My first instinct was to ignore this comment as one would a dog barking in a junkyard.

Upon reflection, however, I found its nastiness to require that the author explain himself.

What did you mean by this DocJay?  A PM would be fine if you cannot explain this publicly.

Agreed.

This causes me to fear that Hobbes might be correct in his assessment of human nature- its need for a monarch.

From the preface of The Great Conversation published in 1952:

The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandists or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues themselves.

For these reasons I feel this hopelessness as well.  Belief in the rule of law is nearly dead in political conversations.  Legal positivists (those whose concern is not the content of legislation, regulation, judicial fiat, or executive action but only that they were derived through the appropriate legal forms) fill the academies and the corridors of political power.

Bill Whittle has basically been arguing that conservatives must get in the war of propaganda.  This seems correct as most adults have suffered a pathetic public education free of classic authors, accurate world history, or the great works of western literature.

Critical thought for many is absent; pounding conservative memes into the culture seems the primary method available for converting the busy, propagandized masses.

Maybe democracy isn't so great after all.  

The ancients recognized this.  

Plato cursed the democracy of Athens as mob rule for the death of Socrates.

The Eleatic Stranger said this in Plato's Statesman (citation from The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon, Volume 1):

To go against the laws, which are based upon long experience, and the wisdom of counsellors who have graciously recommended them and persuaded the multitude to pass them, would be a far greater and more ruinous error than any adherence to written law.

His utopia was a totalitarian regime led by benevolent scholar-warriors who would, presumedly heed the advice of wise counsellors and long experience.  

Such a strain of thought resurfaces even in these days.

It bears repeating that the founders did not constitute a democracy but a republic, one constrained by the rule of law.

From The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon, Volume 1:

According as the many exercise legal power as citizens or merely actual power as a mob, democracy is aligned with or against constitutional government.

We now have a democracy and sadly the mob is in charge and cares little  for legal power preferring the 'written law' and its arbitrary derivations.

There could be only one!

In the end I've found your argument compelling.

I hope you don't mind the homage - not only the nom de guerre but the avatar will be changed soon unless, of course, you or Ricochet think there is some kind of property right involved here.

It is nice to see the therapeutic view of human nature so well represented by some of the libertarian members of Ricochet, one shared with progressives.

It differs from the conservative, tragic view of human nature - that we are all formed from the crooked timber of humanity (H/T Jonah Goldberg).

The therapeutic approach would blame some evil or corporate motive for dilatory individual actions or choices; the tragic accepts that flawed people make flawed decisions themselves.  Sometimes, as in the case of over-expansive government, such decisions are harmful to others, groups, or entire societies.

So who is to blame for the young man's decisions?  The government, 'corporations,' or the individual actor?

Murray Rothbard:

Liberals generally wish to preserve the concept of "rights" for such "human" rights as freedom of speech, while denying the concept to private property.  And yet, on the contrary the concept of "rights" only makes sense as property rights. For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property rights are not used as the standard.

Agreed that the errant fields of human knowledge are valuable.

However, neither you nor I get to look at history and describe what was actually science and what wasn't; that is, using hindsight to describe who was scientific and who wasn't is cheating.

For this reason (an inductive one that much of the theorizing of the past has been incorrect though it has provided) it is important to keep in mind the fallibility of science and the theorists of same.

Here is a question.  In the black hole wars either Leonard Suskind or Steven Hawking was right.  Hawking actually publicly stated that Suskind was correct.  Are the correct and incorrect theories they fronted both science or is only the correct one science?  Ultimately, how do we know they are not actually both wrong?

To 1, I would argue that certain 'science skeptics' question the ability of individuals or bodies composed thereof to model the universe and its laws inerrantly.

To 2, I would say, 'Exactly!'

The heuristic device distinguishing 'science' from 'not science' would be a key component to this discussion and your argument.

I'd appreciate its articulation.

The 'odd judgement' was your categorical statement about the nature of the discussion Boethius has proposed as being a yawner and not to be had on Ricochet.

Not your place, not my place to limit the discussion to topics we would prefer here.  That is for the editors and investors.

Also, judging by the commentary, and the 'Follows' there are some who find it interesting.

Self-evident, but unclear.  

Please, enlighten me.

Red Feline elsewhere has asserted that the data is the science, the theories are viewpoints.

This is the debate!

It seems there are few scientists, or humans for that matter, who would never derive theories from data.  This is natural.

It is not logical to conflate those theories with the data itself, however.  Another way to think about this, it is not logical to think the theory has the same strength as the data as the theories are mere interpretations of the data.  So one might see necessary relations between, say physical objects, but the repetition of these relations does not necessarily serve as an epistemic foundation  for the theory advanced based on such an observation.  

The theory is derived from the observation, it is not generally the observation, at least not in the context we have been discussing. 

Yes!

Again you state my point and again more artfully than I.

The theories are not science, the method is! Precisely!  I think this a central point in the philosophy of science

And, as far as expertise, Freud was an expert in his particular brand of psychology, Jung in his.  Marx was an expert in his particular brand of economics, Lenin in his.  The people Ignaz Semmelweis battled as he tried to improve hospital hand disinfection were experts!

Ptolemy, Aristotle (think his cosmology and elemental theory here), Lamarck, and so on were all experts.  This does not denigrate them but the question, 'Of what value expertise in errant fields of human knowledge' requires consideration.  Differently, 'Is one actually expert when utterly incorrect though widely cited and respected?'

It was claimed that some economists were in favor of TARP and the bank bailouts.  Also that some economists thought the stimulus appropriate or too small.  They built models to demonstrate this.

I believe it was the Boston Fed that conducted a study concluding that aggressive regulation of banks was necessary to get minorities into homes - much subprime came from this.

These were economists; they were wrong and they have extended the recession in the same way FDR and Hoover extended a recession and created a depression.

How would you delineate economists practicing science and those merely issuing viewpoints with math?

This is pivotal and I am heartened at the fine expression of this point I have been attempting to assert inartfully.

The data may be scientifically collected, the theories are merely viewpoints developed form this.

The theories are not science.  The data is the science!

Well said, Red.

It is one thing to apply the scientific method to data collection and statistical analysis but quite another to derive theories from same.

Onerous though it may be to consider, keep in mind the past scientific pronouncements of credentialed individuals and bodies.  Now consider how those theories have been discredited by the steady advance of our knowledge.

Further consider whether you believe our scientific knowledge to be at its theoretical peak.  If so, then all our theories are right and we merely need to proceed down the road of confirmation.  However, I think it more likely that our fundamental understandings are inaccurate as our knowledge of the universe and its working are fractional.

Because the theories of our brightest will be disconfirmed or supplanted it is important for them and us to avoid hubris.

Also, technology is not evidence of theoretical purity.  Chinese alchemists developed gun powder.  Ancient peoples accurately predicted the movements of moon, planets, sun, and stars without the benefits of Copernican or Gallilean theories.