The Philosophy of Science

For those of you that peruse my musings on Shadwell’s you know a common theme running throughout is my thoughts on being careful of what you hold to be absolute truths.

The current book I am reading, The Black Swan delves into the philosophy of science and into some very intriguing and at least for me a little bit difficult to grasp at times concepts like induction, empirical data and deduction from observation (which is where the title of the book comes from).

I have already shared some of my thoughts from early impressions of the book (I am about 25% through the book right now), but I was struck with a very powerful thought on how to look at what Taleb is sharing. He is really looking at how human nature plays into what I had previously perceived as ‘hard’ science. This morning on the walk in he talked about how we naturally look for facts that back up our preconceived ideas to validate them, instead of the more powerful approach of trying to prove them wrong. He says the latter approach is the path of the truly confident. Have a belief? Put all of your efforts into trying to prove it wrong, don’t look for corroborative data. He used religious and political views to really hammer this point home. Think about if you are an ultra conservative or an ultra liberal how you view the ‘facts’ around the current healthcare debate.

This book is deep and dry, but I am really enjoying the mental workout it is giving me. For those of you that worry I am going off the deep end into this spacey intellectual what is real concept in my reading, don’t fret. I am balancing my intellectual workout with the Twilight series

Peace Out

Bill

~ by b44hanson on September 15, 2009.