What gave Science it's status/credibility?

[27Thousand]

Before you conclude this, find out if it's true. Get some of that empirical data that science loves so much.

Create a poll. Ask if PFers believe that women do or do not not flirt with men non-verbally.

Unless I'm understanding the other PF member incorrectly, which I'm sorry if I am, post 33 seems very against women "sending out non-verbal flirting signals even if not aware of what they're doing".

I mean, often if I notice a women I'll try to sit up straight, but not so likely around women I don't care about. Don't people do things like lean slightly away from people they don't like as much, and more likely to lean towards those they're interested in talking to? Isn't this something that anyone can observe for themselves? I had to read that from a teach yourself body language book because I think I have problems on picking up things, but the teach yourself exercises where you observe others pointed it out to me personally, through real life experience of watching. Then it had try yourself exercises. Can't anyone experiment and see how folding your arms/leaning slightly away from someone affects how they act and the conversation versus the next time you speak to them when you lean slightly toward them?

I mean, don't people position themselves differently, voices slightly different, eye contact, posture, spatial closeness, etc, around people depending on how they feel about the other? Can't anyone observe others at a social gathering and even observe body language related to receptiveness in talking to others?

Don't other women say they send body language http://answers.yahoo.com/question/i...JfkNWGfsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20091015175438AABS8Ml For example one said to me, "omg that is like all true lol yes all that is very true comin from a girl of my standards lol =] but usually we don't act goofy unless were away from them but still in veiw. But when closer around them we get real qiute." Then the men were different than the women, the men were hostile and told me to get out more.

 

[27Thousand]

i say the mathematicization of science is what gave it its credibility. just think of isaac Newton's "i feign no hypothesis" quotation:



in other words, Newton didn't try to explain any more about gravity other than to describe what it does precisely using math, rather than understand how it works, what causes it, etc. galileo had that original idea, & also the function concept, descartes created analytic geometry & the philosophy that underlies Newton's work. before that, there was the copernican system, which was mathematically simplest, and at the time was its only advantage. math is what gives science its credibility.

That's really interesting! In the experimental-control section of the social sciences, they mostly only use null hypothesis testing or bayesian statistics, but I don't see too much falsifying equations used to predict. They of course make general explanations/observable principles to make predictions, but not equations to do so. Then outside of the experimental-control section, they mostly use statistics just to describe, but not much as far as using equations to predict.

So maybe they can have more of that in the social sciences? Although maybe not as precise as physics, maybe instead equations that give a general confidence interval after being given several variables. Having a statistics minor I know that they sometimes use "Multivariate Statistics" in the social sciences. It's kind of like the Y predicting the X in algebra, but instead you have many many independent Y variable predicting a dependent X variable. Maybe if I track down my R computer programming they use, plus my notes, and then look at peer-review studies, maybe I could brainstorm equations that I could make falsifiable? Now I'm excited! Although it will most definitely not be apple pie

 

[27Thousand]

From what I have read, before World War 2 the US as a nation didn't really invest that much in science as most people thought it was useless, and if you look at the list of nobel prize winners for chemistry from 1901 to 1939, all but 3 were European, for physics during the same time period it was all but 6 were European. American attitudes about science only seemed to change after the atomic bomb made it clear what science was capable of doing, and after that the US become the dominant force in the science world.

That's interesting too! If you don't mind, what source did you read for that? I'll need to be able to back myself up.

 

[fourier jr]

That's really interesting! In the experimental-control section of the social sciences, they mostly only use null hypothesis testing or bayesian statistics, but I don't see too much falsifying equations used to predict. They of course make general explanations/observable principles to make predictions, but not equations to do so. Then outside of the experimental-control section, they mostly use statistics just to describe, but not much as far as using equations to predict.

So maybe they can have more of that in the social sciences? Although maybe not as precise as physics, maybe instead equations that give a general confidence interval after being given several variables.

i don't see why not. Newton himself thought of that, although in reference to other parts of physics:

... since we are concerned with natural philosophy rather than manual arts, and are writing about natural rather than manual powers, we concentrate on aspects of gravity, levity, elastic forces resistance of fluids, and forces of this sort, whether attractive or impulsive. And therefore our present work sets forth mathematical principles of natural philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces... Then the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea are deduced from these forces by propositions that are also mathematical. If only we could derive the other phenomena of nature from mathematical principles by the same kind of reasoning! For many things lead me to have a suspicion that all phenomena may depend on certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by causes not yet known, either are impelled toward one another and cohere in regular figures, or are impelled from one another and recede.

and hilbert believed that every science, once sufficiently developed, automatically becomes a part of math. maybe social sciences just aren't as developed yet

 

[DaveC426913]

Unless I'm understanding the other PF member incorrectly, which I'm sorry if I am, post 33 seems very against women "sending out non-verbal flirting signals even if not aware of what they're doing".

I don't quite understand her point either.

Miss Silvy, can you clarify post 33? Are you saying non-verbal communication does not happen? Or are you saying it's useless?