| > You might be describing something close to science in some ideal but certainly not what it looks like in reality. Wait, are we discussing science or the problems science is designed to solve? You could make your remarks just as well about law, arguing that, because laws are broken, therefore they shouldn't exist, or they don't really mean what they say. You could also say this about mathematics, which only rarely exactly agrees with experience, but is still extremely useful in making predictions about an imperfect world. Science is meant to be an ideal, that's its purpose. > If you want to rule out everything where there's a strong human, non-mechanical element from the world of science, then there's very little science going on to talk about. How are you missing the point that science is supposed to represent an alternative to everyday human affairs? And how are you missing the fact that, no matter how emotionally attached to a particular outcome, no matter how driven, a person still has to toe the science line in order to accomplish anything useful? > ... I don't think it serves any useful purpose to pretend that science actually happens in a clean room. True -- only good science, memorable science, happens in a clean room. I can't believe you haven't figured out that science exists precisely because people are the way they are. If this were not the case, if people could divorce themselves from passion and perceptual distortions when circumstances required it, there would be no science -- what we call science would be one variety of normal human behavior and no one would think about it. |