1) and 2) appear to me to be virtually synonymous with "falsification". sciencers (fans of science) like 3) and 4), but 3) is not a given axiom. while i like to believe in the constancy of universal fundamental physical constants, i do not demand such. perhaps $\alpha$ is changing with time (and the physics would change), but i am dubious of it. what Einstein said about 4) is "Things should be described as simple as possible, but no simpler." Occam's razor is good for what it is, but do not sacrifice reality for simplicity. regarding 5) what is the commanding discipline? physics uber alles?

If 1 and 2 are virtually synonymous with falsifiability, then Alchemy basically satisfies Popper. That is nonsense. You ignore the explanation on 3. Constants can change over time, etc. But the change itself will eventually need an explanation within the theory. Re: 5 Harmony accomplished by slavish service of melody is tasteless, trite and ineffective. There can be no commanding discipline or we are losing part of 1. We are demanding there is a best perspective, and some sciences are more 'real' than others.

i don't think so, job. eventually Alchemy does not comport with the data and does not meet the challenges, otherwise we would be using alchemy to explain where the holes and electrons go inside a semiconductor. and if we clearly and consistently measure a changing "constant", we may have to accept the reality of that change and incorporate it into theory even before we figure out why. we want medical science to be consistent with chemistry, but i don't think it ever will trump chemistry. however i do think facts regarding chemistry will trump (disprove) beliefs in medicine.

I am not going around and around defending what I meant from someone so doctrinaire that they insist on ignoring me. I have made this mistake with you in the past. You cannot tell me I agree with Popper, when I do not, and then judge what I said from the assumption I agree. You ignore eventually, or basically, you just don't care what I mean. You know you are right.

my gunness! any of us should be able to "rise to the challenge".

Allowing oneself to be manipulated and mis-represented is not part of the challenge. Someone needs to demand manners, or people who don't like playing fair just win.

Eventually, quantum mechanics will no longer comport with the facts, or physics is dead. That does not mean it is not a science. Science changes, and moves one, but it is one thing that did not spring into existence when deined by Sir Karl

well, all's i can say is "physician heal thyself".

All I can say is that I will no longer respond to comments from you.

@CortAmmon, certainly scientists of different disciplines normally respect the expertise of those in other disciplines. but when a couple of chemists claim to run an experiment demonstrating "cold fusion" and physicists are dubious of it, yes "cliques" of a sort will form but even if i were a chemist, i would side with the physicists. (and, apparently, so does reality.)

@CortAmmon There are gaps between sciences, but there are gaps between concentrations within a science. For example, continuous evolution is presumed by all these folks doing statistical genetics, but punctuated equilibrium is preferred by paleontology. The two will come together somehow. The point is that there are only gaps, not walls, that the scale of difference at the top level is proportional to those lower down. We do not create insulation by naming, just names.

@CortAmmon Actually, these cliques are strong, and they are a part of this question. Anthropology has a set of standards based upon storytelling and immersive direct experience that can never be Popperized. It will purposely choose to treat non-falsifiable theories as real theories, or it will stop being itself and decompose into various subdisciplines that will become parts of biology, history, psychology, and sociology. To me it is a science because it is respected as a discipline by related sciences. To Popper it is not, because this is not a convergent statistical procedure.

@CortAmmon Feyerabend also sees the rejection and then reincorporation of Chinese medicine as an example of such cliquing. It is a science by these looser standards, if only in its home country. But its failure to be Popper-compliant makes folks wary of integrating it into 'real' medicine. OTOH, it encodes information that works, and needs to either be harmonized or have its unexpected success explained and its data incorporated. (Sorry for the long comments.)

so job, if Chinese medicine, practiced in the west, is not considered "Popper-compliant", does oncology also fail to meet criteria of falsifiability? say, chemotherapy. it doesn't work all the time. or doesn't seem to work many times (by "work", i mean reduce a tumor). does that mean that it doesn't make a difference? (your mistake is confusing falsifiability with deterministic results. statistical results are results. and oncologists do not know exactly how it works, yet can discern statistical results.)

@robertbristow-johnson (OK, so I guess I lied. Sorry to 'flounce') I am making no such mistake. You are failing to read what I wrote, again. Also, try paying attention to what Popper actually said. In Chinese medicine there are traditions that one does not violate -- the meridian system is not questioned or really ever refined. Chinese medicine does not make clear predictions at the risk being wrong. That is what falsification means. It does not mean the composite of 1 and 2 above, it means something much narrower and requires statistical convergence.

@robertbristow-johnson Oncology tracks its failures and diagnoses them, it is Popper-compliant to the degree it is theory-based. In traditional medicine, if your success rate improves, people do what you did, regardless of whether it fits the theory, and someone comes up with a reason why it worked later.

so can't a western physician do the same with the practice of Chinese medicine? that physician might find out that, statistically, it doesn't make a difference and thus is falsified. but maybe he/she might find out that there are some statistical indicators that would suggest that something in the practice of Chinese medicine did some good. now they don't have to understand why or how it works, and it's still acting within the scientific method.

That is doing Western medicine, borrowing hypotheses from traditional sources, not doing traditional medicine. Chinese medicine is what it says it is, not what we say it is. If a Westerner experimentally proved part of traditional medicine wrong, it probably would not change the behavior of the vast majority of practitioners.

Do you really not see the difference between collecting data, and testing hypotheses? When Western doctors went to China, they insisted those they trained not use any local method that had not been subjected to testing by Western science. Success rates fell.

It is not about knowing why or how, it is about testing first and acting later vs acting first and maybe eventually testing, if there is a problem.

Popper means what he said, not what you imagine he said. I mean what I said, not what you imagine I said.

So, related to this direction, there was a wording I kept out of the question: I notice linguistics plays a huge deal in hypotheses. I know western science has a language of statistics that it uses on a regular basis. However, eastern thoughts (can I call them "science?") tend to use a different language. In particular, words like Chi seem monumentally difficult to turn into testable concepts in western notations.

Every time I talk to someone who follows eastern thinknig, and press in this direction, they are emphatic about "Testing the Chi." However, they do not accept tests written in western notation (read: statistical measurement of bulk properties). They claim that does not properly capture the essence of Chi.

Much of what caused me to pose the question is whether that meets the rules of the scientific method. Several have explicitly pointed to Popper's definition of falsifiability, which is excelent. Falsifiabilitiy is a much smaller topic than sience as a whole.

So that leads the question, for me, towards the question of whether "science" specified methods of falsifying, and in particular, if it is valid for a practicioner of eastern beliefs to say "you do not have enough training to see the CHi yet, so do not question what I have to say, just do ot."

WHich si not akin to everything I learn from QM professors =p

except there it is "you may have enough training, but you don't have the access to a multi-billion dollar collider to do the experiment on."

My instincts say there is a smooth gradient, but I have so much trouble trying to get straightforward answers out of either party, eastern or western =p

I would say that violates my item #2. But there is a distinction between science and engineering. Hidebound syndicalism has a point. It is quite reasonable to demand something be done in a way acceptable to a set of practitioners, and for those standards to be very resistant to challenge. The community of practitioners needs to be able to take responsibility for the actions of those practicing.

But engineering is not science. To the degree that medicine is really engineering, it is not basically scientific, and a Western doctor is just as likely to tell a recalcitrant patient, or an uppity resident-in-training to 'just do it'.

Science, in the end, needs to handle the challenges of outsiders. Chinese medicine may not be able to demonstrate to you how to practice it, but it has compilations of data upon which it is based. I cannot show you an electron, either. But I can make predictions based upon the behavior of electrons that will vindicate my faith in them.

Basically, a clear standard of falsification constitutes proving a negative. We can make things seem highly unlikely by not seeing them, but we cannot prove them false. We cannot really prove the mechanistic details behind our correct predictions either. We are always assuming, like a 'cargo cult', that our actions are causal because they give us the expected effects. You know, maybe the machine elves are just messing with us by making all these particles seem to appear...

Even at its most mechanistic, science has only 'specified' methods of falsifying pretty much by deciding to be wrong 5% of the time. You pick a p-level, try to turn your real question into a statistical hypothesis, and go with it.

More directly: It is not courses in quantum mechanics, but my dog that has taught me how to feel electrons. She is terrified of electrical storms and I can now tell, because of her, when the air is charged. It is possible that one can be taught how to feel 'chi' in the same way. But, like the electrons, there is likely a real force associated with 'chi', or it is nonsense.

The Qigong folks try to measure it, but most of the rest of the folks who use it are hidebound engineers, and not scientists. That does not mean at its origins it was not science. The problem here is with my point 5. If it scares you too much to harmonize your science with mine, you have stopped really doing science. That goes for both sides. If it bothers physicists and biologists in the West that chi might exist, and they won't consider an experiment, they are equally bad at 5.

(Sorry again for my length. You seem to ask a lot of questions at once, and I don't seem to be able to make my thinking compact enough to answer more than one at a time.)