But what I’m trying to do is dissociate the social activity from the cognitive activity. The doing from the knowing, reasoning, judging mind.

Damnint. I have more to say but I have to go to a freakin’ soccer game. I’ll be bahck.

I guess my only point was that the editorial commentary usually occurs (can occur) because most of the editors agree, on some level, about some of the basic principles involved. I mean, they agree that they can only edit “that which is editable.” They can only comment on “things that make themselves open to commentary.” They share a certain set of minimum standards which allow them to maintain this “science” thing — they form an epistemic community, if you will. And one of the concepts that join them is something like “falsifiability” (that is, “edit-ability,” or “open to comment”), in one of its many guises.

But yeah, ultimately, it’s a distributed comment-driven process. Which is why the whole ID thing rubs so many scientists the wrong way — it has the feel of a party-crasher, someone who doesn’t want to participate at all, complaining about how the party isn’t being conducted the way they want.

Hell, I seem to be one of those, myself. But that’s neither here nor there.

In an ideal world, though, the forest of “invective” might be better-described as “distributed continuous editorial commentary”, don’t you think? Including internalized editorial commenting?

But you’re right, I suppose that in talking about “theories” and “falsifiability,” you kind of lose the forest for the trees. And the forest is a forest of invective. Indeed.