Rohan McLeod <rhn@jeack.com.au> wrote:
In consequence there seems much confusion regarding the difference between technology, which has existed for millennia in many different cultures and science which is a fairly recent invention, predominantly of Europe.
The roots of science run much earlier - in the European tradition, at least to ancient Greece. I am not familiar in this respect with other traditions.
The adoption by technology of scientific language, perhaps for unanimous, precise and unambiguous specification, exacerbates this confusion. It also largely overlooks the need in the linguistic foundation of science for a way of defining words; which enables objectively falsifiable statements to be constructed.
Do you mean along the lines of Popper and Lakatos?
Unfortunately current linguistics seems to treat language as just a 'natural phenomena'; [sic] rather than a 'social artifact one of whose purposes is communication' . The consequence is that it has essentially nothing to say regarding the purpose of definitions; and dictionary definitions in particular.
I don't see any necessary inconsistency between treating language as a "natural phenomenon" and explaining the role of definitions, to the extent that this is important. In any case, modern semantic analysis goes far beyond questions about definitions.
I would contend that for artifacts defined in terms of their purposes; falsifiable statements are possible.
You could just as well argue that statements of empirical fact are falsifiable. One of the difficulties, though, which is raised against simple versions of this view derives from the so-called theory-ladenness of observation. More complex forms of the theory are supposed to deal with this objection. If you want to pursue this, I suggest finding a good book of collected papers in the philosophy of science (read Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyer-Abend, and others). At that point you'll be in a position to arrive at an informed opinion on the subject.
Hypothetically allow that such a definition does exist; we may then be able to conclude that the hypothesis of 'climate warming' is thus far consistent with the objectively observable evidence that , that hypothesis asserts. Whether the 'majority of scientists', 'domain experts' or 'peers' agree is irrelevant; down that path lies scholasticism. With scholasticism: ' the epistemological theory that the credibility of knowledge, must depend on the authority of it's source'
Testimony can be a legitimate path to knowledge, however. If you aren't in a position to evaluate the data and theories yourself, you have to rely on the informed opinions of the scientific community. If there's a critical and thoughtful debate within the scientific community that leads to a consensus (or near consensus) then that's evidence, for the time being, that the world is as claimed. This assumes, of course, that pertinent experiments are carried out and rigorously evaluated. Further, some scientific issues are so complex that few people possess all of the interdisciplinary domain knowledge required to make an assessment, which is why scientists have to rely on work of their colleagues in other disciplines.
It may further be possible to show that the hypothesis of 'global warming', is consistent with " human CO2 emissions". Thus far and no further can science go.
To the contrary, it can show that it's highly likely that there exists a causal relationship between anthropogenic CO2 emissions and global average temperature increases. So... it's time for you to do some reading. Have fun!