Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:23 pm
OK - meant to keep this short, but I'm a windbag so apologies in advance...
While I partially agree with caliban and WW's statements above, I don't think science and philosophy are separable any more than science and human biology are. I do think there are degrees of separation and they are related to keeping things honest. The kinds of stretches and factual incorrectness that appear to be in Lanza's work from our expert's testimony is of a different character - a willful attempt to position personal opinion as something factual that is backed by evidence is a form of deception and has no place in any field.
For an example of the more benign and often overlooked sort, I got into a long-running debate (back before I started *trying* to live by the Wilde quote in my sig) with a full-blown-young-Earth-Creationist who believed that God was essentially constantly deceiving us and so all our measurements were measurements of fraudulent data. Of course, he described this in more positive terms of "God as storyteller." His arguments about science were remarkably similar to those expressed in this thread - that it was useful for measuring "what is" in that it can be measured, but cannot go into the "why" questions without becoming philosophy. Of course, what he meant by this is that science cannot tell us the universe is old or that there wasn't a Great Flood, or that we aren't made of taffy (ok - the last one was my addition, but it fit the model). His basic argument was that interpretation isn't science, but I disagree in that any abstraction of information is interpretation, even to the degree of putting absolute values on measured phenomena (10 watts).
Compare the deceptive God argument, which cannot be refuted with evidence any more than can the statement that Elephants fly when you aren't looking, with a likely counter argument - that things really are as they seem when measured, and tend to stay that way over time. This is based in logic, evidence, and to some degree a trust in materialism as a philosophical position.
A third argument, common among Buddhists, is that there is no "thing" to thingness and all is basically form with no matter (this is an extreme simplification.) And so their views on the age of the universe may be self-contradictory because they are only discussing "relative truth" as they call it and don't see any human knowledge as really touching on actual truths. So not only are there no flying Elephants, there aren't any normal Elephants either - there's just the form of Elephants and someday you may break out of causal reality and see what's really there.
The only thing making one argument more compelling than the others is one's personal philosophical leanings, which no matter how strongly believed in as correct, cannot be proved one way or another. The data from Hubble can be understood in any of these philosophical contexts. What is absurd and not worth considering to one person, is obviously correct to another. My reaction to the "deceptive God" hypothesis is "nonsense!" but I do recognize that this reaction is philosophical - based in this case on the idea that liars are morally corrupt, and that God by definition, if He/She/It/They exist isn't morally corrupt and if He/She/It/They is morally corrupt isn't worth listening to in any case.
In our culture, I've found this tends towards a sort of materialism-plus, where the plus is some kind of vague exception clause for miracles and whatnot. In this view, mostly science is right, but there are exceptions to the rule where God does in fact act in a deceptive manner as it relates to measured evidence. In my informal canvassing, the vast majority of Americans of all or no faith fall into this camp, with the small minorities falling to the materialist or religionists extremes.
When a scientist publishes a paper that states that electrons are negatively charged or that the Earth is billions of years old, it lies upon a foundation of philosophy. This philosophy, though not a monolith, tends towards rationalism and materialism and is thoroughly embedded in the language, processes, and from what I've seen the culture of science. For my part I happened to agree with much of it and so I don't have a problem with it, but I do think it's important to recognize it.
Science is still, to me, Natural Philosophy. And it sounds so much better too.
- SC
While I partially agree with caliban and WW's statements above, I don't think science and philosophy are separable any more than science and human biology are. I do think there are degrees of separation and they are related to keeping things honest. The kinds of stretches and factual incorrectness that appear to be in Lanza's work from our expert's testimony is of a different character - a willful attempt to position personal opinion as something factual that is backed by evidence is a form of deception and has no place in any field.
For an example of the more benign and often overlooked sort, I got into a long-running debate (back before I started *trying* to live by the Wilde quote in my sig) with a full-blown-young-Earth-Creationist who believed that God was essentially constantly deceiving us and so all our measurements were measurements of fraudulent data. Of course, he described this in more positive terms of "God as storyteller." His arguments about science were remarkably similar to those expressed in this thread - that it was useful for measuring "what is" in that it can be measured, but cannot go into the "why" questions without becoming philosophy. Of course, what he meant by this is that science cannot tell us the universe is old or that there wasn't a Great Flood, or that we aren't made of taffy (ok - the last one was my addition, but it fit the model). His basic argument was that interpretation isn't science, but I disagree in that any abstraction of information is interpretation, even to the degree of putting absolute values on measured phenomena (10 watts).
Compare the deceptive God argument, which cannot be refuted with evidence any more than can the statement that Elephants fly when you aren't looking, with a likely counter argument - that things really are as they seem when measured, and tend to stay that way over time. This is based in logic, evidence, and to some degree a trust in materialism as a philosophical position.
A third argument, common among Buddhists, is that there is no "thing" to thingness and all is basically form with no matter (this is an extreme simplification.) And so their views on the age of the universe may be self-contradictory because they are only discussing "relative truth" as they call it and don't see any human knowledge as really touching on actual truths. So not only are there no flying Elephants, there aren't any normal Elephants either - there's just the form of Elephants and someday you may break out of causal reality and see what's really there.
The only thing making one argument more compelling than the others is one's personal philosophical leanings, which no matter how strongly believed in as correct, cannot be proved one way or another. The data from Hubble can be understood in any of these philosophical contexts. What is absurd and not worth considering to one person, is obviously correct to another. My reaction to the "deceptive God" hypothesis is "nonsense!" but I do recognize that this reaction is philosophical - based in this case on the idea that liars are morally corrupt, and that God by definition, if He/She/It/They exist isn't morally corrupt and if He/She/It/They is morally corrupt isn't worth listening to in any case.
In our culture, I've found this tends towards a sort of materialism-plus, where the plus is some kind of vague exception clause for miracles and whatnot. In this view, mostly science is right, but there are exceptions to the rule where God does in fact act in a deceptive manner as it relates to measured evidence. In my informal canvassing, the vast majority of Americans of all or no faith fall into this camp, with the small minorities falling to the materialist or religionists extremes.
When a scientist publishes a paper that states that electrons are negatively charged or that the Earth is billions of years old, it lies upon a foundation of philosophy. This philosophy, though not a monolith, tends towards rationalism and materialism and is thoroughly embedded in the language, processes, and from what I've seen the culture of science. For my part I happened to agree with much of it and so I don't have a problem with it, but I do think it's important to recognize it.
Science is still, to me, Natural Philosophy. And it sounds so much better too.
- SC