THe article is a word salad of wrongful definitions and strawman arguments that it then tears down.
Take for instance The words
“Science is a system of knowledge obtained by scientific methods” is tautology
No, science is defined as
- the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.
he goes on to say
1. The Popper’s scientific criterion “scientific theory is always refutable”, must be replaced by “scientific theory is always confirmable”. Otherwise, the vector is directed towards idiocy, not evolution.
but of course his absolute statement isn't backed up with any examples.
then there is
2. The Burden of Proof should not become the Presumption of Guilt: “if something has not been proven, it does not exist”. Instead the presumption of innocence must be used: “as long as something is not refuted, it exists.”
which essentially means that infinite things exist????
The above philosophy applied to science would lead to a divergence from the truth instead of a convergence to the truth. Essentially, you end up with the problem of infinity. There are infinite things that haven't yet to be confirmed, therefore under the above model you'd have to believe they exist until you refuted it.
Here is an example of how this is a problem. Lets take a scenario-- building a box.
Now, under current scientific practices, approaching this problem is easy-- you start with all the things you know. You define a box, you use the attributes and parameters you want it to have to generate specifications and criteria, then you find materials that meet those specs and then you build the box according to your criteria using previously known practices and methods that have been confirmed and viola you have a box.
But what if use this "Presumption of innocence" as the bedrock of our scientific practice to building a box?
Well, first we have to define what a box is, but some nutballs out there have a million wacky definitions of what a box is so before I can definitely say what a box is I have to disprove and refute those definitions??? This problem also encompasses construction. I have to believe that unproven construction methods are just as valid as proven construction methods until I refute those unproven construction methods??? As you can see, I have a problem with infinity under this model. I can waste millions of hours trying to do something simple because under this model I have to assume that things exist until I disprove them???
And I will stop there.
From a mathematical standpoint, you can absolutely turn Science on its head and "reverse" all of the edicts and mantras and dogmas. Logically, you can argue that said decision would be valid. However, if you did that, then you get the opposite result, that is, you turn science into something that would naturally be convergent into something that becomes naturally divergent. What do I mean?
Well, in science, the confirmation/validation of one theory, constant, parameter, equation, etc is instrumental in leading to the confirmation/validation of the next theory, constant, parameter, equation etc. Truth adds up, truth leads to more truth. When you are developing a new "anything" you are faced with the problem of infinity and having some way to parse and reduce infinity down to something manageable is paramount. When you are developing mathematical models it is extremely easy for your model and equations to form incorrectly if there is no anchor. Math space is a very pliable realm and without some sort of grounding you can develop a model or equation that "seems" to apply to this universe but in reality it doesn't, it only applies to one specific circumstance. However, if you can ground it to a few key truths and constants that are "proven" then your math model can/will converge to an equation/solution that applies to this universe and/or most circumstances instead of just one circumstance (sorry this is hard to explain to someone unfamiliar with math models).
In any event, I skimmed this paper and it seems a bit pretentious and disingenuous. I'm underwhelmed by his arguments
