PZ Fails Again

Once again, PZ Myers demonstrates poor thinking:

There is no expectation that a system for generating knowledge has to follow a narrowly defined scientific method (although no one has yet shown us a functioning alternative.)

I see.  So mathematicians and logicians follow the "narrowly defined scientific method".  (Alternatively, they don't employ a knowledge generating method, but that's simply absurd.)  Pray tell, PZ, what is this "narrowly defined scientific method" of which you speak?  Please, define it for us.  I'd also like to know what's required for someone to "show" a functioning alternative.  And to whom is this alternative to be shown?  That is, who is the "us" you refer to?  You and your mom?  You and your blog fans?  I don't expect answers, of course.  You don't have them.  Nothing to see here folks.  Just more psychobabble of a New Atheist flavor.

Comments

[Dan Hicks]

A handful of philosophers of math (Lakatos, Kitcher, I think someone named Tymoczko) have argued that the method mathematicians practice is basically the same as the method other scientists use: by investigating an array of particular cases, a general hypothesis is formulated; they then attempt to provide evidence (in some sense) in support the hypothesis; usually there's some back-and-forth as the hypothesis has to be modified in light of the new evidence; and eventually the evidence is sufficient to support the final version of the hypothesis (to some appropriate degree).

1. This may not be anything like what Myers had in mind by `a narrowly defined scientific method'.

2. `Evidence' probably needs to be context-dependent for this story to be plausible. Empirical observations (or the data sets generated based on them, or something in the vicinity) need to count as strong evidence in chemistry, but only weak evidence at best in math. Note that this might drive a wedge into your inference from `follow[ing] the scientific method' to `adduc[ing] scientific evidence' in the last post.

3. I take it to be highly plausible that this method, presented at this or a slightly higher level of generality, is either the best or the only way of producing robust, systematic knowledge. `Systemic' here is meant to suggest a distinction between individual beliefs about, eg, the presence of craisins in this particular bowl of oatmeal and whole sets of related beliefs about, eg, the properties of 3-manifolds in general.

4. Theologians, theistic apologists, and philosophers of religion might use another specification of this method for producing systematic theology and reasons sufficient to support belief in god. That, I take it, is a sociological claim best supported by someone familiar with the work of these sorts of intellectuals and popular intellectuals. I am not so familiar. I suspect Myers is not either.

[datavortex.net]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method