Interesting article, thanks for directing my attentions towards it.
Reading through the comments, we all seem to agree: there’s nothing wrong with science. (I’ve grown to expect misleading titles and thesis statements that push too far, it seems part of the blog/internet culture, and the article can still be read for the interesting connecting bits.)
There’s nothing wrong with “science” … I interpret the article as pointing out the problem of induction in the context of a complex system with a limited number of observations. For example, an animation is a very complex system—much more complex than Newtonian physics, requiring a model of the specific intentions of a human mind.
Given an observation, the scientific method goes, you form a hypothesis. Then you test that hypothesis, especially for the broader context that you would like to apply it to. Michotte’s subjects formed a hypothesis about blue and red balls in a set of animations that would not hold up to further observations. Likewise, Pfizer formed hypotheses about cholesterol interactions in human systems that did not hold up. This is the scientific method working, just as well as ever.
An example of the scientific method not working would be experiments that change their behavior depending on what your expectations are and what hypotheses you are forming (exclude anything in psychology for the moment). For example, it would be really weird if objects knew you expected to them to fall down due to gravity and were just obliging. (The scientific worldview is rejecting that sort of hypothesis universally in the absence of any evidence for it.)
Interesting article, thanks for directing my attentions towards it.
Reading through the comments, we all seem to agree: there’s nothing wrong with science. (I’ve grown to expect misleading titles and thesis statements that push too far, it seems part of the blog/internet culture, and the article can still be read for the interesting connecting bits.)
There’s nothing wrong with “science” … I interpret the article as pointing out the problem of induction in the context of a complex system with a limited number of observations. For example, an animation is a very complex system—much more complex than Newtonian physics, requiring a model of the specific intentions of a human mind.
Given an observation, the scientific method goes, you form a hypothesis. Then you test that hypothesis, especially for the broader context that you would like to apply it to. Michotte’s subjects formed a hypothesis about blue and red balls in a set of animations that would not hold up to further observations. Likewise, Pfizer formed hypotheses about cholesterol interactions in human systems that did not hold up. This is the scientific method working, just as well as ever.
An example of the scientific method not working would be experiments that change their behavior depending on what your expectations are and what hypotheses you are forming (exclude anything in psychology for the moment). For example, it would be really weird if objects knew you expected to them to fall down due to gravity and were just obliging. (The scientific worldview is rejecting that sort of hypothesis universally in the absence of any evidence for it.)