>that's actually remarkably close to the definition proposed by john
>ziman, a working physicist who wrote some books on the philosophy of
>science ("public knowledge" and "reliable knowledge" are the two i've
>read). ziman claims that "science is public knowledge", by which he
>means something close to "science is the consensus of opinion on those
>topics for which a consensus of opinion can be formed."
Which would mean that Engineers, Librarians, Lawyers, Humanities Scholars and Mathmaticians are scientists. Methinks Ziman needs to get out of his ivory tower more often.
>obglorantha: how well will this definition work in glorantha?
It depends on the means by which one creates a consensus. Putting to the sword those who disagree with you works well in glorantha but is not what most people would consider scientific argumentation.
Julian Lord.
>Ah! I think, Peter, I understand where our approaches diverge:
I'm glad that at least one of us does...
>I'm looking at science according to some sort of linguistic
>theory which would see a model of reality as "knowledge" in the
>same way that information stored in the brain is "knowledge".
>[more of the same deleted...]
>I see theories, then, as being in the province of knowledge.
Arfle Bargle Goop? More to the point how does this relate to your contention that scientists observe and not predict? As far as I can tell it was contradicted by your premise that one cannot distinguish thoughts, facts and theories...
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