Lecture: Be, Do, Have Straightwire
February 13, 2011 by admin
Filed under Hubbard's research, Scripture
Author: Hubbard, L. R.
Document date: 1954, 4 May
Document title: Be, Do, Have Straightwire
Document type: lecture transcript
Event: Fifth American Advanced Clinical Course
Location: Phoenix, Arizona
Document ID: 5ACC26
Description: Hubbard discusses how the Scientific Method used in Dianetics was discussed and defined by engineers at Bell Laboratories.
The scientific method which is used today was discussed with the engineers at Bell Laboratories – Ma Bell – at lunch hours, until they had finally decided what they were doing. Here we let somebody decide what he was doing instead of deciding what was so. And we found out that the scientific method, in their understanding, was so-and-so and so-and-so. But in discussing it for a few lunch hours they had established a brand-new scientific method.
They had made a better definition out of it than had existed before. And that scientific method which they then defined ran this way: They take a theory or a datum which predicts where new data will be found, which when looked for will be found to exist in fact. In other words, scientific method is a system of prediction used by entering on this basis: Well, something may be so. Now let’s see if any data exists to demonstrate it. Why, then, this theory has some validity and possibly will predict some more data. Now we’ll go look for that new data and find out if it exists anyplace, and if that exists this theory is getting pretty good. And we’ll see if it predicts some more data.
And if it predicts some more data, by golly, that’s getting pretty good. And if it doesn’t predict all the data that we did find, then there’s something wrong with the theory, so we get a new theory. See. And we refine the theory and go ahead from there.
Now, that actually is a refined statement of the scientific method as of 1950. And if any invention is connected with it, it is the engineers at Bell Labs. Now, you’ll find people who every once in a while will tell you, why, the scientific method is all written up in – oh, there’s a big mention of it or something. You go look at that publication. Yes, yes, yeah. It’s written up. Says “the scientific method,” and then skips it.
In other words, the discipline in this field called science did not match the word called science. The discipline did not match the word called science. Because science means truth. It is taken from the word scio – s-c-i-o – which is “knowing in the fullest sense of the word.” That’s quote-unquote. Scio means “knowing in the fullest sense of the word.”1 And so there you have, of course – in knowingness – you have at once the combination of truth and knowledge. And if science then was interested in truth and knowledge fully, they never would have shilly-shallied up the line anyplace and excused themselves one way or another lamely by saying what? That the problem of the human mind was too complex to solve. And you’ll find that statement repeated over and over, book after book, year after year, clear back to 1876. Any unit which operates on the basis that its goal cannot be achieved must be operating in an apathy.
Hubbard, L. R. (1954, 4 May). Be, Do, Have Straightwire. Fifth American Advanced Clinical Course, (5ACC26). Lecture conducted from Phoenix, Arizona.
Notes
- Definition: Scientology ↩