[Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications

Sat Oct 5 13:18:12 CDT 2013

For many people sasquatch exists. They spend money mounting expeditions
to find him/her. They act on their belief.

Empirical data is facts. Facts are well-documented observations. Some
figure the sasquatch is well-documented and thus a fact. I think there
is a scientific name for him or her.

The only fact a scientist should accept absolutely is the chair he/she
is sitting in and the certainty of death and taxes. Anything else not in
the room with him/her needs to be dealt with in varying degrees of
credibility or dubiety. Concepts and hypotheses are quite as real as the
sasquatch when you act on them. Fields like magnetism can be measured
and described with equations but nobody knows what magnetism actually
is. Us scientists deal with lots of semi-real things quite effectively.

Empiricism/positivism is not dead, no, but an ideal. A real one.

____________________________
Richard H. Zander
Missouri Botanical Garden, PO Box 299, St. Louis, MO 63166-0299 USA  
Web sites: http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/resbot/ and
http://www.mobot.org/plantscience/bfna/bfnamenu.htm
Framework: http://tinyurl.com/ltd66dw
UPS and FedExpr -  MBG, 4344 Shaw Blvd, St. Louis 63110 USA

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Ashley Nicholas
Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2013 1:05 PM
To: Fred Schueler
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications

I disagree with this what is being said here. Only
objects/forces/phenomena that can be experimented on or objectively
observed really exist. Anything we abstract fro this through the
collection of data/information is a concept or a hypothesis and not
real. A flash about the benzene ring must have come from empirically
collected data. Taxonomy cannot be exempt from this process if it is
then it is not empirical science it is guessing!

Ashley
________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] on behalf of Fred Schueler
[bckcdb at istar.ca]
Sent: 05 October 2013 03:48
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Biodiversity questions: Classifications

On 10/4/2013 10:26 AM, Dan Lahr wrote:
> Ha, I was not aware that he acknowledged that.

* well, not in those words - but he certainly acknowledged that a
falsifiable hypothesis could come from anywhere - and "anywhere"
includes baconian induction. In a sense, any hypothesis arises as an
idea about existing data, whether it comes as a flash about a benzene
ring, or only after poring over decades of correlation between weather
data and road-crossing dates.

fred.
===============================================
>
> So it is in fact the wide *perception* of popperian science that
defines
> science as only the last part of that sentence, not Popper himself...
>
> thanks for pointing it out FRed.
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 10:09 AM, Fred Schueler <bckcdb at istar.ca
> <mailto:bckcdb at istar.ca>> wrote:
>
>     On 10/4/2013 9:00 AM, Dan Lahr wrote:
>
>      > Incidently, I tend think that applying the popperian definition
>     of science
>      > to taxonomy, as you have indicated, is a bit of trying to fit a
>     square peg
>      > in a round hole.  Popper's definition is too restrictive:
exploratory
>      > science is also part of science!  HOw would we come to
hypothesis
>     if we
>      > don't know what objects can be hypothesizable subjects?
>
>     * an interesting point - the popperian hypothesis is that "it will
be
>     only through exploratory data collection and baconian induction
that it
>     will be possible to form a falsifiable hypothesis about this
subject."
>     In my experience, this hypothesis is often corroborated.
>
>     fred.
>     ------------------------------------------------------------
>                Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
>     Bishops Mills Natural History Centre -
http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
>     Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
>     Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
>                RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
>         on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
>     (613)258-3107 <tel:%28613%29258-3107> <bckcdb at istar.ca
>     <http://istar.ca>> http://pinicola.ca/
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>
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>
> --
> ___________________
> Daniel J. G. Lahr, PhD
> Assist. Prof., Dept of Zoology,
> Univ. of Sao Paulo, Brazil
> + 55 (11) 3091 0948

--
------------------------------------------------------------
          Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
          RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
   on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
    (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
------------------------------------------------------------

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