from John Appel
To Dag F'
Here's an addendum to my earlier post today. In contrasting life, and physical
sciences it is often overlooked that life sciences are themselves physical.
Sensory input is basically physical: sights go as light waves to the retina of
the eye where they are changed to electrochemical impulses, thence to the
optical cortex. Similarly sounds go from the speaker as sound waves to the
eardrums of the listener and thence to the auditory centers of the brain.
Physical touch, smell, and taste proceeds similarly. This fact suggests that
BCT meets the criterion of physical theory or model.
Forssell Translation Team wrote:
[From Dag Forssell (990226 18:00)
>>From John Appel
>Rick is correct , BCT is a recipe; a theory of how to do things, such
>as cure patients with mental disorder. I believe this meaning of theory
>is scientific. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Perhaps the term a
>theoretic "method" of doing things would be more dignified.John, I have been reading some of the discussion of BCT. I am sure that to
many in the life sciences, the meaning of theory as recipe or prescription
is "scientific."To people in the physical sciences, this is a bad joke. The advocates of
PCT are promoting a model, a physical mechanism, that "behaves" by itself
just like living organisms do and thus explains what behavior is and how it
works with a rigor that is typical of the concepts and practice in the
physical sciences.As long as people in the life sciences agree with your view of what is
scientific, they will stay stuck at a level of "science" that is medieval
at best, compared to the physical sciences.I think that a basic problem in discussing this is that most people, and
certainly social scientists who avoided "techie" subjects in school, have
no idea what is meant by "theory" in the physical sciences -- sciences that
are totally responsible for the rapid progress mankind has made in the last
350 years.I'll attach a post by Bill Powers that bears on this subject. When you
consider what Bill expressed here, you may begin to understand Tracy's
not-so-polite criticism of a few days ago, and to understand why PCT
scientists may not consider BCT to be worthy of the label "theory" in the
first place.
Yours
John Appel
jappel218.vcf (62 Bytes)