Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Dec 29, 2015; 2:50am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Physicists-and-Philosophers-Debate-the-Boundaries-of-Science-Quanta-Magazine-tp7586966p7587007.html
Thanks, Glen,
That's an argument I hadn't heard of before.
I guess I think that observationalists wouldn't be able to find their home from a party after dark, let alone discover anything new or interesting for the rest of us. No compasses. No maps.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen
Sent: Monday, December 28, 2015 5:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science | Quanta Magazine
On 12/28/2015 03:56 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> “observational-ist”?!!!! Whazzat?
I tend to think of "Doubting Thomas". I associate it with a more specific version of empiricism, which can take either of 2 basic forms: 1) that all thought has to be grounded _immediately_ in observation or 2) that all thought has to be grounded _eventually_ in observation. Observationalists are more DIY scientists ... they expect to be able to perform the tests themselves rather than allowing the knowledge to accrete over time. They tend to distrust experiments that, for example, require something like the hadron collider to perform ... that is, unless they happen to have their own access to an accelerator... then they can still be relatively observationalist yet trust the results from CERN.
At least that's they way _I_ use the term. I'm happy to be corrected.
--
⇔ glen
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