[A-List] How "scientific" is science?

["Sabri Oncu" <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony:

> 'Science' in the abstract is merely a process of open-ended 
> inquiry guided by a 'prime directive' of self-correction.

Dear Tony,

Let us dissect the above a bit:

> 'Science' in the abstract is merely a process of open-ended 
> inquiry

The first question I would like to ask is "an inquiry of what?" 'Religion'
in the abstract is merely a process of open-ended inquiry as well, is it
not?

> guided by a 'prime directive' of self-correction.

The second question I have is that if scientific process is self-correcting,
then does it not mean that in the limit as the number of corrections go to
infinity, we would get to the "truth", whatever "truth" means? But even we
may be able to reach a limit after infitinetely many corrections, how can we
know that that limit is the "truth" or not? All we can know is the limit of
these iterations, if there is a limit of course, is it not? Further,if as
someone once said there is no unique way to science and given that the
limits we reach depend on the ways we choose, how do we know which limit is
the "right" one?

There, I again side with Dale: "We know what makes living things tick, but
we
have no clue what life really is."

Best,

Sabri