Hey hey hey!! How much does religion affect MIT?

tech_fan
Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:44:42 +0000

Jessie –



Really, I think “It’s not science because we said so, even though we don’t really have a definition of what science is” is rather overly simplistic.



That point is certainly well-taken. While I pushed my point a little more strongly than it deserved in order to overcome the popular conception that science is JUST a logical construct, I actually agree with you. While what constitutes the corpus of science is a sociologically determined thing, those determinations are not whimsical but hinge on standards. So I agree with you almost completely when you say

I think that the definition of science is sociological, but that once you’ve got that definition, what goes under that name needs to meet that definition.

The only thing is that “definition” in this context, if it is to be honest and plausible, would take a few books to articulate. The danger in writing out a Wikipedia-style definition is that you make it seem like determining what is and isn’t science is something that anybody reasonably intelligent can do. That’s not the case. The decision has to be made by a thoughtful group of experts who have been cooking in these ideas for decades.

I think the true challenge here, certainly from a political standpoint, is how to convince people that school boards aren’t equipped to evaluate what is science; and also how to do this without seeming elitist or falling into the “majority of elites is always right” trap. Science is an elite activity, but must also be reasonably responsive to the public’s needs and desires, especially with respect to things like education. How to negotiate that tricky path is, I think, the really serious and important question here. Any thoughts?