My apologies, Blueline. Usually I try to be clear, efficient, and informative in my posts. But the fact that Andrew keeps shifting the topic means I have to continually reassert what’s actually being discussed instead of moving forward with the discussion. And the fact that he does not directly respond to my specific arguments and questions impels me to repeat myself to the point of drudgery.
“Lam, as Ryan said, nobody here has said that ‘science generally proceeds from facts to theories’. I’m saying that the natural sciences sometimes and at some points in the chain of inference do proceed from facts to theory, therefore Andrew’s contention that ‘to look at facts to derive a theory is preposterous’ is false.”
Andrew’s contention is only false for being a rhetorical hyperbole, the philosophical content behind it still rings true, and is the death knell of positivism in the natural sciences.
Furthermore, both Bacon’s Novum Organum and Mises’ Theory and History are terrible on the physical sciences due to their verificationist views of the progression of natural science, disproven by Popper, and that both therefore imply there exist purely objective facts about the physical world, disproven by Kuhn. Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions are far better pieces of reading for this topic.
- Ludwig von Mises thought that studying history always presupposed having a theory.
- Andrew Cain thought that he could extend that argument to also apply to studying things in the pure natural sciences.
- So Andrew Cain thought that studying things in the pure natural sciences always presupposed having a theory.
It would be a shift from the argument with Andrew Cain to a totally different argument to change his argument from saying that studying things in the pure natural sciences always presupposes having a theory, to saying that studying things in the pure natural sciences just usually presupposes having a theory, because it would destroy the analogy between it and what Ludwig von Mises thought, which was the whole point.
He was trying to make an analogy between his view in the context of the pure natural sciences, and the view of Ludwig von Mises in the context of economics; so his use of the word “theory” in that context depended on the use of the word “theory” of Ludwig von Mises in that context. So I was trying to tell you how Ludwig von Mises used the word in that context, and how it is totally irrelevant to the pure natural sciences, which would destroy the analogy.
You came into this trying to back up the claims of Andrew Cain; so it was up to you to correctly interpret his use of the words “theory”, “facts”, and so on, to do that. And I was telling you that you didn’t do that. I wouldn’t even have asked the question in the first place if I knew that Andrew Cain was using the word “theory” in a different way than Ludwig von Mises did, because I would have just pointed that out, which would have ended the whole discussion, if he agreed with me.
You just saw the words, interpreted them based on your own definitions totally irrelevant to this, and then went off on a tangent about methodology in the pure natural sciences, and then went off onto another tangent about Ludwig von Mises being dead wrong about methodology in the natural sciences or something. It had nothing to do with the argument with Andrew Cain.
Bacon wrote a book? Who knew bacon could act?
Anyway, thanks.
Falsity that “rings true” is falsity nonetheless. Philosophy is difficult enough without rhetorical hyperbole blurring distinctions.
Again, my contention in this thread has never been that Bacon’s method is sound, but rather simply that Rothbard’s characterization of it is incorrect. I only referred Novum Organum to Daniel so that he could understand what we’re talking about in this discussion concerning the history of thought, not so that he could know the cutting edge in the philosophy of science. And Andrew had brought in a misreading of Theory and History to bear on the subject which I endeavored to correct, so I suggested actually reading that too, so Daniel could understand that part of the discussion.
On a separate but related matter, Lam, I’d appreciate getting your take on this comment that Stephen Grossman left on the Mises blog posting of Rothbard’s anti-Bacon excerpt.
“Bacon’s induction is a renaissance of Aristotle’s concern with contextually essential causes. It is not empiricism, ie, rationally unorganized facts. Bacon is the most influential cause of the new, scientific use of systematic induction. Rationalism (Rothbard: the scientist, before gathering and collating facts, must have a pretty good idea of what to look for and why. [subjectivism or mysticism!]) is not the only alternative. The third alternative is objectivity, ie, knowing reality with logic, as Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, John McCaskey and David Harriman (Leap Of Logic) have discussed for physical science and Edwin Locke for psychology. See McCaskey for Bacon and the rise of modern science. McCasky has systemized and made explicit Aristotle’s scattered, often implicit, theory of induction.”
Also, have you read Francis Bacon as a Precursor to Popper by Peter Urbach? Unfortunately it’s behind a pay wall. If you happen to have access to it through your Uni, I’d LOVE a digital copy of it (or even just its abstract). I gather from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy that its thesis probably lies predominantly in finding a resonance between Bacon’s analysis by exclusion and Popper’s use of falsification, but aside from that bare-bones speculation, I don’t know what Urbach’s case is, and I’d like to.
Yes, and in addition to his books, he also penned some splendidly written essays. (One might term these shorter works of his as “Bacon bits”.)
And you are clear, efficient, and informative in your posts. My post was more or less a humorous passing remark concerning the topic. I haven’t read Bacon or Theory and History, so most of this is over my head.
I’m also not here to take sides at the moment
This article might be of use to those interested in this debate and are curious to learn exactly how the hypothetico deductive model applies to the natural sciences and why it is not suitable for economics:
Why Friedman Misunderstood Physics and Mises was Right about Economics