sciences in general, what they are and their methods
It is a Christian concept (or at least a theistic concept) that the world we inhabit is a universe. The existence of the universe requires there to be a perspective that encompasses the whole of the world, which is the perspective of a transcendent divinity. The universe is thus the whole of creation. It is […]
Historians establish the facts of history, of what happened in the past. They do this with a variety of sources, some documentary, some physical, and whatever else they find is relevant. Key particulars are more significant than universals in establishing the facts of history. Historians may consider scientific theory in doing this, but they may
At the highest level of classification, history may be divided into human history (better known simply as ‘history’) and physical history. The former is a large subject with many subdivisions, while the latter is usually turned over to the physical sciences. This is a pity since science and history are different disciplines (see posts here).
There is a well-known alternation of induction and deduction in science (click to enlarge): The induction phase consists of data collection, data analysis, and model development. The deduction phase consists of taking the model, making hypothetical inferences, and following up with experiments that lead to new data collection. Then the cycle repeats.
The following (long) excerpts are from Isaiah Berlin’s article “History and Theory: The Concept of Scientific History”, published in History and Theory 1 (1):1 (1960). Republished in Concepts and Categories: Philosophical Essays. NY: Viking Press, 1979. (online here). HISTORY, according to Aristotle, is an account of what individual human beings have done and suffered. In
For previous posts on history and science, see here. History and science are different kinds of knowledge. History is based on the particulars that go into narratives. Science is based on the universals that go into theories. History is focused on the matter and science is focused on the form, in the Aristotelian sense. The
Societies have an intellectual hierarchy reflected in their academic hierarchy that exhibit their scale of concepts and values. There are basically three groups of intellectual disciplines: the study of divinity (theology), the humanities, and the sciences. There are six possible ways of ordering these three, which shows the intellectual state of a society. (1) Theology,
This subject was previously mentioned, e.g., here. James Hutton proposed introducing deep time into modern science in 1788. In the early 19th century it was accepted for the geologic time scale. Biologists followed with Darwinism in the late 19th century. Astronomers accepted it to explain cosmology. What’s wrong with the deep time postulate (DTP)? The
Science Today the word science usually means naturalistic science. Historically, naturalism was not dominant in modern science until the nineteenth century, when it was promoted by those who were called “naturalists” (not to be confused with a naturalist as someone who studies natural history). These naturalists promoted the idea that science was limited to naturalism.
I last wrote about design here. What is the essential element of a design? Dictionaries define design in terms of a plan but that concerns how a design is recorded or communicated rather than the design itself. I suggest that the essential element of a design is the necessity of a trade-off. To define a
