While it's always nice to see a scientists step up to argue that intelligent design or creationism ought not to be taught as science because they aren't science, this worries me somewhat:
Scientists have failed to explain the limits of science, Peshkin said. Science deals in what can be observed and measured through experimentation. Assertions or beliefs are not part of it. A theory, he said, is a hunch about how the world works that is then subjected to experimental observation.
Religion, on the other hand, accepts revealed knowledge. The two, therefore, take different approaches to reality, Peshkin said.
But each is valid and the conflict between the two is unnecessary, he said.
This is simply wrong. For a start everyone knows that science and religion are elbowing each other for more room on the social and conceptual dance floor. But there's an interesting asymmetry between science and religion.
Science is something nobody who is sane and informed can reject. Its epistemology is based on evidence and inference, and when it works it works, end of story. All human beings are forced to admit the truths that science has shown us. A couple of centuries ago, relatively recently in human history, the universe was a very small and very young place. Now it is understood to be ancient and enormous. No religion that denies these facts can survive in a reasonable environment.
But religion is not a single category that like science is a constraint on all human reasoning about the world. There are literally tens of thousands of religions, and no religion is intellectually authoritative for someone who does not accept the revelation, tradition or source that religion is based upon. For example, and to be most obvious, Christians cite the New Testament as an authority; nobody else does. It has no "probative" (that is, evidentiary) force whatsoever on non-Christians. No Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, shaman, Australian aboriginal dreamtime believer, or Parsi is in the slightest bound by that scripture or the interpretive traditions the (still tens of thousands of) Christian denominations and cults rely upon.
So, science is universal, while religion is rather local. One relies on an epistemology everyone in the world has access to; the other relies on an epistemology that barely works for that religion. To say of all religions that "each is valid" is to assert an absurdity. If each religion is separately valid, and all religions contradict each other, we are way past postmodernist silliness and out the other side into pure fiction and flights of imagination. It basically causes the very idea of knowledge to be degraded to the point that it no longer has the slightest meaning.
So the next time you hear someone say that religion and science do not conflict, the key question to ask is: which religion? The speaker's? Of course they would say that. But is it true? Science constrains rational religion, while no religion, Plantinga notwithstanding, constrains rational science. So when the two conflict, as they must given that they often attempt to explain the same phenomena, which one is it rational to adopt and teach?
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So, science is universal, while religion is rather local.
I would use the term 'provincial' instead of 'local' - it's much more specific. I also really like what Sagan said on the provincialism of gods and religions in chapter 2 of Pale Blue Dot. :-)
I think I'm going to make note of your final two sentences though - a good quote!
I think your second last sentence: "Science constrains rational religion, while no religion, Plantinga notwithstanding, constrains rational rational science." should rather read "Science contraints religion, while no religion contraints science".
The first 'rational' appears absurd as religion is the contrary of rational, and the second appears a tautology as science is nothing BUT rational.
All of science is internally consistent. Every religion is internally inconsistent.
The different epistemologies are:
1. Finding stuff out.
2. Making shit up.
Nothing in the idea of revelation requires turning off one's critical capacities. To anyone who claims that he has revelation from a god, the natural questions are how he knows that that is what it is, why that god communicates in that restricted fashion and not more broadly and directly to humankind, and how one might test that revelation. Religion doesn't require acceptance of revealed knowledge, but credulity toward when one would believe that. Science doesn't exclude revealed knowledge, but requires a more skeptical and critical attitude toward it.
Clear, concise, lucid, to the point and above all true! The erudite ape hits the bulls-eye yet again.
It seems to me that the pigeon-holing of the entire scientific community under the label 'something nobody who is sane and informed can reject' is somewhat of an over simplification. Isn't science's virtue its capacity for revision? Not to make truth claims unless utterly certain and to test them even when they have been proven.
You suggest that the history of science has been a scattered array of people consistently working out the truth of the universe. I disagree. Science can be incorrect but future science will out that flaw and revise it. You are establishing Science as a new religion by putting it on a pedestal where it cannot be challenged.
I would rephrase it to
'Science is something SOMEONE who is sane and informed HAS TO TRY TO reject.'
/delurk
Science is something nobody who is sane and informed can reject. Its epistemology is based on evidence and inference, and when it works it works, end of story.
This is way too simple. Granted, it's just a blog post, but still. Consider systematic theology -- say, Aquinas' Summa theologica. Its epistemology is based on evidence and inference. The evidence is different -- you're consulting Aristotle and the Church tradition for your data, rather than conducting experiments -- but it's still evidence. You're assuming certain statements about the world as data. So `evidence and inference' isn't a good argument against theology.
The natural complaint -- cf Bill the Cat's comment -- is that, unlike science, Aquinas has made things up. But the method of science is retroduction, not deduction. Proposing a brilliant new natural hypothesis about unobservables (genes!) is just as much making shit up as anything Aquinas ever did (substantial forms!).
A better complaint is, I think, to point out that science works, but systematic theology doesn't. What does this mean? We need to cash out `works'. Straightforwardly, something works if it does what it's supposed to. So let's say that science works because it achieves -- albeit piecemeal and provisionally -- the goals it sets for itself. Systematic theology does not. There are details to be filled out here, but let that go for the sake of making the larger point.
Now you've tied your success term to a particular set of goals or ends. I happen to like this, because I happen to like Dewey, but it means an additional step is needed to defend the universality of science. You have to argue that the goals or ends of science are universal. Or, to put it the other way around: if some fundamentalist insists that she isn't interested in doing the sort of things science wants to do, then why should she be bound by the restrictions science would place on her beliefs?
I'd like to fill in this gap. I like science, and I dislike theology. But this comment is already way too long, and I don't really know how to do it anyways.
(I should say, because it's going to come up when someone goes to my webpage anyways, that I am a grad student at Notre Dame, and I've even taken a class from Plantinga. However, his philosophy drives me up the wall, and I pretty much completely disagree with everything he has ever written. That one class was taken against my will, and I hated every minute of it. So please don't think some Plantingite has invaded!)
Surely it is philosophical slight-of-hand to call anybody who doesn't accept something either "insane" or "uninformed."
Perhaps you should back up and explain what you mean by rejecting science? I assume you don't mean the results of scientific inquiry since the history of science filled with people who have rejected earlier scientific results. I assume you don't want to call, for example, early 20th century physicists insane or uninformed for rejecting Newtonian physics.
It seems to me that one can't make a pre-judgment as you did about the rejection of science without looking at the reasons for that rejection. After all, aren't we told repeatedly that "the truths that science has shown us" are always open for review (and therefore rejection).
BTW, can I suggest David Livingstone's Putting Science in It's Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge? It calls into question the idea that science is universal.
> Science is something nobody who is sane and informed can
> reject.
...if it does not conflict with prior worldviews. Else *noone* on this Earth is sane and informed. If a worldview has benefits for the believer, it will resist external contradictions. PZ Myers is as stubborn and narrow-minded
as a Christian fundie and equally deaf to arguments if you find the right theme.
I think it is an error that people who have a "religion" are using it as a bunch of rules. Far from it; most of the Christians have a very poor knowledge of the Bible. I think it is more adequate to think that the *image* a religion projects and which is established during childhood is that what is ferociously defended. Contradictory evidence
between scripture/belief and own belief systems are ignored and it is almost always pointless to argue against it.
Evidence ?
The Gallup poll in June 2005 said that a whopping 20% of Americans believe in reincarnation.
http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/logic/gallup.html
The problem is: Both Christianity and Islam explicitly *rule out* the possibility of reincarnation; it is a strict no-no. As the possible believers would never reach 20% of the population we are forced to admit that there is a big bunch of Christians out there who actually believe in reincarnation.
Worse, there are no statistically significant differences due to education. The almost sacred belief of atheists and skeptics that education will vanquish "superstitous" beliefs doesn't hold water in reality (Another study in Germany get exactly the same results).
bradm: "Perhaps you should back up and explain what you mean by rejecting science? I assume you don't mean the results of scientific inquiry since the history of science filled with people who have rejected earlier scientific results. I assume you don't want to call, for example, early 20th century physicists insane or uninformed for rejecting Newtonian physics."
Those who found Newtonian physics inadequate to explain certain phenomena still had to demonstrate why it had worked so well so far. It's not so much that the previous scientific results are outright rejected so much as they are explained in the light of something more comprehensive. Issac Asimov's "The Relativity of Wrong" is a good fleshing out of this point.
Religious notions mark the boundaries of the group(s) with which I most intensely identify. Those boundaries are so important to my identity that I must willingly hobble my thinking by adopting absurd epistemic rules. And if you disagree with my epistemic rules, it simply shows that you are rather silly, as you belong to the damnable out-group, not to the favored in-group. This willing submission to group-think clearly marks my group identity, so the other members of my in-group recognize me for the faithful adherent that I am.
J.J., I don't really want to get in an argument about incommensurablity here - that's been hashed out in many books before. Needless to say, I think Asimov is wrong (relatively speaking, of course).
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J J Ramsey has already raised one objection to the statements quoted above and I have a couple more. Firstly one doesn't reject scientific results, if one rejects anything at all it is scientific theories. For me results are empirical facts and these are the things that have to be explained by the theories. One criterion for choosing one theory over another in that it has a greater explanatory power, of the facts in a particular area of inquiry, a claim that is intuitive understood by scientist and philosophers of science but trying to exactly quantify the scope of explanatory power has proved to be one of the nightmares of the philosophy of science.
Having redefined the original statement we now have; the history of science filled with people who have rejected earlier scientific theories and even this modified version is not correct. Theories are almost never rejected but are superseded by theories that have a greater explanatory scope or power, in the case quoted General Relativity is a better fit for various astronomical facts than Newtonian Gravity e.g. orbit of Mercury. However Newtonian Gravity did not as a result get thrown into the dustbin of history but is still very much alive and well and being used by scientists, engineers and technicians all over the world every day in cases where the greater accuracy but also greater computational complexity of General Relativity would be superfluous to requirements. It might come as a shock to some that in order to put a man on the moon in the 1960s, NASA used good old Newtonian physics and not relativity to navigate their space vehicle.
Should you be tempted into thinking that Newtonian Gravity is in some way an exception and old theories are in the rule rejected I would, as another example, point out that Ptolemaeic Cosmology in also still thriving and is used by people learning astro-navigation where the assumption of a geo-centric solar system makes calculation much simpler.
If we are claiming that science makes truth claims (and I would and John has) then the fact that Newtonian mechanics is used by engineers and scientists has little to do with whether it has been rejected as a claim to truth. Surely it has. Which brings us back to my main point, which has been ignored so far, that the mere rejection of science is not enough to label somebody insane or uninformed. Rather it is the reasons for the rejection that matter.
JJ Ramsey - Parts of Newtonian theory carry over to a relativistic framework, but not all.
Thony C - I think the issue is about acceptance or rejection of theories as approximately true descriptions of an unobserved reality. That's very different from accepting a theory recognized as false as a useful instrument for prediction and control of phenomena.
If Einstein was right, Newton was wrong. Yet in many contexts, Newton's (presumably) incorrect theory is more useful than Einstein's (presumably) correct theory. There's nothing mysterious about this.
John, how can I decide when a scientific conjecture is true?
Modern philosophy of science does not suppose that science makes truth claims. Science offers testable explanations of facts. Newton offered a testable explanation of a group of observable empirical facts that stood up extremely well to being tested and was thus validated but in no way proven true. His theory therefore remains valid within a given degree of tolerance and therefore is not rejected but continues to be used. Einstein produced a theory that has a wider explanatory scope than that of Newton's and that has also stood up well to testing and is also considered well validated. In those cases where that greater explanatory scope is necessary it is used in preference to Newton's theory. Any and all attempts up till now to give a truth measure to different validated theories have failed and so it is incorrect to talk of approximately true descriptions. Theories work or they don't work and if a theory continues to be used then it is still valid.
Thony C - I don't know what you consider to be "modern philosophy of science," but in my experience whether or not science makes truth claims is the topic of lively debate. My impression, though not itself scientific, is that a majority of scientists and a majority of philosophers of science are not instrumentalists.
Nice post John. It's true that many scientists are flat out mad. But the methodology grinds away the crazies and their ideas and refines our view of "reality".
All religions are divergent.
(because everyone's imagination is different)
All science is convergent.
(because facts are the same everywhere you go)
Get believers to understand that, and maybe we'll get somewhere.
Good post.
Science is also rather local, or locally influenced. Insert talk about the theory-ladeness of observation, SSK, and anthropology of science here.
Other than that, I'd say this was a pretty sound post. You're comments about religions are pretty dead on, as are those regarding the epistemic row they have with science regarding quality and power of explanation.
Another nice post, John.
Maybe you should work this up into a [short?] book.
(signed) marc
Okay, I've been away lecturing (corrupting!) conservation biology students at the local rural campus, so I see I have a lot to reply to. I'll start with Noumena's comment #8:
Of course one may rationally reject some parts of science if they are unsupported or infirm. But having read a fair bit of the Summa I have to disagree with you about the use of evidence in Aquinas or indeed any systematic theology. Instead evidence in the form of scriptural and traditional material has to be reconciled with particular views as dictated by doctrine. While theology is a subtle "science" it is nothing like actual science.
And science is indeed what works - I'm a thoroughgoing pragmaticist (Peirce style rather than Deweyan or Jamesian pragmatist), because science doesn't track truth - it tracks what works, and explanation follows. That's for another post.
Bradm (#9): yes, if someone is informed about science and rejects it (entire - of course there are differences of opinion within science), they must be insane, or at least are taking an insane position not easily distinguishable from schizophrenia. I say this knowing there are those who do this in academe.
James (#17): You decide whether a scientific theory is true using whatever criteria one uses when deciding anything is true. As I think scientific theories are neither true nor absolute, I am happy enough to say a scientific theory explains. I'm no scientific realist.
Bob (#19): Scientists think all kinds of things about theories that aren't true. One of them is that somehow science is not instrumentalist, despite the fact that all scientists behave just like instrumentalists (possibly excluding the pseudotheology of cosmology).
Don (#22): Not all observation is theory-laden. This is a myth of logical positivism and its immediate heirs.
There, now to solve the problems in the Middle East.
Bob: whilst it may appear to you that I am describing or even advocating instrumentalism I am not. No matter which metaphysics one holds as to the status of scientific theories it remain a fact that one cannot ascribe positive truth values to them one can only falsify them.
Like Mr Wilkins I would describe myself as a sort of pragmatist but in terms of "schools" of philosophy I have no idea what sort.
Instrumentalism has, in my opinion nothing to do with the truth or falsity of theories but whether one believes that theories described realty or not. The operationalist or instrumentalist doesn't care whether theories describe reality or not, for him or her the question is irrelevant. I personally, and this is just an opinion and not part of some complex philosophical construct, believe that theories describe reality in some way, we can however have no idea as to the truth of that description. A new theory that supplants an old one because it has greater explanatory scope might be nearer to being a true description or it might be on the same level in truth terms as the old theory, just viewing things from a different angle, or it might although apparently more explanatory be further from the truth than the old theory, we simply cannot tell. On the whole my realism is somewhere between scientific realism and naive realism but please don't ask me to say exactly where.
There is a wonderful saying in the philosophy of mathematics that most working mathematicians are Formalists during the week and Platonists on Sundays. One could say that most working scientists are Instrumentalists during the week but what are they on Sundays?
...what are they on Sundays>
Scientific realists, of course. Scratch a scientist and find a realist - but only about theories they aren't themselves working on.
I agree that we have no means of establishing beyond a reasonable doubt that a given theory provides an accurate (i.e., approximately true) description of an unobserved reality. That doesn't mean that truth isn't the goal of scientific inquiry. Some people think that if we have no way of determining when, if ever, we have attained (perhaps stumbled onto) truth, it cannot be the goal of science. But this ignores the role of aspirational goals. That's the role that I think truth plays in science.
John - I'd be interested to see how you cash out 'explanation' without reference to truth -- or do you follow van Frassen here and treat as "explanatory" whatever account satisfies questioners?
Does this mean that the role of truth in physics is the same as winning a Nobel, getting tenure, becoming rich and famous, laying the lab assistant...;)
"Does this mean that the role of truth in physics is the same as winning a Nobel, getting tenure, becoming rich and famous, laying the lab assistant...;)"
Yes, insofar as those goals are apirational. No, insofar as truth is an epistemic goal. (Try portraying winning a Nobel, getting tenure, becoming rich and famous, laying the lab assistant ... as epistemic endeavors, and see how far you get.) I don't deny that at least some scientists pursue science in the service of status, or security, or wealth, or just getting laid. But those goals don't explain a lot of what goes on science, the parts that seem intelligible when viewed as attempts to capture that elusive thing called truth.
Bob, no, I don't follow van Fraassen, but instead the view presented by Frederick Suppe, whose realist version of the semantic theory had a great influence on me. The notion is called "erotetic" accounts of explanation and work like this:
An explanation that satisfies is one that identifies, of some set of possible answers in the state space of the theory and dialogue of the time, a unique solution. Thus, if I explain, say, the relatedness of South American and Austronesian fauna in terms of there being a supercontinent Gondwana, I have narrowed down all the solutions to one. Just to the extent that I do this effectively, we say some phenomenon is explained. It's not so much that it satisfies questioners as that it resolves, in an empirically adequate manner, the questions that are live at a time.
Now if new data comes to light that undercuts the satisfactoriness of that solution, then we seek another. So long as none occur or happen to be arrived at, we have an impasse in a research program. If an explanation requires some entities to exist in order to be satisfactory (if, for example, we require tectonic plates) then on Suppe's version we are warranted in inferring the reality of those entities for our best theories/explanations. van Fraassen would say we are only required to use those entities as explanatory objects, not believe in them.
I tend to be a bit of a structural realist in that regard.
John, I'm with you entirely re your post. Well said!
Re your later comments, I don't see any less reason in principle to be a scientific realist than to be a realist about everyday matters, or about claims made by, say, historians. In fact, I don't see any particular point of discontinuity between science and these other things. Admittedly, the chains of inference may get longer and longer as we stray farther and farther from what can be directly observed, so there may come a point where we start to have less trust that the theoretical entities we're postulating have real existence. But that's surely the exception, and entertaining this possibility is different from being an instrumentalist in principle.
Even when the chains of inference are long, they can sometimes be so well supported by converging evidence from so many independent sources, and from modeling and observation at such a high level of precision, that we can be very confident that the entities, events, etc., are (or were) real. The nature of the converging evidence and the precision of the methodology may more than make up for our lack of having directly observed the phenomena in question.
Take the existence of dinosaurs. Nobody has actually seen a dinosaur (birds don't count; I mean things like tyrannosaurs, brachiosaurs, etc., etc.). All we've seen are fossilised bones and other traces (and even our claim that they are fossilised bones that we're observing is a bit of (well-supported) scientific theory).
But I see no more need to be an instrumentalist about dinosaurs than I do about, say, Napoleon. I think we can be just as confident that dinosaurs really did exist and became extinct 60-something million years ago (again, birds don't count) as we can be confident that Napoleon really did exist, really did lose the Battle of Waterloo, etc. In neither case should we treat them (dinosaurs, Napoleon) as just ways of correlating certain observations of fossilsed bones, or of various historical documents and so on ... or however a serious instrumentalist would want to describe them.
Instrumentalism might be appropriate sometimes when you're working at the cutting edge, but I don't see why we would be instrumentalists about scientific claims in general.
I also don't see why we should, in principle, be any more sceptical, or more inclined to reserve judgment, about the truth of well-corroborated scientific findings than about anything else that we come to believe, based on evidence that falls short of direct observation. Once again, there's no discontinuity between science and other means by which we obtain knowledge.
I need to take another look at Fred Suppe's work to refresh my memory. I know Fred; he's a very smart guy.
BTW, you stipulate that a solution which counts as explanatory must be unique. If the point is that settling on _an_ explanation necessarily excludes other distinguishable "potential" explanations, OK. Alternatively, is the uniqueness in question grounded in epistemic properties of the solution, or is a formal property of the erotetic context, or what?
I think people hear "operationalism" when someone says "instrumentalism". I clearly do not think that Napoleon didn't exist, but really all the access I have to him is via the instruments of historical inquiry and the same is true of any field of inquiry. Scientific realism and metaphysical realism aren't the same thing, either. One can be a Quinean or Canberra Plan realist (committed only to the provisional reality of the entities of scientific theories somehow bounded in a Ramsey sentence or logical description) without think that one thereby must be a metaphysical realist. Internal realism is enough for science to proceed.
But, as I noted, I think that a suitably tested and successful is probably real in its structural relations, if not the entities it posits. And I think that we think theories posit a lot more in the way of entities than they do...
Bob, the uniqueness is based on what options are in play, not all possible options (because sets of possible solutions are indefinitely large if not infinite, and we'd never access them all to eliminate them, or find the solution that we can use out of such a set). So it's competition between actual solutions that is occurring. Hence erotetic not epistemic.
That said, I think a partial explanation can encompass a region in the erotetic space. We can say of a solution that it is more exact, or better, than another because it reduces the volume of solutions.
John - I appreciate the difference between the actual and the potential, but I don't see how it gets you to uniqueness. Whatever the criteria might be for effecting a selection between actual competitor solutions, there's always the possibility that competition results in a draw.
But then, maybe I'm not understanding the contrast you see between erotetic and epistemic factors.
I used to say that science and religion started from the same place, but moved to separate domains. Now I have decided that they have the same domain but somewhat different ranges. Science and religion both start as the same thing: an attempt to understand and predict the world. Magic/science works from the view that the world is orderly, that it has laws (or is sufficiently law-like or natural or whatever). Religion works with the idea that there are powerful willful beings that make things happen. Engineer, so to speak, is science put to work to make things happen. Morality, at least originally, was religion put to work to make things happen. If we look at the Torah (and other places, but this is the most familiar to most of us and one of the earliest/largest written versions) we find that pleasing these **powerful beings** brings the rains, the crops, etc. Failure to please brings about disease and destruction. The point/meaning of Right and Wrong, and the results there of, were quite a bit different then than now. Religion has retreated from *both* sides of this: not simply understanding how the world works but in presenting what we should do. There is inherent overlap, but some religions have retreated faster/further/better than others.
Bradm: "Which brings us back to my main point, which has been ignored so far, that the mere rejection of science is not enough to label somebody insane or uninformed. Rather it is the reasons for the rejection that matter."
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John: "Bradm (#9): yes, if someone is informed about science and rejects it (entire - of course there are differences of opinion within science), they must be insane, or at least are taking an insane position not easily distinguishable from schizophrenia. I say this knowing there are those who do this in academe."
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No transference in psychology here, John.
Mental health in intellectual area demands balanced dynamism between conviction and doubtfulness. Conscience is the key, so freedom suffices the decision of rejection or acceptance. No more than this.
The peril exists both in science and religion when it is in dealing with a belief system.
Bradm: "J.J., I don't really want to get in an argument about incommensurablity here - that's been hashed out in many books before. Needless to say, I think Asimov is wrong (relatively speaking, of course). "
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We need to acknowledge the challenges of post modernity. I thought that will make us humble in the reflections of the area where the epistemologies of science and religion are updating. According to Bradley Onishi, our time of experiencing post-modernism has made the radical break from the thought patterns of enlightened modernity which our rationality of developing science is based.
Religion is not supposed and not necessary to replace the position of the challenge of post-modernism for science in terms of its epistemological development, nevertheless to empower it, just like the tradition-mediated rationality has done so far. (Science so far has been relied on Christian faith as the coherence to survive. Look, in Biology we even can not define our taxonomy properly, our samples size were to random and fragmented; nevertheless we have trusted the consistency and regularity of nature-that is biblical faith.) As a biological person, I can see a dramatic innovation in taxonomy in the near future, so does the chain reactions of the theories will happen in biological science. So, I maintain the critical realism towards science, so to speak.
Anyway, the philosophies of classical foundationalism and Cartesian certainty which have helped to build our scientific epistemology have to be coupling with non-foundationalism from religion. I foresee the recovery of metaphysics and theology in the interpretation of nature where science's dimension is crippled.
I would challenge the claim that the volume of solutions ever reaches one; that is uniqueness. I think it is one of the great myths of science that at any one time all, or at least the majority of scientist, working in a field of inquiry accept the same solution to a complex question i.e. Kuhn's paradigm or Lakatos' research programme (sorry about the p word its unavoidable here!!). My own historical work has led/is leading me to the conclusion that at any one time in the evolution of a discipline the scientists working within that discipline share a group of theories as potential answers to the questions posed within that discipline but that each individual within the group actually hold a different subset of those theories as correct/valid/true (choose the appropriate word for your own metaphysical standpoint). Important here is the fact that answers to scientific questions are almost never single theories but almost always, often quite large, conglomerates of interlocking and interdependent theories. At any given time in the evolution of a particular discipline those scientist working within that discipline will hold a number of those theories in common but will disagree on varying subsets of the other theories leading to the situation that the sum of theories held to be valid by each individual scientist will be unique to that individual. Using Lakatos' model of the scientific research programme I am saying that there is a common core of theories held to be valid but that the auxiliary belt of theories associated with that core is different for each researcher within the field. There can of course be subsets of researches who share similar or even identical auxiliary belts but they are the exception rather than the rule and it is almost never the case that the majority of researchers in a field all share the same core and auxiliary belt.
As should be obvious to anybody brave enough to have ploughed their way through that which I have just written that I am struggling to express something about which I myself am not very clear. I would be grateful if Bob, John or anybody else who might have read it could say whether it makes any sense at all or if it is just the insane babbling of a deranged historian?
Thony C - I think you've provided a reasonably clear description of at least one source of variability in the theoretical commitments of scientists sharing a domain of inquiry. But I suspect John was thinking in terms of an individual scientist employing criteria to settle on a unique solution/explanation -- not a group all converging on a single solution (though that could happen, too).
I think your Lakatosian sense of the combinatorial possibilities open to those working in a particular research programme is on the money.
John, do you think that anything is true or absolute?
I guess if you say "no", then you would be making an absolute statement. And you would be saying that it's true that nothing is true or absolute.
I guess you would need a slick caveat. Nothing is true or absolute except the absolute truth that nothing is true or absolute.
Perhaps I am, indeed, getting operationalism and instrumentalism confused, so I could do with a primer of what the difference really is.
Think back to the classic Galileo affair, during which Galileo was told by the Church that he could teach the heliocentric picture as a useful way of organising observations and thinking about the universe. What he was not permitted to do was teach that the heliocentric picture was a representation of the reality. Similarly, one could talk about "dinosaurs" as a way of organising the various traces and thinking about them, without thinking it to be really true that large reptiles (or quasi-reptiles) really did exist during what we call the Mesozoic Era, ending 60 or 70 million years ago.
I was taught (or at least understood) that this was the distinction between instrumentalism and scientific realism. I appreciate that there are shades of realism not only about science but about other things, but I'm now confused about instrumentalism and eager to learn. If what I am describing is not instrumentalism but operationalism, what is instrumentalism?
Jim Goetz:
Hi, dear friend. The meaning of our life is to live and to show out the glory of God. Very often, we would like to learn to know the answer and end up with more questions. So, to live with our questions is an important part of faith. (I Corinthians 13:9-12)"For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when perfect comes, the imperfect disappears. ....Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known."
The meaning of life is more likely something to do with having as much sex as we can with as many attractive people as are willing ... but that's not the issue under discussion.
Bob, you correctly identify the dialectic here - a solution offered is from one scientist (or one collective, such as a research group/paper, school of thought, etc.), and the nature of the Lakatosian process is that someone may (and often will) offer an alternative explanation. You and Thony both are correct. Of course we all hope that we will converge on a single explanation, and in physics we seem to more than in other sciences.
Jim, absolutely not.
Russell: this is a good discussion of the issues. I get my instrumentalism from Peirce. Operationalism was the view held by Bridgman.
For my money instrumentalism does not require disbelief in the objects or processes posited by a scientific theory, either; it just doesn't mean that in virtue of being posited by a theory we must believe in it. And as a practical note, scientists use theories and the ancillary operations of theories (such as protocols) without much concern for the reality or otherwise of the things they imply exist.
John, the "this" link doesn't seem to work.
Try now.
paiwan - this is not a place to evangelise. Please do not do that. There are plenty of places where you can do that, but not here.
I think that I got it down. It's an absolute truth that nothing is absolute or true. And now that I understand this, I can live a rational life.
Thanks. Working now.
John: Is your topic the epistemologies of religion? Don't stay in a corner and accuse me misunderstanding your language.
Russell: What makes you proud of your rudeness, your expertise or ignorance?
Good call Paiwan. I've always thought Russell was rude. ;P
Stay in your staunch independence, Brian. :-)
paiwan wrote:
The creationist Henry Morris calculated that the population of the world at the time of the Noachic Flood could have been many billions. More conservative estimates place it in the tens of millions.
Either way, we are asked to believe that they were all so irredeemably wicked that even an all-powerful God had no choice but to wipe them all out - bar eight and a floating menagerie.
Even if we accept this unlikely proposition, a sizeable part of that population must have been children too young to have become so wicked that they deserved to die. I leave it to you to estimate how many that might have been and ask instead what glory is there in a god who commits genocide; why worship one that murdered so many innocent children, even if he exists?
Ian:
Since the topic that John gave is epistemology, therefore let me make clear my points posted so far in this thread.
1. The epistemology of science so far has been developed based on the rationality after the Enlightenment, unfortunately now we have seen this kind of rationality too narrow; it has been challenged by post modernity, not mention the area from religion.
Some people use the analog of a web to depict the rationality. Science perhaps contributes as the straight threads, and the web is fragile. In between the threads, if you weave the interconnected threads, then the web becomes stronger. These interconnected threads are recognizing the areas which are not used to be in science's epistemology, for instance non-foundational, or tradition-mediated rationality. In fact, this is not new. You can read Roy Bhaskar's "critical realism". Some people called it chastened rationality.
2. "Either way, we are asked to believe that they were all so irredeemably wicked that even an all-powerful God had no choice but to wipe them all out - bar eight and a floating menagerie."
This point that you posted was a misunderstanding of the scripture, if you have the basic knowledge of doctrine criticism of the scripture, you will find that this kind of viewpoint is nothing there in a correct interpretation of the scripture.
3. I sincerely hope that this thread is a good chance to clear the un-necessary misunderstanding of these two epistemologies, and therefore to move on deeper levels of dialogues; for instance, the interpretation of deconstruction of nature, stratification of reality. As the analog goes, the web of rationality becomes powerful by these further efforts.
As Albert Einstein's comment on narrow rationality of science by the analog of the music; it is absurd if you think that the performance of a piece of symphony is just the various waves of sound. This is the point.
To exclude the epistemology of religion, I am afraid that it will fall into a warning of a theologian, " We have rejected that we did not really understand, and accepted that we increasingly came to realize was an imaginatively impoverished and emotionally deficient substitute."
Paiwan: You may discuss the epistemology of religion in the thread. You may not evangelise or engage in theology or apologetics here. This is my blog, not yours, and I say what goes.
There's a distinction of philosophy you might find useful: Use-Mention. You may mention the epistemology of religion here, for that is what we are discussing. You may not use it. Use it somewhere else more appropriate.
I am deeply unimpressed by "post modernity". I don't know what it is post to, but I am pre-post modernity (a view someone called "preposterist"). Bhaskar, and other post modern accounts of science leave me cold. They do not engage in the interesting aspects of science and often are merely apologies for antirationalism.* Religions often employ this approach because it gives the semblance of equality with science for their religious doctrines or prejudices. But they aren't equal, as I argued in the post.
As to Einstein's view - a bit more reading of the great man's views might challenge your easy use of him. In any case, he's no more an authority on epistemology than any politician is on political history, or a car driver on the development and engineering of cars.
And a final point - I did not exclude an epistemology of religion. In fact I recognise it. I'm merely saying that it carries no weight whatsoever outside the religion itself, whereas the epistemology of science, fallibilistic though it may be, carries outstanding weight for everyone. Don't give me that "It's all the fault of the Enlightenment" crap - the Enlightenment hasn't been the foundation for science since the eighteenth century. Philosophy is influenced greatly by the Enlightenment - science is influenced mostly by data and success (albeit sometimes success in getting grants and teaching positions).
* Exceptions include Stephen Toulmin's book Cosmopolis, and some of the less-extreme sociology of science, if you can call it "post-modern".
Yeah, Brian - I'm famous for it (though, psssst, I thought the comment concerned made a claim at least as plausible as the one that it responded to). ;)
This thread is also confirming one of my favourite theses: the affinity between post-modernist epistemic relativism (and similar views) and theological reasoning.
"For my money instrumentalism does not require disbelief in the objects or processes posited by a scientific theory, either; it just doesn't mean that in virtue of being posited by a theory we must believe in it."
That's pretty similar to Duhem's view, isn't it?
I think as far as explaining natural phenomena is concerned, it is simply out of political correctness that one would assert that both science and religion are merely different approaches to reality. When you consider the breadth of religious ideologies, it does appear to be an "anything-goes" epistemology. It is irrational to give both science and religion an equal footing in terms of their explanatory power for natural phenomena.
He's talking about the method -- about science itself --, not about any particular hypothesis. You are of course right that all hypotheses are preliminary. The scientific method isn't.
What does retroduction mean?
How, please, are genes "unobservable"? I can literally hand you a gene on a plate, and given a tunnel microscope or the like, I can even show it to your eyes.
But that's not the important point. The important point is that scientific hypotheses are falsifiable. As long as you can answer the question "if I were wrong, how would I know?", you are doing science. As soon as you stop being able to do that, you are not doing science anymore.
Such as?
It certainly doesn't make lots of people lose religion altogether, but more YECs enter the universities each year than leave them.
(It goes without saying that there simply are no creationists in Germany, Jehovah's Witnesses and a few other tiny sects excepted. People there already believe in a god that is so ineffable he's completely untestable.)
You can't. If it is wrong, however, you can find that out. (By definition. If you can't, it's not scientific.)
To whom? To God, who already knows his glory better than we ever could? To each other -- then what for do we exist?
Postmodernism has not attacked science, it has attacked a strawman. You see, it is not even possible to disprove solipsism. What if reality does not exist except inside my mind?
Perhaps surprisingly, this does not matter for science. Science only requires that reality be reasonably consistent, not that it be truth. You can of course argue that, if reality does not truly exist, science is rather pointless -- but even then it still works.
The difference between religion and science is simpler than that. It's very straightforward: religion assumes that there are 'supernatural' things, and science doesn't. Supernatural things are those that are fundamentally incomprehensible to humans. They are 'unknowable', they can't ever be understood.
Think about the difference between the notion of the 'powerful alien' (a staple of science fiction) and the notion of a 'god' in a religion. What's the essential difference between them? In the stories, they both do amazing, astonishing things. But a powerful alien is (ultimately, eventually) comprehensible - often in the story humans are able to figure out some way of duplicating its powers, or interfering with them, etc. Gods, though, are beyond what humans can do, and there's no point in trying to figure out why or how they do what they do.
Roger Zelazny put it best, I think: "The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable."
This is a really great post. As brilliant as Stephen Jay Gould was, I don't buy the non-overlapping magisteria argument. Science deals with essentially any claims about the reality in the universe, so any institution that makes claims about reality is overlapping into science.
If your religion says a virgin gave birth to the son of a deity. Then some biologist will say, well we've never actually encountered a mammal capable of asexual reproduction.
If your religion says that satan brought your savior up to a high mountain where he could see every kingdom of the earth, then a scientist will say the Earth is round, so that really isn't possible.
Science needs testable hypotheses, but religion needs faith in authority in order to survive. They overlap quite a bit and religion always seems to be on the losing end.
I feel like there is a distinction between religion and mythology that is being glossed over here. Typically, religions have their mythologies (Judaism has the stories of Adam and Eve and Moses, Christianity has the stories of Jesus' miraculous birth and resurrection), but I think that it may be a mistake to identify a religion with its mythology, for two reasons:
(1) As just a "theory" about the universe, a mythology doesn't imply any particular behavior on the part of believers. Maybe I believe that lightning bolts are weapons wielded by Zeus, but that doesn't mean that I have to worship him. Yes, I want to avoid being fried by Zeus, but there are lots of different strategies. I could just keep my head down and hope not to be noticed. I could try to trick Zeus into doing what I want. I could try to find a benefactor (Hera, maybe) who would protect me from the wrath of Zeus. Believing in the existence of Zeus does not imply belonging to the religion of Zeus-worship.
(2) Many people are members of religious groups who don't take the mythology any more seriously than an atheist would.
A religion involves a particular set of practices, a certain set of attitudes towards life, the world, others, etc. It's celebrating certain holidays, singing certain songs, performing certain rituals in honor of birth, a death, a marriage, becoming an adult. It's engaging in certain kinds of activities such as feeding the poor and taking care of the homeless (and to be fair to the anti-religious, there's always persecution of witches, gays, those of other religions). This is above and beyond any particular mythology about the way the world works.
It's hard to know whether these two aspects of religion are necessarily connected. Many Unitarian churches in the United States have come pretty close to severing the connection completely. For example, Congressman Pete Stark has declared himself to be both an atheist and a Unitarian.
Anyway, when it comes to a conflict between religion and science, the conflict is really between the mythology and science. Can religion survive without its mythology? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not.
David MarjanoviÄ wrote:
It goes without saying that there simply are no creationists in Germany,...
I'm afraid to say that this statement is simply not true David. The creationists and IDiots are still a very small minority in comparison to America but they do exist here and they are definitely increasing in number and in the strength of their public appearances. Last year my local newspaper had a lively debate in its letter's column on the subject of evolution contra intelligent design and I was shocked by the number of very vocal supporters of ID who took part, as I too had, up till then, assumed that they were not present here in Germany.
> PZ Myers is as stubborn and narrow-minded as a Christian
> fundie and equally deaf to arguments if you find the
> right theme.
> Such as?
...his embarrassing appearance in the ridiculous Bad Astronomy / Climate Audit voting contest. While calling CA a "denialist blog" and its readers "forces of stupidity" and some more severe insults he also said that he won't even take a short look at the criticized website.
How does he judge a content by *not* looking at it ? Precognition ? Unlikely. So he bases his judgement fully on hearsay what other people told him about it ? Is that rational ? Like a christian fundie avoiding the icky-wicky Dawkins without ever meeting him or reading his books ?
Denialism by my definition: telling people lies, spreading misinformation and never change position in spite of contrary evidence.
In short, I did visit Tim Lamberts Deltoid which featured an attack on Steve McIntyre based on a link from another scientist. Unfortunately the site on the link striked through the accusations.
So I asked Tim and the visitors frankly what verifiable errors Steve are making. They weren't able to point out any. Worse, after visiting RealClimate and CA I found that Steve found two errors which were corrected. Steve may be very critical, but he does it scientifically sound and on a high level. Many, if not most of his readers, are denialists, but he hasn't an influence which people are reading his blog or endorsing his views (My views aren't John Wilkins views). Sure, he puts IMHO too much stress on MBH98 and he isn't able to explain the worrisome temperature anomaly in the North, but he himself is
not a denialist.
Sure, PZ may ignore CA or say that Pharyngula isn't the right place to discuss it, but if he is doing disparaging remarks without backing it up he is relying on "faith" which he ludicrously despises.
Peshkin is obviously a Popperite. It's bizarre and saddening to see so many theorists who are attracted to Popper's ridiculous philosophy. Worse yet they conflate it with science itself. Likewise, you constantly conflate science with your instrumentalism/pragmatism, when the standard interpretation of science would be the naive interpretation (i.e., science makes truth claims as every scientist believes; as, in fact, anyone engaged in any practical work believes) rather than the "minimum needed for science to proceed." Claiming further that scientists fail to see your radically anti-realist interpretation of their work in their own work is beyond disingenuous.
Excellent post, John! I'm glad to see you're still arguing the same old things as back from my talk.origins days. I'm still doing it too, just mostly on blogs. Your second-to-last paragraph was so excellent that I'm totally quoting it in arguments versus creationists from now on. It's a feeling I've felt since the very beginning, but was never able to write out quite so articulately.
John, I really agree with your statement that "science is universal, while religion is rather local." I came from Asia. What I love about science is that it is something we can all accept, whether you are from the West or the East. That doesn't work with religions. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are foreign to me and Buddhism and Shintoism are foreign to my Western friends.
However, when I talk to philosopher-types, especially post-modernists, they seem to scorn any mention of universality as outdated. It is good that you don't agree with post-modernists. But they are still respected and influential, some backlash notwithstanding. How do you deal with them? How acceptable is it to claim something is universal among philosophers?
I'm afraid to say that this statement is simply not true David. The creationists and IDiots are still a very small minority in comparison to America but they do exist here and they are definitely increasing in number and in the strength of their public appearances.
Careful, you cannot compare this to the situation in America. I have sometimes the feeling that Americans may freely choose their religion, but are obliged sticking to it. In Germany you are much more individual; you can choose parts of several belief systems to build your own system.
The percentage of people with no confession is still one third of the population, so no fear, folks.
There are several key factors which gives ID an advantage:
- Literal interpretation of the Bible is still extremely
rare.
- The "wedge papers" are virtually unknown.
- Most christians and other religious people fully accept
evolution as developing tool for a God. The description
of an practically unattackable, spiritual God is dead
on. The continuing debate about the incompatibility of
religion and evolution sounds ridiculous for German ears.
- While evolution as a whole is accepted the implication
that only a materialistic, atheistic or skeptic worldview
is therefore acceptable is *not* shared.
- Ridiculing and insulting are felt repugnant by most
people.
While Dawkins "God illusion" is widely read, he repelled
people by using quips and allusions.
While ID proponents may be delighted by being heard in Germany, they would be horrified about the German adaption of it.
TSK I am afraid that I don't understand what you are trying to say vielleicht steh ich auf die Leitung Ich weis nicht but then again you might not be expressing yourself very clearly could you please elucidate?
Hmm....
You are concerned that ID proponents are existing in Germany and growing in numbers, right ?
What I tried to say is that there are different reasons and different responses so that the people who have the same description ("ID proponents") may be very different people and are rightfully perceived as such.
What thinks an average US citizen of a "communist" ? Pretty scary, hm ? Imagine the public reaction if the US government says that *millions* of communists are accepted as new US citizens...whoa.
But exactly that happened in Germany. After the reuni-fication we had millions of new communists; former members of the single existing party SED. But while most of them were disillusioned about the dark side of the former state many retained the idea that communism wasn't per se bad.
So "communist" as label has neither the identification nor the derogatory power it has in the US.
What I heard about America so far is that while everyone accepts your right to choose your belief system, atheism
will still make you a social outcast and you are suspected of immorality. The USA is currently more and more divided into two hostile factions, the left and the right. Choosing one position will therefore choose your peers and influence your positions strongly.
Being an American ID proponent means that you want include or leave at least the possibility that the belief on God will influence the science curriculum under hidden premises.
In Germany it is different. Yes, you still have very religious and even fundamentalistic groups, but they are extremely rare. You are christened as child, visit the religious instructions (or ethics nowadays), discuss over love, death, drugs etc., get your money presents at communion/confirmation and leave church if you want to get rid of the church tax. The bible, if read at all, is interpreted metaphorically. Churches have a stuffy and boring image. All in all, religion has a very low impact on your social identity.
A German ID proponent (if not belonging to a fundamentalist
subgroup) has mostly other goals: Allowing that a transcendental God guides the evolution and protesting against an allegedly purposeless universe. He don't judge atheists as immoral. He is far less antiscientific and religious than his American counterpart.
Ok ?
I've not perused the comments with much effort, but I gotta say, I loved that post. Arguably one of the best things I've read on the internet recently :D
Paiwan completely misses the point of John's post about global vs local - which god does he want us all to glorify?
He also buys into the dualism of the west or it is polyism? where you can categorize your life into religion, science, work, home, etc. The worst thing that religions ever did was to give up oral tradition and write beliefs on paper - science changes - religion stagnates. In the world of indigenous cultures, religion and science are intertwined in TEK (traditional ecological or environmental knowledge) science and religion are in a negative feedback loop needed to sustain the culture. The west has decoupled the two with disastrous results.
Maybe they mean "ANY religion doesn't conflict", especially if religion deals with supernatural entities which by definition science doesn't deal with. When physicists speak of religion, they usually mean pantheism or pseudo-religious deism, which sees God(s) as an impersoanl creative agency that underpins the reality amenable to science...
Well, of course the Universe is ancient and enormous. It takes billions of years of nucleosynthesis etc to evolve the heavy elements that make life and life-supporting planet(s)...
Since the Universe expands during this evolution, it should also be enormous by the time that observers have evolved in it. Just as observers aren't surprised to have evolved in hostile environments, observers shouldn't be surprised to observe cold, dark, old universe(s), instead of universes which opposite attriutes...
John Wilkins writes:
I'm not an expert on the philosophy of science, but those two statements both seem wrong to me. First, I don't know of an example of an observation that is not to some extent theory-laden (unless it's "I exist" or "Something happened", which doesn't help much by itself). Second, I can't believe that the claim that all observations are theory-laden was due to the logical positivists. To the contrary, it would seem to make the goals of the logical positivists impossible. The positivists wanted to base science on verifiable, objective observations. The claim that all observations are theory laden makes this an impossible goal.
Rather than being something introduced by logical positivists, the idea that observations are theory-laden was a criticism against the logical positivists.To quote from this article
To say, as this writer does, that religion and science are equally "valid" goes a bit too far in my opinion, but how exactly does the fact that science and religion are, in fact, conflicting, refute the contention that the conflict may be unnecessary?
I think it is you who is simply wrong. Sane and informed people do, in fact, reject science. They're just wrong.
What does "works" mean, by the way?
Your chestbeating about how science "must" be accepted seems to me to reflect an awfully sanguine and unrealistic view of human nature and history. If science is so all powerful and people are so compliant to its aurthority, what the hell is everybody talking about at scienceblogs all the time? Isn't about half of what is written here about people who choose NOT to recognize the authority of science in some selected area?
No religion is universally accepted, but plenty of religions claim to be universally true nonetheless. You can't advance lack of acceptance as proof of non-universality.
But what does the writer mean when he says that religion is valid? I don't think he means what you take him to mean. Suppose he means something like, "The religious approach to life and coping with life as a human being is valid. Science truth claims about the world are also valid?"
TSK: "Ok ?"
--------------
Interesting and excellent.
I am particularly interested in understanding the different responses between America and Germany about ID proponents (belief partially or completely).
Interesting points:
"There are several key factors which gives ID an advantage:
- Literal interpretation of the Bible is still extremely
rare.
- The "wedge papers" are virtually unknown.
- Most christians and other religious people fully accept
evolution as developing tool for a God. The description
of an practically unattackable, spiritual God is dead
on. The continuing debate about the incompatibility of
religion and evolution sounds ridiculous for German ears.
- While evolution as a whole is accepted the implication
that only a materialistic, atheistic or skeptic worldview
is therefore acceptable is *not* shared.
- Ridiculing and insulting are felt repugnant by most
people."
And
"The bible, if read at all, is interpreted metaphorically."
To me, perhaps German response has more depth due to long standing Protestant tradition? Do Germany have the concern of 'State and Church Separation' or related issue like in the United States? And why?
Michaelf says: "Paiwan completely misses the point of John's post about global vs local - which god does he want us all to glorify?"
You use "completely" this term, does it sound too exaggerated?
Paiwan - does only one god exist or do we each glorify which ever one comes to mind?
On another note, might some ethical similarities exist universally among cultures - things like "love your neighbor" that have different explanatory narratives? I don't have enough background in comparative religions to make any conclusions.
It also seems that many of these "ethical advisories" were ultimately based in science. The laws in the Old Testament may appear arbitrary, but were likely made in light of the ecological community in which they appeared - things like eating certain foods or letting fields go fallow. The context has likely been lost.
Daryl: You are right - I misspoke. Of course the Logical Positivists wanted Protokolsätze, although the Logical Empiricists of the 1960s and after seemed to accept the doctrine of theory dependence of observation. Popper popularised it, and Kuhn, Feyerabend and others accepted it as well.
My view that non-theoretic observation is possible is taken from Ian Hacking's "New Experimentalism". It works something like this - I do not need theory to see as I am growing up; there is something like a naive form of observation. If true (and however unrefined) then I can by induction develop a sophisticated form of observation. You hand me a telescope - I can see things clearly in the distance that I saw just ten minutes ago when I was over there. So I trust the results of the telescope without a theory of optics, and so on. Now I see something I can't go to (craters on the moon). Do I trust that? Yes I do, because I found telescopes to be reliable and so on.
To say that not all observation is theory dependent is not to say that all of it is theory-free; just that some observations are not based on a theory. There's another sense too, one we might call a Duhemian sense - I can use a theory that is not under test to make observations germane to the theory being tested. Consider the use of night goggles to observe bat behaviour. I am not testing the theory of light, and the technologies involved in night vision - I am observing what bats do at night. So any results of that observation are independent of the theory of optics and electronics, etc.
That is what I meant.
Mr Wilkins Wrote:
If true (and however unrefined) then I can by induction develop a sophisticated form of observation. You hand me a telescope - I can see things clearly in the distance that I saw just ten minutes ago when I was over there. So I trust the results of the telescope without a theory of optics, and so on. Now I see something I can't go to (craters on the moon). Do I trust that? Yes I do, because I found telescopes to be reliable and so on.
May I split some hairs? Your analysis of the case of the telescope is of course completely correct and in indeed the way that the early users of the telescope as an astronomical instrument reasoned but the claim that the process is theory free can be questioned in at least two different ways. Firstly, the inductive conclusion that the users draw in order to justify their extraterrestrial observations is in itself a theory. This theory says because all of my terrestrial observation showed me that my telescope only reproduces things that I know to be real and has done this in a series of carefully controlled tests I can assume that it will continue to do so when I use it for extraterrestrial observations. Secondly, and this is the point where the sceptics jumped in with both feet in the early days of telescopy, this theory is not testable therefore they demanded a theoretical explanation of how the telescope produces its images i.e. the theory of lens optics, which, historically, Kepler duly delivered.
Maybe this is getting too aetherial and off the topic, but in my opinion, there are theoretical biases going on even with completely mundane observations by infants. Of course, they haven't actually been taught any theory, but I think that a rudimentary theory of physical objects is innate (taught by evolution, if you like).
For example: the persistence of objects over time. I see a pattern of light. A fraction of a second later, I see a similar pattern in a slightly different location. What I naturally assume (and I think this is hard-wired into the brain) is that there is some object that has moved from one location to another. (As opposed to an object popping out of existence and a similar one popping into existence.) So we report our observation as "The object moved from point A to point B" even though we didn't literally see that. That's an interpretation of what we saw.
Of course, if we didn't have rudimentary theories of cause and effect, persistence of objects, built-in, it would take a long, long time to figure out what is going on in the world.
Though the original entry is far from clear it helps to clarify matters a little, so I suppose I will post there here, although down here where no one will ever read it.
The unexamined, even unspoken, assumption here is that religion is somehow meant to serve the same purpose as science, that is, to explain the nature of the physical world and sensible reality.
This is not at all the case. Religion was never meant to do that. Religion was meant to promote a cohesive unity in society that would bind together everyone in a given culture in something like the same way a family is bound together. This is sometimes somewhat imperfectly expressed by saying that religion provides meaning.
Religion was never meant to provide an explanation of the operation of the physical world, though it did, incidentally do that, in very early times, before the creation of philosophy in Classical Greece.
Once science was created in order to explain the world from entirely different premises than religion, religion easily abandoned any efforts to explain the physical world, since it had never been an important part of its operation anyway. You will notice that liberal Protestants and Catholics do not have any use for creationism.
That is, except for the tiny minority that constituted a fundamentalist reaction. They saw that religion was failing to provide its unifying function and falsely concluded that it was somehow the fault of science and modernity (which perhaps it is, but not in the simplistic way they imagined). They insisted therefore, that science had to be rejected, leaving religion with the responsibility of providing objective information about the world in the same way as science. This is the origin of creationism; or, rather, the perpetuation of creationism once it was abandoned as a scientific theory.
The internet skeptic community that opposes creationism has paradoxically take the bait of its claims hook, line, and sinker, and tends to accept fundamentalist definitions of religion. Thus, all too often skeptics think they are refuting religion when they attack creationism. They dont seem to realize that any form of religion other than Fundamentalism (which is sort of kitsch copy of religion) exists. For instance, Each religion is valid, insofar as it binds together its own community; only a fundamentalist would worry about the names of gods (or even structural differences in individual religions) being different between communities presenting a logical inconsistency. This is what Gandhi meant when he said I am a Hindu, and a Muslim, and a Christian. Say that the epistemologies of revelation and tradition barely work only shows that the author does not understand the social role of those structures; indeed he sees them as competing with the epistemology of science which they do not do except for the fundamentalist and, as it seems, all too often, the skeptic. The one word that describes modern culture is alienation, The one word that describes ancient or medieval society is , well, religious, in the sense of being bound together and integrated (the word means tied together in Latin). The Romantics had a utopian dream of integrating tradition and the Enlightenment. The fundamentalists simply deny the Enlightenment. In order to have the tradition and the Enlightenment together at all today requires an existential act of cognitive dissonance. It seems that creates even more alienation rather than lessening it.
Helena,
I think you're dead-on about religion. That was my point in distinguishing religion from mythology. Even though religions typically have their associated mythology (creation stories, theories about the afterlife, miracle stories, etc.) the mythology is not all there is to the religion.
But the question comes up, though, as to whether the mythology is necessary for the religion. Can a religion get rid of all of its mythological elements and still survive? There are religious communities that have very little in the way of mythology (Unitarians, for example), but so far they are in the extreme minority among all religious adherents. Is it possible for mythology-free religion to become the mainstream, the majority?
(Eliminating mythology doesn't mean that the mythological elements can't continue to exist as metaphors, as parables, as fables, etc. It just means that they can't continue to be viewed as literal truth.)
In general I would religion can't be demythologized and survived, but myth must be understood in some other way than literal facts are.
Of course, if I had definitive answers to these questions, I'd be Pope.
De-mythology has to work hand in hand with re-interpretation under the real situation; a kind of task of being accountable for existential reality by dialect process. Therefore, a living religion is much localized; meanwhile the existential dialect maintains the context of universality. So, it is paradoxical; localized and universal.
For instance, the latest Monks in Burma who have stood by the oppressed people against the unjust junta, this struggle has been very local. Nevertheless, their witness and sacrifice have fulfilled the universal unity against the injustice. Obviously, Burmese monks have demonstrated a living religion here and now. Religion without localized dialect doesn't bring the embodiment of its sacrament, therefore is not living-they are not answering the meaning of life and death.
The posts by Helena and Paiwan match my somewhat scattered thinking. I am an ecologist/evolutionary biologist by training and see the feedback between religion and science in indigenous cultures as contributing greatly to their sustainability. The globalization of religions remove them from their local ecosystem context and remove much of their meaining.
Thony and Daryl - that is a sense of "theory" that is a million miles away from the scientific sense. Yes I know that the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian view was that things in the superlunary sphere were celestial and hence by definition incorruptible, but Kepler (Tycho?) saw the comet that contradicted that sense of theory, and so I think the argument fails to undercut the Hacking approach. And the mere fact that children naturally assume an essence to animate objects in no way means they have a "theory" of those objects, just an inborn disposition due to millions of years of selection for cognitive capacities.
Helena, I do agree with you about the function of religion. But if they have no epistemology as such they cannot make knowledge claims and hence there is no conflict between them and science. Of course most religions make knowledge claims. Religion wasn't "meant" to do or be anything - it survived because it did things that were on the whole adaptive for its believers. One of the things it does is tie communities together by telling narratives that are knowledge claims. So I think that they have an epistemology.
Yes, religions often "encode" information about the environment: the classic case is the rituals of Buddhist Bali that determined what happened (presumably through a process of cultural adaptation) to be the optimal planting seasons. This is not, however, their main function or reason for being.
John,
The point is that every observation (or nearly every observation, anyway) depends on assumptions about the way the world works, whether those assumptions have been codified into a well-defined scientific theory, or not.
If you are objecting to the phrase "theory-laden" because people are not always *consciously* interpreting their observations relative to a theory, well, yes, I would agree with that, and I think so would the people who first claimed that observations are theory-laden.
Hi paiwan,
as the difference is not the main theme of this thread, I try to keep short and I hope John forgives me for this interruption.
- The main religions in Germany are (each approximately one third) Roman Catholic (South), Protestants (North & West) and Confessionless (East).
- Many europeans left Europe because they felt that their
religion was suppressed which may explain that the USA
insisted on strict separation of church and state to
disallow discrimination on religious grounds. In Europe
the church lost all its political and propagandistic
power. Toothless, the church agreed with the state
to a "concordance" model, that means:
- Any religion which is a corporate body according to civil
law may charge its members a "church tax" which is
collected by the state. If you don't want to pay, you
go to the local court and resign your membership.
- Christian organisations are still heavily responsible for
caritative tasks. Many conscientious objectors are
serving their alternative service in religious
organisations (Caritas, Diakonisches Werk).
- There are christian instructions in school. Christian
schools may require attendance, all other state schools
are obliged to alternative branches if a pupil rejects
instruction.
Curiously and perhaps paradoxically it raises less
conflicts. As it may not contradict the stuff in other
lessons the obvious problems like creation are treated
mythologically. The bible stuff is "light"; the passages
which may arouse parents are either softened or left out,
it concentrates on the New Testament. Older pupils are
discussing live themes like love, drugs, conscience and
death.
But even that crumbles; several federal states have
already introduced neutral ethics lessons.
- There are still controversial themes. Bavaria had a law
that required a crucifix in *any* school room. The
supreme court decided that the law is illicit. A female
muslim was rejected because she insisted on her
headscarf and the supreme court conceded: *Either* any
religious clothing is allowed or any clothing is
prohibited.
The court ruled 2002 that the shechita must be allowed if
the religion explicitly demands bloodless meat (Jews and
Muslims) - this in contrary to animal protection laws
which normally forbids this kind of slaughtering.
Anyway, as all nations we have our personal quirks which may amuse other nations.
I followed the link, but given the length, I need to decide whether it's worth reading or not.
Which Plantinga wrote this? Impenetrable-prose Plantinga, or "OMG he can't possibly believe anything this stupid" Plantinga?
Or is there a third Plantinga, one capable of writing something worth reading?
TSK: Thanks for your explanations of the situation of state and church separation in Germany. Yes, it is not directly relating to the epistemological reasoning of religion and science. However, for religion itself the outcome has been the result of the collective reasoning of a society; and I am not so sure if there is a standard epistemology of religion which could be applicable to any countries. Therefore, I continue to probe in this area. Sorry for the disruptive post.
My curiosity of Germany in comparing to the United States as per your #69 post's: the different responses towards ID and the interpretation, and else is the pros and cons of religious influences on the society at large.
I remembered that Pope John Paul II had ever pinpointed the peril of defective democracy system without religion by naming Nazi's case.
But it seems that in the United States the situation has been different, the atheism movement has been accelerated by the debates in politics and science education and plagued with polarity. And I just wonder if this is conducive to a society on long term development by any plausible historical reflection, especially by referring to a country like Germany which has long standing tradition in Secularization and Enlightenment.