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I want to think more about whether there are important differences between the first steps of these competing scientific methods.  I like seriously loopy science.  I like it's dynamism.  I prefer circles to straight lines.  I think they feel more appropriate in an age/society/culture that's basically left teleological/theological thinking behind.  And I'm glad that we've ditched/are ditching those ways of making sense of the world. 

The thing I still like about "Hypothesis" that I'm not sure I get from "Summary of Observations" is the more active, co-constructive connotation of the verb "hypothesize" versus "summarize."  Tonight we accepted some pretty big claims with minimal resistance.  There is no such thing as empirical knowledge.  No such things as facts.  If next week we're talking more about the brain, maybe we can talk about how the brain feels about/deals with living this kind of schizophrenic existence where we can believe that the only proper attitude towards "reality" is radical skepticism about everything that appears to "work," but simultaneously go ahead putting one foot in front of the other, flying in airplanes that we assume won't crash because the high priests of physics have arranged the numbers in such a way that they appear to be infallible. 

Do we end up with a new kind of dualism?  Does weightless, creative, inquisitive thought spin off into some parallel reality, an anarchic space where the goal is an endless circle of cognitive self-pleasuring?  That doesn't sound too bad, but then there's just something a little uncomfortable about this new kind of "mind" being inconveniently housed in the "body" that is our life-world with all its lame, heavy, existing systems and structures.  How does transforming thought, or even education, become the "transformation of the world."  Should this new spirit of unfettered, purely creative thought feel remotely responsible for dealing with/helping out the existing life-world, or can the world only be a drag on it? 

Or is some yet to be articulated vision of "education" that potential point of convergence?  Where the übermenschen, reach back to help new generations find their way out of the graveyard of ossified "truths" that can't actually be truths (because there's no such thing), only hypotheses that have forgotten they're just temporarily serviceable hypotheses.  How much of the old muck does this require us to muck around in?  What does it mean to "transform" rather than simply negate or discard?