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I just had to stop at the end of the first video to say thanks for this. I am utterly disgusted by the media's treatment of science and experimental evidence.
Carl Sagan is so dearly missed.
There is a bit of disconnect here for me given the "pretty" definition of science and irrelevance of "philosophy of science" and "scientific" areas of research such as String Theory (which may never be testable.) I like Feynmann's definition but wouldn't that filter out a good chunk of what is (officially/academically) passing as "Science" these days?
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I like Feynmann's definition but wouldn't that filter out a good chunk of what is (officially/academically) passing as "Science" these days?
In my sphere of biomedical research it isn't. But, I understand your point. I think the problem might be in the lack of distinction between the practice of science, especially the guessing part, and scientific evidence, that which has survived experiment. Feynman's definition puts String Theory somewhere between the guessing and the model, I think. IMHO, the philosophy of science is extremely useful, but it stops at step 2. Interpretation of experiment, which often requires philosophy, means the model is incomplete. More work to be done. Back to step 1. What bothers me about String Theory, is that it only half-heartedly intends to move to step 3. Astrology is guess and a model.