Issues of Scientific Methodology

Reproducibility and controls dominate the
logico-conceptual-empirical aspect of science. What is their
epistemological status, and what questions do they raise?

As in general relativity, where background (boundary) decides
even 'intrinsic' (localized) properties such as mass, the
surroundings vary even as system variables are (almost)
controllable--but for the crucial generality of spacetime
(experience) (no two points are identical, among many
'equivalent' representations). Since the Heraclitan
background is constantly changing, reproducibility is
adventitious: no logical force supports it. Rather, the
interest is technological, or technical. Physics conforms to
our (presumptive) interest in reproducibally safe bridges,
cell phones, shuttles, etc.

As reproducibility is a (logically) arbitrary operational
criterion, psychologically constrained, controls are
idealizations whose veridical oscillations admit, after
Quine, an infinity of mathematico-physical representations.
Even as to adding differentiable constants (boundaries
instanced as objects). Okham's razor is an aesthetic
heuristic, whose alternatives (greater conceptual density--a
baroque representation) are equally suggestive. It is
instructive, and easy--despite our prejudices--to imagine a
world of complexity sufficent to embody astronomical and
astrological descriptions. And it is as likely as not that
each one of us is the center and acme of creation (issues
quantifiable within the probability theory of infinite sets).

Could we be occupants of a physically unremarkable star
system, and yet the moral axis of the universe? The Jewish
talmud teaches that the commandants, the center of the law
and will of God, were revealed on the summit of the
physically unremarkable Sinai to express God's love of
humility. A reading that, if known to Calvin and disseminated
during the Reformation, could have helped avert, or resolve,
the enduring Galilean/Darwinian conflict between Western
science (objective--) and religion (subjective--generality).