We’ve argued over whether rationalism should be defined as that which wins. I think this is isomorphic to the question whether science should be defined as that which gets good results.
I’d like to look at the history of science in the 16th-18th centuries, to see whether such a definition would have been a help or a hindrance. My priors say that it would have been a hindrance, because it wouldn’t have kicked contenders out of the field rapidly.
Under position 1, “science = good results”, you would have competition only on the level of individual theories. If the experimental approach to transforming metals won out over mystical Hermetic formulations, that would tell you nothing about whether you would expect an experimental approach to crop fertilization to win out over prayer to the gods.
Position 2, that science is a methodology that turns out to have good results, lets epistemologies, or families of theories, compete. You can group a whole bunch of theories together and call them “scientific”, and a whole bunch of other theories together and call them “tradition”, and other theories together and call them “mystic”, etc.; and test the families against each other. This gives you much stronger statistics. This is probably what happened.
(rationlism:winning)::(science:results)
We’ve argued over whether rationalism should be defined as that which wins. I think this is isomorphic to the question whether science should be defined as that which gets good results.
I’d like to look at the history of science in the 16th-18th centuries, to see whether such a definition would have been a help or a hindrance. My priors say that it would have been a hindrance, because it wouldn’t have kicked contenders out of the field rapidly.
Under position 1, “science = good results”, you would have competition only on the level of individual theories. If the experimental approach to transforming metals won out over mystical Hermetic formulations, that would tell you nothing about whether you would expect an experimental approach to crop fertilization to win out over prayer to the gods.
Position 2, that science is a methodology that turns out to have good results, lets epistemologies, or families of theories, compete. You can group a whole bunch of theories together and call them “scientific”, and a whole bunch of other theories together and call them “tradition”, and other theories together and call them “mystic”, etc.; and test the families against each other. This gives you much stronger statistics. This is probably what happened.