Quote:
Originally posted by ArSiNiK
scientific methodologism insists that all theories must be firmly based on repeatable observations that can be made under controlled conditions and which must be demonstrable so that they are registered by one or more of our five main sense organs. in practice and of necessity in the so-called 'social and historical sciences' one does not insist on repeatability or controlled conditions for the simple reason that this is almost always impossible. one does insist on observation.
empiricism is seen in most social science as a guiding philosophy, not just as a method for ascertaining certain matters of fact, which is what it is. despite the demonstration of the unavoidable illogical consequences and paradoxes of scientific empiricism, the mentality of the academic and scientific establishment today is still dominated and underpinned by so-called sense empiricism or scientific methodologism, which requires observation by aid of some sense organ(s).
the sense organs, are assumed out of hand to be nothing but physical. though organic in structure, they are seen as complex bio-physical mechanisms, in much the same way that neurologists regard the brain. science holds that what cannot be decided by a crucial observation - namely by a decisive fact registering on one or more sense organs of the observer - is 'not scientific', which is often said as being tantamount to simply not having existence or not being true. at the same time, science insists that 'physical reality' is largely, if not entirely, quite other than the human sense organs show us. to add yet more confusion, since newton a majority of scientists have demonstrated that the sense organs themselves can 'create' subjective phenomena. the 'qualities' of color, taste etc. were not to be regarded as belonging to the objective 'external world'.
one assumption of empiricism that was unprovable but is now widely regarded as erroneous, namely that the mind is as a blank tablet at birth and receives absolutely all its impressions from experience and the ideas that arise from impressions. ironically enough, several kinds of recent empirical research into pre-natal influences, such as of human language on unborn children, even provides evidence that this is not the case.
thus, scientific empiricism is based on the narrow and outdated assumption that all that can ever be known about anything must come to us through the sense organs. without tangible evidence to support it, it denies the possibility of cognisant abilities for which there is massive extra-scientific evidence and also of the possibility that introspection can provide inner perceptions, insight - or even conceptions - for which there is no sensory basis. physiology itself has long since shown that at least one of the 'five senses' (touch) is comprised of a variety of types of sensor. meanwhile, in the halls of justice, experiences for which there is no clearly identifiable organ are denied any validity, even though physiology has only tentative or partial explanations for snow, weather or any other atmospherical phenomenon. |
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