Seriously, it does appear we arguing past each other at this point – I think we agree on the concepts, we’re just arguing terminology.

I just don’t believe we should muddy up the term “science” – it’s too loaded with connotations, especially by specialists. I don’t disparage “non-natural” fields, I just don’t think they belong in the realm of “science.” They belong in the realm of knowledge gained through reason, and the knowledge in them is just as valid as the knowledge in the “scientific” fields.

Part of my reasoning for demanding a strict definition for “science”, and making it a subset of reason, is to get past the knee-jerk reaction of most science-types I know towards knowledge not gained through the scientific method. If you call it “science” they’ll shut down the reason center of their brain and begin a lecture on the scientific method. By granting them this initial definition, they remain open to learning about the validity of other methods of gaining knowledge. Of course, there is also the problem of many science types who don’t even understand the scientific method that they are beholden to, but that’s another issue altogether (if I had a dollar for every Ph.D. I had to teach the scientific method to in my old lab…)

Wasn’t it Mises who wrote that the real battle is one of epistemology? Once you get that battle won, the rest seems to fall into place fairly easily.

In any event your appeal to “reason” as the overarching concept of which “the scientific method” is just one part, is just what I meant. Okay, so the systematic study of economics is not a science, by this definition, but it is an application of reason. We need a term for this. I say ti is a science. Of course it is. You want to say that natural science is the only science there is. THis is a way of disparaging other “domains of reason” by not granting them the term “science”.

No. What I’m doing is requiring a strict definition for the word “science”. I’ll grant you that there is nothing that says there needs to be a strict definition for it, or that my strict definition is the proper one – but in that direction lies dragons.

My point, actually, is that even the scientific method is merely a subset of the larger effort to understand life through the application of reason. The scientific method was DEVELOPED through reason. And it assumes the use of reason in formulating hypotheses and comparing the data generated. Hence, science is not separate from the use of reason.

However, it is important to note that science IS a subset, and therefore not the only way to gain knowledge through the application of reason. My alien example is one I’ve used repeatedly in arguments with technocrats: the knowledge gained from the alien is unscientific (to an extreme if only one person observed the alien, which then promptly disappeared forever), but nevertheless it is knowledge. It is knowledge even if the alien sticks around and continues to demonstrate it, but we puny humans don’t have the ability to test whether it is illusion or real by the scientific method. Just like Newton’s theories were solid science until we were able to perceive better and realize that his conception of absolute space didn’t mesh with our observations. Our subsequent observations did nothing to change the fact that science supported Newton’s theory.

Not all knowledge can be discovered by the scientific method. However, it is helpful in the arenas it is suited for. In other arenas, we must fall back to the underlying method – the application of pure reason.

To me, “science” is the application of the scientific method. Hypothesize, formulate anti-hypothesis, test, compare results to predictions, rinse, repeat. Anything that doesn’t involve this process isn’t “science.”

Well, then it seems you are accepting the metaphysical dualism Machan criticizes. Look, in a way, it’s just semantics: depends on how you define science. If you want to define that word to refer only to the natural sciences–the systematic study of causal phenomenon–that is fine; but then we need a term for other systematic studies. What, then, are economics and ethics and politics? They can also be systematically studied. So then we have science, and other types of systematically-studied topics. What is the umbrella term for “systematically-studied topics”?

Surely it should be science. There are difference sciences. Some sciences, like the sciences of ethics and politics and economics, concern non-causal phenomenon; they concern human action, teleology, and value. They can be studied systematically and rigorously, but in a way appropriate to their nature. The natural sciences have their own methods, e.g. empirical testing, etc.

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Incidentally, there some libertarians who adopt a Popperian methodology, where there is no such thing as proof or justification; there are only conjectures that can be tested. See, e.g., J.C. Lester, Escape from Leviathan. “Conjecturalism” and Popperian positivsm-empiricism is an incoherent, self-contradictory view, IMO; see, e.g., p. 188 of Hoppe’s article In Defense of Extreme Rationalism; and his A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, ch. 7. For more on lester, see the reviews by David Gordon and Rafe Champion; see also this quick summary of Roderick Long’s summary of Popper here, and note 113 et pass of Roderick Long’s working paper, Wittgenstein, Austrian Economics, and the Logic of Action.

To me, “science” is the application of the scientific method. Hypothesize, formulate anti-hypothesis, test, compare results to predictions, rinse, repeat. Anything that doesn’t involve this process isn’t “science.”

The important thing to note is that science does not equal truth. Science is merely one way to approach gaining knowledge, but nothing learned by science is unassailable. For example, if an alien landed tomorrow and demonstrated that, in fact, he controls gravity and that Einstein was all wet with general relativity, the science would be wrong, but the knowledge we gained from the alien would in fact be unscientific in nature.

Even more important is to note that the scientific method does incorporate logic in the process – you formulate your hypotheses and anti-hypotheses using logic, based upon certain “facts” that you assume are true. So the scientific method is merely a subset of the use of logic to discover truth as we can perceive it.