Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions should be a  
mandatory part of any college education (or a politician's). It would make  
people understand more the differences between the 'hard' and 'soft'  
sciences, which have nothing to do with difficulty, but with foundations  
on which they are based, which is what philosophy of science concerns  
itself with. We don't question the axioms of math, chemistry, biology, but  
we have a *lot* debates about fundamentals of economics, sociology, etc.  
This makes all the difference between their modern evolutionary examples  
we rely on every day like computer weather (or climate) models vs. similar  
computer models of social behavior. You will lose betting against the  
weather prediction tomorrow, but you have as good chance as anybody  
predicting what will happen in the world next year, :-)

Sen. Inhofe would not have made a fool of himself in the Senate throwing a  
snowball had he understood what philosophy of science gave us and why we  
can trust certain branches of science more, but need to be more vigilant  
about others.

Przemek

--

             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html