Knowledge and control: Effectuation vs Causation

“Knowledge is power.” This is usually attributed to Francis Bacon, who said something similar enough. He was roughly a contemporary of Descartes and went all in in this “let’s figure things out ourselves” idea. So he went ahead and created the scientific method. His stated purpose, in creating the method, was to “command nature” by […]

Theories as cameras, theories as engines

At some point all of science was together in something called “natural philosophy”. Francis Bacon was the first to attempt to partition the sciences. Nowadays disciplines are partitioned more or less neatly. (Cognitive Sciences being new is pretty haphazard.) And there is one big demarcation I wish to touch upon: between soft and hard sciences, […]