Science observable consequences

There are four basic rules of scientific method to which an investigator is committed (1) good observation, (2) the public nature of observation, (3) the necessity to theorize logically, and (4) the testing of theory by observable consequences. These constitute the scientific enterprise. I consider below the wider application of each rule to d-ASCs and indicate how unnecessary physicaliStic restrictions may be dropped. I also show that all these commitments or rules can be accommodated in the development of state-specific sciences. 

In making these observations, we may only be providing an echo of C. P. Snow s The Two Cultures, based on his Rede lecture for Cambridge University [2]. Snow s main point was that the lack of communication between the sciences and the humanities was a regrettable situation rife with negative consequences. The Two Cultures was meant to be both an admonition to thinkers and an invitation to have scientists and humanists work harder at understanding each other. 

As will be shown below, the notion that science is objective is mistaken and the mistake contributes to many of the problems encountered when scientific reseach has immediate economic or political consequences(16-21). It should not be surprising that years after the introduction of the concept of trans-science, we still observe difficulty, conflict and general misunderstanding not of what science can or cannot do, but of what science does do and how. The reason is a general lack of appreciation that the scientific method of inquiry is inherently and specifically subjective and that it requires a value system without which it simply cannot be applied. 

This nebulous region, where science, politics, and agendas intersect, is exactly the territory occupied by the recent U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change (hereafter the USNA).1 In this chapter, I examine the USNA, demonstrate that the models that serve as its basis are inconsistent with observations, and conclude that it... 

Displaying a grasp of chemistry remarkable even among chemical engineers, the authors ascribe the hazardous side reaction consequent upon mono-nitration of toluene in mixed acid, to a decomposition of nitric acid (science has hitherto regarded nitric acid as thermodynamically more stable than conceivable decomposition products). This is favoured by poor mixing in what they describe as a three phase mixture (m/xo-nitrotoluenes being apparently immiscible with toluene). What the calorimetric study described seems to have observed is the transition from nitration to oxidation of the substrate. 

Another approach is to realize that this problem is not unique to d-ASCs. One can have illusions and misperceptions in the ordinary d-SoC. Before the rise of modern physical science, all sorts of things were imagined about the nature of the physical world that could not be directly refuted. The same techniques that eliminated these illusions in the physical sciences can also eliminate them in state-specific sciences dealing with nonphysical data. All observations must be subjected to consensual validation and all their theoretical consequences must be examined. Those that do not show consistent patterns and cannot be replicated can be distinguished from those phenomena that do show general lawfulness across individuals. 

The lowest level in observing a phenomenon is when we are faced with a totally new phenomenon where both factors and the law of changes are unknown to us, i.e. outcomes-responses of the observed phenomenon are random values for us. This randomness is objectively a consequence of the lack of ability to simultaneously observe all relations and influences of all factors on system responses. Through its development science continually discovers new connections, relationships and factors, which brings about shifting up the limits between randomness and lawfulness. 

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