Talk:Scientific method/Draft

Revert

I reverted the work of Gareth Leng. Altough it is a nice work, I think it is too poetic. The earlier version was more factual.

--Matthias Brendel 16:44, 26 December 2006 (CST)

Just as an example. The first sentence I find very bad is "This simple account begs many questions. What do we mean by ‘facts’? "

1) This is out of the blue, since the "facts" were not mentioned before. So how does the kknowtion of "facts" come here? 2) Then there is an unnecessary dispute about how we can trust facts. We should not start to explain the scientific method by this dispute. 3) The dispute about the basis of scientific knowledge was repeated later as the protocol-sentence debate. So quoting here Bacon is very outdated. If somebody wants to present this question, then let him quote the latest accounts on this! Even the protocol-sentence debate is outdfate I think.

--Matthias Brendel 16:52, 26 December 2006 (CST)

This I think is not how we work at Citizendium. We do not bulk revert in this way, but gain consensus civilly and seek understanding. In particular, this is a new CZ article in progress, and it is replacing a deeply flawed ungainly repetetive and inaccurate WP version (Bayesian inference is not a way of generating hypotheses; Einstein's theory was indeed a refutation of Newton's, and the idea that it represented progress was questioned by Kuhn, who commented that Einstein's theory was closer to Aristotle's than either was to Newton; alchemy was characterised by very precise measurements; Lakatos is unexplained but introduced as though he was a Kuhnian when in fact he was a Popperian etc etc). As for the lead, facts refers directly to the introductory quote from Darwin. Understanding the nature of facts, and how they depend on a theory, is central to the understanding of the importance of theory in science and hence to understanding the incommensurability of theory. Gareth Leng 17:04, 26 December 2006 (CST)