They both operate on agreed upon laws. These laws are more or less immutable until they prove untenable based on what actually transpires and is seen as such. Both undergo tweaks as information and practice dictate, often with great debate but truth eventually outs.

There’s often a lot of hot air opinions vociferously offered by those who would differ, pushing back against the research offered by those who have studied and long thought about their findings.

As Chief Justice Stevens advises: Understanding before Disagreeing.

Buddha’s First Precept: Right Thought, then right Action (which includes speaking).

For example: “For invincible reasons of homogeneity and coherence, the fibers of cosmogenesis require to be prolonged in ourselves far more deeply than flesh and bone.” (1st sentence below the diagram). What is that supposed to mean? (Rhetorical question – I don’t want an answer.)

I also followed the Feyerabend selection (TomH’s link in posting 11/18/09) a bit strange. Perhaps because it was a summary of something much longer, so he didn’t have room to support what looked to me like numerous “this is obvious and no one but a fool would disagree”-type statements (“Today we realise that rationalism, being bound to science, cannot give us any assistance in the issue between science and myth and we also know, from inquiries of an entirely different kind, that myths are vastly better than rationalists have dared to admit.” 2nd par.) Vastly better? At what? Anyway, it looked like he really had a axe to grind. I couldn’t finish it, but it seem to be heading in an anti- or post-colonial direction (all viewpoints are equally valid) which seems like nonsense to me.

All viewpoints are incomplete and contain errors (in my experience and opinion). This is most certainly not the same thing as equality in validity. Example: If you think the earth is a sphere, you are wrong, but not terribly wrong. It is an oblate spheroid (flattened a bit at the poles). But if you think the earth is flat, you are really really wrong. If one can’t see that these two wrongs are not equivalent…well…I’m at a loss for words.

I see that my prior responses tend to get a bit long so I’ll end with a riddle.

How is science similar to democracy?

A – Both of them are the worst of all possible worldviews (forms of government) except for all the others. (Apologies to Winston Churchill).

I am in Australia at the moment so I am not sure what day it is…but the 150th birthday of one of the most significant publications in human history is definately worth celebrating. And as I said Shermer has a lot of good fight left in him and lots of foes still needing to be faught. I am about to embark on some good science critical reading and as always I will attempt the use of transcend and include technology, for as I said, I for one am not ready to live without science. And in the interest of full disclosure I was a catholic kid who wanted to be a priest, then became disillusioned with religion became an atheist who studied physics and became an engineer. Then I became disillusioned with science as a way to understand ultimate reality and through myself into a spiritual search that led to Evolutionary Enlightenment and Integral Theory. Now I am backtracking and looking into Western Philosophy and loving it.
And by the way, I also don’t think science has a handle on ethics.

I’m still hoping to read a good challenge to the scientific worldview. Oh what the hell, I’ll just do it myself. Look at any college curiculum and you’ll see ‘Liberal Arts and Sciences’. If science is complete, why study the Arts? Because science doesn’t fully comprehend aesthetics.