brains has little relation to chances of being appointed to the SC. If brains were a serious criteria for consideration, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Posner, and Richard Falk would have been appointed long ago. But the first and last are considered too radically liberal and all of them may be too cerebral for the other justices to deal with.

Luke: I would say that the first condition -- P is true -- is not a necessary condition. That one believes on justifiable grounds is good enough. For instance, I know the earth is round because I once travelled around it. Or because I have seen pictures of earth taken from the moon. Etc. 
 
Say that someone has observed the repeated flipping of a coin over 10,000 consequitive times. On each of those occasions the coin landed heads. He believes, with very good justification, that the coin is rigged and that the probability of it landing heads on the next flip is close to 1. Unbeknowst to him, the coin is actually fair and the 10,000 straight heads has simply been a crazy coicidence.  
 
Does this person know that the probability the coin will land on heads is close to 1?

@JuJuby: who is this "we" of whom you speak? 
 
The common linguistic community for which these types of semantic issues are adjudicated. Just because someone uses a word in a certain way does not makes its meaning that way. Just because someone is using "know" in roughly the same way as "believe" does not make it so. Most members of the english speaking linguistic community would not consider beliefs that are wrong to be knowledge. Though people who have wrong beliefs may claim they know, that don't make it so.

JuJuby, they only say "believe" after the event. Before falsity is established, it's quite common to say "know". If they only suspect that the thing is true, they often say "I know it for a fact". 
 
They may "say" that but we usually consider that a case of word misuse. We don't say that the people in the Flat Earth Society know that the earth is flat though they may say they know. We say that they think they know but don't really or they falsily believe that's the case.

>>JuJuby, they only say "believe" after the event. Before falsity is established, it's quite common to say "know". If they only suspect that the thing is true, they often say "I know it for a fact".

Sorry, "know" is an ordinary English word, and is not defined as you suggest. Everyone knows (groan!) of cases where he "knew" something and it turned out to be untrue. 
 
That definition is closer to "believe" than it is to "know". Usually, people don't say someone knew S when in fact S wasn't true. They say that he (falsely) believed S (wrongly).

where'd you get yer example from?

But then again, what do I know, I am just a philosophy major.

eoin said: 
What I need - as an applied scientist - from you philosophers is a set of algorithms for judging the veracity, or not, or a sentence. If there is a more formal way of expressing language to make philosophical texts more easily parsed for truth then I should know that too. I dont see anything in a google search, but I may be looking in the wrong areas. Show me the beef. Then I'll code it up. 
 
I don't know exactly what you mean by "algorithm" for judging "veracity." Even in math we don't have that and we never will. (Consequence of Godel's incompleteness theorem which is an inherent nature of all non-trivial formalizable axiomatic systems)  
 
In mathematics, we can construct set-theoretic models and use precise language in theory if we had the time, effort and patience to do so. But as I've shown, in practice, that is nearly impossible. No self-respecting mathematician or philosopher-logician will even attempt to publish such a proof because it is in practice impossible. Besides, that type of formal drudgery is really meant for computer programers (no offense). There's a lot more art in math than most people realize.  
 
In theory we can also express much of philosophy in set-theoretic terms and have a precise language and functions that map our language to our model and have a formal truth theory. See the work of Tarski for example on truth. 
 
However, another inherent limitation of that would be that this type of formalism would be in practice also impossible to construct because it would be so complicated (much like the usual proofs in mathematics that are published). The more precise your language is (less ambiguous for example) the longer your proof will be due to its syntactical complexity. You can't have a proof that is both precise and relatively short. That's like trying to have your proof-theoretic cake and eating it too. If you could in practice construct a non-trivial mathematical proof using strictly formal language and proof structure, most mathematicians would probably do it for it then becomes machine checkable. However, in real life, we cannot escape the peer review process with all its "art," amibiguity, human error, etc. A famous example of this is Wiles' proof of Fermat's last theorem. It took months for other mathematicians to discover an error. Wiles had to prove an independent theorem (modularity theorem) and plug it back into his main proof before resubmitting it.  
 
Interestingly, there is a branch of recursion theory (AKA, computability logic) that works on machine proof, trying to get automated machine proving algorithms. Some philosophers actually work in this field. Branden Fitelson, Vincent F. Hendricks, have published in this area among others.

I thought all of Toulmin's degrees were in philosophy?  
 
Anyway, philosophers have delt with the contextual nuances of language. There's a mountain of literature on this subject. Check out the seminal works by Richard Montague, David Kaplan, Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis to name just a few. They have worked to develope very rich contextual formal semantics for everyday speech. A good introductory to this body of work is Lewis' paper, "Scorekeeping In a Language Game" published in the Journal of Philosophical Logic, vol. 8, Jan. 1979.

This passage from wiki is correct. Proofs published in math jorunal are almost always informal (done using natural language). [emphaisis mine] 
 
The informal proofs of everyday mathematical practice are unlike the formal proofs of proof theory. They are rather like high-level sketches that would allow an expert to reconstruct a formal proof at least in principle, given enough time and patience. For most mathematicians, writing a fully formal proof would have all the drawbacks of programming in machine code. 
 
Formal proofs are constructed with the help of computers in interactive theorem proving. Significantly, these proofs can be checked automatically, also by computer. (Checking formal proofs is usually trivial, whereas finding proofs (automated theorem proving) is typically quite hard.) An informal proof in the mathematics literature, by contrast, requires weeks of peer review to be checked, and may still contain errors.

In any case the English language, of itself ( or to more exact any human language) cannot prove anything since it is a highly informal system.  
 
Of course you can prove things in informal language. In fact, the language of choice for mathematicians in their published proofs is usually English. Take a look at any math journal where proofs are published. Prose is used almost throughout. Here's a real simple proof (lucas' theorem) Logical and mathematical symbols are sprinkled in between but the main work is done by natural language. There's a good reason for this. If you were to try and prove things in a purely formal proof system (for example, natural deduction or a tableaux system) you'd have a proof that's literally, thousands of pages long even for very simple proof.

Cognition, 
 
Yes, I meant that they had the lowest ratios.

Also, Jason, don't want to belabor this point but if you look at the whole study it did not say that the Han male children had higher 2D:4D ratios than the Berber male children. It said that Hans had the highest ratios for both female and male at 0.954. Berbers were at 0.950. Now, if you look at the figures for male children, Han males are at 0.940 while Berber males at 0.945, a lower figure. 
 
However, I did some number crunching and found this. The t-value for the difference between the means for the Berber and Han male children were much too low to be statistically significant (it was less than 1. It should be over around 1.7 to get a p-value equal or under 0.05). So while the Han male children did have a lower 2D:4D ratio, it wasn't significant and could have been due to a type-1 error. The differences between the male Berber children and the Jamaican male children, OTOH, is statistically significant with a p-value less than 0.01 (and likewise when Jamaican male children was compared with Han male children).  
 
Since I had to drudgingly compute these figures using my hand calculator, if someone has SAS or minitab and knows how to run ANOVA, they can check my figures themselves rather easily.

Thanks Jason, 
 
I would like to see more of these 2d:4D ratios with bigger population sizes, etc. The study I sited was questionable due to sample being self-reports. However, it seems that your study was only done on children and the caucasian population was only of Berbers. I guess the jurry is still out.

Richard Sharpe said: 
 
However, the abstract says:... 
 
And your point being? Not "however." Try to read the whole study. You can access it for free using the pubmed site I gave. Anyway, my whole post before being cutoff by the software for using the greater/less than carrot signs was this: 
 
 
Speaking of 2d:4d ratios and testosterone levels, it's interesting that the most reliable evidence around seems to suggest that Asian men have significantly higher levels of testosterone than white men. This certainly contradicts the idea that Asian men are effiminate due to low testosterone.  
 
This is a huge study by UCLA (N greater than 1,000, P-value less than 0.01 compafred with caucasian men). Asian men where found to have the highest levels of bound testosterone, and more importantly for masculinization, free and bio-available t. Black men were found to be inbetween Asian and white men.  
 
Interestingly too, Japanese men had the highest overall concentrations of DHT, the "other" potent angrogenic hormone. Chinese men where found to have the highest overall free and bio-available testoterone with DHT levels conmparable to caucasian men and below black and Japanese men.  
 
After adjustment for age and Quetelet's index, the levels of total and bioavailable testosterone were highest in Asian-Americans, intermediate in African-Americans, and lowest in whites. 
 
Asian men also have the highest 2D:4D digit ratios evidencing the same conclusion.  
 
However, there was also evidence that mean 2D:4D varied across ethnic groups with higher ratios for Whites, Non-Chinese Asians, and Mid-Easterners and lower ratios in Chinese and Black samples. There were significant differences in 2D:4D across sexual orientation groups but these were confined to men. Male homosexuals and bisexuals had higher mean 2D:4D (suggesting exposure to lower prenatal T) than heterosexuals.  
 
Other less direct correlates of androgenic activity are the instances of obesity and testicular dysgenesis syndrome (TDS) within a population. Asian men show less instances compared to white men in these two areas suggesting also higher angrogenic activity, and likely higher anti-estrogenic activity, as well as well.

Speaking of 2d:4d ratios and testosterone levels, it's interesting that the most reliable evidence around seems to suggest that Asian men have significantly higher levels of testosterone than white men. This certainly contradicts the idea that Asian men are effiminate due to low testosterone.  
 
This is a huge study by UCLA (N >1,000, P

To elaborate a little more, I meant that only political or economic institutions can be even considered fair or unfair for Rawls. He is not being a metaphysician when he is talking about fairness, he is speaking as a member of the contract tradition of political philosophy (and Kantian rationalism) that seeks to justify political and social institutions. Living in a society with differences in genetic endowments can be fair (in a political sense) to all those involved because those who are gifted can contribute to all of society, especially to those least well-off. So it doesn't make rawlsian sense to say that having different genetic endowments are fair or unfair simpliciter.

yo said: 
Instead you'd maximize your expected utility 
 
The maximin rule does allow people to maximize their expected utility so long as any increase in theoir utility is justified by an increase in the utility of the least well-off.  
 
I don't think Rawls would ever say that "genetic advantages are undeserved and unfair." That seems to be a strawman. Only political and economic institutions can be "fair" and "unfair" in the Rawlsian sense. The distribution of genetic endowments are not related to political or moral justice(the kind of justice Rawls is speaking about) and are therefor not even capable of being considered either fair or unfair.  
 
This quote from half sigma is a very bizare interpretation of Rawls (and probably way off the mark): 
 
Yet this is exactly what Rawls is saying, that poor people are poor because of their genes.

I?m not trying to do what you say I have failed at. 
 
I pointed out what you have failed at doing, now stop it with your hissy fits. This is what you said in your first post (exact quote):  
 
Isn?t it possible that anthropology can never be a science in the sense that astronomy or chemistry is? 
 
You then mounted a incoherent babbling rant on the "pomo" influence in cultural anthro which was a collosal failure to show any objective methodological differences betwen anthropology and these other sciences. Sure we can all wax poetic and rant about pomo in academia but a real dialogue would involve giving good reasons and making coherent objections. You have simply not accomplished that. No dave, you are not participating in a dialogue with me at all and that's the problem.  
 
It is ironic that many rants against pomo claim that pomo writers like to show off by droping names and buzz words from the physical sciences to establish their arguments without truly understanding what these terms mean. That's exactly what you have done with cultural anthrology. Nice that you did a google and threw around some names and (outdated) buzzwords and such but where's the substance? tsk tsk. Take some responsibility for what you said. If you are changing your tunes, fine. cool.  
 
SUre we all know by now that you don't feel the findings in cultural anthro are not "surprising" "successful," and are "obvious" etc. But guess what? No one cares.  
 
cool. 
 
You?re quite right: I have indeed not shown a single objective criterion to distinguish a ?real science? form cultural anthropology. 
 
I never tried to. 
 
And there's your problem. You made a claim that anthropology was not a "science" the way chemistry and astronomy was. Can you name a non-trivial difference betwen them? No. Sure we know of trivial differences like anthrology studies poeple and cultures etc and the other two disciplines are physcical sciences that studies physical things and physical processes but that's not what you meant when you said there's a difference betwen them right?  
 
Evasion, using buzz words without nowing what they mean, conceptual confusion, fancy verbiage, who does that? Um...pomos? 
 
You are kind of hung-up on words ? maybe you should be a lexicographer, or a post-modernist. 
 
I find that, usually, when soemone says this, they are conceptually confused. WHen I clear up a semantic confusion for someone or ask them what they mean by certain terms and how they justify their usages, they, when they actually know what they are saying, will gladly clearify. OTOH, when they have no idea what they are saying...well, pomos do this kind of evasion often. You made a non-trivial distinction between anthropology and chemstry and astronomy qua "scie
More....

Dave, 
 
At bottom, it comes down to this. You have not shown throughout this entire time a single objective criterion to distinguish a "real science" like physics, or as you are now admitting economics, from cultural anthropology. You have only given subjective criterion such as (some) of the findings in physics and ecnomics are "surpising" and "successful".  
 
To establish your case that there is some kind of qualitative difference between these disciplines qua "sciences" you would need to show some type of methodological difference. You have failed on that fundamental requirement. Sure it is harder to establish a sustained paradigm in cultural anthropology and the results are less precise but that is more of trivial difference. Many sciences exept math and logic come up short relative to physics in those regards.  
 
Cultural anthropology does go by scientific methods and values exhibited in the physical or other sciences. Being a science or not depends on objective properties such as methodological differences, not whether or not you, dave, think the results are "suprising" or "successful." Most people who have studied cultural anthropology do think its results surprising and successful. Much of you original critique of anthropology can be applied to physics as well. In your first post, you even mentioned that human behavior is "computationally intractable" but then went on to say that so is the chaotic behavior of physical objects. So where are the non-subjective differences? The theories of cultural anthropology do describe societies, cultures and human behavior much like the theories of physics. Just because you, and few others, think that these results are not surprising or successfull does not make the results in that science any less objectively verifiable than they are. That objective fact simply does not disapear no matter what you, dave, feel the results.

Mencius, 
 
Baseball needs to be very rigorous or else fans would not want to watch. People want concreete decisive scoring etc. Baseball is designed so that it is relatively easy to judge and clear cut. Life is usually much more diffcult. 
 
I do agree with you that Bayes' law is somewhat trivial but so is much of probability's laws. Bayesian epistomology however, goes much further than that law to include a whole branch of epistomology and probability theory. I also agree with you that orthodox Bayesians (who now seems to be a minority in the philosophy of science) have taken subjective "fudge factors" and made them into precise factors. That's a problem with them that modest Bayesians have come to terms with. You don't need to assign to each of your belief's a precise confidence factor or utility number or anything like that to have a robust Bayesian confirmation theory or decision theory that can ground lots of scientific or rational epistomology. 
 
I like the book by Mark Kaplan who is a modest Bayesian. He shows that simply by acepting some very basic rational assumptions such as the Kolmogorov axioms, "ordering," "confidence" and "modest probabilism" without having to assign every belief a confiddence factor, you can derive a very robust and rational decision theory and confirmation theory.

But I think this is basically JuJuby's definition of science. Science is anything that uses math. Anything that uses math is science. One wonders what he thinks of "Moneyball." 
 
Where did you get that idea from? I was just using the commonly used definition of science. If a methodological discipline assumes objectivity and uses certain critera to assess its theories like testability, falsifiability, predictability, explanatory value, coherence etc then its a science. And anthrology is clearly a science.  
 
BTW, what exactly were your objections to baysians anyway? It seems to me you have delt with a very limited group of baysians. There are very modest baysians out there who have developed very answers to many of the objections you raised, not just the extreme ones (so called immodest baysians).

The Real Richard Sharpe said: 
 
[Cultural] Anthropology ... testable conclusions that are accepted by a consensus 
 
I think that word there (consensus) is the problem. 
As far as I can tell, science does not proceed by consensus. 
 
It may not "proceed" by consensus but surely there is consensus in science. Evolution? Quantum mechanics? Etc etc etc.  
 
con·sen·sus [kuhn-sen-suhs] 
noun, plural -sus·es 
 
1. majority of opinion: The consensus of the group was that they should meet twice a month.  
 
2. general agreement or concord; harmony.

WellÂ… JuJuby, you keep saying this, and I keep asking for specific examples (from cultural anthropology --I know about examples in paleoanthropology), and you just keep repeating the general statement without mentioning specific examples. 
 
I've given you general examples such as the intertribal game-theoretic example. Other examples are when anthropologists have developed theories for how food is transfered in different types of hunter and gather societies and diffferent kinds of agrarians societies using calorie transferance as a function of different variables such as food availability, etc. These relationships can be expressed in very similar equations to the ones ecologists use in types of ecosystems to describe energy transfer. Other cases are the theories describing how work or goods are distributed in different kinds of societies using developments in economic theory etc. I also know that interesting theories of color concept categorization have been developed. These are but a few of the literally, hundreds of examples of general, testable, theories in that science. You've put me on a spot as I am not a cultural anthropologist but even off the top of my head I've given you examples countering your claims and I've given you link for a cultural anthropology textbook. Check it out yourself. Don't be lazy. Some physicist complain that "pomos" are misrepresenting developments in physics but you seem to be a phycists that is misrepresenting cultural anthropology without knowing anything about what cultural anthropologists actually do. At least I have looked through a cultural anthropology textbook before and there are plenty of examples like the ones I given you. It seems to me the only thing you've said were strawman arguments, not knowing anthropology when just a quick review of a texbook at a library would show you many examples. I've pointed to where you can find more information on these examples now its your turn to follow up on it.

Dave said: But the point that I (and, perhaps, Razib) have been trying to stress is that natural science has also succeeded at something else: it has produced very specific but also broadly applicable and successful generalizations that were really surprising, that no human knew were true until they were proposed and tested by science. We all know numerous examples of these broad, surprising generalizations in natural science – the fact of evolution, the atomic theory, plate tectonics, the heliocentric theory, the Big Bang, etc. 
 
I cannot think of any equivalent success in anthropology.  
 
I think your notion of "success" is very subjective. Like I explained, as far as a qualitative difference between how different sciences are conucted and their values, ideally, all science are prety much the same, working under the same assumptions of objectivity, testability, explanatory explanation, parsimony, coherence, etc. Anthropology, by definition, is the study of people. It has reached generalized, testable conclusions that are accepted by a consensus. The fact that there are cultural anthropology textbooks which includes factual information about human societies, etc which almost always agree with each other (because they usually will include only accepted and "generalized" facts about human cultures and societies) testifies to this. Of course those facts are not as "general" as those in physics but they are not meant to be. To truly say something about "generalizability" you'd have to givbe a much more rigorous definition than the one you are using. A theory is by definition general, in some sense, and there certainly are plenty of theories in cultural anthropology. Are they "successful"? Again, that is a loaded subjective word. They most certainly are in the fact that they illuminate and broaden our understanding of other and our own cultures, so yes, they are successful.

Cultural anthropology is not a Popperian science because it fails  
 
No science is a "Popperian science." Popperian inductive epistomology has been thorouly refuted since the 60s (for example, see Hilary Putnam's work on Popper's falsifiability criterion). Even Popper had to concede he was wrong about his most fundamental assertions. 
 
[quote] "Popper's final position is that he acknowledges that it is impossible to discriminate science from non-science on the basis of the falsifiability of the scientific statements alone; he recognizes that scientific theories are predictive, and consequently prohibitive, only when taken in conjunction with auxiliary hypotheses, and he also recognizes that readjustment or modification of the latter is an integral part of scientific practice. Hence his final concern is to outline conditions which indicate when such modification is genuinely scientific, and when it is merely ad hoc. This is itself clearly a major alteration in his position, and arguably represents a substantial retraction on his part..."

Mencius, 
 
Data mining and ad hoc model fitting occurs in all sciences, not just anthropology. Just because there is data mining doesn't entail that the science is not falsifiable or non-objective or not testable. My point is that you can't draw a line between some sciences as testable and falsifiable and then claim that cultural anthropology is not because it clearly is.  
 
Is this evidence of the model's accuracy? Or just a coincidence? There is no way to know.  
 
Yes there is. There are justifiable procedural ways to know. See some of the new developments in Bayesian decision theory.  
 
Also see this book.  
 
One of the classic ways to spot an unjustifiable position is that, rather than finding the one or two watertight arguments that justify it and ignoring the large number of spurious nonjustifications that must surround any correct rationale, it spreads its efforts across everything that sounds vaguely right. This is often (though not always) a sign that there are no watertight arguments, only spurious justifications.  
 
Again, this "objection" can be leveled at some scientists in any discipline including physicists. This is a problem in all science, not just cultural anthropology. You've gone from "cultural athropology is not falsifiable and testable" to these other types of objections which can be, to varing degrees, leveled at all other sciences. That doesn't entail that they are non-objective, non-falsifiable, non-testable.  
 
The developments in Bayesian decision theory, the already existant criteria in the sciences of parsimony, explanatory value, predicatbility, coherence, etc can answer just about all your objections.

Dave, 
 
I definitely think that non-trivial, "systematic" knowledge is possible in cultural anthropology. I am not sure exactly what youy mean by "nontrivial" and "systematic" but the way that the scientific discipline of cultural anthropology is carried out is systematic, as systematic as any other science. Of course, it is not as rigourous and precise as some but that doesn't entail it is unsystematic. As for triviality, anthropologists would certainly disagree that their hard work results in "trivial knowledge". We know concrete and relevant facts from their science about other peoples past and present. Now, math may be seen as offering trivial truths in some sense (a priori truthes) and even in physics, Boltzmann's statistical laws of thermodynamics seems to me to be far more "trivial" than the concrete facts mined by the anthropologists. Given a set of innitial conditions and statistical laws we may derive the truths of much of thermodynamics but anthrologists must actually go into the field to test their hypothesis, etc.  
 
Description is also a role of all science, not just anthropology, biology, etc. That's what science does, it describes reality. There's nothing trivial about knowing reality through observation.

mencius said:It's quite a "science" in which no controlled experiments can be conducted, no falsifiable hypotheses can be stated, and no underlying quantitative structure can be imagined. On the other hand, it does end in "ology." 
 
Actually, this is, many times, false. There are many hypothesis even in cultural anthropology that are testable and falsifiable.  
 
For example, if an anthropologist wishes to explain the historical intertribal behavior and viewpoints between two neighboring tribes that must share limited resources, he may opt to use game-theoretic models. These quantitative models are testable from the archeological, observational, testimonial or other types of evidence. They can also be evaluated on other objective critera such as predictability, coherence, explanatory value, parsimony etc.  
 
Some other anthropologists might wish to explain certain cultural taboos within tribes as stemming from pragmatic practices or concerns in response to disasters or disease causing agents, for example. These are also testable from historical, geological, archeological evidence. Of course, other anthropologists might reject these theories using evidence gathered that falsifies the hypothesis.

Is there? ThatÂ’s not my impression – the different squabbling schools of thought seem to be talking past each other. Could you give a few examples – IÂ’m not trying to score debating points; IÂ’d honestly like to know what you have in mind. 
 
http://www.amazon.com/Anthropology-12th-Carol-R-Ember/dp/0132277530/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198902860&sr=8-2 
 
1. Out of Africa theory of Human migration 
2. Human taxonomic relationships to other primates (Some controversy but good evidence from fossil and genetic evidence to establish main branches) 
3. Taxonomic relationships of many linguistic family groups are well established 
4. How many well-studied cultures around the world politically organize their societies.  
5. What religious practices and rituals many well-studied cultures around the world participate in. 
 
etc, etc, etc.

Dave, 
 
I don't understand what your examples in physics have to do with anthropology. It seems to me that there is clearly standards of objectivity at work in anthropology and in physics. Anthropology may never be as rigorous or precise as physics but that's ok. These standards have been beneficial in studying human cultures and populations and human evolution. We now know much much more than we did 400 years ago about the different cultures, past and present, languages, and peoples of the world. And there is plenty of scientific consensus on major issues in anthropology. Anthropologists will be the first to tell you that there is no absolute certainty in their science and that we cannot apply many of the standards and critera in the physical sciences to the social sciences but, again, they would say that that is perfectly ok.  
 
As you mentioned, even some of the pre 20th century standards thought to apply to physics are no longer held to be true standards due to the developments of chaos theory, for example. You didn't need to use meterology as a example to show this. Even following newtonian mechanics and assuming for perfectly elastic collisions, no friction, etc, after a few bounces of the billiard ball, prediction becomes "computationally intractable". But the science of physics go on with their own set of criteria and standards for objectivity much as anthropology may go on with its own set of objective criteria and standards taylored to their science.  
 
Anthropologists do not throw their hands up and give up because of the complexities of humans and societies. They know that their efforts are fruitful because it produces results consistently. Just ask any anthropologist working in the field who first encounters and studies a tribe no scientist have studied before. I don't think social scientists are now trying to immitate the physical sciences. They realize that there is no way to absolutely rid all technical terms in their respective disciplines of "value" connotations but they still cling to notions such as relative explanatory value, parsimony, experimental repeatability (for certain phenomenon), and theoretical elegance as critera for their theories much as the physicists do.