[Taxacom] Reproducibility of phylogenetic analysis

[Don.Colless at csiro.au]

It's worth noting that Karl Popper, while insisting that science advances by the testing of hypotheses, steered clear of just how we should arrive at those hypotheses. Indeed, I seem to recall that he admitted intuition there. The most respectable these days seems to be the process of "inference to the best explanation" - which, surely, requires just the intuition of a highly trained, talented expert. 

Donald H. Colless
CSIRO Div of Entomology
GPO Box 1700
Canberra 2601
don.colless at csiro.au
tuz li munz est miens envirun

________________________________________
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Curtis Clark [jcclark-lists at earthlink.net]
Sent: 26 January 2010 01:49
To: TAXACOM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Reproducibility of phylogenetic analysis

On 2010-01-24 14:58, Richard Zander wrote:
> "     A third method of scientific analysis is intuition, long
> lambasted as illogical and subjective though often defended as "common
> sense."

In my estimation, science only progresses through intuition, and the
purpose of the scientific method is to provide post-hoc evaluation of
intuitive insights.

--
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Director, I&IT Web Development                   +1 909 979 6371
University Web Coordinator, Cal Poly Pomona

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