User talk:ChrisSteinbach

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Hello there Chris, welcome to the 'pedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. If you ever need editing help visit Wikipedia:How does one edit a page and experiment at Wikipedia:Sandbox. If you need pointers on how we title pages visit Wikipedia:Naming conventions. If you have any other questions about the project then check out Wikipedia:Help or add a question to the Village pump. BTW, nice additions to the scientific mythology. Cheers! --maveric149

Hi, Chris,

I needed to be told this, so maybe you'll be glad to be told to: If you type three tildes (~) on a Talk page, the software signs your login as a link, so that people can go to your user page and see who you are (if you put something there). Four tildes and you get the date and time as well. Nobody has ever tried five tildes, to my knowledge. 168... 07:56 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

And now for all time, I will try five tildes...168... 07:56 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)~

So that's how it works! Thanks for the tip. ChrisSteinbach 11:03 1 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Good work on Feyerabend, Chris. Thanks. Banno 21:04, 23 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Tropical Storm Zeta

Good catch, I failed to spot it when updating. NSLE _(T+C+CVU) 08:49, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes on scientific method

"What hopes and fears does this scientific method imply for mankind? I do not think that this is the right way to put the question. Whatever this tool in the hand of man will produce depends entirely on the nature of the goals alive in this mankind. Once these goals exist, scientific method furnishes means to realize them. Yet it cannot furnish the very goals. The scientific method itself would not have led anywhere, it would not even have been born without a passionate striving for clear understanding." -- Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years

"It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method. I venture to think that the people who talk most about it are the people who do least about it. Scientific method is what working scientists do, not what other people or even they themselves may say about it.... Scientific method is something talked about by people standing on the outside and wondering how the scientist manages to do it. These people have been able to uncover various generalities applicable to at least most of what the scientist does, but it seems to me that these generalities are not very profound, and could have been anticipated by anyone who know enough about scientists to know what is their primary objective.... In short, science is what scientists do, and there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists. " --P.W.Bridgman (Nobel Prize in Physics 1946), On Scientific Method

The scientific method is nothing but the normal working of the human mind. That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes.- the English biologist T.H. Huxley (1825-1895)

"When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. Neverthess, noone doubts that we are confronted with a causal connection whose causal components are in the main known to us. Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact perdiction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature." -- Albert Einstein, New York Times Magazine on November 9, 1930 pp 1-4

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 - 20 hindsight. It's good for seeing where you've been. It's good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can't tell you where you ought to go. -- Robert M. Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, pt. 3, ch. 24 (1974).

The method of science is tried and true. It is not perfect, it's just the best we have. And to abandon it, with it's skeptical protocols is the pathway to a dark age. -- Carl Sagan, sound clip from CSICOP

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My Edit count: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/Tool1/wannabe_kate?username=ChrisSteinbach&site=en.wikipedia.org

[edit] Current disruption on Philosophy Talk

Hi - your comments on the talk page have been insightful and useful. Unfortunately it is very hard to locate them due to the current disruption on the page (mostly caused by Ludvikus, in my view, though there is one other, who is less disruptive). A community ban on one of the editors (Ludvikus) has been proposed by Banno, which I strongly support. However, other administrators feel there is not much evidence of any disruption. If you do feel that there is a problem, and that current conditions make work on the article difficult or impossible, please leave a message on FT2's talk page. FT2 is currently co-ordinating work on the Philosophy article. Dbuckner 08:45, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Well it's good of you to consider me as a potential ally. Sadly I will have to disappoint. If there is one idea I like less than wasting my own time in this dispute, it is dragging some other poor soul (FT2) into it. It may seem heartless, but I'm afraid I couldn't be persuaded to participate even in a perfunctory manner.

I'll be working on the History of scientific method article for the time being. Although you are hardly obliged to help me out given what I have said above, I would much prefer to see you contributing your time there than on the Philosophy talk page. --ChrisSteinbach 21:12, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course I will help on the History of scientific method article, and I have already had a look. But I do want to see the Philosophy article back into something resembling its former state. Dbuckner 21:36, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I understand and sympathize, I really do. Remember though that reverting will work just as well a few months from now. --ChrisSteinbach 22:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

This is how I normally do it. Most people go away eventually and one can make gradual improvements back. My judgment was that this case was very different. Dbuckner 08:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific Method

Couldn't help noticing the quotations on your page (e.g. Huxley) to the effect that there is no such thing as a 'scientific method' as such. I agree. I studied biblical criticism for some time and there are many methods evolved there to address questions like, was there a single source for the gospels, was there even any historical character such as Jesus, all that sort of thing. The key thing is to determine what propositions explain the available evidence, and there are indeed as many methods as there are kinds of evidence. Looking at the page in question, a lot of this is about philosophers' theories about scientific method, and one has to ask, do any but philosophers construct theories about science in this way? Seems to me that scientists just get on with it. Dbuckner 09:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no doubt that scientific practice diverges from the formal, philosophical treatment of method. And mostly when scientists use the term 'scientific method' they are not referring to one of the grand schemes of these philosophers. I remember Stephen Jay Gould noted how little science philosophy interacts with science practise in "The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox". And I read recently in, (if I'm not mixing books) "Kuhn vs. Popper", Steve Fuller's comments on how influential philosophers of science seem to almost always be failed scientists (with the implication that they have an axe to grind). --ChrisSteinbach 11:12, 25 January 2007 (UTC)