Addendum to "Is" - Science, Empirical Investigation, and Prediction

WSN,

(I sent this to Mike Alexander the other day after seeing his reply; I thought the rest of you might like to take a look at my slightly modified response and comment on it. The opinions are soley my own and perhaps reflect much of my own ignorance on the subject.  Nonetheless I welcome your insights and your corrections.  Thanks!)

Luke R.

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Yes, prediction is important to the scientific endeavor; I agree.  The problem comes down to what exactly is entailed in such prediction ...

But, first, I’m glad you brought up your second point about facts being a “useful means to an end” and that the end is “understanding.”  Very good point!  Precisely, because it answers the question – ‘what’s the difference between the scientist and the mere technician (be such a car mechanic, certain sorts of lab techs, ... <and so on>)?  You have basically answered it => “UNDERSTAND-ING.”  The scientist’s work with empirical investigation and predictions is supposed to add to the store of “funded knowledge” in a scholarly sense (it can certainly be practical and circumstantially specific, but at some point it must be able to epistemologically add to the store of “funded knowledge” in the universal sense or at least help to contribute to such) That’s good!

Yet, prediction is a broad term and I think there’s a slippery slope to avoid here.  By prediction, we don’t want to imply the scientist is some sort of magical prophet foretelling the future exactly as it’s going to be (mainly because I’m not so sure one can).  With the (semi-)free agency of both individual things and systemic realities as a whole, we aren’t always going to be able to make predictions that are 100% accurate.  Much of prediction still comes down to probabilities, likely scenarios, Chaos Theory, and Complexity.  It has far less to do, I believe, with materialist mechanism in the Newtonian sense as it does with the trend of fluid dynamics in both the physical world (matter and energy) and the world of organisms (biology/biochem./organic chemistry). At least that’s my take on the matter.  What’s yours?

Finally, the term “empirical” can be problematic as well.  Empirical investigation can be characterized by both “use tests” as you put it and by actual experimentation.  And, yet, when we’re speaking about the orientation of our scientific investigation - when we speak about ‘science being empirical’ for instance - I think we’re also focusing on the scope and level of what it is we are studying as our object – (i.e. the specific fluctuations of the Dow & the Nasdaq from day to day, the specific activities of a Bill going through Congress, and so on).  In other words, we’re focusing (to some extent) on the formal distinctions & discrete matter of specific processes/phenomena of those objects or systems we choose to study. (I’m using the term “matter” here in the technical Scholastic sense that Late Medievals like Aquinas and Scotus used it as they discussed principles of remote matter, proximate matter, and DS’s notion of the “formal distinction”)  Of course, this implies more than just “experimentation” & “use tests”; and, yet, (I believe) it’s still covered under the term “empirical.”  (At least it has sounded that way to me at the various times I’ve heard the word used in scientific parlance)

I know Scholastic Philosophy isn’t very popular these days, and perhaps it is too theoretical and/or legalistic to be of use to us as (social or natural) scientists, but I find that if properly used its terms are sharp enough to make a good fit with the empirical details of what we look at in the social sciences.  (Much better to me than just the superficiality of terms like the specifics of “X” or “Y.”)  But, what do you think? ...

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