The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #55060   Message #855968
Posted By: Pied Piper
31-Dec-02 - 11:36 AM
Thread Name: BS: Here come the 'Raelian' clones
Subject: RE: BS: Here come the 'Raelian' clones
DA
The Universe does not dissemble.
People do.
When you ask a question of the Nature it always gives truth. Wither what you construe from the answer is relevant or not is much more problematic.
The tricky bit is asking pertinent questions.
I think your view of the way science works is inaccurate.
1 The idea that studying sciences and mathematics involves learning lots of facts and ideas which you must take at face value without evidence is nonsense. Science and mathematics a practical skills that you must learn by doing. Obviously building a practical accelerator isn't a practical possibility for most people so you have to take the word of the participants that results from experiments that have been repeated are correct. The point is that your results must be testable and repeatable.
When I studied for A levels in Chemistry, Physics and Biology I actually did practical experiments to test the postulates of science.
I wonder how many people that studied A level Sociology actually did any practical experiments, rather than site other peoples results in essays.
a joke
Physicist goes to the funding department of his university and asks for £1Billion (10 to the power 9) to build a high energy particle accelerator.
Funding Manager says- You Physicists are so expensive. Why can't you be like the Mathematicians? All they need is pencils, paper and wastepaper baskets. Better still be like the Philosophers, all they need is pencils and paper.
A bit hard on the Philosophers but you get my drift.
IF IT AIN'T TESTABLE ITS USELESS.
2 The idea that all scientists do is construct experiments, analyse the results and come up with theories is inaccurate. In fact the process usually goes the other way around the scientist uses all the resources of the human mind, intuition, dreams, visual reasoning, mental model building, and play to come up with a "theory" about a certain problem that the Scientist thinks is a TRUE description of what is going on. He then constructs an experiment that will prove the theory correct, but more importantly disprove it if it is wrong.

Now if the Mudcat Mystics would adopt some rigorous process by which there postulates can be tested by everyone not inside there heads, may be reasonable people might find something of interest in there.

I am not saying that insights gained in altered states of consciousness cannot be true, merely that if they are not testable they are useless.
All the best PP