THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS A SUBSET OF “THE MORAL METHOD” All processes of product

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IS A SUBSET OF “THE MORAL METHOD”

All processes of production are the same. We merely weight the outputs differently in value. Science values knowledge for its own sake (supposedly.) The scientific method ignores both real costs and opportunity costs. Technology doesn’t ignore them, because it is goal directed. The production of consumer goods, ignores places lower value on knowledge development and hides it rather than publishes it. But all that differs in any process of production (study of transformation) is which inputs we consider, and which outputs we prefer. PERIOD.

The scientific method is but one instance of THE METHOD. The method is the same, whether in craft, production, technology or science. You would not believe how hard I have tried to make this argument, and how hard critical rationalists try to deny it so that they can preserve a special place in their hearts.

Here is the mind blowing bit: The scientific method is written as a moral rule more than a logical one. The reason that scientists developed this moral rule in some detail before other fields, was because it was so much easier to lie, err, and fantasize about the production of hypotheses than it was to produce craft, production, or technology. Worse, (and this is what I work on) it is even harder to take the same moral prohibition and apply it to social science (economics, religion, morality, politics, law) because the incentives to lie, err, and fantasize, are even greater than those in science. My objective, in my work, is to apply the moral constraints we put in place upon science to defend us from lies, errors, and fantasies, to the social sciences, and the moral literature. And I expect that there will be a lot of resistance to following THE METHOD. Precisely because lying, useful error, and selling fantasies is so profitable.