November 19, 2004
FACTS? WHO NEEDS 'EM:
Who says science is about facts? They only get in the way of a good theory (Terence Kealey, 11/15/04, Times of London)
WHEN CHARLES MOORE was editing The Spectator he once asked me why, of his contributors, it was those trained in science who were the least honest. Most contributors respected truth but articles from people trained in science (medical doctors were the worst) would often provoke letters to complain of factual errors.Charles Moore had supposed that scientists would revere facts, but that supposition is a myth: scientists actually treat facts the way barristers treat hostile witnesses — with suspicion.
The mythmaker was Karl Popper. Popper was not a scientist but a political philosopher who proposed that science works by “falsifiability”: scientists discover facts; they create a theory to explain them; and the theory is accepted until it is falsified by the discovery of incompatible facts that then inspire a new theory. Popper needed “falsifiability” to attack his enemies, namely Marx and Freud (and by extension the fascist apologists). Those writers claimed to be scientists but they made statements that could not be falsified by empirical testing: Freud might assert that, in our minds, an ego mediates between an id and a superego, but because those entities are subconscious their existence cannot be tested. Popper said, therefore, that Freud’s assertion was not scientific and was thus invalid.
Yet it is a myth that working scientists always respect falsifiability.
No religion requires falsifiability. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 19, 2004 8:14 AM
You may need to make a distinction here. Faith in science to provide a better life may indeed be compared to a religion. Science itself is not a religion.
Posted by: Brandon at November 19, 2004 10:46 AMWhy not?
Posted by: oj at November 19, 2004 10:50 AMNo religion requires consistency, either.
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at November 19, 2004 10:57 AMScience does not require anyone to do anything (although it may strongly suggest that if you fail to do something, there will be penalties).
Religion requires all sorts of behaviors, many of them harmful.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 19, 2004 1:05 PMJudeo-Chriostianity requires moral behavior--science justifies amorality, all of it harmful.
Posted by: oj at November 19, 2004 1:10 PMI pulled these definitions of religion from dictionary.com:
1a. Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
1b. A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
2. The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
3. A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
4. A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
I will concede that science can be called a religion under definitions 2 and 4. Definiton 3 may apply to certain disciplines, but not all. However, the definition 1 does not apply to science which is based on natural, not supernatural powers.
Posted by: Brandon at November 19, 2004 1:44 PMBrandon:
Science has the core presumption of an orderly universe obeying invariant laws over vast regions of space and time. (The Godhead of Spinoza and Einstein) This is an a priori assumption, with no logical necessity. Add to this the remarkable fine-tuning of the fundamental constants, for which there is no theoretical basis and again, no logical necessity, and we find ourselves in a unique and unexplained situation. While this could simply be called 'natural' because it exists as such, it could equally well be called supernatural, because it is such an improbable state of affairs given all the logical possibilities.
As for the role of facts, from the commentary cited:
"Such argy-bargy is inevitable because scientists prize paradigms. Like Pontius Pilate asking what is truth, they know how disputable many facts really are; so the best scientists are poets, creating theories they seek to verify in the face of inconvenient observations."
It is routine to reject those (hopefully few) observations which do not, for some reason, fit a predicted relation and attribute them to some unexplained error. In the extreme, any contrary 'fact' can be rejected, for it is always possible to find some justification for doing so. I have heard rumors that 90%+ of radiological dates are rejected because they do not properly correspond to the accepted chronology of the geological strata they were taken from.
Brandon:
I'm with jd, but alternatively:
all I can do, is keep on tellin' you
I want you, I need you
But there ain't no way-ay I'm ever gonna lo-ove you
Now don't be sad
'Cause three out of four ai-ain't bad
Unique for sure.
Partially and tentatively explained by science, wholly explained by religion.
The :Christian explanations have been abandoned, even by Christians, over the centuries.
So you have to choose: 1) possibly close to right, or 2) certainly wrong.
What keeps humans from being completely boring is that more choose 2 than 1.
Harry;
To the contrary, the more we know the more even science comes to conform with Judeo-Christianity, from the Big Bang to the anthropic principle and so on.
Posted by: oj at November 19, 2004 5:25 PMBut as far as I can tell, it sure doesn't jibe with six-day-zap creation science.
Posted by: Ken at November 19, 2004 7:02 PMKen:
6-day creation may be true, and it would be a 'miracle', just like other miracles we read about. But I doubt if creation "science" is going to validate it (as you imply).
The 'natural' process of grapes growing on a vine, being harvested and then processed into wine may just be as 'miraculous' as the immediate transformation of water into wine (as noted by C.S. Lewis).
Indeed, when compared to the absence of any created thing ("the void"), such transformation is.
Posted by: jim hamlen at November 19, 2004 8:36 PMBut they were the story teller's days. Which are our days.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 20, 2004 10:59 AMYes, since Man didn't exist yet there could be only one Story-teller.
Posted by: oj at November 20, 2004 11:05 AMAll superstitions have equal validity.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 20, 2004 5:58 PMScience no less than any of the others.
Posted by: oj at November 20, 2004 6:12 PMThe men sitting around the campfire, drinking naturally fermented beverages, making the story up as they went along most certainly existed.
Posted by: Jeff Guinn at November 21, 2004 9:26 AMWhy?
Posted by: oj at November 21, 2004 10:17 AMBecause if they didn't, we don't, and your religion is meaningless.
Why are you assuming you or I matter?
Posted by: oj at November 21, 2004 3:55 PMLabeling science superstition is meaningless.
Science is a way of finding things out. Superstition is the reverse.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at November 22, 2004 9:36 PMHarry:
Science doesn't even ask the questions that matter to our lives, which superstition answers. You'll not find out anything you need from science.
Posted by: oj at November 22, 2004 11:10 PM