Human beings work with ideas. For various reasons, humans categorize these ideas in different ways. When an idea is categorized in a certain way, a corresponding attitude towards the idea is adopted. This attitude limits the way in which the idea is used, for better or worse. In this essay, I suggest that current categorization schemes, while probably useful in certain respects, has likely hindered –and will continue to hinder– the progress of science. By abandoning the idea that certain ideas are inherently “scientific” while others are not, and adopting a pragmatic view which acknowledges as “scientific” any idea useful to the explanation, prediction, creation and control of phenomena, science could make available to itself a plethora of potentially useful ideas from non-scientific idea-categories which otherwise would have remained unexploited.
Ian Brinkley
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