and one more thing, john doe

[Kyle]

On 10/10/05, John Doe <tristero69 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> ...science is ultimately more about description
> than explanation per se anyway...
>

Science has kind of evolved to this, though; the original role of science
was to explain the otherwise unexplainable factors of the world (lightning,
earthquakes, etc.), but it is now (as most of our questions now have to do
with previous scientific explanation and how accurate it is instead of
finding new ways of understanding unexplainable things; in your words,
"ultimately more about description") more concerned about self-evaluation,
which has brought about such questioning of the method. Science is now
almost purely self-corrective instead of a 'new adventure' so to speak, and,
on top of that, a lot of modern science isn't that applicable, and that
which is applicable brings about questions such as 'do we really need this
sort of stuff?' Sure, a spedometer is very useful, predicting the weather is
a must, but what about designer drugs? and plasma TVs? and things that bring
people to extremes of self-gratification? (all these are more contemporary
applications). I think that most people are more concerned with the fact
that science does not have a conscience; certainly such predispositions
spoil a scientific experiment. You're right, science can't necessarily
explain why people enjoy listening to Led Zeppelin, but (I think a lot of
people think this way) it doesn't exactly mean that such questions are not
important to us as humans. And many people seem to believe that if it isn't
science it's useless (and thus chain themselves to the harshness of reason).
I think this was what that guy who pulled the Blake quote was trying to get
at, because this is the kind of stuff Blake advocated. I'm not disagreeing
with you, though, because a lot of contemporary science does end up bringing
about unarguable beneficial fruits, such as DNA-altered crops that bear much
more food. But the problem is, science is now more about "competition" and
thus not about bettering the world.

--
-kyle b
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