> this social institution that began developing in Europe in the 17th century, a community of people who would read scientific treatises and letters and then critique each other—that’s what science is. It’s institutionalized critique. It’s guaranteed dissent. That makes people smarter.
It's certainly true that science started doing this in the 17th century, but if you look at how Aquinas in the 13th century did his much of his writing it was laid out similarly: what is the question? What are all the objections, stated as strongly as possible? How does the author respond?
From what I've heard/read, writing was of that format, because Aquinas and other university professors at the time would have a lecture revolve around a question or hypothesis, and he would have students announce what are the best objections to the hypothesis, and they would lecture for the remaining time refuting the best objections raised (and sometimes adding their own).
One might disagree with many of the conclusions that Scholastics came to, or whether the questions merited such an approach, but the process has been in place for a while.
One hopefully useful nitpick:
> this social institution that began developing in Europe in the 17th century, a community of people who would read scientific treatises and letters and then critique each other—that’s what science is. It’s institutionalized critique. It’s guaranteed dissent. That makes people smarter.
It's certainly true that science started doing this in the 17th century, but if you look at how Aquinas in the 13th century did his much of his writing it was laid out similarly: what is the question? What are all the objections, stated as strongly as possible? How does the author respond?
From what I've heard/read, writing was of that format, because Aquinas and other university professors at the time would have a lecture revolve around a question or hypothesis, and he would have students announce what are the best objections to the hypothesis, and they would lecture for the remaining time refuting the best objections raised (and sometimes adding their own).
One might disagree with many of the conclusions that Scholastics came to, or whether the questions merited such an approach, but the process has been in place for a while.