Ghostbusters, GMOs and the Feigned Expertise of Nobel Laureates

[kristopher]

10. Philosophy of Physics

You're engaged far more in deception and character assassination than you are "science".

"Shiva studied physics at Panjab University in Chandigarh, graduating as a bachelor of science in 1972 and
a master of science in 1974.[8]

After that she worked, briefly, at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre before moving to Canada to pursue an M.A. in the philosophy of science at the University of Guelph (Ontario) in 1977, with a thesis entitled "Changes in the concept of periodicity of light".[8][9]

In 1978, she completed and received her PhD in philosophy at the University of Western Ontario,[10] focusing on philosophy of physics. Her dissertation was titled "Hidden variables and locality in quantum theory," in which she discussed the mathematical and philosophical implications of hidden variable theories that fall outside of the purview of Bell's theorem.[11]

She later went on to interdisciplinary research in science, technology, and environmental policy at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.[7]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandana_Shiva

The philosophy of science



There is an overlap between philosophy and science
In this website, we use a practical checklist to get a basic picture of what science is and a flexible flowchart to depict how science works. For most everyday purposes, this gives us a fairly complete picture of what science is and is not. However, there is an entire field of rigorous academic study that deals specifically with what science is, how it works, and the logic through which we build scientific knowledge. This branch of philosophy is handily called the philosophy of science. Many of the ideas that we present in this website are a rough synthesis of some new and some old ideas from the philosophy of science.

Despite its straightforward name, the field is complex and remains an area of current inquiry. Philosophers of science actively study such questions as:

What is a law of nature? Are there any in non-physical sciences like biology and psychology?

What kind of data can be used to distinguish between real causes and accidental regularities?

How much evidence and what kinds of evidence do we need before we accept hypotheses?

Why do scientists continue to rely on models and theories which they know are at least partially inaccurate (like Newton's physics)?

Though they might seem elementary, these questions are actually quite difficult to answer satisfactorily. Opinions on such issues vary widely within the field (and occasionally part ways with the views of scientists themselves — who mainly spend their time doing science, not analyzing it abstractly). Despite this diversity of opinion, philosophers of science can largely agree on one thing: there is no single, simple way to define science!

Science vs. 'non-science'
Though the field is highly specialized, a few touchstone ideas have made their way into the mainstream. Here's a quick explanation of just a few concepts associated with the philosophy of science, which you might (or might not) have encountered.

Epistemology — branch of philosophy that deals with what knowledge is, how we come to accept some things as true, and how we justify that acceptance.

Empiricism — set of philosophical approaches to building knowledge that emphasizes the importance of observable evidence from the natural world.

Induction — method of reasoning in which a generalization is argued to be true based on individual examples that seem to fit with that generalization. For example, after observing that trees, bacteria, sea anemones, fruit flies, and humans have cells, one might inductively infer that all organisms have cells.

Deduction — method of reasoning in which a conclusion is logically reached from premises. For example, if we know the current relative positions of the moon, sun, and Earth, as well as exactly how these move with respect to one another, we can deduce the date and location of the next solar eclipse.

Parsimony/Occam's razor — idea that, all other things being equal, we should prefer a simpler explanation over a more complex one.

Demarcation problem — the problem of reliably distinguishing science from non-science. Modern philosophers of science largely agree that there is no single, simple criterion that can be used to demarcate the boundaries of science.

Falsification — the view, associated with philosopher Karl Popper, that evidence can only be used to rule out ideas, not to support them. Popper proposed that scientific ideas can only be tested through falsification, never through a search for supporting evidence.


Paradigm shifts and scientific revolutions — a view of science, associated with philosopher Thomas Kuhn, which suggests that the history of science can be divided up into times of normal science (when scientists add to, elaborate on, and work with a central, accepted scientific theory) and briefer periods of revolutionary science. Kuhn asserted that during times of revolutionary science, anomalies refuting the accepted theory have built up to such a point that the old theory is broken down and a new one is built to take its place in a so-called "paradigm shift."

http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/philosophy