Having dropped a snide remark about "label thinking", it would be
unseemly for me to quibble about the precise one now applied to scientific
methodology. Provided it means testing against reality rather than pure
untested deductions, then I am happy. If I stand corrected, so be
it, it does not affect the thrust of my argument. But I do
hope Keith's source is not an anti-evolutionist "scientist" from a
US mid-western college. And scientists are regularly running tests of
Einstein's work in space experiments etc.
Anyone who isn't sure what we are talking about could get an
excellent indication from either of two sources: a. The US Biological
Science Curriculum Studies "blue version", "Molecules to Man", about
1970, or b. the Sherlock Holmes stories. The first undoubtedly contained
it in the first chapter of the book as a reaction to "put downs" from physical
sicentists about our "imprecise sciences"; someone else may care
to guess at Conan Doyle's motivation.
And Keith does not have to look forward to empirical tests, because
Vic Bridger's excellent contributions contain many examples where predictioins
based on the Douglas analysis have proved correct. But I will mention
again the stagflation problem if he wishes one scrap.
Finally, may I bring up the totally invented story of the motorist who went
to an economist mechanic when his car stalled. Mechanic DEDUCED from the
symptoms that the fault was certainly electrical and replaced the whole
ignition system. And the car still didn't go. So, several hundred
dollars poorer, the motorist went down the street to the Socred
mechanic, who thought "Looks like an electrical fault, but I'll
check". Checking a spark plug, which had a beautiful blue spark SUGGESTED
(didn't prove) that his first hypothesis was wrong. So he took the
alternative one, that the fuel system was faulty, and behold, no
fuel was reaching the motor. So his next hypothesis was a line blockage,
but being truly (INDUCTIVE, or ..) he dipped the tank, to find it was
empty, and had to ditch that one too. Being knowledgeable, he
asked the motorist if he could have been misled by a fuel gauge permanently
showing "full"? To leave out the next hypothesis and cut the story a bit
shorter, he soldered up the broken lead from the tank unit to it and charged
the motorist about ten dollars before he went off happily. (It really
was an electrical fault, but not the one DEDUCED by the first operator.)
Before someone tells me modern cars have computers and different
methodology, I'll agree. But from the point of view of a typical
do-it-yourself Kiwi working on the wonderful old Chrysler Valiants
formerly produced in Australasia, it is dead accurate.
For the first situation in it, perhaps one could substitute the
"trickle down" theory associated with the modern monetarist approach to
economics?
John R.
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