Books on Science

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Permalink Reply by Alotta Fagina on December 15, 2009 at 8:01am

There is a danger that this 4th paradigm in scientific method might lead to excessive empiricism. I am an undergraduate in computational biology in which we look at truck loads of experimental data. My professors always warn us to not go looking for patterns like the face of Jesus in the cheese sandwich or the Bible code.

Because such patterns exist in all random data. And given enough computing power we might be able mine these out.

Scientific method begins with hypothesis i.e. an educated guess based on the current facts. Radical empiricists begin their method of inquiry with data which leads to stuff like the Bible code.

Permalink Reply by Mike Hein on December 21, 2009 at 2:26pm

I like this line: "Dr. Wing has argued that ideas like recursion, parallelism and abstraction taken from computer science will redefine modern science." Uhhhh...in other words, ideas that first come from cognitive psych THEN from computer science will redefine modern science.

I'm really not slamming the article, which is excellent, but I found that one sentiment pretty funny.

Cheers!