I think there is something like a metatheory of science for the information age -- the so-called New Mechanism. The corresponding SEP entry is very detailed and informative: https://plato.stanford.edu/Entries/science-mechanisms/. This paragraph is noteworthy:
"The new mechanical philosophy emerged around the turn of the twenty-first century as a new framework for thinking about the philosophy of science. The philosophers who developed this framework were, by comparison with the logical empiricists, practitioners as well of the history of science and tended, by and large, to focus on the biological, rather than physical, sciences. Many new mechanists developed their framework explicitly as a successor to logical empiricist treatments of causation, levels, explanation, laws of nature, reduction, and discovery."
Given the influence of the information age on biology (e.g., the pervasiveness of the computational or the coding metaphor, influx of ideas from cybernetics, etc.) and given that biology has had more successes since 1970 than physics, this seems about right.
One more vote for rethinking the philosophy of science by taking biochemistry rather than fundamental physics as the primary explanandum!
Relatedly, worth noting that condensed matter physics has come along nicely in recent decades, and its general mode of operation is much more like biochemistry than like gravitation or HEP.
"Just like historians of science think there are lessons to learn from the Newtons and the Einsteins, I’d argue we have lessons to learn from the discovery of Vitamin A and semaglutide." Banger final sentence
The semaglutide results are an example of John Tukey's Interoccular Trauma Test (i.e. the results hit you right between the eyes. It's the most conclusive test there is. A lot of science before the development of statistics was based on the ITT.
I think a lot of the problems with determining the character of evidence are due to a false sense that the scientific method is essentially uniform. Here I follow Freeman Dyson's distinction between Athenian and Manchesterian science. Dyson advises us to look at what a science studies, it's "state of affairs" in philosophy-speak. Athenian sciences study historically invariant and non-reactive states of affairs (relatively, that is). That means that conclusive explanations using deductive theories based on experimental results that generate law-like relationships. That means predictions of point estimates confirmed by experiments. Physics is the best example, of course. Manchesterian science studies historically variant and reactive states of affairs. That means descriptive explanations using historical narratives based on inductive theories based on historical sequences and generating probabilistic explanations. That means the best you can do for presdictions is confidence estimates based on statistical techniques. Here examples would include political science, meteorology, medicine, cosmology, geology, and biology. (Dyson identified himself as a Manchesterian, btw.)
Looked at this way you can say that when Feynman was talking about "cargo-cult science" he was asking the wrong question. I think a lot of the confusions about "the scientific method" could be avoided if we started looking at "the scientific methods" instead.
“I worry that science reformers spend too much time asking for rigid, robotic “repeatability” of the same experiment rather than creatively thinking through the different potential predictions and consequences of the same theory. Repeatability spends too much time trying to nail down the experimental conditions clause in the derivation chain. We need ways of probing higher up the chain, among the auxiliaries and theoretical constructs. This can only happen by generating and testing diverse, risky predictions.”
I think there is something like a metatheory of science for the information age -- the so-called New Mechanism. The corresponding SEP entry is very detailed and informative: https://plato.stanford.edu/Entries/science-mechanisms/. This paragraph is noteworthy:
"The new mechanical philosophy emerged around the turn of the twenty-first century as a new framework for thinking about the philosophy of science. The philosophers who developed this framework were, by comparison with the logical empiricists, practitioners as well of the history of science and tended, by and large, to focus on the biological, rather than physical, sciences. Many new mechanists developed their framework explicitly as a successor to logical empiricist treatments of causation, levels, explanation, laws of nature, reduction, and discovery."
Given the influence of the information age on biology (e.g., the pervasiveness of the computational or the coding metaphor, influx of ideas from cybernetics, etc.) and given that biology has had more successes since 1970 than physics, this seems about right.
Oh nice. I just printed out the entry... (have to love SEP).
One more vote for rethinking the philosophy of science by taking biochemistry rather than fundamental physics as the primary explanandum!
Relatedly, worth noting that condensed matter physics has come along nicely in recent decades, and its general mode of operation is much more like biochemistry than like gravitation or HEP.
Agreed. I used the mealy-mouthed "fundamental" adjective in hopes of distinguishing particle physics from semiconductor physics/condensed matter.
"Just like historians of science think there are lessons to learn from the Newtons and the Einsteins, I’d argue we have lessons to learn from the discovery of Vitamin A and semaglutide." Banger final sentence
The semaglutide results are an example of John Tukey's Interoccular Trauma Test (i.e. the results hit you right between the eyes. It's the most conclusive test there is. A lot of science before the development of statistics was based on the ITT.
I think a lot of the problems with determining the character of evidence are due to a false sense that the scientific method is essentially uniform. Here I follow Freeman Dyson's distinction between Athenian and Manchesterian science. Dyson advises us to look at what a science studies, it's "state of affairs" in philosophy-speak. Athenian sciences study historically invariant and non-reactive states of affairs (relatively, that is). That means that conclusive explanations using deductive theories based on experimental results that generate law-like relationships. That means predictions of point estimates confirmed by experiments. Physics is the best example, of course. Manchesterian science studies historically variant and reactive states of affairs. That means descriptive explanations using historical narratives based on inductive theories based on historical sequences and generating probabilistic explanations. That means the best you can do for presdictions is confidence estimates based on statistical techniques. Here examples would include political science, meteorology, medicine, cosmology, geology, and biology. (Dyson identified himself as a Manchesterian, btw.)
Looked at this way you can say that when Feynman was talking about "cargo-cult science" he was asking the wrong question. I think a lot of the confusions about "the scientific method" could be avoided if we started looking at "the scientific methods" instead.
“I worry that science reformers spend too much time asking for rigid, robotic “repeatability” of the same experiment rather than creatively thinking through the different potential predictions and consequences of the same theory. Repeatability spends too much time trying to nail down the experimental conditions clause in the derivation chain. We need ways of probing higher up the chain, among the auxiliaries and theoretical constructs. This can only happen by generating and testing diverse, risky predictions.”
-> Morphological Analysis