the notion of doing things "for science"

glennmagusharvey

First:

No, it isn't science.  It's not proper science unless you actually try to make some sort of good-faith effort at carefully doing a controlled study of what you're messing with.  I might be sounding like a fuddy duddy here, but part of the whole point of science is to mess with stuff in such a way that you reasonably trustworthy information out of it, thanks to doing things like rigorous observation, lots of data collection, and control scenarios.  But instead people think that working with exotic and unusual materials or doing things in totally wrong ways just to see how they'll react is "science".

No, it's not science.  It's play.

HOWEVER:

It's okay that it's play.  Play isn't necessarily something that's useless.  In fact, it can easily be educational.  Being willing to toy around with something (no pun intended) means learning how that something works, and developing an understanding of its mechanical properties.  Even if you're doing something totally stupid like attempting to combine the harlem shake and twerking on top of a coffee table surrounded by candles floating on the surface of a swimming pool, you will learn something from the experience -- in this example, just how little room you have to maneuver, and just how stupid you look when you fall into the water.

 

Conclusion: science = play, taken seriously.

DYRE

It's like, a joke.

Noimporta

^That.

 

Also, when we get too anal about rigor, serendipity suffers. And as far as progress goes, that's a pretty bad thing.

glennmagusharvey

If I was really so serious about this complaint, my conclusion wouldn't not logically follow from my contention. :P