"John Wilkins"  wrote in message
>
> Or, starting next semester, lecturers in undergraduate philosophy of
> biology...
>
When I was at school we were taught that science proceeds by a system of
hypothesis, experiment, result, conclusion. We were often given some toy
experiments to do, the results were always known, and it was not allowed to
draw anything other than the approved conclusion. At university that changed
to observation, hypotheses, attempted falsification, further hypotheses.
Also I noticed that the experiments stopped "working" as neatly. At first I
thought that this was due to inexperience and bad protocols, but when I
started doing real science - i.e. experiments where the results are not
known before the experiment is done, I realised that chaos and problems and
confounding factors are par for the course. When you are doing something for
the first time you almost inevitably make a hash of it, and a real
experiment, by definition, is done for the first time.

So the school system doesn't present the reality of science, at least of
biology. However I wouldn't say that it is therefore wrong - results do
guide conclusions, hypotheses are falsifiable, but just not in the neat way
that the school science teacher presents. To say that "evolution is a faith
position" or "science is a series of unacknowledged
metaphors", as I have
heard seriously argued, is a much more gross distortion.
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