Your society accepts the results of Rothbotham’s experiments, so it should follow that it agrees with the way he conducted his experiments. Except it doesn’t.
This conversation is bound to go in circles. You
imagine something about FE or FE'ers, I tell you that you that it's not at all accurate and you should probably learn what you're discussing before discussing it, so you move on to another thing you've imagined or guessed. We can talk about Zeteticism, but you need to stop with the endless strawmans. You'd be well displeased if I did the same with you.
In this case, you have made 3 statements, comprising 3 critical errors:
- A sweeping statement on how our society accepts the results of Rowbotham's experiments. In reality, some FE'ers accept some of Rowbotham's results. The claim that Rowbotham is some sort of "Flat Earth Messiah" is only ever used by RE'ers, and only by ones who don't know what they're talking about.
- You then claim that "it should follow that it agrees with the way he conducted his experiments". It absolutely shouldn't, and it absolutely doesn't. Science is an adequate method of inquiry, even if it is flawed. Furthermore, many of the world's great discoveries were made by accident, which is a considerably worse method than science. And yet, to everyone's shock, these discoveries are not discarded, merely verified.
- Finally, you reach your conclusion - "except it doesn't". I think most of the suspense has waned off by now, but let's say it anything: this, too, is incorrect. Some of Rowbotham's experiments were sound, some weren't.
So, I repeat myself: If you don't understand something, ask. Don't imagine an answer and demand that someone defends it for you.
I haven’t proposed any “experimental set up”
Of course you have. If you had simply read that comment in context, you would have realised that. Your experiment was to take both methods, as they're currently used in the real world, and compare their outputs. You have stated so clearly here:
Here’s a question. Using the zetetic method, what knowledge has been gained about the flat earth over the last couple of hundred years? The proof is in the pudding, so they say. If the zetetic method is superior, it seems like a lot more should have been learned.
When I asked you to clarify, multiple times, you chose to simply repeat yourself. Example:
You asked on what basis I thought zecticism should have contributed more knowledge than it has about the flat earth. I responded because a superior method, which the wiki claims it to be, should produce superior results. If zecticism is a superior method of scientific inquiry, then there should be some results that show that.
However, your experimental setup sucks. You are comparing the output of a couple centuries of isolated enthusiasts who deliberately avoid funding with, well, the whole worlds of academia and business. This is an extremely poor performance regardless of which philosophy you prefer. By contrast, if we ordered 2 followers of each methodology to perform the same experiment, the veracity of their results will be affected by many more factors. A couple of quick examples:
- Their competence. We've seen plenty of RE'ers who claim to be "true disciples of science", but who struggle to distinguish the concepts of velocity and acceleration in their minds.
- Resources. If you start me off with a budget of £10,000,000, I sure as hell am gonna do better than the science enthusiast starting with £50.
- Time. This one hopefully doesn't require an explanation.
So, to drive this point home: no, the logic of "if Zeteticism is so good, then why hasn't it done more than it already has?" doesn't even begin to work. You chose an arbitrary (and undefined) threshold for "making enough progress" and unilaterally declared that Zeteticism hasn't met that threshold. You've done so without knowing what Zeteticism is (as demonstrated above), too.
You started this thread as "Questions about Zeteticism", but so far you haven't had many questions. You're just explaining to us what you think Zeteticism is, and how what you've imagined doesn't make sense. I don't see what you hope to achieve here.