Quote:
Originally Posted by rcglinsk
I think there is a problem with your taxonomy. You include in one big group under the label "science" things I would split as follows:
Linguistics - The vowel shift
History and P/E - The great depression (at least the Europeans always lump politics and economics, good taxonomy there)
Science - The P-T extinction - geology, cosmology, (biology, chemistry, thermodynamics etc.)
I agree that science requires different treatment from linguistics and history. The key differences are that people were around for linguistics and history, and that the science is certain: people did it by making choices. Why would people decide to do something is a different sort of question entirely from scientific questions.
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Thanks for this ... you have confirmed what I suspected: one aspect of your questions has to do with the difference between what you perceive as science and what scientists actually do.
Clarification: my reference to the Great Depression was intended to refer solely to economics, as a science that is no different in its core methods from cosmology.
But let's continue with the demarcation exercise ...
To what extent is the study of human origins science (in your view)? As in the evolution of the species
Homo sapiens?