22 October 2005

Hello PhD student. You write, you suffer and you defend your thesis.
So that did not take a long time to say. But it takes a long time to do.


It is a disturbing thought, but has it occured to you that science is creating and nullifying theories. Research is writing. It occured to me that much of what goes on in academia is purely descriptive, without testing any theory at all. Mere description. The worst type is probably calling a collection of descriptive case studies science. I have seen some of these and they do not qualify as science. The qualify as knowledge. I welcome any comments.
Actually, what we know as academia is probably a mixture of knowledge and science. Many people just record knowledge. I have told a few people this, and they are not happy, obviously. It is not the way to become popular. But since the atmosphere is usually sooo accepting, somebody needs to hightlight what science is.