Previous schemes like this have run into problems getting the requirements straight, and with estimating. Don't tell me that in the agile world, these things don't matter: they matter in the real world, where your customers live.

No-one is disagreeing about the origins of the scientific method. Did you think that it somehow refutes the point of mine that you quoted?

That's not at all what I said.

Then you jump on the coattails in your next sentence! You have also been straining mightily to imply it in the rest of your posts here, falling back on an undisputed but narrow factual claim when pressed - a near-perfect example of the Motte and Bailey fallacy. Your frequent invocation of the origins of the scientific method only underscores by contrast how little a role contemporary academic philosophy played through the scientific revolution - as I said in my reply to your 'architects' post, scientists were not waiting around for Popper et. al. to show them the way; the philosophers merely described what science was doing. And if you keep on insinuating that science is forever in the thrall of philosophy because of the origins of the scientific method, I will have to look up the name of that fallacy.

I have bad news for you: you will not find *the* Truth in philosophy either, though you may find a number of different definitions of the word.

It turns out that knowledge is a pretty good alternative.

Don't attribute your misunderstanding of the issue to me (I am guessing that you have misunderstood it because your examples are not relevant to the relationship between the scientific method and philosophy, but instead look like an attempt to claim an extra couple of mm for philosophy.)

As for ignorance, humanity had no idea of how much it did not know until science got going.

I have addressed your architects claim elsewhere: http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Philosophers did indeed get science going, but there is a great deal of coattail-riding in suggesting that current science is dependent on, or a consequence of, current academic philosophy.

But science has moved ahead of academic philosophy. Popper et. al. were, at best, describing how the science of their time and before was practiced, and if they had not been there, science would still have been the most amazingly productive human activity in history. It's not as if scientists were sitting around waiting for philosophers to figure out how to proceed.
 

While the philosophers have a point, it is highly unlikely any breakthroughs in fundamental science will be made by someone educated purely in academic philosophy.

Is it not a matter of conjecture that these galaxies are forming in regions where dark matter is concentrated? - a reasonably well-founded conjecture perhaps, but not corroborated by any evidence beyond that which is the basis of the conjecture?

Agreed - self-reported results have little credibility (see homeopathy), and those of psychoactive substance use are particularly suspect.

And neither productivity nor creativity gains, even if real, are worth much unless accompanied by good judgement.
 

Reductionism has its limits - for example. while I have no doubt that the history of life on earth can in principle be described purely as a sequence of physical processes, a theory of evolution works at an appropriate level of abstraction and provides much more insight.

I don't think you can have much of a theory of the origin of life until you have a plausible chemical story.

Not so, unfortunately - truthiness bubbles are inherently fact-resistant.

I think there are some fairly obvious extensions to that threat.

I get the distinct impression that you are one of those people for whom it is always someone else's fault.