critiques of science

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Scientific Ecstasy?

Let me close this post by requesting to talk less about gods and more about science.

In contrast, let me open with Borderpolice's sign-off by trivially drawing attention to the title of this thread, "critiques of science" (as opposed to "worshippers of science" etc) related to which a discussion of religious discourse is especially relevant, particularly when there are those who seek to elevate science to the status of an exclusivist religion (Dawkins etc, and some posters here, apparently).

{ But perhaps, for levity's sake, I should have started with this piece of Jack Torrence-style - realist poetics interluding - amusement:

I am unable to recognize my position here. Maybe you confuse my position with somebody else's?
I am unable to recognize my position here. Maybe you confuse my position with somebody else's?
I am unable to recognize my position here. Maybe you confuse my position with somebody else's?

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no ploy makes Jack a dull boy.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull toy. [An otherwise Realist poet, Jack was noted for his arbitrary grammatical innovations ...]. }

???????????? Because the "thing-in-itself", truth, objectivity, final reality, structure and order, IS God, is ALWAYS God. And this, despite the fact that many (ostensible) atheists believe in truth, objectivity, etc.

No it is not, unless you equate god and the thing in itself. But then your claims are semantic trivialities. I am well aware of the pantheistic position but reject it, because i don't see the cognitive benefit of this semantic equivocation. Hence my question, which, incidentally, you have not answered. So let me ask again: Exactly what value does it have to identify the thing in itself with god?

First, it is belief in such things as a "thing-in-itself" that is identical with belief in (a transcendent) God. I assumed - clearly mistakenly - that making such an elementary metaphysical point would have been trivial here.

Second, I made no direct mention of pantheism; I said that for many religious, God=Immanence. Spinoza is an obvious candidate, for whom God=Nature, Substance, but he was no pantheist: he believed, not that God is all around, is everywhere [very popular among many hippy scientists, incidentally ("It's cosmic, man!")], but that God is Everything , that there is nothing that is not God. Kant, of course, believed Spinoza to be an atheist because of such a conception of God, a conception of God not as a personal or transcendent being, but as radically other (and therefore, forever inaccessible, much like the Ocean in Stanislaw Lem/Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, one of the best filmic portrayals) substance (nature). So you and some other posters here believe this Kantian position, that the only notions of God that are permitted are the transcendent, supernatural, supernatural ones. You're defining what God must be despite not believing in such a God in order to effortlessly reject such a notion: a strawgod

I drew attention earlier to a nineteenth-century view of evolution/progress, a prescriptive naturalism quite prevalent among scientists (and many others besides), including posters here, and one that is based on a classical, dogmatic empiricism which summarily rejects all that cannot be directly "perceived" by the senses. Ironic in this context, as it was Kant who first argued the limitations of such empirical fundamentalism: by demonstrating that all human experience is constitutively mediated - what we take for experience is ineluctibly pre-screened through a cognitive apparatus which pre-determines and structures all perception. Naive empiricism necessarily limits/reduces our perception of the world, and science itself has also discovered this, destroying naive empiricism in the process [Just because something is imagined doesn't mean it isn't true ...]

[*] I believe that there is no coherent concept of god. Believers use that term in many different ways, that cannot be abstracted into a simple concept encompassing all of this.

You mean there is disagreement about the concept, just as there is disagreement about science? So, because discourse about religion (just as with science) is a chaotic, unruly, disorderly, incoherent riot of competing interpretations, we really must not take it seriously? (A "meta-concept" would be more coherent, more superior? And not just yet another addition to the chaos? ) What's the alternative, then, apart from a narcissistic, solipsistic retreat into that other, supremely late capitalist God, his holiness the Ego, the self?

[*] This lack of consensus about what gods are is not accidental, but a direct consequence of the evolution of religion over the millenia, and directly related to its social function.

There is no consensus about religion, yes, just as there is no consensus about science. And there never will be. Because there is no such thing as a "community of religious" or a "community of scientists". Why should there be, why the need for such "consensus", apart from a (political, metaphysical) need for order in a chaotic world?

[*] Nevertheless one can discern some degree of similarity in a significant part of religious discourse. Current theorising of religion summerises this bit as "the re-entry of the distinction between immanence and transcendence into immanence". This is fairly abstract and presumably a little hard to comprehend for the uninitiated, so let me simplify it for a lay audience: gods are paradoxica/incomprehensible things about which we cannot in principle say anything, but we talk about them anyway. Defusiing this foundational paradox is an important task in the reproduction of religion and achieved in various ways, like for example rituals.

["fairly abstract and presumably a little hard to comprehend for the uninitiated, so let me simplify it for a lay audience": Is it really necessary for you to so openly parade your condescending, patronising, and pompous disposition on a forum where you don't actually know anything about the backgrounds or knowledge of posters/lurkers? And this from someone who can't distinguish between immanence and pantheism? This from a lapdog of the Big Other God of self-appointed and imagined AUTHORITY?]

[*] It is empirically undeniable that pantheists are considered atheists by most religions. Hence those that have the best authority to decide on what gods may be (the believers) reject your equivocation. This puts your equivocation in a pretty weak position, hence my question: exactly what are the cognitive benefits of equating god and thing in itself/immanence/the universe. Why not equate god and love (as is quite fashionable now), of god and potatoes?

Appealing again to your GOD of AUTHORITY. Pantheists are atheists because "most religious" say so (presumably by a show of hands, or maybe they appointed a Supreme Court Ecclesiastical Judge to decide the issue forever more!) Gee, whatever will poor 'auld Buddhists ever do if they are brought before your Supreme Judge!

[And as Tryptych points out, you're conflating immanence with "thing-in-itself" transcendence]. Really what you are doing here is rejecting all of metaphysics, an absurdly fundamentalist and destructive position which even most scientists could never do, including the chap in a state of metaphysical ecstasy at the top of this post ...]

[*] Let me elaborate on the previous point: you claim that my position (which you don't understand) is unable to account for non-theistic religions; counterquestion: how does your pantheisitic position account for the majority of world religions that stipulate personal, supernatural gods?

I'm not a pantheist, and you're position is very clear. Rather you should be asking yourself how your authoritarian God of scientific empiricism compares with supernatural fantasy. All those Gods are dead ...

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Ahh, that fashionable po-mo disdain for 'progress'!

You mean modernist distain for inexorable laws of progress, which has nothing to do with fashion.

(there are no laws of nature, borderpolice)

Would you therefore care to explain to me why the universe is amenable to rational understanding at all? Why a ball thrown up in the air will follow a trajectory that can be precisely predicted using Newton's Laws, and doesn't simply move around however it pleases, disappear or turn into a butterfly? If you want to say "all laws of nature are human constructs", I'd be happy with that, as long as we admit that there is some concrete link between them and the real, physical, tangible universe. After all, religion, philosophy and society are all human constructs, and they most definitely exist.

"laws of nature are human constructs" ie are untrue (necessary fictions).

A concrete link between the equations of science (the symbolic real) and the Real is not possible, because the Real is inaccessible, it is void.

It was my understanding that modern science had completely undermined the belief in unchanging, deterministic natural laws, especially quantum physics. So I must be mistaken about modern science.

 

[Guybrush]

Note to business people: choose your product names wisely! (Sorry for the derailment. )

 

[Mr. Tea]

You mean modernist distain for inexorable laws of progress, which has nothing to do with fashion.

Funny, I was under the impression 'progess' as a concept in itself was an inherently modernist one...

"laws of nature are human constructs" ie are untrue (necessary fictions).

Since when does something being a human construct make it 'untrue'? Are you saying the laws of physics are untrue, but still (demonstably!) correct? How can something be both untrue and correct?

A concrete link between the equations of science (the symbolic real) and the Real is not possible, because the Real is inaccessible, it is void.

Says you. I say it *is* accessible. Otherwise, answer me this: how is it possible that science even works at all if the Real - the actual, material world - is inaccessible? Is it merely coincidence that science can make astonishingly accurate predictions, that the world just decides to play ball with us because it feels like it? You STILL haven't answered this fundamental question. And in what way is it 'void' - are you a Taoist? No offence if you are, just curious...

It was my understanding that modern science had completely undermined the belief in unchanging, deterministic natural laws, especially quantum physics. So I must be mistaken about modern science.

Ahh, quantum mechanics, the most efficient device ever conceived of for confusing people...
Well, for a start, it is generally accepted that the laws of physics *at their most fundamental level* are unchanging - of course, at the level of observable phenomena, they've changed a great deal from the Big Bang through to the evolution of life on earth. What I mean is, the laws governing (or, if you prefer, decribing) the evolution of the Universe when it was very young and consisted of a hot gas of particles chaotically whizzing around are different from those describing a universe of galaxies and stars, but the *underlying* physics, the basic equations of quantum fields, gravity and so on - appear to be immutable.* So far as we know. (note scientific humility!)
Obviously, the strictly deterministic world view was irreversibly shattered in the last century, first by quantum mechanics and then by investigations into so-called Chaos Theory. But so what? We now live in a non-deterministic universe, but we still use science to understand it. You may not be able to predict the outcome of a single quantum-level event, but you can calculate with pretty much absolute precision the probabilities of the various outcomes. In this sense, quantum mechanics is just as deterministic as Newtonian mechanics - you just have to quote probabilities over an arbitrarily large number of measurements, rather than the value of a single measurement.
And on a further point:

[Just because something is imagined doesn't mean it isn't true ...]

Firstly, modern scientists, especially physicists, use 'imagined' conceps all the time: wave-functions, virtual particles, 'ghost' fields, imaginary numbers, even. Things which are quite clearly constructs but which, crucially, give the right results. So, as I keep repeating, there must be *some* kind of concptual link between them and the real world - otherwise it wouldn't work!
Secondly, your statement seems to be at odds with your claim that "laws of nature are untrue". Do you say this because they're concepts, constructs, 'imagined things'? But you've just said that doesn't make them 'untrue'. So why *are* they 'untrue', then?
I don't know why you started talking about determinism, it's got nothing to do with the current discussion as far as I can see.

You're defining what God must be despite not believing in such a God in order to effortlessly reject such a notion: a strawgod

Just because I don't believe in God it doesn't mean I'm not entitled to a belief about what most people mean when they talk about God. Your non-supernatural, impersonal, immanent God is a lot different from what I mean when I say 'God'. If you really wanted to, you could say "God is orange juice", which would (if I were to accept your authority on such matters) force me to say "Oh, well I certainly believe in orange juice, so I must be a theist after all. HALLELUJA!".

*of course, if a 'law' changes over time and you can formulate an exact descrition of how it changes - and that description is itself unchanging - then you really have a new, more general law which is unchanging and immutable.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Just spotted this in an old post by Tryptych:

Notice how we can swap "induction" with "falsification" and "create" with "falsify" - if an experimental result goes against a theory (thereby falsifying it), 100 times in a row, we have no right to assume it will be the same on the 101st attempt.

Re. induction vs. falsification: the above argument falls down for the simple reason that a theory doesn't have to fail every conceivable experimental test in order to be falsified: it has only to fail one. A theory that is proven wrong a hundred times in a row and is then apparently vindicated on one occasion is a pretty shoddy theory!

 

[borderpolice]

This from a lapdog of the Big Other God of self-appointed and imagined AUTHORITY?

Woof! Woof!

 

[borderpolice]

Back to the science - I'm sort of interested, and it might help clafiry the debate if I knew what position borderpolice and Mr Tea take on science .

I am a social constructivist. My view of empirical data is naturalist,
in quine's sense, hence, my position is essentially that of a modern
day hegelian (sorry for namedropping). In other words, i agree with
the mainstream view in SSK (sociology of scientific knowledge). I make
no claim to originality.

 

[tryptych]

Just spotted this in an old post by Tryptych:


Re. induction vs. falsification: the above argument falls down for the simple reason that a theory doesn't have to fail every conceivable experimental test in order to be falsified: it has only to fail one. A theory that is proven wrong a hundred times in a row and is then apparently vindicated on one occasion is a pretty shoddy theory!

But that's an even stronger claim! Popper was widely criticised for demanding that one failure was enough to consign a theory to the dustbin, and Lakatos etc defended that as a gross misreading of Popper's ideas.

If one positive result is no good reason to accept a theory, why is one negative result a good reason to abandon it? This only makes sense if you conflate the philosophical problem of induction with a psychological argument about accepting theories...

 

[tryptych]

I am a social constructivist. My view of empirical data is naturalist,
in quine's sense, hence, my position is essentially that of a modern
day hegelian (sorry for namedropping). In other words, i agree with
the mainstream view in SSK (sociology of scientific knowledge). I make
no claim to originality.

Mainstream SSK.. that takes me back!

I'm a bit bemused then if you peg yourself as a social constructivist... Why don't you and HMLT agree more?

 

[hundredmillionlifetimes]

Woof! Woof!

Are those empirical woofs or social constructivist ones?

 

[vimothy]

Bump!

 

[nomadthethird]

But that's an even stronger claim! Popper was widely criticised for demanding that one failure was enough to consign a theory to the dustbin, and Lakatos etc defended that as a gross misreading of Popper's ideas.

If one positive result is no good reason to accept a theory, why is one negative result a good reason to abandon it? This only makes sense if you conflate the philosophical problem of induction with a psychological argument about accepting theories...

Right...in general, being able to reproduce results in an experimental setting means that any theory based on replicable experiments is more reliable, or is considered more reliable and less full of holes by professional scientists. So when you're looking at a scientific theory, the important thing to look at is not if one person came out with results that contradict a vast body of replicated results. Usually, when this happens, people should be very skeptical and only accept the groundbreaking results when they can be replicated and duplicated and backed up by others working in the field. The consensus slowly shifts; science is interesting in that it seems to balance well conservative and progressive tendencies and make them work together productively. (Unlike politics.)

This is often a problem with science journalism, I've found-- they will seize on *one* shocking discovery that goes against the grain of most established research, often toting an experiment with serious limitations (small sample size, not well-controlled, not double blind, no clear null hypothesis, etc), quite often one that nobody within the field takes very seriously because of its obvious mathematical/statistical limitations, and will hail it as this AMAZING EUREKA moment that is about to revolutionize the way everyone thinks about x.

Only it isn't going to revolutionize anything, and will probably juts feed into public misconceptions and misperceptions in unhealthy ways.

Example: that one guy who did a meta-analysis on anti-depressants that wasn't even published yet or reviewed by anybody and was quoted in the Newsweek article as "proof" that anti-depressants were really no good after all. They even had the nerve to outright state that "everybody", the consensus, was moving away from the use of anti-depressants. This had a small kernel of truth to it, but it was egregiously misleading and fantastic.

In reality, scientific consensus on them hasn't changed a bit, and neither has psychiatric consensus. All the meta-analysis proved was what a lot of psychiatrist had already been saying all along, which was that GPs have been overprescribing anti-depressants (esp to women) and misdiagnosing clinical depression in the first place for the past 20 years. The meta-analysis helped make the case (that was already well underway) for the fact that overprescription of anti-depressants is a procedural and a medical ethics problem, not a problem with the psychopharmacology of anti-depressants.

But what most people read when they look at that article is Kpunk level bullshit about how anti-depressants are TEH BAD.

You could say that complaining about science journalism is off-topic, but the popular perceptions about what's "scientific" certainly affects the ability of scientists to get funding to do important research, and certainly has an effect on the scientific process in the long run in many respects.

 

[nomadthethird]

Aaaanyway, I would say my position is that empiricism is very useful in science, since induction, which is based on empirical observations, is the basis of a scientific outlook - the most basic kind of science consists of noticing patterns in nature, and then formulating 'laws' which can then be used to make predictions. A more mature kind of science relies on deduction as well, in the form of logical (and especially mathematical) reasoning used (usually in conjuction with empirical data as well) to formulate laws. Both kinds of law - those based more on induction, and those based more on a priori logical/mathematical reasoning - are then subjected to empirical verification. So without empiricism, science is nothing, I think - although there's far more to science than *just* empiricism.

As regards the idea of 'ultimate reality' or 'ultimate Truth', I'd have to say I think the universe works perfectly well in the absence of any human attempts to observe or understand it, and that to assert otherwise is anthropocentric in the extreme (as embodied in the way the 'Copenahagen interpretation' of quantum mechanics has basically been discared by all serious thinkers in the field, and cosmological models are routinely attacked for being 'anthropic'). As I said before, I have no problem with the idea of laws of nature being human constructs per se on the basis that a) there is some concrete connection between these 'laws' and the thing-in-itself, the real live functioning Universe of objects and energy and phenomena; and b) that plenty of things that are undoubtably human constructs nonetheless exist. I feel perfectly happy saying this because although I'm obviously a scientist through-and-through, I'm not a reductionist, e.g. I think you'd have a hard time deriving Darwinian evolution from the laws of physics. Furthermore, for HMLT to constantly assert that I believe in 'God' simply because I believe there is an objective universe and that science can have at least some (probably never total or ultimate, as I keep re-iterating) success accessing this through empirical observation and rational analysis is laughable and, as borderpolice says, in contradiction to the idea the vast majority of people in the world have of 'God'. God, by definition, is supernatural - or at the very least 'trans-natural', i.e. occurring in a conceptual realm outside or beyond that of natural phenomena - while science is attempt to understand the natural world by natural means.

Does this make any sense? I'm sort of pouring my brain out on the keyboard here, sorry if it's not too coherent.

Good post.

I see that the worse than cliched, worse than trite, worse than shallow SCIENCE=RELIGION rhetoric is all over this thread.

God bless HMLT but that's the worst, most illogical load of tripe you're ever going to hear. And sadly, I remember when I used to think maybe there was something to the idea that "atheism" was a religion. Or something to the idea that atheism and science can't co-exist without individual scientists becoming "religious"....

I used to think that way because I didn't know anything about science, and I'd always just assumed people were just pretending to believe in gods because society rewarded them for doing that.

The scientific method is the opposite of religious fundamentalism. Its absolute polar opposite.

Some people might have an overly naive view of the powers of science, akin to the way godbots have an overly naive worldview in general and a ridiculous worship for an abusive piece of shit they've created in their minds--but is the kind of "hope" that things in the world can get better proffered by some naive scientists somehow more naive and stupid than the irrational belief in Sky Daddies and holy Ghosts? I think not. It's of a piece, the impulse to want things to get better in empiricists and religious folks, but the two things simply *aren't* equivalent epistemologically.

 

[zhao]

The Trouble with Scientism

 

[Patrick Swayze]

Good post.

I see that the worse than cliched, worse than trite, worse than shallow SCIENCE=RELIGION rhetoric is all over this thread.

God bless HMLT but that's the worst, most illogical load of tripe you're ever going to hear. And sadly, I remember when I used to think maybe there was something to the idea that "atheism" was a religion. Or something to the idea that atheism and science can't co-exist without individual scientists becoming "religious"....

I used to think that way because I didn't know anything about science, and I'd always just assumed people were just pretending to believe in gods because society rewarded them for doing that.

The scientific method is the opposite of religious fundamentalism. Its absolute polar opposite.

Some people might have an overly naive view of the powers of science, akin to the way godbots have an overly naive worldview in general and a ridiculous worship for an abusive piece of shit they've created in their minds--but is the kind of "hope" that things in the world can get better proffered by some naive scientists somehow more naive and stupid than the irrational belief in Sky Daddies and holy Ghosts? I think not. It's of a piece, the impulse to want things to get better in empiricists and religious folks, but the two things simply *aren't* equivalent epistemologically.

you haven't really shown they're not alike, just said it repeatedly in different ways.

 

[IdleRich]

I think that the onus is on those who say that they're alike to demonstrate it.

 

[Patrick Swayze]

not if you're challenging a perceived consensus as that post aims to do

 

[IdleRich]

I'm not sure it's a perceived consensus but maybe not worth arguing about as neither Nomad or HMLT post any more... more interesting would be for you to say why you think science is like a religion, assuming that you do. I'm never quite sure of what religion is personally but it seems pretty different from my understanding of what science is as far as that goes.

 

[Patrick Swayze]

I don't think science is like religion but I think that it fulfils some of the social functions science used to e.g. identifies the fact that there are (relatively) mysterious forces at work which govern our life and instils the belief that we must try to understand them for our own improvement (physical and material improvement replacing 'spiritual' improvement); creates an elite group who mediate observations about these complex phenomena to the laypeople (who, through rigorous study, can become one of the elite)

in a more general sense I think the respected/feared/awed members of the clergy have been replaced in our culture by 'the expert'.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I don't think science is like religion but I think that it fulfils some of the social functions science used to e.g. identifies the fact that there are (relatively) mysterious forces at work which govern our life and instils the belief that we must try to understand them for our own improvement (physical and material improvement replacing 'spiritual' improvement); creates an elite group who mediate observations about these complex phenomena to the laypeople (who, through rigorous study, can become one of the elite)

in a more general sense I think the respected/feared/awed members of the clergy have been replaced in our culture by 'the expert'.

Some fair points there but I think a lot of religions, perhaps most of them, are not about trying to understand "mysterious forces" at all - at least, from the POV of the laity. You know, all that stuff about God being "ineffable" and moving in "mysterious ways", which in my experience is usually a complete cop-out answer to a question about why shitty things happen to good people or why the Lord in all his wisdom made dinosaur fossils just to confuse us.

Some scientists might occasionally cultivate a deliberate air of mystique around their subject but in my experience most are only too happy to try and explain what they do to non-specialists.

Interesting that you use the word 'elite' - sure, there's an academic elite, but the amount of power they actually exert is pretty tiny compared to the sway church leaders used to have hundreds of years ago (in the UK, I mean), or the sway religious authorities still exert in many parts of the world. Even in Britain today, how many scientists are given the sort of public platform that the media affords the Archbishop of Canterbury? Probably quite telling that Dicky Dawkins in the only one I can think of...