pilgrim.not.wanderer

I know physics does.  I know biology does.  I know chemistry does.  But does science exist?  

If by science you mean the collection of the sciences, then obviously science does exist.  

But is there a thing called science which can speak with its own voice?  

Who gets to say what counts as physics?  

Someone will say that the physicists do.  After all, they are the people doing physics, so they’re in the best position to know what physics is.  Physics is what the physicists do, so if we want to know what physics is we need to ask the physicists what they’re doing.

But that’s circular, right?  How do we know what a physicist is?  They are the people who do physics. How do we what physics is?  It is what the physicists do.

Given that it seems possible that the physicists could do something as physics which isn’t rightly physics (e.g. baking banana muffins), we can’t be satisfied with the circular definition.

The domain of inquiry which constitutes physics is handed to the physicists from somewhere else.  It is known by other means than physics itself.  Physics begins with the recognition of this domain of inquiry, it does not establish it.

Isn’t the same true of biology, chemistry and all the rest?

So I watched the Agenda with Steve Paikin last night.  It was about public confidence in science.  It was funny for a couple reasons.

First, a few of the guests seemed to have no concept of the problem of demarcation.  The problem is that we don’t know how to sort out the scientific from the non-scientific, in any principled way.  It might be easy to sort out some extreme cases (the tooth fairy).  But if you think that the division is always clear, I’ll bet you haven’t thought carefully enough about it.  The scientific community might have an established policy concerning what counts as scientific.  But that doesn’t mean they have a principled basis for the policy, capable of withstanding philosophical scrutiny.  

At least one of the guests seemed to think that the whole hullaballoo would dissolve if people only understood what science is.  There is surely some truth this this, but in my judgment not nearly as much as you might think.  What science is isn’t obvious, is it?

Second, one of the guests talked about what he called ‘the illusion of consensus on the matter of climate change’.  Another of the guests, a pretty young research scientist, was asked to respond.  Her only response was that she had no response.  She smiled, batted her pretty eyes in utter disbelief, and said she simply had no response.  

She said all her colleagues believe in climate change, she asserted climate change, she said climate change was a working assumption in much of her daily work as a research scientist, but she could say no more.  Maybe this was the right response for her to make.  But it didn’t address his specific point that the document people inevitably make reference to when they talk about the scientific consensus on climate change is not a true expression of scientific consensus (for a number of reasons).  

Since she believes in climate change, she doesn’t need to consider the case against it.  Given limited time and money, that might be how it works.  But then the case for her beliefs on climate change isn’t ‘evidence based’ in the relevant sense.  Instead,  her beliefs are legitimated by the plausibility structure of the community which matters for her success, along with other evidentially irrelevant pragmatic factors.  

My only point here is that this does not square with what the apologists of science have to say about science when they are trying to convince the unwashed masses of the greatness of science.  They’re always bragging about how different they are from the humanities departments: they have to base all their beliefs on the evidence and they have to relinquish any belief that isn’t supported by the evidence.  Sort of, but not quite.

The best observation of the evening was by a fellow who noted that people don’t distrust science per se, they distrust the corporations and institutions who bankroll science.  Isn’t this distrust at least somewhat appropriate? 

(BTW - if you read the preceding as a personal endorsement of anti-climate change beliefs you’ve misread me.)

The history of science reveals that we often believe the right things for the wrong reasons.  Sometimes for embarrassingly wrong reasons.  This suggests to me that our knowledge of things proceeds on a basis other than the explicit reasons we give.  These explicit reasons are more like after-the-fact rationalizations.  It seems that we know things before we know how we know them.  So a lot of the intellectual heavy lifting that goes on is aimed at explaining and justifying what we seem to know by other means.  If that’s all true, then it is the height of existential dishonesty when the champions of reason pretend that only explicit arguments and/or explicit scientific research furnishes us with knowledge.

The history of science also suggests that some of the scientific theories that seem most obvious today will be overturned or be drastically re-conceptualized in the future.  This will happen because of unanticipated, surprise developments.  Because of the surprising nature of these developments, we don’t know what we will be most embarrassed about in 30 years.  We’ll have to wait until the surprises happen.

If it is irrational (or otherwise improper) to question the scientific consensus, wouldn’t rationality (or propriety) bring scientific progress to a halt?  Admittedly, there would be a little bit of room for progress as we chased down all the implications entailed by the current scientific consensus.  But don’t we expect surprises?  Aren’t we at least open to surprise?  

If it is wrong to question the scientific consensus, then aren’t we left trapped within the confines of this consensus?  It is not as if we are free to move where the consensus moves.  For the consensus will never move unless individuals or small groups first begin to step outside of it.

If someone asks you how you deal with the relationship between faith and reason, throw a question back at them.  ”Whose reason?”

It is not as if there’s an uncontroversial, unambiguous conception of what reason is or what its deliverances are.  

Someone will say, “It is science!  What science says, and nothing else, is reason.”

But this is laughable.  Science depends for its very existence upon a kind of common pre-scientific reasoning.  And the most basic truths that we depend on everyday are not knowable via science.

If you want to, I suppose you could call science a subsection of reason.  Fine.  But whatever else we know, we know science (understood in the modern sense) is not simply another name for this thing, reason.  

Unless you think our pre-scientific knowledge which gives life to science is known by ‘faith’.  But then science will be based on faith, no?  The champions of science as reason will not want to make that move, will they?

I reject most of the negotiated truces between ‘reason’ and ‘faith’.  I find that the more you poke at them the faster they crumble under their own weight.

I think it is funny when a journalist, scientist or a theologian pontificates on the relationship between ‘reason’ and ‘faith’, presuming that one of these negotiated truces is obviously binding on anyone of sound mind.  Often they will being with, “We all know now, thanks to Immanuel Kant, that…”  Then they’ll have a few nasty things to say about fundamentalists.  Everyone of good manners is expected to cluck their tongues in disgust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gm_food

Sometimes I hear the talking heads on TV saying things like, “There has never been a single piece of legitimate peer reviewed science demonstrating any health problems with GM food.”  Or something similar.  The line these folks take is that ‘the science is on their side’ and that those who oppose them are ‘anti-science’.  

I’m not familiar with the science on this.  But I know this much.  If you are going to tamper with the biosphere by genetically altering crops, the burden of proof is on you to show that it is safe.  It is not enough to say that there is no proof it is harmful.  

And the intentional genetic programing of crops to not produce viable seeds is obviously immoral.  It is profoundly set against nature.  But this way corporations can patent a crop and be the only supplier of that crop.  The possibility for horrendous, even if unintended, consequences is so plain it is hard to imagine how this is moving ahead.  This seems plainly bad for the  humankind, bad for the earth and not popular with consumers.  (Most people are naturally a bid squeamish about GM foods, aren’t they?)  So why does it march ahead?  Money to be made!!!  

When I was 12 Canada shut down its cod fisheries.  For years traditional fishers had opposed new scientific fishing technology and management, believing it to be to out of step with nature and harmful to it.  Were they anti-science?  Well given that ’scientific management’ of the cod stocks was such a cataclysmic failure, isn’t it good and proper to be anti-science, if not always, at least at the right times and places?

“You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away.  Those who have studied the period know better.  There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. [...]

“There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the ‘wisdom’ of earlier ages.  For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue.  For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious - such as digging up and mutilating the dead.”

C.S Lewis, the Abolition of Man, pg. 46.

I read the Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul last weekend.  Not a great book.  Poorly organized and weakly argued.  Sure, it did contain some interesting evidence from the world of neuroscience.  But in the end the authors really didn’t offer a ‘case for the existence of the soul’.  They did offer some neuroscientific evidence that RSMEs (religious/spiritual/mystical experiences) ought not be explained away as the result of brain disfunction (or as the result of brain functions not aimed at connecting us with reality).

(more…)

With my previous post’s ramblings in view, it seems clear enough that the laws of nature do not rule out, or render irrational, the traditional understanding of God’s providential rule over the unfolding of history.  Instead, the laws of nature describe a significant aspect of this providential rule.  So how could God have answered the mother’s prayer by ensuring her son wasn’t hit by the bullet? (more…)

I just finished reading (actually rereading for maybe the 10th time over the years) a very short essay by C.S. Lewis on prayer and the laws of nature.  He begins by prompting us to consider the woman who thanked God for answering her prayer that her son would be kept safe while away at war.  (For the record, I’m recounting all of this from memory.  So I might not be getting all the details right.)  Apparently her son had been directly shot at, but the bullet narrowly missed him.  The woman took this as a sign of God’s special protection of her son and she thanked God for answering her prayer.Lewis then considers whether God’s involvement in this event is incompatible with our understanding of the laws of nature.  (By ‘laws of nature’ Lewis means, roughly, the laws of physics.)  (more…)

Here’s some interesting responses from Behe to his high profile critics.  If you are interested in ID, this is worth reading.

I just read the responses, and what I took from them was that, whether or not you agree with ID, you can agree that these high profile reviewers missed the mark in some of their basic lines of criticism.  Of particular interest was the 3 part direct interaction with Coyne.

Here’s the first three paragraphs from Reasonable Science, Reasonable Faith by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn Copyright (c) 2007 First Things (April 2007).

Here we find explicit evidence that Newton was no deist (which was a surprise to me). But we also find problems Newton’s own theistic philosophy of nature. It seems to me that most atheists believe that any theistic philosophy of nature will necessarily be just like Newton’s. Actually I think the question, of whether or not there could be theistic philosophy of nature other than Newton’s, doesn’t even cross their minds.

The first two paragraphs contain the explicit evidence that Newton wasn’t a deist. The third paragraph contains a short description of the traditional Aristotelian philosophy of nature.

To the second edition of his Principia Mathematica, published in 1713, Isaac Newton appended what he called a scholium generale. A principal concern of Newton’s had been to refute Descartes’ theory of planetary motions, which he renounced as a materialistic theory. The perfection and the regularity of these motions cannot “have their origin in mechanical causes,” Newton insisted. “This supremely exquisite structure that is visible to us, comprising the sun, the planets, and the comets, could come into being solely through the decision and under the dominion of an intelligent and powerful, truly existing being. . . . He steers everything, not as a world-soul, but as the Lord of all things.”

Indeed, Newton added an energetic remark directed against the deism that was already rampant in the early eighteenth century: “A God lacking in dominion, providence, and final causes is nothing other than mere fate and mere nature. No possibility of change in things may be derived from blind metaphysical necessity, which is after all always and everywhere the same. The entire manifold of things ordered according to place and time could originate solely from the ideas and the will of a truly existent being, one that exists as a matter of necessity.” And this section of the scholium closes: “So much, then, about God; to make assertions about Him on the basis of natural appearances pertains directly to natural philosophy.”

Newton’s scholium contains, in a nutshell, many of the essential questions that still occupy us today when discussing science, reason, and faith. Yet already in Newton’s view of divine action a major shift from the Aristotelian and medieval understanding has taken place. In the traditional view, the Creator endows nature with a kind of quasi-intelligence: Like an agent, nature “acts for an end,” with immanent principles of self-unfolding and self-operation. Newton, by contrast, is already seized by the early modern “mechanical philosophy,” in which nature is seen as a kind of unnatural composite of passive, unintelligent, preexisting matter, on which order has been extrinsically imposed by a Supreme Intelligence.

Under the traditional Aristotelian philosophy nature, theists can study nature without constantly worrying about finding holes into which they can plug God. Instead, nature is thought of as plugged into God. This doesn’t rule out the possibility of God acting in special ways as he sees fit. It also doesn’t rule out God’s providential rule of the unfolding of history. But it does rule out the idea that God constantly needs to intervene and interrupt nature, in a piecemeal fashion, in order to keep the ‘machine’ of nature driving along. In this way Christians can be free to do science - they can study nature in its own right. Under this philosophy of nature, to say something is ‘natural’ is not to say that God has nothing to do with it.

Do scientific theories stand or fall by their ability satisfy a set of objective criteria or rules? What I mean is, is the evaluation of a theory simply a matter of following objective rules? In the end, can the scientist say, “Well, it’s nothing personal, it’s just that your theory fails to meet these objective criteria. I personally have nothing to do with it. I’m just following the rules. Here’s the criteria right here on this page - you can see that your theory fails to meet these objective criteria. For this reason we can’t accept it as a valid theory.”? If scientists followed these objective rules without deviation, would every scientist arrive at the exact same conclusion? Are the objective rules solely responsible for the decision?

OR

Is the evaluation (and generation) of a scientific theory ultimately rooted in one’s personal (not objective rule based) judgment and an intuitive sense of the theory’s rationality?

Here’s a quote from Michael Polanyi which touches on this:

“For modern man has set up as the ideal of knowledge the conception of natural science as a set of statements which is ‘objective’ in the sense that its substance is entirely determined by observation, even while its presentation may be shaped by convention. This conception, stemming from a craving rooted in the very depths of our culture, would be shattered if the intuition of rationality in nature had to be acknowledged as a justifiable and indeed essential part of scientific theory. That is why scientific theory is represented as a mere economical description of facts; or embodying a conventional policy for drawing empirical inferences; or as a working hypothesis suited to man’s practical convenience - interpretations that all deliberately overlook the rational core of science.

“That is why, also, if the existence of this rational core yet reasserts itself, its offensiveness is covered up by a set of euphemisms, a kind of decent understatement like that used in Victorian times when legs were called limbs - a bowdlerization which we may observe, for example, in the attempts to replace ‘rationality’ by ’simplicity’. It is legitimate, of course, to regard simplicity as a mark or rationality, and to pay tribute to any theory as a triumph of simplicity. But great theories are rarely simple in the ordinary sense of the term… Hermann Weyl lets the cat out of the bag by saying: ‘the required simplicity is not necessarily the obvious one but we must let nature train us to recognize the true inner simplicity.’ In other words, simplicity in science can be made equivalent to rationality only if ’simplicity’ is used in a special sense known only by scientists. We understand the meaning of the term ’simple’ only by recalling the meaning of the term ‘rational’ or ‘reasonable’ or ’such that we ought to assent to it’, which the term ’simple’ was supposed to replace. The term ’simplicity’ functions then merely as a disguise for another meaning than its own. It is used for smuggling an essential quality into our appreciation of a scientific theory, which a mistaken conception of objectivity forbids us openly to acknowledge.”

Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 16.

I’ve mentioned this before, but it is worth pointing out again: Isaac Newton “believed the Apocalypse would come in 2060 – exactly 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, according to a recently published letter.”

Now I don’t think it is a good idea to produce end-times dates like this. And I have no idea how Newton came up with this figure (all I know is that he thought it was biblical). But it is instructive that he came up with any number at all. Apparently he thought biblical prophecy fit with, or at least wasn’t reduced to irrationality by, his so called mechanistic/rationalistic/scientific worldview. And evidently Newton was interested in defending biblical prophecy.

Here’s his own explanation for what he was on about: “This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail… It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner.”

What does this all mean? Well it doesn’t mean that, since Newton was evidently a theist of some sort, and since Newton was undoubtedly a great father of modern science, therefore contemporary scientists should become theists of some sort. It doesn’t even mean that the scientific community must allow some sort of theism in their midst .

But I’d say it does work to destabilize the assumption that, according to the very nature of things, theism (in all of its meaningful senses and forms) is inherently incompatible with science and the basic beliefs of the working scientist. Was Newton simply trapped in the past and being inconsistent with his own more rational scientific beliefs? Strong social forces would lead us to think, “Oh, of course he was being inconsistent! He hadn’t fully emerged from the darkness yet!” But coming to this conclusion is as easy as falling ass backwards into a big soft chair - it is where we’re headed when we throw our minds on autopilot and take a nap. It might be true (it is at least not obviously false), but I think it would be far more interesting to more carefully consider other possibilities.

PS - Check out this hilarious quote from the article linked to above:

“Luckily for modern scientists in awe of his achievements, Newton based this figure on religion rather than reasoning.”

It was most certainly based on reasoning! (Even if it was lousy reasoning!) The fact that it wasn’t based upon deductions from first principles or an inductive study of nature doesn’t mean it wasn’t based upon reasoning. Surely he arrived at the figure by some sort of inductive study of the bible and/or deductions from the bible. This is reasoning. You might want to call it religious reasoning. But what makes it ‘religious’ is that it begins with words/announcements which are specially revealed to a peculiar people in peculiar relationship with God. The fact that not everyone has these special words/announcements means that this reasoning won’t get off the ground with everyone. It will only work for those who have access to and have accepted these special words/announcements. But this doesn’t entail that this ‘religious’ reasoning isn’t actually reasoning.

{Update: check this out - www.isaac-newton.org Apparently Newton was a unitarian heretic.}

If a critic of ID says that it is ‘not science’ because it is not falsifiable, then I think that this critic will find himself in deep trouble.

Here’s what I have in mind:

If the critic says that irreducible complexity isn’t falsifiable then, it seems to me that, logically, he must admit that reducible complexity isn’t falsifiable either - and therefore it too is ‘not science’.  Because, if you can demonstrate that a particular complex is reducible, then you’ve falsified the claim it has irreducible complexity.  

Surely scientists believe that they can demonstrate that something doesn’t have irreducible complexity.  Surely they believe this.   Behe has put forward examples of what he takes to be irreducible complexity.  And some critics have attempted to find plausible stories of how these complexes could be arrived at by small incremental steps.  But then irreducible complexity is falsifiable and, in this sense, it is scientific.  (Even if it is wrong - or if every proposed example (so far) has been falsified.)

 Suppose that you’ve been taught standard, run-of-the-mill, evolution theory from early elementary-school on through high-school.  Perhaps you even learned more about it in  university too.  Suppose that, as far as you can tell, all (or at least most) of the people who are best equipped to judge evolutionary theory, find it to be good, or satisfactory, or ‘the best we have’, or ‘the way to go’, or ‘what educated people should believe’, etc.

Suppose that, with all this in view, you find yourself hard pressed to not subscribe to evolutionary theory.  Suppose that, upon reflection, you come to feel it is somehow your duty to either subscribe to it, or at least pay an appropriate level of lip-service to it.

Bracket all the questions you personally have about whether or not you yourself  actually should adopt this attitude towards evolutionary theory.  (Maybe you have have a list of reasons, A, B and C why you, as far as you can tell, have no duty to subscribe to evolutionary theory.)  For the sake of argument set all this aside and suppose all that I’ve asked you to suppose.  Now careful consider the fact that many folks find themselves in just this position.

Should this be an obstacle to your hearing the Gospel and responding with faith?  Or is sorting out all these issues concerning the doctrine of Creation and evolution a secondary matter (even if it is still important)?  Must the goal of Christian proclamation be to hammer away at you concerning Creation and evolution first, and only then proceed to Christ when this is finished?  Can Christ only be preached to you after you’ve first been soundly defeated on the matter of Creation and evolution?  Or can you hear and believe the Gospel, all the while being unsure of exactly what to think about, or how to deal with, the issues surrounding the doctrine of Creation and evolution?

Whatever else you think about all this (and there are a lot of thoughts to be had), I think your answer to this last question ought to be YES.  You can believe the Gospel, be united to Christ by faith, be delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Col. 1), the all the while being totally confused and unsure about what to think about the doctrine of Creation and evolution.