I guess I'm trying to be on the sides of BOTH the PTB and the Conspiracy-Theorists. I never speak of the "Elite-Scum!!" for example -- yet I realize that corruption and arrogance are rampant. If 'they' come to 'get' me -- I'll probably offer to make them a fresh pot of coffee (without poison!) before we head for Camp FEMA. All of this really is a game to me. A very serious game. I like an interdisciplinary approach -- hence the title of this thread. I plan to examine the Scientific-Method -- and then apply it individually to Law, Politics, Religion, Journalism, and Conspiracy-Theories. I'd make a very poor rabble-rouser, debater, or interview subject -- although I think I might possibly be useful as an interviewer -- and I feel as if I might've already done some of this unwittingly in recent months and years. This website is sort of a 'Galactic Rand Corporation' for me. I'd never get hired-on to such an enterprise -- so this is the next best thing -- and it might actually be BETTER than some formal group meeting in an underground base somewhere. Such a situation would probably be unbelieveably controlled. Just a guess. I've signed nothing. I get paid nothing. I know everything I type and say is recorded -- and can and will be used against me in some damn kangaroo court. Unfortunately, this seems to be the cost of doing business. I'm frankly a burned-out and over-the-hill Pseudointellectual Political and Theological Science-Fiction Writer who will probably never, ever get a book published -- and who will probably die deeply in debt. When Raven called me a 'Completely Ignorant Fool' some time ago -- I agreed that this was quite accurate -- and it remains accurate. Unfortunately, this is reality, and it sucks to be me. We all have our crosses to bear. The horror. Anyway, back to the task at hand. Here is a continuation of the Wikipedia material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_methodMain article: History of scientific method
See also: Timeline of the history of scientific method
Aristotle, 384 BC–322 BC. "As regards his method, Aristotle is recognized as the inventor of scientific method because of his refined analysis of logical implications contained in demonstrative discourse, which goes well beyond natural logic and does not owe anything to the ones who philosophized before him."—Riccardo Pozzo[95]The development of the scientific method is inseparable from the history of science itself. Ancient Egyptian documents describe empirical methods in astronomy,[96] mathematics,[97] and medicine.[98] The ancient Greek philosopher Thales in the 6th century BC refused to accept supernatural, religious or mythological explanations for natural phenomena, proclaiming that every event had a natural cause. The development of deductive reasoning by Plato was an important step towards the scientific method. Empiricism seems to have been formalized by Aristotle, who believed that universal truths could be reached via induction.
There are hints of experimental methods from the Classical world (e.g., those reported by Archimedes in a report recovered early in the 20th century CE from an overwritten manuscript), but the first clear instances of an experimental scientific method seem to have been developed by Islamic scientists who introduced the use of experimentation and quantification within a generally empirical orientation. For example, Alhazen performed optical and physiological experiments, reported in his manifold works, the most famous being Book of Optics (1021).[99][unreliable source?] The modern scientific method crystallized no later than in the 17th and 18th centuries. In his work Novum Organum (1620) — a reference to Aristotle's Organon — Francis Bacon outlined a new system of logic to improve upon the old philosophical process of syllogism.[100] Then, in 1637, René Descartes established the framework for a scientific method's guiding principles in his treatise, Discourse on Method. The writings of Alhazen, Bacon and Descartes are considered critical in the historical development of the modern scientific method, as are those of John Stuart Mill.[101]
Grosseteste was "the principal figure" in bringing about "a more adequate method of scientific inquiry" by which "medieval scientists were able eventually to outstrip their ancient European and Muslim teachers" (Dales 1973:62). ... His thinking influenced Roger Bacon, who spread Grosseteste's ideas from Oxford to the University of Paris during a visit there in the 1240s. From the prestigious universities in Oxford and Paris, the new experimental science spread rapidly throughout the medieval universities: "And so it went to Galileo, William Gilbert, Francis Bacon, William Harvey, Descartes, Robert Hooke, Newton, Leibniz, and the world of the seventeenth century" (Crombie 1962:15). So it went to us also.
— Hugh G. Gauch, 2003.[102]
Roger Bacon (c.1214–1294) is sometimes credited as one of the earliest European advocates of the modern scientific method inspired by the works of Aristotle.[103]In the late 19th century, Charles Sanders Peirce proposed a schema that would turn out to have considerable influence in the development of current scientific method generally. Peirce accelerated the progress on several fronts. Firstly, speaking in broader context in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878), Peirce outlined an objectively verifiable method to test the truth of putative knowledge on a way that goes beyond mere foundational alternatives, focusing upon both deduction and induction. He thus placed induction and deduction in a complementary rather than competitive context (the latter of which had been the primary trend at least since David Hume, who wrote in the mid-to-late 18th century). Secondly, and of more direct importance to modern method, Peirce put forth the basic schema for hypothesis/testing that continues to prevail today. Extracting the theory of inquiry from its raw materials in classical logic, he refined it in parallel with the early development of symbolic logic to address the then-current problems in scientific reasoning. Peirce examined and articulated the three fundamental modes of reasoning that, as discussed above in this article, play a role in inquiry today, the processes that are currently known as abductive, deductive, and inductive inference. Thirdly, he played a major role in the progress of symbolic logic itself — indeed this was his primary specialty.
Beginning in the 1930s, Karl Popper argued that there is no such thing as inductive reasoning.[104] All inferences ever made, including in science, are purely[105] deductive according to this view. Accordingly, he claimed that the empirical character of science has nothing to do with induction—but with the deductive property of falsifiability that scientific hypotheses have. Contrasting his views with inductivism and positivism, he even denied the existence of scientific method: "(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory (2) There is no method for ascertaining the truth of a scientific hypothesis, i.e., no method of verification; (3) There is no method for ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', or probably true".[106] Instead, he held that there is only one universal method, a method not particular to science: The negative method of criticism, or colloquially termed trial and error. It covers not only all products of the human mind, including science, mathematics, philosophy, art and so on, but also the evolution of life. Following Peirce and others, Popper argued that science is fallible and has no authority.[106] In contrast to empiricist-inductivist views, he welcomed metaphysics and philosophical discussion and even gave qualified support to myths[107] and pseudosciences.[108] Popper's view has become known as critical rationalism.
Relationship with mathematicsScience is the process of gathering, comparing, and evaluating proposed models against observables. A model can be a simulation, mathematical or chemical formula, or set of proposed steps. Science is like mathematics in that researchers in both disciplines can clearly distinguish what is known from what is unknown at each stage of discovery. Models, in both science and mathematics, need to be internally consistent and also ought to be falsifiable (capable of disproof). In mathematics, a statement need not yet be proven; at such a stage, that statement would be called a conjecture. But when a statement has attained mathematical proof, that statement gains a kind of immortality which is highly prized by mathematicians, and for which some mathematicians devote their lives.[109]
Mathematical work and scientific work can inspire each other.[110] For example, the technical concept of time arose in science, and timelessness was a hallmark of a mathematical topic. But today, the Poincaré conjecture has been proven using time as a mathematical concept in which objects can flow (see Ricci flow).
Nevertheless, the connection between mathematics and reality (and so science to the extent it describes reality) remains obscure. Eugene Wigner's paper, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences, is a very well known account of the issue from a Nobel Prize physicist. In fact, some observers (including some well known mathematicians such as Gregory Chaitin, and others such as Lakoff and Núñez) have suggested that mathematics is the result of practitioner bias and human limitation (including cultural ones), somewhat like the post-modernist view of science.
George Pólya's work on problem solving,[111] the construction of mathematical proofs, and heuristic[112][113] show that the mathematical method and the scientific method differ in detail, while nevertheless resembling each other in using iterative or recursive steps.
Mathematical method Scientific method
1 Understanding Characterization from experience and observation
2 Analysis Hypothesis: a proposed explanation
3 Synthesis Deduction: prediction from the hypothesis
4 Review/Extend Test and experiment
In Pólya's view, understanding involves restating unfamiliar definitions in your own words, resorting to geometrical figures, and questioning what we know and do not know already; analysis, which Pólya takes from Pappus,[114] involves free and heuristic construction of plausible arguments, working backward from the goal, and devising a plan for constructing the proof; synthesis is the strict Euclidean exposition of step-by-step details[115] of the proof; review involves reconsidering and re-examining the result and the path taken to it.
Gauss, when asked how he came about his theorems, once replied "durch planmässiges Tattonieren" (through systematic palpable experimentation).[116]
Imre Lakatos argued that mathematicians actually use contradiction, criticism and revision as principles for improving their work.[117]
See alsoConfirmability
Contingency
Falsifiability
Hypothesis
Hypothesis testing
Inquiry
Information theory
Logic
Abductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning
Inductive reasoning
Inference
Tautology
Methodology
Baconian method
Empirical method
Historical method
Philosophical method
Phronetic method
Scholarly method
Strong inference
Mathematics
OGHET
Operationalization
Quantitative research
Reproducibility
Research
Social research
Statistics
Testability
Theory
Verification and Validation
Problems and issuesInduction
Problem of induction
Occam's razor
Skeptical hypotheses
Poverty of the stimulus
Reference class problem
Underdetermination
Demarcation problem
Holistic science
Junk science
Pseudoscience
Scientific misconduct
History, philosophy, sociologyEpistemology
Epistemic truth
History of science
History of scientific method
Instrumentalism
Mertonian norms (Cudos)
Philosophy of science
Science studies
Sociology of scientific knowledge
Timeline of scientific method
Notes^ a b Goldhaber & Nieto 2010, p. 940
^ "[4] Rules for the study of natural philosophy", Newton 1999, pp. 794–6, from Book 3, The System of the World.
^ Oxford English Dictionary - entry for scientific.
^ Gauch 2003, p. 35
^ a b "Truth is sought for its own sake. And those who are engaged upon the quest for anything for its own sake are not interested in other things. Finding the truth is difficult, and the road to it is rough."—Alhazen (Ibn Al-Haytham 965-c.1040) Critique of Ptolemy, translated by S. Pines, Actes X Congrès internationale d'histoire des sciences, Vol I Ithaca 1962, as quoted in Sambursky 1974, p. 139. (This quotation is from Alhazen's critique of Ptolemy's books Almagest, Planetary Hypotheses, and Optics as translated into English by A. Mark Smith.)
^ Morris Kline (1985) Mathematics for the nonmathematician. Courier Dover Publications. p. 284. ISBN 0-486-24823-2
^ Peirce, C. S., Collected Papers v. 1, paragraph 74.
^ "...the statement of a law—A depends on B—always transcends experience." —Born 1949, p. 6
^ Godfrey-Smith 2003 p. 236.
^ Taleb 2007 e.g., p. 58, devotes his chapter 5 to the error of confirmation.
^ "How does light travel through transparent bodies? Light travels through transparent bodies in straight lines only.... We have explained this exhaustively in our Book of Optics. But let us now mention something to prove this convincingly: the fact that light travels in straight lines is clearly observed in the lights which enter into dark rooms through holes.... [T]he entering light will be clearly observable in the dust which fills the air. —Alhazen, translated into English from German by M. Schwarz, from "Abhandlung über das Licht", J. Baarmann (ed. 1882) Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft Vol 36 as quoted in Sambursky 1974, p. 136.
The conjecture that "light travels through transparent bodies in straight lines only" was corroborated by Alhazen only after years of effort. His demonstration of the conjecture was to place a straight stick or a taut thread next to the light beam, as quoted in Sambursky 1974, p. 136 to prove that light travels in a straight line.
David Hockney, (2001, 2006) in Secret Knowledge: rediscovering the lost techniques of the old masters ISBN 0-14-200512-6 (expanded edition) cites Alhazen several times as the likely source for the portraiture technique using the camera obscura, which Hockney rediscovered with the aid of an optical suggestion from Charles M. Falco. Kitab al-Manazir, which is Alhazen's Book of Optics, at that time denoted Opticae Thesaurus, Alhazen Arabis, was translated from Arabic into Latin for European use as early as 1270. Hockney cites Friedrich Risner's 1572 Basle edition of Opticae Thesaurus. Hockney quotes Alhazen as the first clear description of the camera obscura in Hockney, p. 240.
^ Galilei, Galileo (M.D.C.XXXVIII), Discorsi e Dimonstrazioni Matematiche, intorno a due nuoue scienze, Leida: Apresso gli Elsevirri, ISBN 0-486-60099-8 , Dover reprint of the 1914 Macmillan translation by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio of Two New Sciences, Galileo Galilei Linceo (1638). Additional publication information is from the collection of first editions of the Library of Congress surveyed by Bruno 1989, pp. 261–264.
^ "I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably." —Christiaan Huygens, Letter to Pierre Perrault, 'Sur la préface de M. Perrault de son traité del'Origine des fontaines' [1763], Oeuvres Complétes de Christiaan Huygens (1897), Vol. 7, 298. Quoted in Jacques Roger, The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, ed. Keith R. Benson and trans. Robert Ellrich (1997), 163. Quotation selected by Bynum & Porter 2005, p. 317 Huygens 317#4.
^ As noted by Alice Calaprice (ed. 2005) The New Quotable Einstein Princeton University Press and Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ISBN 0-691-12074-9 p. 291. Calaprice denotes this not as an exact quotation, but as a paraphrase of a translation of A. Einstein's "Induction and Deduction". Collected Papers of Albert Einstein 7 Document 28. Volume 7 is The Berlin Years: Writings, 1918-1921. A. Einstein; M. Janssen, R. Schulmann, et al., eds.
^ Murzi, Mauro (2001, 2008), "Carl Gustav Hempel (1905—1997)", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
^ Poincaré 1905 p.142 notes that Francis Bacon introduced the term; on a related note, Ørsted introduced the term 'thought experiment'; of course, Galileo, a contemporary of Bacon, had previously made liberal use of these concepts in his writings centuries earlier than Poincaré or Ørsted.
^ Fleck 1979, pp. xxvii-xxviii
^ October, 1951. as noted in McElheny 2004, p. 40:"That's what a helix should look like!" Crick exclaimed in delight (This is the Cochran-Crick-Vand&Stokes theory of the transform of a helix).
^ June, 1952. as noted in McElheny 2004, p. 43: Watson had succeeded in getting X-ray pictures of TMV showing a helical structure
^ a b Cochran W, Crick FHC and Vand V. (1952) "The Structure of Synthetic Polypeptides. I. The Transform of Atoms on a Helix", Acta Cryst., 5, 581-586.
^ a b Friday, January 30, 1953. Tea time. as noted in McElheny 2004, p. 52: Franklin confronts Watson and his paper - "Of course it [Pauling's pre-print] is wrong. DNA is not a helix." Watson ran away from Franklin and into Wilkins; in Wilkins' office, Watson saw photo 51. Watson immediately recognizes the diffraction pattern of a helical structure.
^ a b Saturday, February 28, 1953, as noted in McElheny 2004, pp. 57–59: Watson found the base pairing mechanism which explained Chargaff's rules using his cardboard models.
^ "People start off with a belief and a prejudice—we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth." —Simon Singh, as quoted in Wired (August 30, 2010) interview by Robert Capps
^ "Observation and experiment are subject to a very popular myth. ... The knower is seen as a ... Julius Caesar winning his battles according to ... formula. Even research workers will admit that the first observation may have been a little imprecise, whereas the second and third were 'adjusted to the facts' ... until tradition, education, and familiarity have produced a readiness for stylized (that is directed and restricted) perception and action; until an answer becomes largely pre-formed in the question, and a decision confined merely to 'yes' or 'no' or perhaps to a numerical determination; until methods and apparatus automatically carry out the greatest part of the mental work for us." Ludwik Fleck labels this thought style(Denkstil). Fleck 1979, p. 84.
^ Needham & Wang 1954 p.166 shows how the 'flying gallop' image propagated from China to the West.
^ Stanovich, Keith E. (2007). How to Think Straight About Psychology. Boston: Pearson Education. pg 123
^ "A myth is a belief given uncritical acceptance by members of a group ..." —Weiss, Business Ethics p. 15, as cited by Ronald R. Sims (2003) Ethics and corporate social responsibility: why giants fall p.21
^ Imre Lakatos (1976), Proofs and Refutations. Taleb 2007, p. 72 lists ways to avoid narrative fallacy and confirmation bias.
^ For more on the narrative fallacy, see also Fleck 1979, p. 27: "Words and ideas are originally phonetic and mental equivalences of the experiences coinciding with them. ... Such proto-ideas are at first always too broad and insufficiently specialized. ... Once a structurally complete and closed system of opinions consisting of many details and relations has been formed, it offers enduring resistance to anything that contradicts it."
^ Brody 1993, pp. 44–45
^ See the hypothethico-deductive method, for example, Godfrey-Smith 2003, p. 236.
^ Jevons 1874, pp. 265–6.
^ pp.65,73,92,398 —Andrew J. Galambos, Sic Itur ad Astra ISBN 0-88078-004-5(AJG learned scientific method from Felix Ehrenhaft
^ Galileo 1638, pp. v-xii,1–300
^ Brody 1993, pp. 10–24 calls this the "epistemic cycle": "The epistemic cycle starts from an initial model; iterations of the cycle then improve the model until an adequate fit is achieved."
^ Iteration example: Chaldean astronomers such as Kidinnu compiled astronomical data. Hipparchus was to use this data to calculate the precession of the Earth's axis. Fifteen hundred years after Kidinnu, Al-Batani, born in what is now Turkey, would use the collected data and improve Hipparchus' value for the precession of the Earth's axis. Al-Batani's value, 54.5 arc-seconds per year, compares well to the current value of 49.8 arc-seconds per year (26,000 years for Earth's axis to round the circle of nutation).
^ Recursion example: the Earth is itself a magnet, with its own North and South Poles William Gilbert (in Latin 1600) De Magnete, or On Magnetism and Magnetic Bodies. Translated from Latin to English, selection by Moulton & Schifferes 1960, pp. 113–117. Gilbert created a terrella, a lodestone ground into a spherical shape, which served as Gilbert's model for the Earth itself, as noted in Bruno 1989, p. 277.
^ "The foundation of general physics ... is experience. These ... everyday experiences we do not discover without deliberately directing our attention to them. Collecting information about these is observation." —Hans Christian Ørsted("First Introduction to General Physics" ¶13, part of a series of public lectures at the University of Copenhagen. Copenhagen 1811, in Danish, printed by Johan Frederik Schulz. In Kirstine Meyer's 1920 edition of Ørsted's works, vol.III pp. 151-190. ) "First Introduction to Physics: the Spirit, Meaning, and Goal of Natural Science". Reprinted in German in 1822, Schweigger's Journal für Chemie und Physik 36, pp.458-488, as translated in Ørsted 1997, p. 292
^ "When it is not clear under which law of nature an effect or class of effect belongs, we try to fill this gap by means of a guess. Such guesses have been given the name conjectures or hypotheses." —Hans Christian Ørsted(1811) "First Introduction to General Physics" as translated in Ørsted 1997, p. 297.
^ "In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. ...", —Feynman 1965, p. 156
^ "... the statement of a law - A depends on B - always transcends experience."—Born 1949, p. 6
^ "The student of nature ... regards as his property the experiences which the mathematician can only borrow. This is why he deduces theorems directly from the nature of an effect while the mathematician only arrives at them circuitously." —Hans Christian Ørsted(1811) "First Introduction to General Physics" ¶17. as translated in Ørsted 1997, p. 297.
^ Salviati speaks: "I greatly doubt that Aristotle ever tested by experiment whether it be true that two stones, one weighing ten times as much as the other, if allowed to fall, at the same instant, from a height of, say, 100 cubits, would so differ in speed that when the heavier had reached the ground, the other would not have fallen more than 10 cubits." Two New Sciences (1638) —Galileo 1638, pp. 61–62. A more extended quotation is referenced by Moulton & Schifferes 1960, pp. 80–81.
^ In the inquiry-based education paradigm, the stage of "characterization, observation, definition, …" is more briefly summed up under the rubric of a Question
^ "To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science." —Einstein & Infeld 1938, p. 92.
^ Crawford S, Stucki L (1990), "Peer review and the changing research record", "J Am Soc Info Science", vol. 41, pp 223-228
^ See, e.g., Gauch 2003, esp. chapters 5-8
^ Cartwright, Nancy (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-824704-4
^ Andreas Vesalius, Epistola, Rationem, Modumque Propinandi Radicis Chynae Decocti (1546), 141. Quoted and translated in C.D. O'Malley, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, (1964), 116. As quoted by Bynum & Porter 2005, p. 597: Andreas Vesalius,597#1.
^ Crick, Francis (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis ISBN 0-684-19431-7 p.20
^ McCarty1985
^ McElheny 2004 p.34
^ Glen 1994, pp. 37–38.
^ "The structure that we propose is a three-chain structure, each chain being a helix" — Linus Pauling, as quoted on p. 157 by Horace Freeland Judson (1979), The Eighth Day of Creation ISBN 0-671-22540-5
^ McElheny 2004, pp. 49–50: January 28, 1953 - Watson read Pauling's pre-print, and realized that in Pauling's model, DNA's phosphate groups had to be un-ionized. But DNA is an acid, which contradicts Pauling's model.
^ June, 1952. as noted in McElheny 2004, p. 43: Watson had succeeded in getting X-ray pictures of TMV showing a diffraction pattern consistent with the transform of a helix.
^ Watson did enough work on Tobacco mosaic virus to produce the diffraction pattern for a helix, per Crick's work on the transform of a helix. pp. 137-138, Horace Freeland Judson (1979) The Eighth Day of Creation ISBN 0-671-22540-5
^ McElheny 2004 p.68: Nature April 25, 1953.
^ In March 1917, the Royal Astronomical Society announced that on May 29, 1919, the occasion of a total eclipse of the sun would afford favorable conditions for testing Einstein's General theory of relativity. One expedition, to Sobral, Ceará, Brazil, and Eddington's expedition to the island of Principe yielded a set of photographs, which, when compared to photographs taken at Sobral and at Greenwich Observatory showed that the deviation of light was measured to be 1.69 arc-seconds, as compared to Einstein's desk prediction of 1.75 arc-seconds. — Antonina Vallentin (1954), Einstein, as quoted by Samuel Rapport and Helen Wright (1965), Physics, New York: Washington Square Press, pp 294-295.
^ Mill, John Stuart, "A System of Logic", University Press of the Pacific, Honolulu, 2002, ISBN 1-4102-0252-6.
^ al-Battani, De Motu Stellarum translation from Arabic to Latin in 1116, as cited by "Battani, al-" (c.858-929) Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th. ed. Al-Battani is known for his accurate observations at al-Raqqah in Syria, beginning in 877. His work includes measurement of the annual precession of the equinoxes.
^ "The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race." —Watson 1968, p. 167 Page 168 shows the X-shaped pattern of the B-form of DNA, clearly indicating crucial details of its helical structure to Watson and Crick.
McElheny 2004 p.52 dates the Franklin-Watson confrontation as Friday, January 30, 1953. Later that evening, Watson urges Wilkins to begin model-building immediately. But Wilkins agrees to do so only after Franklin's departure.
^ McElheny 2004 p.53: The weekend (January 31-February 1) after seeing photo 51, Watson informed Bragg of the X-ray diffraction image of DNA in B form. Bragg gave them permission to restart their research on DNA (that is, model building).
^ McElheny 2004 p.54: On Sunday February 8, 1953, Maurice Wilkes gave Watson and Crick permission to work on models, as Wilkes would not be building models until Franklin left DNA research.
^ McElheny 2004 p.56: Jerry Donohue, on sabbatical from Pauling's lab and visiting Cambridge, advises Watson that textbook form of the base pairs was incorrect for DNA base pairs; rather, the keto form of the base pairs should be used instead. This form allowed the bases' hydrogen bonds to pair 'unlike' with 'unlike', rather than to pair 'like' with 'like', as Watson was inclined to model, on the basis of the textbook statements. On February 27, 1953, Watson was convinced enough to make cardboard models of the nucleotides in their keto form.
^ "Suddenly I became aware that an adenine-thymine pair held together by two hydrogen bonds was identical in shape to a guanine-cytosine pair held together by at least two hydrogen bonds. ..." —Watson 1968, pp. 194–197.
McElheny 2004 p.57 Saturday, February 28, 1953, Watson tried 'like with like' and admited these base pairs didn't have hydrogen bonds that line up. But after trying 'unlike with unlike', and getting Jerry Donohue's approval, the base pairs turned out to be identical in shape (as Watson stated above in his 1968 Double Helix memoir quoted above). Watson now felt confident enough to inform Crick. (Of course, 'unlike with unlike' increases the number of possible codons, if this scheme were a genetic code.)
^ See, e.g., Physics Today, 59(1), p42. Richmann electrocuted in St. Petersburg (1753)
^ Aristotle, "Prior Analytics", Hugh Tredennick (trans.), pp. 181-531 in Aristotle, Volume 1, Loeb Classical Library, William Heinemann, London, UK, 1938.
^ a b Peirce (1877), "The Fixation of Belief", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp. 1–15. Reprinted often, including (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce v. 5, paragraphs 358–87), (The Essential Peirce, v. 1, pp. 109–23). Peirce.org Eprint. Wikisource Eprint.
^ "What one does not in the least doubt one should not pretend to doubt; but a man should train himself to doubt," said Peirce in a brief intellectual autobiography; see Ketner, Kenneth Laine (2009) "Charles Sanders Peirce: Interdisciplinary Scientist" in The Logic of Interdisciplinarity). Peirce held that actual, genuine doubt originates externally, usually in surprise, but also that it is to be sought and cultivated, "provided only that it be the weighty and noble metal itself, and no counterfeit nor paper substitute"; in "Issues of Pragmaticism", The Monist, v. XV, n. 4, pp. 481-99, see p. 484, and p. 491. (Reprinted in Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 438-63, see 443 and 451).
^ Peirce (1898), "Philosophy and the Conduct of Life", Lecture 1 of the Cambridge (MA) Conferences Lectures, published in Collected Papers v. 1, paragraphs 616-48 in part and in Reasoning and the Logic of Things, Ketner (ed., intro.) and Putnam (intro., comm.), pp. 105-22, reprinted in Essential Peirce v. 2, pp. 27-41.
^ Peirce (1899), "F.R.L." [First Rule of Logic], Collected Papers v. 1, paragraphs 135-40, Eprint
^ Collected Papers v. 5, in paragraph 582, from 1898:
... [rational] inquiry of every type, fully carried out, has the vital power of self-correction and of growth. This is a property so deeply saturating its inmost nature that it may truly be said that there is but one thing needful for learning the truth, and that is a hearty and active desire to learn what is true.
^ a b c Peirce (1877), "How to Make Our Ideas Clear", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp. 286–302. Reprinted often, including Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 388–410, Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 124–41. ArisbeEprint. Wikisource Eprint.
^ Peirce (1868), "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities", Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. 2, n. 3, pp. 140–57. Reprinted Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 264–317, The Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 28–55, and elsewhere. Arisbe Eprint
^ Peirce (1878), "The Doctrine of Chances", Popular Science Monthly v. 12, pp. 604-15, see pp. 610-11 via Internet Archive. Reprinted Collected Papers v. 2, paragraphs 645-68, Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 142-54. "...death makes the number of our risks, the number of our inferences, finite, and so makes their mean result uncertain. The very idea of probability and of reasoning rests on the assumption that this number is indefinitely great. .... ...logicality inexorably requires that our interests shall not be limited. .... Logic is rooted in the social principle."
^ Peirce (1908), "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God", Hibbert Journal v. 7, pp. 90-112. s:A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God with added notes. Reprinted with previously unpublished part, Collected Papers v. 6, paragraphs 452-85, The Essential Peirce v. 2, pp. 434-50, and elsewhere.
^ Peirce (c. 1906), "PAP (Prolegomena for an Apology to Pragmatism)" (Manuscript 293, not the like-named article), The New Elements of Mathematics (NEM) 4:319-320, see first quote under "Abduction" at Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms.
^ Peirce, Carnegie application (L75, 1902), New Elements of Mathematics v. 4, pp. 37-38:
For it is not sufficient that a hypothesis should be a justifiable one. Any hypothesis which explains the facts is justified critically. But among justifiable hypotheses we have to select that one which is suitable for being tested by experiment.
^ a b Peirce (1902), Carnegie application, see MS L75.329-330, from Draft D of Memoir 27:
Consequently, to discover is simply to expedite an event that would occur sooner or later, if we had not troubled ourselves to make the discovery. Consequently, the art of discovery is purely a question of economics. The economics of research is, so far as logic is concerned, the leading doctrine with reference to the art of discovery. Consequently, the conduct of abduction, which is chiefly a question of heuretic and is the first question of heuretic, is to be governed by economical considerations.
^ Peirce (1903), "Pragmatism — The Logic of Abduction", Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 195-205, especially 196. Eprint.
^ Peirce, "On the Logic of Drawing Ancient History from Documents", Essential Peirce v. 2, see pp. 107-9. On Twenty Questions, p. 109:
Thus, twenty skillful hypotheses will ascertain what 200,000 stupid ones might fail to do.
^ Peirce (1878), "The Probability of Induction", Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp. 705-18, see 718 Google Books; 718 via Internet Archive. Reprinted often, including (Collected Papers v. 2, paragraphs 669-93), (The Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 155-69).
^ Peirce (1905 draft "G" of "A Neglected Argument"), "Crude, Quantitative, and Qualitative Induction", Collected Papers v. 2, paragraphs 755–760, see 759. Find under "Induction" at Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms.
^ . Brown, C. (2005) Overcoming Barriers to Use of Promising Research Among Elite Middle East Policy Groups, Journal of Social Behaviour and Personality, Select Press.
^ Hanson, Norwood (1958), Patterns of Discovery, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-05197-5
^ Kuhn 1962, p. 113 ISBN 978-1443255448
^ Feyerabend, Paul K (1960) "Patterns of Discovery" The Philosophical Review (1960) vol. 69 (2) pp. 247-252
^ Kuhn, Thomas S., "The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science", ISIS 52(2), 161–193, 1961.
^ Feyerabend, Paul K., Against Method, Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, 1st published, 1975. Reprinted, Verso, London, UK, 1978.
^
Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997
Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science, Picador; 1st Picador USA Pbk. Ed edition, 1999
The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy, University of Nebraska Press, 2000 ISBN 0-8032-7995-7
A House Built on Sand: Exposing Postmodernist Myths About Science, Oxford University Press, 2000
Intellectual Impostures, Economist Books, 2003
^ a b c Dunbar, K., & Fugelsang, J. (2005). Causal thinking in science: How scientists and students interpret the unexpected. In M. E. Gorman, R. D. Tweney, D. Gooding & A. Kincannon (Eds.), Scientific and Technical Thinking (pp. 57-79). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
^ a b Oliver, J.E. (1991) Ch2. of The incomplete guide to the art of discovery. New York:NY, Columbia University Press.
^ Talib contributes a brief description of anti-fragility,
http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_3.html ^ Riccardo Pozzo (2004) The impact of Aristotelianism on modern philosophy. CUA Press. p.41. ISBN 0813213479
^ The ancient Egyptians observed that heliacal rising of a certain star, Sothis (Greek for Sopdet (Egyptian), known to the West as Sirius), marked the annual flooding of the Nile river. See Neugebauer, Otto (1969) [1957], The Exact Sciences in Antiquity (2 ed.), Dover Publications, ISBN 978-048622332-2,
http://books.google.com/?id=JVhTtVA2zr8C , p.82, and also the 1911 Britannica, "Egypt".
^ The Rhind papyrus lists practical examples in arithmetic and geometry —1911 Britannica, "Egypt".
^ The Ebers papyrus lists some of the 'mysteries of the physician', as cited in the 1911 Britannica, "Egypt"
^ Rosanna Gorini (2003), "Al-Haytham the Man of Experience, First Steps in the Science of Vision", International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine, Institute of Neurosciences, Laboratory of Psychobiology and Psychopharmacology, Rome, Italy:
"According to the majority of the historians al-Haytham was the pioneer of the modern scientific method. With his book he changed the meaning of the term optics and established experiments as the norm of proof in the field. His investigations are based not on abstract theories, but on experimental evidences and his experiments were systematic and repeatable."
^ Bacon, Francis Novum Organum (The New Organon), 1620. Bacon's work described many of the accepted principles, underscoring the importance of theory, empirical results, data gathering, experiment, and independent corroboration.
^ "John Stuart Mill (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". plato.stanford.edu.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mill/#SciMet. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
^ Gauch 2003, pp. 52–53
^ George Sampson (1970). The concise Cambridge history of English literature. Cambridge University Press. p.174. ISBN 0521095816
^ Logik der Forschung, new appendices *XVII–*XIX (not yet available in the English edition Logic of scientific discovery)
^ Logic of Scientific discovery, p. 20
^ a b Karl Popper: On the non-existence of scientific method. Realism and the Aim of Science (1983)
^ Karl Popper: Science: Conjectures and Refutations. Conjectures and Refuations, section VII
^ Karl Popper: On knowledge. In search of a better world, section II
^ "When we are working intensively, we feel keenly the progress of our work; we are elated when our progress is rapid, we are depressed when it is slow." — the mathematician Pólya 1957, p. 131 in the section on 'Modern heuristic'.
^ "Philosophy [i.e., physics] is written in this grand book--I mean the universe--which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering around in a dark labyrinth." —Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (The Assayer, 1623), as translated by Stillman Drake (1957), Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo pp. 237-8, as quoted by di Francia 1981, p. 10.
^ Pólya 1957 2nd ed.
^ George Pólya (1954), Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning Volume I: Induction and Analogy in Mathematics,
^ George Pólya (1954), Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning Volume II: Patterns of Plausible Reasoning.
^ Pólya 1957, p. 142
^ Pólya 1957, p. 144
^ Mackay 1991 p.100
^ See the development, by generations of mathematicians, of Euler's formula for polyhedra as documented by Lakatos, Imre (1976), Proofs and refutations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-29038-4
ReferencesBorn, Max (1949), Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance, Peter Smith , also published by Dover, 1964. From the Waynflete Lectures, 1948. On the web. N.B.: the web version does not have the 3 addenda by Born, 1950, 1964, in which he notes that all knowledge is subjective. Born then proposes a solution in Appendix 3 (1964)
Brody, Thomas A. (1993), The Philosophy Behind Physics, Springer Verlag, ISBN 0-387-55914-0 . (Luis De La Peña and Peter E. Hodgson, eds.)
Bruno, Leonard C. (1989), The Landmarks of Science, ISBN 0-8160-2137-6
Bynum, W.F.; Porter, Roy (2005), Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, Oxford, ISBN 0-19-858409-1 .
di Francia, G. Toraldo (1981), The Investigation of the Physical World, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-29925-X .
Einstein, Albert; Infeld, Leopold (1938), The Evolution of Physics: from early concepts to relativity and quanta, New York: Simon and Schuster, ISBN 0-671-20156-5
Feynman, Richard (1965), The Character of Physical Law, Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, ISBN 0-262-56003-8 .
Fleck, Ludwik (1979), Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, Univ. of Chicago, ISBN 0-226-25325-2 . (written in German, 1935, Entstehung und Entwickelung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache: Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollectiv) English translation, 1979
Galileo (1638), Two New Sciences, Leiden: Lodewijk Elzevir, ISBN 0-486-60099-8 Translated from Italian to English in 1914 by Henry Crew and Alfonso de Salvio. Introduction by Antonio Favaro. xxv+300 pages, index. New York: Macmillan, with later reprintings by Dover.
Gauch, Hugh G., Jr. (2003), Scientific Method in Practice, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-01708-4,
http://books.google.com/?id=iVkugqNG9dAC 435 pages
Glen, William (ed.) (1994), The Mass-Extinction Debates: How Science Works in a Crisis, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ISBN 0-8047-2285-4 .
Godfrey-Smith, Peter (2003), Theory and Reality: An introduction to the philosophy of science, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-30063-3 .
Goldhaber, Alfred Scharff; Nieto, Michael Martin (January–March 2010), "Photon and graviton mass limits", Rev. Mod. Phys. (American Physical Society) 82: 939, doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.82.939 . pages 939-979.
Jevons, William Stanley (1874), The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method, Dover Publications, ISBN 1430487755 . 1877, 1879. Reprinted with a foreword by Ernst Nagel, New York, NY, 1958.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press . 2nd edition 1970. 3rd edition 1996.
Mackay, Alan L. (ed.) (1991), Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, London: IOP Publishing Ltd, ISBN 0-7503-0106-6
McElheny, Victor K. (2004), Watson & DNA: Making a scientific revolution, Basic Books, ISBN 0-7382-0866-3 .
Moulton, Forest Ray; Schifferes, Justus J. (eds., Second Edition) (1960), The Autobiography of Science, Doubleday .
Needham, Joseph; Wang, Ling (王玲) (1954), Science and Civilisation in China, 1 Introductory Orientations, Cambridge University Press
Newton, Isaac (1687, 1713, 1726), Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-08817-4 , Third edition. From I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman's 1999 translation, 974 pages.
Ørsted, Hans Christian (1997), Selected Scientific Works of Hans Christian Ørsted, Princeton, ISBN 0-691-04334-5 . Translated to English by Karen Jelved, Andrew D. Jackson, and Ole Knudsen, (translators 1997).
Peirce, C. S. — see Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography.
Poincaré, Henri (1905), Science and Hypothesis Eprint
Pólya, George (1957), How to Solve It, Princeton University Press, ISBN -691-08097-6
Popper, Karl R., The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1934, 1959.
Sambursky, Shmuel (ed.) (1974), Physical Thought from the Presocratics to the Quantum Physicists, Pica Press, ISBN 0-87663-712-8 .
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2007), The Black Swan, Random House, ISBN 978-1-4000-6351-2
Watson, James D. (1968), The Double Helix, New York: Atheneum, Library of Congress card number 68-16217 .
Further readingBauer, Henry H., Scientific Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method, University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL, 1992
Beveridge, William I. B., The Art of Scientific Investigation, Heinemann, Melbourne, Australia, 1950.
Bernstein, Richard J., Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1983.
Brody, Baruch A. and Capaldi, Nicholas, Science: Men, Methods, Goals: A Reader: Methods of Physical Science, W. A. Benjamin, 1968
Brody, Baruch A., and Grandy, Richard E., Readings in the Philosophy of Science, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1989.
Burks, Arthur W., Chance, Cause, Reason — An Inquiry into the Nature of Scientific Evidence, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1977.
Alan Chalmers. What is this thing called science?. Queensland University Press and Open University Press, 1976.
Crick, Francis (1988), What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, New York: Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-09137-7 .
Dewey, John, How We Think, D.C. Heath, Lexington, MA, 1910. Reprinted, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1991.
Earman, John (ed.), Inference, Explanation, and Other Frustrations: Essays in the Philosophy of Science, University of California Press, Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA, 1992.
Fraassen, Bas C. van, The Scientific Image, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1980.
Franklin, James (2009), What Science Knows: And How It Knows It, New York: Encounter Books, ISBN 1594032076 .
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Reason in the Age of Science, Frederick G. Lawrence (trans.), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1981.
Giere, Ronald N. (ed.), Cognitive Models of Science, vol. 15 in 'Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science', University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1992.
Hacking, Ian, Representing and Intervening, Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1983.
Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond, Encounters and Conversations, A.J. Pomerans (trans.), Harper and Row, New York, NY 1971, pp. 63–64.
Holton, Gerald, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought, Kepler to Einstein, 1st edition 1973, revised edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1988.
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Essential Tension, Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1977.
Latour, Bruno, Science in Action, How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1987.
Losee, John, A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1972. 2nd edition, 1980.
Maxwell, Nicholas, The Comprehensibility of the Universe: A New Conception of Science, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998. Paperback 2003.
McCarty, Maclyn (1985), The Transforming Principle: Discovering that genes are made of DNA, New York: W. W. Norton, pp. 252 , ISBN 0-393-30450-7 . Memoir of a researcher in the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment.
McComas, William F., ed. The Principal Elements of the Nature of Science: Dispelling the MythsPDF (189 KB), from The Nature of Science in Science Education, pp53–70, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands 1998.
Misak, Cheryl J., Truth and the End of Inquiry, A Peircean Account of Truth, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1991.
Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo (ed.), Language and Learning, The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980.
Popper, Karl R., Unended Quest, An Intellectual Autobiography, Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1982.
Putnam, Hilary, Renewing Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992.
Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1979.
Salmon, Wesley C., Four Decades of Scientific Explanation, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 1990.
Shimony, Abner, Search for a Naturalistic World View: Vol. 1, Scientific Method and Epistemology, Vol. 2, Natural Science and Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1993.
Thagard, Paul, Conceptual Revolutions, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1992.
Ziman, John (2000). Real Science: what it is, and what it means. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Here is an inside look at the Secret Steam Program (at an undisclosed location). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcJIuYb21BM Does anyone know why the tubes in the boiler of this steamboat were a mess? Do some research -- and you'll discover that I'm not blowing smoke. Also, consider the broken-wire and runaway-train phenomenon. What does all of the above have in common? There's a very interesting name connected with all of the above -- with a very interesting history. Do some research -- and you might be amazed. Amaze your friends.
Here is one of my favorite places. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwiO9GG-Ekw&feature=player_embedded It contains something which is very special to me -- but I won't say what that is. Please donate to the BC Forest Discovery Centre, if you can.
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Dirty Bomb = Urine-Filled Balloon?? No Fly Zone = No Throwing Urine-Filled Balloons?? 
Pee-Party Pee-Bombs!!! 
I thought the clowns were attending the HATO Summit!!! 