For example, he drops the remark that "Polanyi showed that crystallography is an a priori science [in the sense that Austrian economics is]" as if it were conclusively settled.
You're basically doing the same when you name-drop "a Bayesian revival in the sciences". I've been here for months trying to figure out what the hell people mean by "Bayesian" and frankly feel little the wiser. It's interesting to me, so I keep digging, but clearly explained? Give me a break. :)
I found Polanyi somewhat obscure (all that I could conclude from Personal Knowledge was that I was totally devoid of spiritual knowledge), so I won't defend him. But one point that keeps coming up is that if you look closely, anything that people have so far come up with that purports to be a "methodological rule of science", can be falsified by looking at one scientist or another, doing something that their peers are happy to call perfectly good science, yet violates one part or another of the supposed "methodology".
As an example being impartial certainly isn't required to do good science; you can start out having a hunch and being damn sure your hunch is correct, and the energy to devise clever ways to turn your hunch into a workable theory lets you succeed where others don't even acknowledge there is a problem to be solved. Semmelweis seems to be a good example of an opinionated scientist. Or maybe Seth Roberts.
What's your take on string theorists? ;)
You're basically doing the same when you name-drop "a Bayesian revival in the sciences".
That's not remotely the same thing -- I wasn't bringing that up as some kind of substantiation for any argument, while Callahan was mentioning the thing about "a priori crystallography" (???) as an argument.
...But one point that keeps coming up is that if you look closely, anything that people have so far come up with that purports to be a "methodological rule of science", can be falsified by looking at one scientist or another, doing som
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