I am glad we moved from initial hostility to a dialogue. It’s a good example of what happens when people on both sides make an honest attempt at conversing, despite a less than ideal beginning!

I’ll definitely look into Hoffman, but that, in a sense, we “invent” rather than perceive reality, is I think agreed by cognitive scientists and philosophers alike. The devil, and possible disagreements, are in what exactly this mean and what we take from it.

As for the innateness of the scientific method, I disagree with the author you pointed to, and I do remember what people like Gould say abut it. Yes, humans have an innate sense of curiosity and ability to “experiment,” and probably so do many (though certainly not all) animal species.

But to call that the scientific method is a huge distortion, analogous to saying that because some birds are able to count up to a few digits then they are doing “mathematics.”