Following from
>>24081So, how do we go about defining science, and what good is "science"? The key break for modernity for me was the German idealists putting a stopper in genuine science and inquiry and insisting that science was something entirely alien to what it had been.
The chief purpose of the scientific endeavor is not to attain "absolute knowledge" but to eliminate enough of the known wrong paths to arrive at the least-wrong, which for our purposes is as close to the truth as the scientific approach is capable of. Science has no particular necessary philosophy or existential claims to be "science", but metaphysical and philosophical claims are necessary to establish the models that communicate any scientific inquiry, and two scientists can talk past each other by entering into an intractable metaphysical argument. The point of science is that there is a claim between the participants that there is a world outside of us or any conceit about it, and this is the only way there can be such things as facts. It is possible for the scientist to render the metaphysical and philosophical positions of any claim in language that is compatible with some other metaphysical framework, and so there is no singular metaphysics that has to be accepted for something to be "science". The only requirement is that everyone agrees that they are referring to the same world that is the only meaningful subject of inquiry.
It's stupefying to me how this is missed, and "science" has been commandeered by the most imperious statements and decrees, recited as dogma and a presumptive monopooly. I really wish people would stop doing this or encouraging this, without saying "science is the problem". No shit, science can be conducted badly. Humanity's scientific endeavor, all taken together, is not replicated by any other area of human activity. If someone produces obviously wrong results, the entire purpose of the scientific discourse is to eliminate those who are obviously malicious actors like the German idealists.