Taomeow

And biophysics, and... One of my favorite quotes ever, by an evolutionary biologist Haldane (I think), in response to the question -- --You have studied creation all your life, what have you learned about the Creator? --That God has an inordinate fondness for beetles. Not sure anthropology covers "all" the territory worth covering... in fact, it chiefly concerns itself with the antics of the species Plato called "the featherless biped" (based on the fact that we walk on two legs like birds but unlike birds are, well, featherless). And what about cats? To say nothing of beetles? So... I actually meant taoist sciences which meet the requirement I consider a sine qua non -- a unified theory underlying all of them. But today they are not viewed as science by the popes of the church of modern western science -- and are woefully lumped together, by assorted quacks, with assorted woo-woo... just like quantum mechanics. Unified theory... That physics woman in the video (I may have been too harsh in my assessment, but am too lazy to list all the reasons why) mentioned superstrings (something she apparently doesn't like) in the context of "it was mostly an American thing, not a European one." That's what we have for a unified theory... an American physics and a European physics. Or is it anthropology, sans physics?..

Thanks for clarifying. Looks like in physics "the argument from naturalness" also had (and we can only hope will have again) its champions who hardly meet the criteria for "a clear example of pseudoscience." E.g., Paul Dirac, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist regarded as one of the great ones, expressed this sentiment in a 1960s article titled "The Evolution of the Physicist's Picture of Nature": "A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data. God is a mathematician of a very high order..." He often reiterated it in his lectures as, ""If a theory is not beautiful, it is probably wrong."

It depends on who those "us" are. Real science, if it existed*, would be based on a unified theory and nothing in the universe would be left out in the cold (however cold) or crash and burn encountering that phenomenon (however hot). I don't just mean a unified theory physicists are pining for (those who care about physics among them, that is, rather than grants and tenures and publications). I mean science as a whole -- where physicists and geologists, biologists and chemists, astronomers and linguists would have an underlying common ground, a common base whence to have a meaningful dialog, a meaningful set of shared fundamentals so they could actually communicate and -- unbelievable as it presently seems -- understand what it's about. Understand it on the level of that unified view, unified theoretical premise they would all share. A science that would have that would be self-consistent across the spectrum of all human endeavors -- not self-contradictory, not weaponized against itself by having skipped that crucial initial step of harmonizing its countless branches by tracing them to a common root. Funny thing is, technology would never be as all-powerful if this kind of science existed. There would be deterrents built in... *It does. It just takes a much longer, much more dedicated study, is not part of any current institution's curriculum, and has empirical outcomes not readily caught by currently accepted/available methods and models. Its time will either come or we're toast. I miss him too.

The first thing she offered as "a clear example of pseudoscience" is "arguments from naturalness."

Dogs will eat anything. Your 'Home Science" sounds like a very useful subject (unless botched by useless teachers.) We had something similar, gender segregated -- boys were doing something in the mechanical shop and girls were knitting and sewing. I had neither the talent nor the patience for either, so my knitted goods self-limited to a scarf just big enough for a cat (should a cat agree to wear a scarf), and I also sewed a pretty nightgown that would probably fit someone very asymmetrical, with one arm three times the circumference of the other and one leg about a foot longer.

WD-40* *How to fix anything... life's most profound lesson: If it moves but shouldn't -- duct tape If it doesn't move but should -- WD-40