{"id":659,"date":"2011-02-02T10:35:06","date_gmt":"2011-02-02T14:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=659"},"modified":"2013-08-28T20:43:19","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T00:43:19","slug":"analects-of-the-core-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2011\/02\/02\/analects-of-the-core-81\/","title":{"rendered":"Analects of the Core: Gould on replacement of theories"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>In this view, any science begins in the nothingness of ignorance, constructing theories as facts accumulate.\u00a0 In such a world, debunking would be primarily negative, for it would only shuck some rotten apples from the barrel of accumulated knowledge.\u00a0 But the barrel of theory is always full; sciences work with elaborated contexts for explaining facts from the very outset.\u00a0 Creationist biology was dead wrong about the origin of species, but Cuvier&#8217;s brand of creationism was not an emptier or less-developed world view than Darwin&#8217;s.\u00a0 Science advances primarily by replacement, not by addition.\u00a0 If the barrel is always full, then rotten apples must be discarded before better ones can be added.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists do not debunk only to cleanse and purge.\u00a0 They refute older ideas<em> in the light of<\/em> a different view about the nature of things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211; Steven Jay Gould, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Mismeasure-Man-Revised-Expanded\/dp\/0393314251\">The Mismeasure of Man<\/a> (351-352)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this view, any science begins in the nothingness of ignorance, constructing theories as facts accumulate.\u00a0 In such a world, debunking would be primarily negative, for it would only shuck some rotten apples from the barrel of accumulated knowledge.\u00a0 But the barrel of theory is always full; sciences work with elaborated contexts for explaining facts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3691],"tags":[4716,426],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2988,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions\/2988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}