The world we live in is dominated by science at essentially every level imaginable. Ignore the cars, roads, computers, coffee makers, medicine and all the other obvious advances in technology for now.
Every single bite of food ever eaten by anyone in the entire history of mankind (other than mothers milk) has been provided by science. Those wild berries you like so much? at some point someone was the first to try them, and when they didn’t get sick or die they shared that knowledge with others. You have your own garden you say? Agriculture is science at every single level, trial and error throughout its history as well. Hunting for food is the same thing. How else did weapons get made and then changed to fit the prey? How else do you learn how to use different tricks for hunting deer and rabbit?
Housing? from living in trees and caves to building debri shelters made to fit all the way to modern skyscrapers is a learning process, Trial and error, Hypothesis and Theory, right up to applied sciences. You didn’t freeze to death this winter or die of heat stroke last summer because of science. (unless you live somewhere more moderate than that) Putting on a sweater or adding more blankets all comes down to science.
The debate comes down to the question, Why do people reject one aspect of science in the face of all the other aspects they take for granted? what makes people think its ok to reject evolution while sitting in a church Protected by a lighting rod (my favorite quote from that page "The priests’ refusals prompted the following letter from the president of Harvard University to Franklin: “How astonishing is the force of prejudice even in an age of so much knowledge and free inquiry. It is amazing to me, that after the full demonstration you have given . . . they should even think of repairing that steeple without such conductors.”)
How does a person in this day and age freely accept the power of Einsteins Relativity ( Every time you fire up your GPS you are testing (and failing to prove it wrong) Relativity, a Theory that describes gravity and its effects on the behavior of time.) and reject Darwin’s Evolution? How does one rationalize the Anti-Vaccination stance in a world where people are still dying because they cannot get vaccinated? What is the issue? lack of education? Cognitive Bias?, Pure concentrated stupid? Given that virtually every single one of us would have never been born without the advances the sciences have given us over the eons could it really be as simple as a basic lack of understanding of history?
People pick and choose what they want to believe. If they do this when it comes to their religious beliefs, they will do this when it comes to science too.
Some fields of science are more reputable than others. No one has a bad thing to say about chemistry. Because chemistry doesn’t stray into issues that the layperson feels comfortable talking about. But when it comes to something like, say, nutrition or psychology, everyone has an opinion. Food and mind are much more “real” to the average person than chemical bonds and orbitals. This invites people to feel that their own wacky theories and anecdotal evidence are meaningful to scientific discourse. Good luck convincing them opinions are not the same thing as educated guesses, which are not the same thing as tested hypotheses and theories.
To be fair to “laypeople”, not all science is the same. The type of science that psychologists do is different than that done by theoretical physicists. Not worse, not better, but just not held to the same bar of statistical confidence (and by necessity…the human mind is way more complicated and unpredictable than an electron). Some fields of science seem to issue more errata than others do, which makes people feel vindicated about their doubts and alternative ideas.
Critical1: Is your concern primarily with the comparmentalization that permits the sort of behaviors you list or do you see in the rejection of evolution merely a symptom of something more pervasive and troubling.
Personally, I don’t think the compartmentalization issue is all that remarkable and examples that are far more extreme can easily be found.
Keeping things neatly partitioned can be an important survival skill so it’s not unexpected that it would be adapted to other purposes as well - one of the principles of evolution actually too isn’t it?
I agree-science is nothing more than Aristotelian logic. Why do people reject science? Because they do not understand logic-it ought to be taught in grade school.
Taking that at face value, I’m obliged to mention that science is empirical and logic is deductive. They’re really quite different animals.
Yeah, a great debate is off to a great start when it begins with two philosophical howlers. Namely, (1) that all human knowledge (even if you limit to the subset of practical knowledge) is the product of science doesn’t seem particularly true — this is Aristotle’s distinction between episteme (knowledge of principles) and techne (craft). They do resemble each other in certain respects, which is why they are both species of knowledge, but they are not identical.
(2) Logic, famously, has no empirical part. Science, on the other hand, is almost entirely empirical. I can meditate on chemical reactions till I’m blue in the face, but I won’t learn any chemistry until I go to the lab.
Actually you kinda hit the nail on the head. A better way to ask might be simply “why are people so effing bad at compartmentalization?” If the methods used to get you to work, your kids to school, allow you to post on this message board are the same ones that tell us at what age a fetus is viable and capable of feeling pain then just maybe you should acknowledge you sound like an idiot when you talk about Masturbating fetuses. Doesn’t Science belong in its own compartment instead of being in several compartments?
This post came from a conversation I had with a co worker who claimed he had searched long and hard and found absolutely zero evidence for evolution…of the 6th kind. Further questioning led to the truth, he has been watching Kevin Hovind and Ray Comfort videos on youtube and thinking it was research. Unfortunately I had to bail on the conversation before I could get to far into it, but I am hoping to finish it up at some point down the road.
Doesn’t “Seem” true is very different than is or isnt true and is pretty testable via the scientific method, How about something besides feelings to back this thought up?
and Kimmy_Gibbler please note I am not trying to be hostile here. What you are suggesting is pretty much what I am talking about though. If knowledge didn’t come from trial and error and other forms of experiment as you are suggesting then it came from thin air. People may not think of what they are doing as science when they do whatever it is they are messing around with but that is still what is going on. I am going to need some serious convincing to reach a different conclusion.
Right, and you are making a category error. Whether there is a distinction between two types of knowledge, episteme and techne, isn’t really an empirically testable proposition. I mean, what empirical observations would one make to resolve it? Epistemology isn’t really a branch of science, which is why it belongs to philosophy.
What goes on in the brain when one knows something, for instance, could be observed. And thus neurology is a branch of science. But a question such as “The body of knowledge belonging to physics is different from the body of knowledge belonging to carpentry” is not one that is susceptible to empirical testing. Still less would the proposition “The body of knowledge belonging to physics differs in kind and method to that belonging to carpentry.”
I don’t mean to be hostile either, but there is a well-developed body of knowledge (i.e., the philosophy of science) that covers this ground. I am gratified to see you interested in it, but I think your contention “All human knowledge belongs to science” wouldn’t be readily accepted. (However, a cousin of that proposition, “All human knowledge is empirical” once was. But, once it was noted that “All human knowledge is empirical” is a proposition that (1) purports to be an item of human knowledge, and (2) does not seem to be empirical in nature, that school had a lot of the winds taken out of its sails).
Okey doke. Let’s take this statement. What trial-and-error experimentation led you to this particular tidbit of knowledge?
Check and mate.
Well, if you can believe that some guy rose from the dead 2,000 years ago, then I’m not surprised by anything else you might believe. If you really think your vote counts, then you don’t understand math.
Why might some be hostile to science?
Nuclear, biological (and just for Monstro) chemical weaponry
Technology that destroys the planet
Technology that makes it easier for some humans to supress others
Technology that has allowed humans to breed to such an extent that we are extincting many of the planets species
Science gives us the intelligence to do things without the wisdom of how they should be used
Science is infinity more dangerous than any religion
I love science but she has a few warts.
I think it’s questionable to lump everything together as science, as the OP does. Trial and error I would not call science. I don’t consider the word to be that broad.
Indeed it’s using the word that loosely that is much of the cause of the problem the OP outlines IMO. People think science is just about test tubes and equations on blackboards, and therefore decide “I don’t trust those guys”. If they knew it is simply about creating models, using those models to make (surprising) predictions, and then, importantly, testing those predictions, we’d have far less of a problem here.
I suspect there is some confusion in what I am trying to say so let me strip it down. Food=Science clothes=Science cars=Science houses and buildings=Science computers=Science metallurgy=Science chemistry=Science airplanes=Science physics=Science, I am not even sure after reading your 2 (out of 3) types of knowledge what it is you are trying to say. It sounds like we are talking past each other.
“If knowledge didn’t come from trial and error and other forms of experiment as you are suggesting then it came from thin air.”
Soooo ignoring the bit about other forms of experiment for the moment I will go with Zero evidence for the supernatural has ever been found. No matter how much trial and error, or other forms of experiment you make you never ever find evidence of the supernatural. Which if I am not completely mistaken is the only other method you could possibly be proposing for the accumulation of knowledge.
Science generally implies, I think by definition, use of the scientific method, and THAT does indeed involve more than trial and error. It is an attempt to create an abstract construct in the form of a theory/hypothesis which gives you some fundamental insight into the universe. At least that’s the objective.
The problem with true science is that you never actually get what you purportedly are seeking. Even when a theory has been establish for decades or centuries and withstood every possible test, it must still fall to evidence that contradicts it’s basic premise. I think more than anything else that is what people find unsatisfying - the perennial lack of certainty.
Trial and error are one of the absolute backbones of science Edison and his thousands of tries at the light bulb will back that up I think
I doubt that’s the reason that man on the street doesn’t trust science. IME few people grasp the notion of uncertainty in science. They think scientists are certain about one thing, that gets proven wrong, then they’re certain about something else.
They don’t grasp that all science does is give us confidence in a model (and make the model useful because while it is making correct predictions, it is making correct predictions). Furthermore most “theories” reported in the popular press are just hypotheses.
That’s engineering / product development not science.
In any case, I didn’t say trial and error isn’t a part of science, I’m saying trial and error is not the same thing as science.
I’m sorry, I didn’t hear anything about your conducting a series of trials and errors or any kind of experimentation in this explanation.
In other words, you assert that you know “All knowledge proceeds from trial-and-error or other forms of experimentation.” I have asked you, “What series of trials and errors or other experimentation have you conducted to establish this knowledge.” You have not been able to describe any.
Then you say, if not trial-and-error, then it must proceed from supernatural sources. Do you think your knowledge about how knowledge is acquired proceeds from supernatural sources? It doesn’t have an empirical source.
There is a long philosophical tradition, rationalism, that seeks to answer this question. If you are ignorant about even the rudiments of this school of thought, then you are woefully unprepared to debate the philosophy of science. (Not being hostile, just dropping a truth bomb…)
None of those things are down to science per se. They’re down to some humans being jerks and all humans not being omniscient.
For both these things science is not part of the problem, but could be part of the solution.