Old Email Archive

digest 1998-10-19 #002.txt


Thursday
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
-> Re: Quietude....
by duemer@polaris.clarkson.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 15 Oct 1998 19:35:22 -0700
From: duemer@polaris.clarkson.edu
Subject: Re: Quietude....
Ernst Mayr, in _This is Biology_, quotes John Moore's list of the
characteristics of science, as follows:
1. A science must be based on data collected in the filed or in the
laboratory by observation or experiment, without invoking
supernatural
factors.
2. Data must be collected to answer questions, and observations must
be
made to strengthen or refute conjectures.
3. Objective methods must be used in order to minimize possible
bias.
4. Hypotheses must be consistent with observations and compatible
with
the general conceptual framework.
5. All hypotheses must be tested, and, if possible, competing
hypotheses
must be developed and their degree of validity (problem-solving
capability) must be compared.
6. Generalizations must be universally valid within the domain of
the
particular science. Unique events must be explained without invoking
supernatural factors.)
7. In order to eliminate the possibility of error, a fact or
discovery
must be fully accepted only if (repeatedly) confirmed by other
investigators.
8. Science is characterized by the steady improvement of scientific
theories, by the replacement of faulty or incomplete theories, and
by
the solution of previously puzzling problems.
When I asked the students (primarily engineering and science majors)
in my Imagining Science course whether they thought such a list
could be constructed for literature, and if not why not, they looked
at me as if I had just emerged from a silvery saucer-shaped space
ship. (I'm sure some of you are familiar with this reaction.) I know
this is a sort of "undergraduate" question, intentionally
ignoring
all the sophistications of post-modern analysis, but since at least
some of you have said you wouldn't mind a little less
"quietude" on
the SLS list, I solicit your reactions.
======================
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts, box 5750
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315.268.3967
duemer@polaris.clarkson.edu
======================
"He who gives up poetry for power
Shall have lots of power."
--Mark Strand