Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[Whateverist]

Yeah, but that would be pretty uninteresting as well as pedantic.  The world of ideas is bigger than science and there is no need to inject it where it isn't the best tool.  It would be a shame if one over-applied it to the degree that it actually narrowed one's perspective.  Over-reliance on science, at its worst, becomes a kind of appeal to authority .. which so cuts against the grain of what it is intended to be.


From a google search without actually opening a link.

conservapedia:  Methodological naturalism is a strategy for studying the world, ..

rationalwiki:  Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method.

IDK, scientific assessments of why pop music is so popular could be pretty interesting.   The world of ideas is big, but "bigger than science" is an empty phrase.  What does it mean to be bigger?  That science hasn't answered some question, or that it can't?  Would you know which is which?  Are you sure that the question is properly formed?  

Science isn't about authorities, it's an appeal to evidence and testable, repeatable demonstrations.  An "over reliance" on it...again, an empty phrase, would be an over relaiance on what it is, not what people wish (or do not wish) for it to be (such as an appeal to authority).  Just as the problems of materialism are what they are, not what people import upon them as straw effigies.  

In any case, art can be -and has been- studied scientifically, it;s not immune.  So if there are questions out there which science cant (not hasn't, can't) answer, or questions for which science is not an appropriate tool...it isn't one of them.  It falls -well- within the remit of the method and the pursuit.  It's demonstrable. Testable. Repeatable.  Material. The current status of advertising is nothing other than the scientific pursuit of commercially successful art.  It seems to be producing results.

I suspect science is in no position to exhaustively answer every question relating to art.  Beyond the questions you can answer regarding what is or is not the case regarding any particular artist's work there are also questions involving intent and message which I do not think science can answer.  Of course a scientist can answer them, she just won't need any science to do so.  You won't be surprised that I won't offer any scientific evidence for that hypothesis. Frankly I think it is self-evident.