this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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You cannot separate the 2. There is no pure science out there which can be done without "governance".
I'm explicitly arguing that you can separate the two. I can perform a completely independent experiment in my house.
For example:
I don't have to publish the results anywhere or even talk with another person, yet I've still used the scientific method. I'm not a professional scientist, but I am an amateur one.
And I can scream into the abyss, it's just as relevant. The absolute majority of actually useful and relevant science is performed socially for social purposes.
You aren't even supposed to do a scientific experiment in the way you have just described. Or rather, there is neither a universally agreed upon scientific method, nor would your described experiment hold up to any standards.
An actual scientific experiment into water boiling would involve at the minimum
However, at each of these steps, you have a choice of how to approach the problem. And this depends on what you are trying to do, and what the best standards in the industry are. The process has also changed over time.
And this reveals the problem of many people's metaphysical approach to science. They treat it as if it were a platonic ideal, or floating constant in the human minds pace. In reality, "science" is an industry with its ever-changing standards, culture, interaction with the rest of society, and a million other complexities.
I think we have a fundamental disagreement on what counts as science, and that's okay.
Your methodology seems to imply a valid scientific experiment must be sufficiently rigorous as to improve on the current scientific consensus. And I do partially agree, it's a waste of time collecting data that's just going to be worse than previously collected, more controlled experiments.
By my philosophy is a lot looser. To quote Adam Savage: "The only difference between screwing around and science, is writing it down"