Verse one of Chapter 11 of the Letter of Paul to the Hebrews reads (in the King James translation of the Bible): "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I mention this not because it is Sunday, or because I intend to offer a sermon, but because when I hear the word "faith," the definition that comes into my mind first is "the evidence of things not seen." By that definition, I have a very hard time thinking of science as requiring faith. If anything, "science" is the exact opposite of "faith". The body of knowledge that we call "science" consists of the things we know about the universe we live in based on the evidence of things that are seen.
In an op-ed in yesterday's New York Times, Paul Davies presents a view that's a bit different from mine. He thinks that not only is science not the opposite of faith, but that faith is necessary in order to do science:
The problem with this neat separation into "non-overlapping magisteria," as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.
The problem with this neat little argument is that science does not proceed on the assumption that nature is ordered. Science simply does not make that assumption. What science does is to ask the question, "is nature organized in a rational way." Science asks that question - tests that hypothesis - every time someone conducts an experiment. So far, the answer has always been yes. But we don't know that the answer will be "yes" the next time it's asked any more than we know that the sun will come up tomorrow morning.
Of course, we do know that the sun will come up tomorrow. If we didn't, most of us wouldn't bother setting our alarm clocks. We also know (at least in the absence of certain pharmaceuticals) that we're not going to learn how to fly in the period between jumping off the cliff and hitting the ground. We know that if there is a full moon today, there won't be one next week. We know that it's not going to snow when it's 85 degrees out. We know that George W. Bush is not going to wake up tomorrow and bring all the troops home.
We just can't prove any of it.
We believe those things to be true not because we have "faith" but because we have evidence and experience. We know what has happened before because we've seen it happen. We've seen that the same set of circumstances consistently produces the same set of results, and that leads us to become confident that the same set of circumstances will continue to produce the same set of results in the future. That's not faith. That's just inductive reasoning.
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The only problem is that inductive reasoning is not sound. There really is no way to say that the sun will rise tomorrow with absolute certainty. Call it what you will, but there is a quality to that which is similar to religious belief. Of course, the religious frequently over emphasize this to the point of saying that science is a religion, when there is an obvious qualitative difference. Certainly, religious faith is often based on hopes and wishes, when science is mostly driven by an attempt to understand nature.
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Certainly, religious faith is often based on hopes and wishes, when science is mostly driven by an attempt to understand nature.
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For some people, religion is an attempt to understand some things as well. Not "nature", no.
"The only problem is that inductive reasoning is not sound."
Depends what you mean by sound. It's not provable and it's not sound in a strict logical sense, but it works very, very well. That's precisely why science isn't like faith. Science doesn't say: "This is true, always has been and always will be". It says: "This is an explanation that works. It works better than any other explanation we have at this time".
If you want to go around saying that science's dependence on inductive reasoning is of the same quality as religious faith, then you might as well say that all human reason is the same as faith, because all human reason is based on unprovable axioms. You're welcome to do thjat if you want, but most people with faith seem to think it's of a different character to ordinary human reason.
I think the author of the op-ed was trying to say (but not very well) is that science is rested in a few assumptions.
These assumptions include that empiricism and materialism/physicalism exist.
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This is an explanation that works.
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Works for what?
I don't want to take away from an otherwise fine post, but I want to point out something to you and perhaps any of your readers who don't keep up with biblical and theological studies. For most of Christian history, St. Paul, aka the Apostle Paul, was believed to have been the author of the epistle to the Hebrews. More recent biblical scholars (in the past several decades) dispute his authorship of this epistle. They don't agree about who wrote it, but many of them believe that Paul probably was not the author of that book.
I think the author of the op-ed was trying to say (but not very well) is that science is rested in a few assumptions.
Me too. He probably chose the word "faith" to stir up trouble.
Religion has its inductive moments too, you know. Pray for rain and the rain comes... Sacrifice goats and the crops grow... Talk to imaginary voices and they talk back...
Believing that past track record will repeat may also be called faith
I hate it when Science and Religion get trotted out as functional abstractions. Somehow the humanity, in both its potential and limitations, of these arenas of thought gets lost so quickly.
I had the same problem with Davies that you did.
Historians point out that modern science rose from a Christian set of assumptions. Things like creation is logical and reasonable because it is the product of a reasonable and logical God. Early scientists did have to go counter to the Church in not believing it was impious to study God's creation because our intellect was inadequate compared to God's. But early science started on assumptions.
But then a funny thing happened, people began to recognize that you could test the assumptions. Each time something new was recognized to be regular and orderly, the assumption became less and less of an assumption. It was tested. Today we make probabilistic statements about our results because the logic is inductive. But every time we fail to disprove our hypotheses, we have one more tested result. Modern science is based on tested propositions.
Even silly people like Davies plan their lives based on inductively tested propositions like the sun is very likely to rise tomorrow.
However, it you really want to make room in a scientific society based on methodological naturalism, you have to define science in a way that makes science seem less than it is. Davies will make the theists feel good but I think he is preaching to the chior and the uninformed.
Ginger Yellow wrote, '[Science] says: "This is an explanation that works. It works better than any other explanation we have at this time".' That's exactly where the 'faith' element of science comes in. What science can really say is, "it appears that an explanation has worked best thus far."
The question is, if science must rely on a weak foundation, what makes it different from a set of beliefs I just made up (ie. religion)? We can't rely on after the fact knowledge, as we are interested in applying science for predicting the future. Obviously I can make up anything, so that certainly is a flawed method of 'knowing'. But how do we avoid sinking into some solipsistic po-mo fantasy?
Maybe the answer is in thinking of science as a behaviour? Maybe we just 'do' science, not too concerned with it's philosophy, and it appears to serve us well, like the ability to build hives serves ants. Of course it's all too easy to draw parallels from that to religion.
Mike,
My only problem with the referenced op-ed is that Davies singled out scientists and the way that he defined the essential concept at the heart of his argument. Other than that, I have no issue with what was suggested about faith as being somewhat necessary for the process....
I think that the difficulty comes with "faith," which I perceive to be a far-more-loaded word for scientists than it is for garden-variety secular-progressives like myself. For me, faith is an essential concept - not necessarily faith in a higher power, but a sense of faith in the work of others - that the work that you're doing means that you've chosen the right shoulders to stand on, you know? That the order that you depend on, on a more universal level, is there to hold up your work. I don't know if that means that God has to be there in what you do, per se - instead, my take is that there's certainly a concept of God/a higher power in the foundation of what you do. What you do with that thought is up to you.
They say that it's easy to take for granted that the sun will come up every day. Well, one day it won't. Then what?
I'm rapidly finding out that defending Davies gets you censored by the theoretically and ideologically motivated crackpots who would call themselves scientists... e.g., Sean Carroll and PZ Meyer.
No island you goof. You call PZ and Carroll crackpots?
When have you been censored for your views? Defending Davies and calling PZ and Carroll crackpots just shows you to be a friend to crackpots not one who can easily discern them from others.
Both, Sean Carroll and PZ have censored me from commenting on this at all, or any further, and I have good reason to call PZ and Carroll crackpots, so if you want to know what they are, then ask, don't pre-judge, or you're just guilty of joining the crowd without knowing why.
Island:
I don't know what happened with you and Sean and PZ. I don't particularly care, either.
You are welcome to comment on Davies article here, whether you want to attack or defend him. I'm not particularly interested in hosting a discussion of the personality flaws of other bloggers. If you continue on that line, there's a fairly good chance you'll find yourself banned here, too.
Fair enough, and I'll admit that my statement didn't sit well with me, even as I hit the send button... ;) So I'll just refer people to this explanatory.
All that's required for there to be scientifically definable concepts that include purpose in nature is an inherent final cause in the energy of the universe.
This is not as big of a deal as people would make it out to be.
Whoops... my colorful link should have included this:
http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2007/11/questions_i_have_for_p…
Saying that the sun will probably rise tomorrow because it's always done so regularly in the past is working on a reasonable assumption.
Saying that the sun will NOT rise tomorrow because God told you the world is going to end - that's faith. Another word for that is 'delusion'.
Mike wrote: "We just can't prove any of it."
Have to disagree with you regarding most of the examples you gave. Sol "coming up" tomorrow (or more pedantically, appearing over the horizon as the Earth spins on its axis) depends not on naive faith in the repeatability of common experience, but on laws of gravitation, momentum, etc., distilled over centuries from experiences and observations. If Sol doesn't "come up," it won't be because those laws no longer obtain, but because of something unusual or even unforeseen that nevertheless obeys the laws of physics, e.g., collision of the Earth with another body, or exhaustion of the Sun's hydrogen reserves. While we haven't yet determined the ultimate "why" answers (or even if there are such answers), relativity and quantum mechanics, both proved to as fine an accuracy as experiment and observation are able to demonstrate, are certainly far beyond common "evidence and experience."
Let's not go even partway toward Davies' take on science as "just another belief system." Walk outdoors and drop a cannonball, it falls (barring nearby electromagnets or living on the International Space Station), regardless of your beliefs or neighborhood opinion polls.
There are indeed questions at the edges of current science, among them the "landscape" that has in particular seemed to make Davies and others go all wobbly-eyed about whether the scientific method has reached the limits of its utility. I see no reason to credit such thinking now, when it has proved to be spectacularly wrong before. (Was it Ernest Rutherford or someone else who said, just prior to Einstein's publication of special relativity, that everything that could be discovered by science had been?)
"The question is, if science must rely on a weak foundation, what makes it different from a set of beliefs I just made up (ie. religion)?"
Rather obviously, that (established) science is verified through experiment and observation. Now it's true that philosophically speaking just because some relation held in the past it won't in the future, but that's philosophy's problem, not ours.
"Obviously I can make up anything, so that certainly is a flawed method of 'knowing'. But how do we avoid sinking into some solipsistic po-mo fantasy?"
Well that's the thing. Pretty much all human reason is based on modus ponens, the idea that "if x implies y, and x is true, then y is true". Yet this cannot be proven outside formal symbolic logic(see Lewis Carroll's reworking of Zeno's paradox), which itself relies on arbitrary rules of symbol manipulation. So the only way to avoid slipping into solipsistic po-mo fantasy about quite literally everything is to take certain truths as self-evident. Obviously, we want to minimise the number and scope of such axioms to things that appear to have a very firm basis in reality.
Science may proceed based on order, whether observed to exist or simply believed in, but what happened to me is that when I encountered the concept of a higher kingdom of nature which I named girasas, all of my concepts of order became challenged by a being of a greater evolutionary caliber than the human.
The thought of having that kingdom of nature present and becoming more and more dominant to the human was similar to an idea of being "fallen". Because the kingdom is attempting to reside within the human form - at the outset - with the prospect of that kingdom developing its own structure out of the body I have used as a human body within an evolutionary time period of millions of years, I am bewildered into acting at times out of love and cooperation with this higher being. At times, I can predict that it will dominate me and cause me to act for it.
Why do I feel the pressure of millions of years? Because I want to ask the right questions today!!! I want to ask other people to see me as struggling to 1)compete with a higher kingdom for time to be active and the acquisition of greater knowledge, 2) to provide for a higher kingdom's life needs, 3) to prepare for situations I cannot possibly in any way shape or form predict will occur, and 4) to be in a position to request help when I need it.
I keep trying to communicate this idea to others, but they always want some expert communicator to replace me. They openly tell me to 1) go back to school, 2) become a good writer, 3) compete with them, etc.
I don't think they understand the problems I am having or wouldn't they try to help me?
I would like it very much if someone of high scientific ability said to me, "I have the girasas too. We're having a great day today, but yesterday we were acting a little off with each other. . . " and to describe their experiences.
I keep trying to tell people. I never set out to be Einstein or Darwin, but I think that with the material I have read - books upon books in both The Theosophical Society and The Saint Germain Foundation - I have actual material that could be presented to a public audience, that would set me apart from other human beings as a discoverer of important data and reports suggesting a little known law is at work in our world and human lives.
How can I look people in the eyes and tell them what I have become by stumbling upon an idea in my study?
It is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world.Because it is based on testable hypotheses.More likely,it will wake up and find that financing for scientific research will dry up because science offends the belief of religious fundamentals.
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mathewgrieg
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