Science and Reason

By Daniel Miessler on November 26th, 2009: Tagged as Reason | Science

From adam.blog.heroku.com:

“Science” and “reason” are two words often spoken alongside each other – almost as if they were the same thing. But each are completely different approach to making judgements and predictions about the world around us.

Science is about measurement, controlled experiment, data collection, and empiricism. It tests hypotheses against the hard reality of repeatable experiments with objectively measurable results. Those who practice it are called scientists or empiricists.

Reason, by contrast, is internally generated. It’s building mental models of the world, starting with your internal sense for what is right and pure, from which further truths can be deduced. Those who practice reason are called rationalists.
  • CarlM

    Well … science is more complex than this guy makes it out to be. We all know that the scientific method consists of making hypotheses that can be empirically tested and then testing them. He defines science as only the second half of this: the empirical testing of hypotheses. He seems to forget about the creation of those hypotheses, a process which fits his definition of reason quite well. Science does NOT consist merely of testing hypotheses. It (obviously) also consists of creating those hypotheses. Indeed, there are scientists who specialize in the creation of hypotheses .. they use pure reason (coupled with known results of past observations) to conjure up a possible mechanism that explains those results AND that leads to predictions about the results of future experiments. Often the experiments themselves are crafted and performed by entirely different people. This does not mean that those in the first group are not scientists.

    He is right that by his definition that mathematics is not a science, but he does not seem to quite understand how mathematics is discovered either. But, I'll not dwell on that because I just read the comments at the end of his post …

    —

    Interestingly, I read his article when you first posted this link, but didn't have time then to reply. Just now I noticed that there are now several comments at his post and a few of them make the same point I've just made, so perhaps you've already read them. One of the comments points out that the post is about business practice and not about either science or reason. The guy seems to have been just using a rather shallow description of science and reason to make a business point.

  • CarlM

    Well … science is more complex than this guy makes it out to be. We all know that the scientific method consists of making hypotheses that can be empirically tested and then testing them. He defines science as only the second half of this: the empirical testing of hypotheses. He seems to forget about the creation of those hypotheses, a process which fits his definition of reason quite well. Science does NOT consist merely of testing hypotheses. It (obviously) also consists of creating those hypotheses. Indeed, there are scientists who specialize in the creation of hypotheses .. they use pure reason (coupled with known results of past observations) to conjure up a possible mechanism that explains those results AND that leads to predictions about the results of future experiments. Often the experiments themselves are crafted and performed by entirely different people. This does not mean that those in the first group are not scientists.

    He is right that by his definition that mathematics is not a science, but he does not seem to quite understand how mathematics is discovered either. But, I'll not dwell on that because I just read the comments at the end of his post …

    —

    Interestingly, I read his article when you first posted this link, but didn't have time then to reply. Just now I noticed that there are now several comments at his post and a few of them make the same point I've just made, so perhaps you've already read them. One of the comments points out that the post is about business practice and not about either science or reason. The guy seems to have been just using a rather shallow description of science and reason to make a business point.


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