Your unreasonable bias against any attempts to understand the world instead of relying on traditions of unknown origin does not substitute an argument against it. Neither empirical or analitical method of scientific research is limited to some sort of elitist and corrupt academia, so your view of academia being elitist and corrupt doesn’t disprove the efficiency of those methods. And no, the knowledge doesn’t come from practice at all, if it did then ritually practiced traditions would lead to understanding of their roots and their purpose, and humans didn’t learn about spreading of diseases from burial rites, but rather from events when those rites weren’t practiced. Furthermore, we didn’t learn how to deal with those diseases from the traditions, but rather from breaking away from them and studying bodies instead of getting rid of them - which faced much backlash from the church, which wanted to uphold tradition no matter what.
The knowledge comes not from practice, but from study, from testing different approaches and writing down what worked, until you get testing sample high enough to figure out why it worked. And then, people who figured it out probably taught others what to do without sharing in enough details why it works, and puff you have a tradition. And if people do share why stuff works and publish their research data and methodology, then we have knowledge, based on which other researchers can conduct their own research, check if they get similar results and whatnot. Peer review is a rather robust standard for truth, as far as human capabilities go.
Academia being gamified in a way that only approved research gets funding or spotlight has nothing to do with traditions themselves being any good either. Most often power is legitimized via tradition, and many scientific institutes were muzzled because power following tradition found their pursuit of knowledge undesireable. The fact that many research topics are taboo is direct result of that.
Lastly, your idea that the academia is isolated from the “feedback” of the “real world” is completely nonsensical. Nothing that’s not peer reviewed isn’t treated as particulary valuable, and you peer review the research by repeating the tests with the same methodology. That’s specifically the feedback from the real world. Any sort of feedback that shows some parts of tradition should be changed is commonly met with resistance however, so it stands to reason that the opposite of what you claimed is actually the truth, and it’s tradition that suffers from lack of the “feedback from the real world”.
I guess you are unfamiliar with iatrogenics. A good example is the case of Semmelweis, who discovered that pregnant women were dying at higher rates IN THE HOSPOTAL compared to births at home.
The reason wasn’t known before. But turned out the doctors didn’t wash their hands between autopsy and delivering babies.
And now, the risk of the child dying during childbirth is twice as likely if the birth happens in homes instead of happening in hospitals. Almost like discovery of germs and
development of antiseptics had consequences. Those pesky doctors must be tracking those homeborn children down and eliminating them in the name of science! Oops!
Science is good but most often incorrect or incomplete. Otherwise our current science wouldnt have disproved the old.
If you are unvilling to admit that human hubris is just as well capable of much harm through science like of which we had 200 years ago or just 100 then drink from lead pipes, paint with radium and do some bloodletting. Those were perfectly ‘safe’ at the time, right?
What will we think of todays acceptables tomorrow?
There was no “science” done to prove that washing hands had effect on mortality, until someone tested that and found that to be the case. So it’s not “old science” vs “new science” but rather “no science” vs “science”. Lead was used because it was available. Radium was used because it was pretty. Bloodletting was considered helpful strictly because of tradition of bloodletting and because no one done the rigorous testing with valid methodology to check if it actually works, or if it’s just a folk belief that it does.
You keep presenting cases where people just didn’t know something and didn’t care to figure it out, and call it “science” because someone baselessly believed in it. It’s irrational. And before you start anew with ignoring my arguments and listing more cases of people not knowing something as a proof that scientific process is harmful, I seriously don’t care. I originally commented about traditions being bad reasons for doing anything with the assumption we have some common ground in our understanding of how science work, and trying to convice someone that science does work is a fair bit too tall of a task to engage with. I’m not interested in that, sorry.
Your unreasonable bias against any attempts to understand the world instead of relying on traditions of unknown origin does not substitute an argument against it. Neither empirical or analitical method of scientific research is limited to some sort of elitist and corrupt academia, so your view of academia being elitist and corrupt doesn’t disprove the efficiency of those methods. And no, the knowledge doesn’t come from practice at all, if it did then ritually practiced traditions would lead to understanding of their roots and their purpose, and humans didn’t learn about spreading of diseases from burial rites, but rather from events when those rites weren’t practiced. Furthermore, we didn’t learn how to deal with those diseases from the traditions, but rather from breaking away from them and studying bodies instead of getting rid of them - which faced much backlash from the church, which wanted to uphold tradition no matter what.
The knowledge comes not from practice, but from study, from testing different approaches and writing down what worked, until you get testing sample high enough to figure out why it worked. And then, people who figured it out probably taught others what to do without sharing in enough details why it works, and puff you have a tradition. And if people do share why stuff works and publish their research data and methodology, then we have knowledge, based on which other researchers can conduct their own research, check if they get similar results and whatnot. Peer review is a rather robust standard for truth, as far as human capabilities go.
Academia being gamified in a way that only approved research gets funding or spotlight has nothing to do with traditions themselves being any good either. Most often power is legitimized via tradition, and many scientific institutes were muzzled because power following tradition found their pursuit of knowledge undesireable. The fact that many research topics are taboo is direct result of that.
Lastly, your idea that the academia is isolated from the “feedback” of the “real world” is completely nonsensical. Nothing that’s not peer reviewed isn’t treated as particulary valuable, and you peer review the research by repeating the tests with the same methodology. That’s specifically the feedback from the real world. Any sort of feedback that shows some parts of tradition should be changed is commonly met with resistance however, so it stands to reason that the opposite of what you claimed is actually the truth, and it’s tradition that suffers from lack of the “feedback from the real world”.
I guess you are unfamiliar with iatrogenics. A good example is the case of Semmelweis, who discovered that pregnant women were dying at higher rates IN THE HOSPOTAL compared to births at home.
The reason wasn’t known before. But turned out the doctors didn’t wash their hands between autopsy and delivering babies.
Oops!
And now, the risk of the child dying during childbirth is twice as likely if the birth happens in homes instead of happening in hospitals. Almost like discovery of germs and development of antiseptics had consequences. Those pesky doctors must be tracking those homeborn children down and eliminating them in the name of science! Oops!
Science is good but most often incorrect or incomplete. Otherwise our current science wouldnt have disproved the old.
If you are unvilling to admit that human hubris is just as well capable of much harm through science like of which we had 200 years ago or just 100 then drink from lead pipes, paint with radium and do some bloodletting. Those were perfectly ‘safe’ at the time, right?
What will we think of todays acceptables tomorrow?
There was no “science” done to prove that washing hands had effect on mortality, until someone tested that and found that to be the case. So it’s not “old science” vs “new science” but rather “no science” vs “science”. Lead was used because it was available. Radium was used because it was pretty. Bloodletting was considered helpful strictly because of tradition of bloodletting and because no one done the rigorous testing with valid methodology to check if it actually works, or if it’s just a folk belief that it does.
You keep presenting cases where people just didn’t know something and didn’t care to figure it out, and call it “science” because someone baselessly believed in it. It’s irrational. And before you start anew with ignoring my arguments and listing more cases of people not knowing something as a proof that scientific process is harmful, I seriously don’t care. I originally commented about traditions being bad reasons for doing anything with the assumption we have some common ground in our understanding of how science work, and trying to convice someone that science does work is a fair bit too tall of a task to engage with. I’m not interested in that, sorry.
That’s curiously a lot of text for someone not caring.
The scientific process is not harmful. If that’s your conclusion then welp.
What’s harmful is the blind belief in science. It is skepticism and exploration that brings new understanding.
But just because we label something science it can still be quack.
And it’s easy for you to dismiss old science because you have the current age’s perspective.
Evaluate each era on its own terms.
And once again science does work, otherwise we wouldnt pursue it. But the zelous blind faith in science is unscientific to say the least.