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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7473621" data-attributes="member: 42582">Thanks you!As well as the examples you point to (astronomy) we could point to aspects of biology (Darwin didn't do experiments - he made very careful observations and conjectured the best explanation for them given the constraints he took to be applicable) or demography/public health (no one goes about spreading diseases or polluting water supplies to try and determine the effect on life expectancy, birth rates, and other aspects of population health), etc.Beginning with the caveat that while I have taught and also supervised in philosophy of science it's not my main gig, I would start any account of the scientific method with the centrality of careful observation and measurement. Experiments are a device for facilitating this, but not the only way.In the fields that are my main gig - law, political and social philosophy, philosophy of language - one of the most common causes of bad work is (in my view) a lack of careful observation - which mostly manifests itself in treating common sense about one's own social situation or one's own linguistic usage as if were a more-or-less necessary feature of such things. (Even with careful observation - eg attention, when doing social theory, to the widest possible range of human social formations - these disciplines still will not count as scientific for the most part, as they typically don't involve measurement.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 7473621, member: 42582"] Thanks you! As well as the examples you point to (astronomy) we could point to aspects of biology (Darwin didn't do experiments - he made very careful observations and conjectured the best explanation for them given the constraints he took to be applicable) or demography/public health (no one goes about spreading diseases or polluting water supplies to try and determine the effect on life expectancy, birth rates, and other aspects of population health), etc. Beginning with the caveat that while I have taught and also supervised in philosophy of science it's not my main gig, I would start any account of the scientific method with the centrality of careful observation and measurement. Experiments are a device for facilitating this, but not the only way. In the fields that [I]are[/I] my main gig - law, political and social philosophy, philosophy of language - one of the most common causes of bad work is (in my view) a lack of careful observation - which mostly manifests itself in treating common sense about one's own social situation or one's own linguistic usage as if were a more-or-less necessary feature of such things. (Even with careful observation - eg attention, when doing social theory, to the widest possible range of human social formations - these disciplines still will not count as [I]scientific[/I] for the most part, as they typically don't involve measurement.) [/QUOTE]

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