Keith has beaten me to the ploy of name-dropping Sir Francis Bacon, which
I'd held in reserve!
His "not in reason" comment is absolutely correct in his "Everything begins
..." context. Holmes goes and plays his violin and an idea comes from
nowhere. A scientist digs his garden, and an idea appears from his
subconscious. Or perhaps, as most creative people do, he or she
wakes in the "wee small hours" and pads out in the cold to record it, if
(he) hasn't a notebook by the bed for the purpose.
All this after extensive collection and collation of data, as Douglas
did.
The critical phase is the next, where the idea is tested DESTRUCTIVELY in
an attempt to disprove it by experiment ofr testing predictions based on
it. No attempt EVER is made to bend the facts to support the idea.
And if it does not stand up under test, particularly by others to whom it is
referred, it is scrapped honestly and ruthlessly.
A classical example in Biology occurred so many years ago that I learned it
as a student and forget the full details. Buit an experiment with
application of, I think, copper, cured a disease in (apples).
WhackO! Copper cures X disease in apples! But the next outfit that
tried it got no results. Finally, it was found that one used galvanised
buckets and the other stainless steel, and that the tiny amount of zinc
dissolved from the lining of the first lot of buckets had done the
job. Hypothesis abandoned, new one accepted as probably right.
No technical civilisation of any extent has risen which did not use this
approach. I believe the obvious failure of our economic distribution
systems suffers from the same lack. But Keith's clear and concise
comments, unlike those of some other correspondents, tell me there
certainly is hope.
John R.
>From: "Keith Wilde"
<keithwilde@sympatico.ca> >Reply-To: socialcredit@elistas.com >To:
<socialcredit@elistas.com> >Subject: [socialcredit] Douglas on
Induction--NOT >Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 06:21:56 -0400 > >This is
mainly for John Rawson, but it should be of interest to any others who suppose
that persons trained in physics and engineering spend more time in fastidious
contemplation of what constitutes scientific method than do sociologists: >
>"Everything begins in the imagination, not in reason; and when the
rational processes legitimately begin, creative processes in the real sense,
cease." [Italics in the original] > >The statement is by Douglas on
Jan.7 1950 according to the editors of The Development of World Dominion
(Tudor Jones and Bryan Monahan). > >As mentioned before, I agreed with
Michael Lane some time ago that even Bacon recognized this principle.
"Induction" from no matter how many observations, is always an act of creative
imagination. As a description of scientific method, therefore, induction
simply isn't. > >I hope that by this time John will have found out who
Ernst Mayr was. I have not forgotten my promise to copy a few pages from his
history of biology the next time I go to where I keep my scanner. >
>Keith Wilde >
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