At what point did 'natural science' become the only 'science'?

[Kyriakos]

You are incorrect that some of the mental world has to be the same for every human. This argument clearly shows that we are thinking differently. And yet we can communicate.

If the mental world is similar, it is because it was made similar, because through communication we agreed that something had to have these properties to be a square. But that is an artificial manipulation of the mind, not something that is inherent.

Someone who is partially colorblind, sees colors differently than me. Yet we can agree on what the color red is, even if his impression is very different from mine. So the color red is an abstract concept that has been agreed on, but everybody has their own mapping to their own mental concept of it. It is the same with math.



The notion of an atom is human-tied. The existence of something that we call an atom is not. Your argument might have some value within Solipsism, but that does not make it globally correct or my view incorrect.

Pretty sure by now you either deliberately choose to not follow what is said (eg by me in response to you), or just mix the different consequences of relative (vs total) difference in human-to-human point of view.
That you mention solipsism leads me to conclude that likely both of the above are so, and you can re-read the thread so as to notice why you don't follow the point of it (which is human-particular systems having as an object human-particular notions, next to human-particular systems which also focus on external- ie now even to more degree human-translated from something other- objects.

 

[Kyriakos]

'Circle' and 'square' are bad examples, but it's certainly not out of the question that what you call 'green' looks like what you call 'red' to me, but neither of us ever noticed because we've both been brought up to call it 'green'.

It is a very different kind of phenomenon, though, and obviously tied to physics ( ), so more backing the argument depicting math (or any logic/human system without external objects there) as closer to any truth we as humans can rigorously and with basis examine.
Of course it should be noted that math objects, exactly due to being non-tied to physical objects (a better way to say it is that math objects are not physical objects, cause ties can exist in less distinct manners), are purely rising from the axioms in math. So while a color can seem to have different tone from human to human (or even from human in one time to the same human in a different time), the color is another property translated to our mind while being sensed as a trait in objects external to it.

Compare with circle: regardless of what size or color you imagine a circle in your mind having, it can only be communicated (in math, of course) as a circle if its periphery has a length of pi times its diameter. Whereas in color the color-tonality itself is another stable but not tied to the aspect of how an individual exactly will sense the color, much like a machine can still identify a blue color as blue, but this tells that machine itself nothing tied to a sense. Categories can be stable, and the analogous stability only is a basis if they are not blurred by external info which is itself of different type.

 

[Flying Pig]

Yes, a circle's a bad example because you can just say 'well, doesn't that look like a joined-up curve of constant radius to you?' But with colours, you can definitely say 'yes, that looks like light reflecting at a frequency of so many hertz', but you can't know how that translates into actual experience. To push it even further, you can't know that the light actually is working at that many hertz - all you know is that your measuring equipment says that it is.

 

[uppi]

Pretty sure by now you either deliberately choose to not follow what is said (eg by me in response to you), or just mix the different consequences of relative (vs total) difference in human-to-human point of view.
That you mention solipsism leads me to conclude that likely both of the above are so, and you can re-read the thread so as to notice why you don't follow the point of it (which is human-particular systems having as an object human-particular notions, next to human-particular systems which also focus on external- ie now even to more degree human-translated from something other- objects.

I disagree that math is a human-particular system concerning itself with human-particular notions. And I have no idea why you claim that.

 

[Hygro]

While of course economics is a science, most economists are as much scientists as doctors or perhaps chiropractors are. I've seen chiropractic work magic with such practitioners knowing their stuff. I've seen doctors with clear commands of molecular cell biology and able to use theory to their advantage. But by and large most are practicing a trade informed mostly by convention.

As such, it confuses people into thinking that economics itself is not a science.

NB most of the economics you learn at most schools is convention with some applied philosophy and not so much the science.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The key difference between social sciences, represented by economics, and physical sciences, represented by physics, is this:

In physics, you observe a phenomena and develop and test theories to explain it. Over time your phenomena becomes better explained.

In economics, you observe a phenomena and develop theories to explain it. As your explanation of the phenomena gets better either you yourself or someone else starts using your model of the phenomena to predict how it will respond and taking actions designed to influence it. By the time you have a solid explanation of what was going on it has been pushed and prodded to the point where it probably isn't even happening any more.

 

[Verbose]

So the distinction is not there in a single word, in german?
It (generally) is not here either, with Episteme still the term for 'science'. Although math is included in the group, those usually are termed with an even worse epithet, translating to 'positive sciences' (as if anything else is crap or negative ^^ ).
Episteme, etymologically, seems to signify 'standing over the subject', and thus having a clear(er) view of it. Tied to the term exegesis, which literally means to lead (to a conclusion/examination etc) by standing somewhere out of the actual phenomenon you are speaking of.

I know for a fact British and American historians of science tend to favourably comment on the other Germanic languages' tendency not to make hard distinctions about what can be a science — it's all Wissenschaft/wetenschap/vetenskap/videnskap.

That said, it's a huge post-Kantian German philosophical tradition going back to the late 19th c. with philosophers like Diltey and Windelband dealing with "Naturwissenschaft" and how it might differ from "Geisteswissenschaft", or in Windelband's classic distinction, what sets "nomothetic science" apart from "idiographic"?

The connection of it all as some kind of "Wissenschaft" seems to hold still. But the inroads of the English language as the international mode of communication is eroding that traditional German tradition among, well, the natural science community. They tend to get their mindset cast in the English language, and that means taking over that language's juxtaposition of science - non-science. (I'd say the medical profession, which is mostly a professional cadre practising various forms of craft-knowledge as clinicians anyway, are trying so hard to be "scientific" — according to some generalised English language philosophy of science — that they are at times failing to comprehend what makes medicine a bit of a special case.)

 

[Terxpahseyton]

And since the European unification of university degrees we got bachelors of art and bachelors of science... yuck