How Science is Different from Any Other Human Enterprise
Science is different from many another human enterprise - not, of course, in its practitioners' being influenced by the culture they grew up in, nor in sometimes being right and sometimes wrong (which are common to every human activity), but in its passion for framing testable hypotheses, in its search for definitive experiments that confirm or deny ideas, in the vigour of its substantive debate, and in its willingness to abandon ideas that have been found wanting. If we were not aware of our own limitations, though, if we were not seeking further data, if we were unwilling to perform controlled experiments, if we did not respect the evidence, we would have very little leverage in our quest for the truth. Through opportunism and timidity we might then be buffeted by every ideological breeze, with nothing of lasting value to hang on to.
Notes:
For its need to form testable hypotheses.
Folksonomies: science scientific method
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Concepts:
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Scientific method (0.870352): dbpedia | freebase
Experiment (0.853859): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Science (0.750774): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Hypothesis (0.628783): dbpedia | freebase
Falsifiability (0.616168): dbpedia | freebase
Left-wing politics (0.589418): dbpedia | freebase | opencyc
Ideology (0.542829): dbpedia | freebase

