> There is no comparison of observations [...] to a theory or hypothesis [....] outside of an epistemological framework that makes certain assumptions, even if it is unwittingly.
Okay, let's assume animals (such as scientists) observe things, record them, and react to them without an explicit theory in mind, but there's an implicit epistemological framework that describes how they behave.
It seems like you still need to build your epistemology to match the animals' behaviors, or it's not the one they use? When scientists do math, you need to observe how they actually use math. How do they actually set up and run an experiment or write a paper? It might be different than you imagine?
This is what David Chapman calls the "ethnomethodological flip" [1].
Scientists also might use math differently from how they claim they use it in a formal paper, which doesn't include all the blind alleys and mistakes. A scientific paper is a cleaned-up just-so story.
A fun example of ethnomethodology is studying exactly how a scientist follows the formal procedure for doing a PCR test, including small mistakes that they don't explain and you might not even notice in the demonstration video unless you watch it very carefully, multiple times. [2]
It seems like a very cool thing to do that's rarely done. It might help for coming up with better philosophy?
Okay, let's assume animals (such as scientists) observe things, record them, and react to them without an explicit theory in mind, but there's an implicit epistemological framework that describes how they behave.
It seems like you still need to build your epistemology to match the animals' behaviors, or it's not the one they use? When scientists do math, you need to observe how they actually use math. How do they actually set up and run an experiment or write a paper? It might be different than you imagine?
This is what David Chapman calls the "ethnomethodological flip" [1].
Scientists also might use math differently from how they claim they use it in a formal paper, which doesn't include all the blind alleys and mistakes. A scientific paper is a cleaned-up just-so story.
A fun example of ethnomethodology is studying exactly how a scientist follows the formal procedure for doing a PCR test, including small mistakes that they don't explain and you might not even notice in the demonstration video unless you watch it very carefully, multiple times. [2]
It seems like a very cool thing to do that's rarely done. It might help for coming up with better philosophy?
[1] https://metarationality.com/ethnomethodological-flip [2] https://metarationality.com/rational-pcr