Later on in history, people took these ideas and they changed the wording a bit.
And the wording's a little bit complicated.
But it's important I think to put on the table right now.
The phrase is analogy identifies anomaly.
So the concept of analogy is that we as humans have an experiential base that we
bring to anything that we are a part of.
And if we see something new,
the first thing we do is compare it to something else we've seen or experienced.
So that's the analogy.
Now, in that experience if we see something that we, if through analogy,
from our experiences that doesn't fit.
It's something new.
It's something unexplained.
Then it's something that rises as something that's may be concerning,
or startling, or interesting.
And something that should be identified as a topic of further investigation.
So that's anomaly.
So analogy identifies anomaly is a really important toolkit we have.
The next person we want to look at, and again this is a whirlwind tour.
There's many others we could bring into play.
But it's Rene Descartes, and he lived in 1596 to 1650 in France.
He was a true Renaissance man, a philosopher, mathematician, writer.
But he wrote a book in 1637 on the discourse on the method.
And in other words, what Descartes did was to bring the concept of Socrates to
the next level and say.
If we have critical free thought,
and we use our multiple senses in everything we do in our everyday life.
That we can acquire knowledge, and have a genuine foundation of what is going on.
But it also, it's encapsulated in this great statement of I think,
therefore I am.
And so, he gave an example called the wax model.
And I think that kind of explains where Descarte was bringing us.
The wax model is the following.
If you have a candle that's cool with a wick in the middle.
Let's say that some candle maker just made it.
And you set the candle in a candle holder in front of you on the table, and
you describe it.
You say, well it has a certain temperature.
It has a color.
It has a waxiness.
It has a beautiful white wick.
It has all these characteristics.
But then if you light the candle, and allow the candle to burn all the way down.
You'll end up with something that's very different than what you've started with.
But it's still a candle, right?
And so let's say that you let the candle burn all the way down.
You have this molten, gooey mass.
If there's any wick left, it's black and it's carbon.
And it doesn't have the same color.
It has none of the same shapes.
But it still is a candle.
So therefore, the idea there is that we must utilize
our multiple senses simultaneously all the time.
But at those moments then,
we have to understand the context of our observations.
Another really important philosopher.
And again, we're jumping through time here dramatically, is Tom Kuhn.
He lived from 1922 to 1996.
And Professor Kuhn was at Harvard and Berkeley and MIT.
And did a lot of very influential, philosophical writings about science.
But his most important, and I think profound work was the structure of
scientific revolutions, which he published in 1962.
And so, this bills upon what we've been talking about so far.
But it has another important caveat, and that is that the nature of humanity.
Scientist are humans.
And we bring to the table all the baggage that humans all have.
One of the natures of science is that it's done by humans.
And therefore, change is almost universally resisted.
And so what Kuhn puts forward is, a look at the historical development of science.
And saying that some of the most important things we've ever had developed
scientifically was a result of.
A lot of pain, a lot of struggle, and a lot of rejection by society.
And so, the scientific revolutions he talks about is the idea that people will
methodically do scientific method or scientific inquiry.
Conduct research, have hypothesis tested, move forward with data,
synthesize it, try to make predictions.
Try to put this in the process models.
But often times, the most important developments of this process,
is actually rejected by not only society, but other scientists.
And then eventually, if the scientific work that's being rejected or
shunned at some level.
If it's strong, solid science, and based in reproducibility, and prediction.
It finally prevails.
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