More Words, Deeper Hole

I did not suggest that that was how science worked. I was suggesting that that was the model of science working that was most likely to grace the pages of Analog, since I suspect such a model is most likely to fit the prejudices of the Analog readership and/or editorial board, who so far as I can tell say "science" when they mean "magic that will make the world as I wish it to be". It’s possible I’m insufficiently charitable to Analog, but there you go.

What follows is neither fair nor altogether accurate:

This brings me to a thought that has been coursing through my brain since James started his recent flurry of posts[1]. There seems to me to be a large and growing amount of hostility toward empiricism within the science fiction community. This may be reflected in the diminishing quantity of science in SF, and especially of good science, the kind that doesn’t support wish fulfillment about the plucky individual doing it on their own without meddling from a society that just doesn’t understand them.

[1] My only basis for what follows is the content of rassf and rasfw, which is as close as I'm likely to get to the "science fiction community" at large. So, a grain of salt and all that.