sciences in general, what they are and their methods
This website is focused on helping lay foundations for a new civilization, not following the decline and fall of an old civilization. But understanding weaknesses in the old civilization may provide insight into what to avoid. The problem is that most analyses of Western civilization do not go far enough. They either support mild reforms […]
There is a curious paradox about the science community. On the one hand scientists have a reputation for independent thinking but on the other hand the science community likes to present a solid front. The latter is closer to the truth: most scientists are conformists. It is well known from the history of science that dissent
If everything were completely unique, we would have no way of identifying them as to what they are. If everything were completely identical, or uniform, we would have no way of distinguishing them. We conclude that the world is somewhere in between: everything is a combination of the unique and the uniform. If all events
Here is a story about two statisticians and two scientists. They are given a problem: what are the frequencies of the letters in English texts? The junior statistician has no research budget whereas the senior statistician has a modest research budget. Similarly, the junior scientist has no research budget but the senior scientist has a
Science is an iterative process and so theories that were once widely accepted may later become superseded, but what does that entail? A superseded theory may be thoroughly undermined by its consistent failure to match expectations. Contrary to falsificationism, it usually takes more than a few anomalies to bring down a theory. Theories are part of
The naïve conception of the figure of the Earth as a plane is locally correct everywhere on Earth but globally false. Observers in every place on Earth see evidence of a finite plane that ends at the horizon. The simplest generalization of these observations is to say they are all seeing the same plane of
History of Chemistry, Simplified The simplest universe has only one kind of substance, which was the first scientific theory, that of Thales (ca 585 BC) who stated that the origin of all matter is water. Then there was Anaximenes, who held that everything in the world is composed of air. Xenophanes said, It’s all Earth.
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. They
Secularists have it all wrong in their desire either to separate religion and science completely or to make religion submit to science. Look again at the major world religions: they last for thousands of years they are the basis for whole civilizations their adherents accept martyrdom rather than give them up Science doesn’t come close
Ben Jeffares wrote a useful article “Testing times: regularities in the historical sciences” (http://www.ege.fcen.uba.ar/ecodes/Integrantes/Javier/cursos/PDFs/(02)%20Jeffares%202008.pdf): Abstract The historical sciences, such as geology, evolutionary biology, and archaeology, appear to have no means to test hypotheses. However, on closer examination, reasoning in the historical sciences relies upon regularities, regularities that can be tested. I outline the role of regularities
