Don’t wanna start an argument or otherwise intervene with your convo with the OP but I wanna highlight a possible confusion: note that Presoak gave a definition of what they mean by “science” in this context - a way of studying reality.
You said “The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database.”
In the context of Zen meditation, no. Very much the opposite actually. You are right that to do science, you’d need all that. But for the study of reality, as per Zen thinking, you don’t.
I’m just agreeing with mrfinnbean that science is to an individual what science is to society.
My point was individuals can do science without society, but they probably will still need a language/database before too long. Maybe I’m wrong about that in he small scale, but i’d think after several hundred experiments most people would struggle to keep track.
This zen meditation thing sounds very different - presumably there is no recording of the observations or conclusions?
Society will for sure be better at science than any individual, but the individual can still do it if they follow a scientific system of observation, hypothesis and test. Making the results and data accessible to others is a huge bonus, no doubt, shoulders of giants and that, but systematic documentation is intrinsically useful to the isolated scientist too even with no prospect of collaboration.
I don’t know about this zen malarkey. but if there’s no systematic study of reality, no observation , hypothesis, and testing cycle then i just don’t see the corollary with science.
Don’t wanna start an argument or otherwise intervene with your convo with the OP but I wanna highlight a possible confusion: note that Presoak gave a definition of what they mean by “science” in this context - a way of studying reality.
You said “The individual will need some way to record their observations to do science, some sort of a database.”
In the context of Zen meditation, no. Very much the opposite actually. You are right that to do science, you’d need all that. But for the study of reality, as per Zen thinking, you don’t.
I’m just agreeing with mrfinnbean that science is to an individual what science is to society.
My point was individuals can do science without society, but they probably will still need a language/database before too long. Maybe I’m wrong about that in he small scale, but i’d think after several hundred experiments most people would struggle to keep track.
This zen meditation thing sounds very different - presumably there is no recording of the observations or conclusions?
Society will for sure be better at science than any individual, but the individual can still do it if they follow a scientific system of observation, hypothesis and test. Making the results and data accessible to others is a huge bonus, no doubt, shoulders of giants and that, but systematic documentation is intrinsically useful to the isolated scientist too even with no prospect of collaboration.
I don’t know about this zen malarkey. but if there’s no systematic study of reality, no observation , hypothesis, and testing cycle then i just don’t see the corollary with science.