A good visualization takes a complicated issue and uses clever visual aids to make it more clear. The beauty of the visualization below is that with a few dots and lines, the basic process of science is illuminated from the first gathering of evidence to our closest approximations of truth.
pictures and words at link.
The few dots are cool.
Nice work.
:)
Well, it’s the usual Grade 10 science class naive empiricism.
Experiment never precedes theory in meaningful science. Experiments always are on the basis of existing theory and the observations are inhereny theory-laden.
Personally I also ascribe to the alternate interpretation of Occam’s Razor. Unless you are a strong Platonist you can’t make assumptions about ‘truth’ (whatever that is) will look like. Simpler theories are not more liky to be true but they are easier to test and so more productive for science.
MartinB said:
Experiment never precedes theory in meaningful science.
Never?
What about high temperature superconductors. They were developed before any theory of their operation came into being.
>Simpler theories are not more likely to be true
Surely it depends on the actual theories under discussion.
>Experiment never precedes theory in meaningful science. Experiments always are on the basis of existing theory and the observations are inhereny theory-laden.
Not sure about this, depends to what status you elevate ‘proto-science’. For example a toddler exploring the world does so from a bunch of tools courtesy millions years of evolution, and the physics of the toddler’s body has (courtesy ancestors that survived, and their lessons of having observed those that didn’t) evolved and come to be through and within like physics, and you know toddlers have lots of ‘accidents’ getting aquainted with the unforgivingness of that physics.
So, from that, it looks like science (meaningful experience contributing to the formalisms) can start with accidents.
Saccharine was discovered when someone picked up a cigarette that had been laying on some chemical
No theory involved there
It’s a dangerous way of thinking that theory is the be all of understanding the world
Early science was almost all discovery by chance – there might have been theory developed before hand but it might have been wrong
sibeen said:
MartinB said:Experiment never precedes theory in meaningful science.
Never?
What about high temperature superconductors. They were developed before any theory of their operation came into being.
Ok, serendipitious discoveries, certainly not completely rare, are a special case, although stepping back I could say that such discoveries don’t come from mucking about, they come in pursuit of some matter. Probably best to just say that ‘never’ may be too strong, but that is not the way science is practised as a matter of course.
thanks martin. would it have been better if hypothesis was used rather than theory at the start?
Wastes a lot of space in that article.
/* Well, it’s the usual Grade 10 science class naive empiricism. */
I disagree, unless ‘u’r’ expressing that number in binary.