Science as a Religion

Great Debates
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Back to evolution:

Not impossible, but that would probably not happen because the environment dictates what organisms survive; the environment therefore “funnels” organism mutations toward a certain basic structure in many cases but by no means always. Evolution is simply the continuing survival of sequences of mutations; it is possible for a mutation that does not put the organism at a disadvantage to survive alongside other non-mutant organisms.

Well, the Idiotic Design and Scientific Cretinist people sure have a lot to say on that topic! I must also remind you of the shortest path suggested by a tool like Occam’s Razor, which cautions the scientist to accept the simplest and best supported explanation with the least number of unknown entities (for the reasons discussed already). Remember the alternative hypothesis to replace gravitation that I mentioned a while back? It makes sense, but it has too many unknowns (why and how is the earth expanding so rapidly?) and frankly it is not supported by observation. It is not a sensible explanation, it is not supported by anything except willpower.

**WHOA, WHOA, WHOA!!! **Stop right there and backtrack a little! Remember when I was discussing general concepts and specific models? Remember that general concepts normally do not change (unless radical new information comes to light), but specific models are changed (improved and refined) all the time based on observations? A general concept, like evolution, has A LOT more material behind it than you give it credit for (even though I know you’re not a creationist). I’ve already provided examples of how to falsify evolution. The examples you provide would falsify specific models within the general concept of evolution, and not the general concept itself. For example, if we found crocodiles in the Antarctic we would have a lot of work to do on the specific models involving reptile development, cold adaptation, etc., but we wouldn’t feel that the theory of evolution has necessarily been compromised because of one negative instance among thousands of supporting ones (see, keeping one’s mind open to possibilities works in favour of scientists as well as against them!). On the other hand if genetics had yielded remarkably different results from what we have actually obtained, as I mentioned earlier (that is, if the genetic record did not show evidence of the extensive structured inter-connectedness that evolution predicts), we would have to raise a few questions for the theory of evolution. As an interesting aside, there are crocodiles called morelets (Crocodylus moreletii) on the Macal river in Belize that are adapted to rather cold water; obviously the environment is not as cold as Antarctica, but extreme adaptation, although remarkable, is perfectly normal.

Why do you say yes? Remember that mutations are random, and more than one type of mutation may survive in any given environment as long as its organism is able to compete and reproduce successfully. For example, snakes are reptiles that underwent certain mutations, including the loss of legs. Yet in environments right alongside with snakes you find reptiles still endowed with legs. Evolution theory does make some predictions, but is not under any obligation to predict specific morphologies because mutations are random. Of course, we can make some predictions, but the factors involved are so numerous that to take them all into account would be far more than I am able or willing to do (because, after all, we are talking about billions of years of mutations, shifting populations, cataclysmic extinctions, different adaptive strategies, etc.).

Again, no, that is not how the theory works. The randomness of mutation means that you can use evolutionary theory to predict some of the morphology of some organisms with a certain degree of probability, but far from certitude. On the other hand, don’t forget that evolutionary theory predicted transitionary fossils with specific morphologies even though no one had ever seen these fossils (e.g. human ancestors that lived a few million years ago had decidedly hominid morphologies as predicted by the theory).

That may be because all living beings on Earth are subject to natural selection on some scale or another. Is that necessarily a tautology? I think what you mean to say here is that since there are no significant populations of organisms living outside of natural selection (apart from us humans, while domesticated critters are subject to artificial selection), it is not possible to compare surviving mutations in an environment with natural selection as opposed to an environment without natural selection. Well it’s a thorny question put like that, and it depends on a myriad points of information, not simply on philosophy. Have we observed natural selection in action? Yes. Have we supporting evidence for evolution from all the other sciences? Yes. Have we identified certain highly adapted mutations that confer advantages in specific environments? Yes. Is it correct to say that those organisms less suited to the environment than others are forced to compete more fiercely for energy/space, and must either adapt further or decline in numbers as the ecology is filled by more successful competitors? Yes. And so forth.

Now, take the example of crocodiles again. I make the claim that crocodiles are superbly adapted to an amphibious hunter’s life. It’s easy to consider crocodilians because they have been around for hundreds of millions of years, and have therefore had a good shot at perfecting their bodies thanks to advantageous random mutations. A croc’s eyes, ears, and nostrils are sensitive and vulnerable. They are all located on the upper side of the head; these important sense organs are therefore easy to keep above water even when the rest of the head is submerged. Crocs have membranes near the eyes, ears, and nostrils that cover and block these sense organs when the crocodile submerges (the nictitating membrane that descends to protect the eye even allows a degree of vision).

Now, if crocs had delicate eyes, ears, and nostrils that lacked the protecting membranes for submersion and that were located in a daft place like the underbelly, the poor creature wouldn’t be much of a water-goer at all (or if it were, it would probably learn to swim on its back!), and he would especially suffer on land, where its low-slung form would effectively be without senses (since the eyes, ears, and nostrils of our croc are on the belly, the croc on land would be constantly seeing, smelling, and hearing the dirt immediately under it–actually, that arrangement reminds me of my first apartment in Hong Kong). These, I think you will agree, are not good environmental adaptations–in fact they would not be adaptations at all, and would probably result in the rapid death of the animal.

Doesn’t that indicate that falsification is possible?

Another way to do the falsification test for natural selection is to take an organism outside of its environment (which is what theoretically contributed to the organism’s looks and functions) and put it in a radically hostile environment, e.g. take a crocodile and drop it off at the North Pole. If it survives its lack of adaptation to that environment, then you know that natural selection may have a problem or two. However this experiment requires very careful consideration of the organism and environment selected, because of course most organisms retain genetic baggage from past environments and have adapted to a number of conditions, not necessarily only their present conditions (for example, we humans are still pretty good climbers and will no doubt be able to adapt to a form of arboreal life once again after Bush drops those nukes he keeps talking about. I just don’t see sheep lasting very long up in the trees).

You are being too hard on scientists, whose very first duty is to observe. To my knowledge the thumblessness of certain monkeys as well as the cold water adaptation of the morelet crocodile are currently being investigated. However, given the extraordinary support for evolution theory and its overall record, scientists are ready to give tentative provisional agreement to the hypothesis that these animals have these adaptations because they fared well in the environment with such adaptations (those that didn’t have certain adaptations fell behind those that did, and eventually died off). These are fairly undocumented and rather specific topics–I could not really find much on the Web–but there is nothing wrong with what I reported earlier about these species or tentative hypotheses concerning them. I would have a serious problem if scientists were to announce without support that the thumblessness of some monkeys is due to adaptive locomotion.

So the words of the primate researchers are a safe assumption based on everything we know thus far, but the specific details have yet to be worked out. The primate researchers didn’t tell us that the reason some monkeys lost their thumbs was due to this or that. They said that the loss of the thumb might be an evolutionary adaptation for locomotion in the specific case of these monkeys. But to learn more we may have to wait until the information is collected and processed meticulously; we were simply given a bit of an assessment of work in progress.

I was going to get to that when I saw your post on the topic, but as usual was short on time. I hope to address it soon, but for now suffice it to say that modern psychology is a science, but classical psychoanalysis certainly isn’t!

This has been a very long bipartite post, but I think it is still sufficiently close to the OP that I may be forgiven. Again, evolution makes a good target, as the good Svinlesha has demonstrated, so if you entertain the idea that science is like religion, please post.

Latro, you are absolutely correct in highlighting the similarities in purpose between science and religion (or perhaps more accurately mythology), which is making sense of the world around us. In fact, science had its humble beginnings in most unscientific thought (and even Sir Isaac Newton himself, whom I quoted at one point, spent the majority of his life working on alchemy of all things).

I think what is at issue here is the fundamental pattern-forming instinct of humans, the need to discover and figure out the unknown (characteristics that most animals lose by adulthood, but that humans often retain).

Just a note, I may not be able to post during the next few days owing to the holiday, so happy holidays and I will check this thread again as soon as I may.

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What exactly IS the difference between religion and mythology? Other than Mythology: what those simpletons used to believe vs Religion : This one is true because it is OUR mythology.

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Abe:

I read with great interest both halves of your response. I’m not going to reply in detail to what you’ve written in the intro (since it’s such a shameless hijack :D), but I can’t help making a couple of general observations. However, first and above all, this gem:

LOL! Methinks I detect the presence of a burnt-out anthro grad.

Okay, anyway. I can definitely sympathize with your distaste for post-modern relativism, in all its various flavors. By the time I had finished my B.A., I had come to the conclusion that it was completely impossible to say/write anything of value about anything, at all, ever, trapped as we are behind the filters of our own cultural presuppositions; and that went doubly so for the natural sciences, which were nothing other than an expression of Western Imperial Culture.

You will be glad to learn that I’ve calmed down a lot since then. Still, all in all, I find there is a definite ambivalence in my relationship to NS, because I am convinced that not everything in existence can be stuffed into a lab and measured, or observed, and so forth. The illusion that via the Natural Sciences we have discovered a method, or set of methods, which will eventually lead us to absolute, objective knowledge has been created by virtue of the fact that these sciences have successfully, and quite spectacularly, solved a specific set of riddles. I’m writing this in shorthand, but anyway: through experiment and observation science has solved the riddles posed by determined systems. These were very important riddles, and there solution has led to important advances for humankind. However, there are other, more complex systems out there as well, systems that are considerably more difficult to approach from a “scientific” perspective. One can be empirical, and rational, and naturalistic in the pursuit of these riddles, but I do not think one can be “scientific” in the sense that it is commonly accepted, because such phenomena do not readily lend themselves to the sorts of observational and experimental methodologies used by NS. I submit that the human “self” is precisely such a system. Alas, this is a topic for a different thread.

Now then, returning yet again to falsification:

I think we are beginning to approach the clear light now, because in many ways we are of pretty much the same opinion. However, we are seeing the issue from different angles. I hope to argue this point more coherently as I go along.

No. I don’t mean to be categorical, here, but this is where our interpretation of falsification begins to separate. And just to be clear, I’m not espousing what I think, but, rather, what I think Popper is really trying to get at with falsification. Falsification does not allow for the verification of any theory. Theories can never be verified, ever, as long as you are a “falsificationist.” You must either chose to abandon the attempt to verify a theory in any way, or abandon the principle of falsification. I think so, anyway. And I think this is where the monkey-wrench lies.

Wrong again. Under the criteria of falsification, evidence for a theory is always useless, due to the critique of induction as formulated by Hume.

Oh, well then. You reject Hume’s critique, and you therefore no longer have need of falsification. You’re an inductivist. Why didn’t you say so in the first place?

Okay, all facetiousness aside, what I’m trying to get at here is this: as a scientific theoretician, one must choose between validation and falsification, which are mutually exclusive. If you accept that the falsification criteria is the demarcation criteria of science, then you cannot simultaneously argue that it is possible to, in your own words, “[use] particular observations to arrive at general laws,” because it is exactly the impossibility of this act that falsification attempts to address. The minute you begin to inductively generalize, you step beyond the bounds of scientific thought. At the very least, this was Popper’s argument.

In other words, I have no real problem with the reasoning you present above; Hume and Popper, however, do. And if you think I’m being too hard against science here, well, I’m not; they are. This is yet another reason why I reject Popper, among the several. Of course, not to be overly simplistic, Popper also thinks there is an important place for imagination, statistical analysis, and so forth; but when it comes to being scientific, then your theory means nothing unless it can be falsified. In fact, it may have been tested a million times, and withstood every attempt at falsification: technically, this means nothing. It could still be falsified tomorrow. Given these sorts of difficulties, one is not surprised to learn that Popper devotes over a third of his Logic to an in-depth analysis of the “probability calculus,” because Popper’s version of science plays absolute hell with the problem of theory choice.

I note as well that you seem to waver between some sort of concept of absolute knowledge, on the one hand, and unfounded opinion, on the other. For me, if I accept Hume’s critique, I have a couple of strategies. One is falsification, which as you can tell I ain’t all that fond of. Another is an acceptance of the fact that absolute, objective knowledge is a long way off, and that all theories are conjectural guesswork, at best. Certainly, based on detailed examination of data, experiments and so on, but still, in the last analysis, nothing more than extremely well-informed opinion. Would you disagree with that formulation?

Yup. Well, one can have varying opinions about Hume’s critique, but it really threw a spanner into the works as far as the philosophy of science was concerned. Most working scientists, however, took the pragmatic approach you’ve suggested, i.e., “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But of course, the logical dilemma nevertheless remained unsolved, which was somewhat embarrassing for a discipline that took pride in its fundamental reliance upon logic. No wonder scientists hopped onto the “falsifiability bandwagon” once Popper’s work became known.

Hume demonstrated that truth can never be approached positively. This is the whole gist of the problem. Popper’s falsification criteria is not itself falsifiable, but this irrelevant since it isn’t a scientific theory. Popper has room for all kinds of other truths in his world picture, including “metaphysical” truths. However, these truths aren’t scientific, and cannot be approached scientifically. Hume means that any positive knowledge, acquired through induction, is nothing other than a superstition, technically. If your not familiar with his argument, it’s worth checking out. I’d give you the low-down, but it would take to long. Anyway, I agree that we tend to approach truth both “positively” and “negatively,” but that’s beside the point: I’m trying to present Popper’s arguments here.

This is, I think a more accurate picture of how science actually works, as opposed to the version articulated by Sir Karl.

Well, like I wrote above, I think its more of a gradation; science aids in the production of very well-informed opinion, and such opinion are often likely to be true. I’m still not sure if I can see a qualitative difference between knowledge and opinion as you present it, but I’m still open to be convinced otherwise.

Regarding Freud’s dream theory, to be brief: scientific unknowns are not always experiential, or psychoanalytic, unknowns.

On to section 2!

Yeah, and I just want to express how depressing it was to come across some of their stuff while browsing the links you provided earlier. Not only do they pirate the solid scientific work done on evolution, but they even steal from social constructionists; I saw them using the phrase “epistemological monopoly of the natural sciences” on one page. No wonder you reacted so strongly when I used similar terminology earlier!

Damn. Sorry, Abe, but I have to close now. I also will be away for a few days during over the holidays. It’s been a great debate, and you’ve been a very gentlemanly debate partner. If we don’t return to this topic after the holidays, I’m sure we’ll see each other around on the boards….

HAPPY EASTER!

PS: I may have just a little too categorical concerning Popper’s argument. But the gist is correct, and Popper made mince-meat of logical positivists, such as Carnap, who espoused opinions similar to your own. Just so you know.

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Mythology I would describe as a body of myths. And a myth, of course, is a traditional narrative usually involving supernatural characters/forces and embodying ideas on phenomena (from explanations for the rain, to birth, to war, etc.).

Religion is a particular system of faith and worship with codified belief in a superhuman controlling power who must receive worship, obedience, or other attention from its followers.

For example, Christianity is a religion that contains many myths.

Myths are an attempt to make sense of the world around us, they frequently predate religion and, indeed, often give rise to it.

Since all religions are based on series of myths, it is tempting to call all religions mythology, but I think that fails to emphasize the codified aspect of religion, whereas myths are not necessarily codified.

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Back from the Easter break and ready for the breach once more. Boy am I exhausted, doesn’t it seem like holidays wear you out?

Well Svinlesha I am actually not a burnt-out anthropology grad, I did that on the side, although if the Yanomano had had their way that assessment wouldn’t be far off! If I ever meet a Yanomano…

OK, the stuff about falsification is getting hairy, not least because I made the mistake of asking you for support for the conclusions whereas in fact I ought to have re-read the set of works you refer to, which I do not even own where I currently reside. Alas, I do not have time currently for such dry and lengthy reading. But let me proceed how I may.

Labels, Svinlesha, labels! Still, I put it to you that falsification may allow for verification of theories. In fact, it being a required test for establishing whether a theory is operationally sound, it definitely contributes to verification. Plus, in either-or cases it would seem that falsification may indeed verify.

Here I must either question Hume (which I think I did earlier) or ask you to post his reasoning (that’s what I meant earlier about support), as I do not recall the passage in question and am reluctant to take the conclusions of philosophers on faith, ever.

Labels again! If you really have to call me something call me a pragmatist, but I do not like labels. I do think falsification is valuable, because it’s the very first indication you have of whether a hypothesis is sound or fallacious. If it can’t be falsified, it is clearly fallacious; if it may be falsified, the hypothesis may be sound (or not, but at the very least it is falsifiable and we have a chance to determine whether it is sound or not).

Here I am not following, perhaps because I have forgot some crucial information from Messers Hume and Popper. I do know what works though, and it is a combination, as we established, of negativa and positiva. Does Popper consider observation to be useless for the purposes of science? What do you mean about falsifying a theory a million times? There is clearly more to science than falsification, although falsification is of course a crucial portion of the process.

No wavering here. If you prefer to use the term informed, reliable, and tested opinion instead of knowledge that works too.

That’s a bit harsh on theories. Theories are distillations of observations, imaginary models that represent the real world to great degrees of accuracy. We’ve already agreed that science rejects the notion of absolute final knowledge because keeping a mind open to possibilities is extremely important to establish new and improved models. In other words, when we examine the models that describe our planet and sun it is possible to extrapolate and predict that tomorrow the sun will “rise” again. But there is no guarantee of this, only a very high likelihood. Surely that’s better than guesswork?

No, although the fewer unknowns or inaccuracies are present in a model, the closer the model approaches reality. Therefore it is possible to derive entirely new information from entirely old information (e.g. predicting the existence of elements by using the incomplete periodic table). Again, this is certainly better than guesswork, even an educated guess. Is the problem perhaps that science precludes absolute knowledge? Why does that pose a problem for human knowledge though?

Your next paragraph on Hume and metaphysical truths rings a haunting bell. I may have to do a tour of the Web sites to refresh myself, as I recall being extremely frustrated with Hume about something closely related to this topic several years ago.

But yes, as I said above if you think the word knowledge is too absolute then there’s no problem replacing it with tested and informed opinion or something like that. If you disagree with me on the qualitative difference between unfounded opinion and informed opinion (knowledge) I would suggest looking at the process involved in obtaining these opinions; after all one claim or another on its own is not always recognizably scientific, but the process used to establish the claim either is or isn’t.

It’s an interesting distinction, and it means that knowledge can be wrong (most likely through the multiplication of unknowns, but also due to other factors).

I’m not sure I understand how you view falsification now. You say that you have to consider validation and falsification as mutually exclusive, but they seem complementary to me.

Well I admit I am very rusty on these philosophers. However, if I may be pragmatic, the criticisms you are using seem to reside purely in the imaginary world, or do they have real-world applications, for example in evolution theory as we were discussing? Have I successfully defended evolution theory?

Been a pleasure.

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Abe:

I curse thee! I have many other important things to do, but this discussion is just too damn interesting to abandon. Anyway, welcome back from your vacation.

Let me save you the trouble of going back to do all that “dry” reading by presenting, as concisely as I can, Hume’s critique of induction, and Popper’s response. (The following is from a paper I am in the process of writing):

*The logical dilemma Hume elucidates can be formulated in a number of different ways, such as 1) “What is the logical basis upon which one can generalize from specific instances to general laws?”, 2) “Is there really such a thing as cause and effect?”, or 3) “How do we know that tomorrow is going to be like today (i.e., that the sun will rise in the east, gravity will still function, and so forth)?” To these rather obvious questions Hume answers, with surprisingly iron-clad logic, that 1) there is absolutely no logical basis for generalization, 2) cause and effect do not exist outside of the mind of the observer, and 3) we cannot know that tomorrow will be like today.

A simple example can perhaps clarify this point. Let us say that we toss a coin 10 times, and that by some twist of fate it lands “heads up” every time. Based on this experience, and assuming that we had never tossed a coin before, is it logical for us to posit a “scientific” law that coins always land “heads up”, and expect that the coin will do so on the 11th toss as well? By what means can we logically deduce such a law?

No, it is not, and we can’t, Hume replies. No matter how many times an experiment is repeated with the same result, there is absolutely no logical reason to assume that it will give the same result the next time it is performed; nor is it possible to deduce a logical rule that in any sense justifies our expectation that future experiences will conform to past ones. *

The key word here is logical. That is to say, Hume argues that we cannot defend induction with any sort purely logical argument. Or conversely, that we cannot construct a logical argument such that, if we observe event A 50 times, we can logically prove with our argument that A will occur on the 51st observation as well. As I pointed out earlier, Popper made mincemeat of the various attempts to support induction that were proposed by the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, among others. No one has really successfully challenged the logic of Hume’s critique; but its pragmatic value, on the other hand, is rather questionable.

Given this state of affairs, Hume goes on to ask why we assume that the future will be like the past, that effects have causes, and that we can generalize from specific instances to general laws. This is the psychological aspect of the problem of induction, and Hume takes a pretty pragmatic view of the issue. We do so, he says, because of “custom or habit”. We are, so to speak, conditioned by the observed repetitions in Nature to expect them to continue, and we could hardly survive without that expectation. Nevertheless, the belief that these repetitions are based on underlying natural laws is a kind of chimera, based solely on experience, and is totally illogical.

Since induction “makes sense” psychologically speaking, Hume’s argument if rather counter-intuitive. It therefore takes a bit of work to wrap one’s head around it; but in the end I fear one cannot avoid concluding that, logically speaking, Hume is correct. On the one hand, Hume’s critique provides a much-need check on the inherent risks of overgeneralization – that is to say, the tendency to draw far-reaching conclusions on the basis of an inadequate observational basis, for example. On the other hand, Hume’s epistemological skepticism can be highly problematic for scientific research: technically, one’s observation base is never large enough to allow for the derivation of conclusions, general laws, and so forth. Hence, the quip from talk.origins website I quoted earlier:

Our differences, Abe, stem from the fact that you are discussing falsification as a technique: one method, among many, that scientists use when interrogating Nature. I am discussing falsification as a criteria: the manner in which scientific theories can be differentiated from all other sorts of statements. As a technique, one among a grab-bag of different methods used by scientists in their work, there can be little doubt of its usefulness; as a criteria, on the other hand, it presents a raft of insolvable difficulties. I hope to make this point more clearly as I go along, and provide some examples from you last couple of posts. But first (can I have a drum-roll, please), Popper’s solution to the Hume’s critique:

  • Popper essentially turns the question on its head; agreeing that we cannot use induction as a basis for making logically defensible statements about the world around us, he argues that we are left to the expedient of falsifying non-truths as our only possible means of coming close to truth. From such a position, it is never possible to know any truth in a “positive” sense. We can only know that certain theories are false. In essence, Popper develops a kind of empirical via negativa; unable to approach truth by means of empirical induction, we can only come to know her by gradually discovering what she is not.

Let us look more closely at Popper’s argument. Popper starts by taking Hume’s statement of the basic inductivist dilemma and reformulating it in what he calls “objective language,”: [ul] [li]L1: Can the claim that an explanatory universal theory is true be justified by ‘empirical reasons’; that is, by assuming the truth of certain test statements or observation statements (which, it may be said, are ‘based on experience’)? (Popper, 1979: 7).[/ul]Popper’s answer to this question is the same as Hume’s: no general theory can be logically derived from any number of specific observations. But from here, Popper goes one step further and generalizes Hume’s question by adding “or false” to the above statement:[ul][]L2: Can the claim that an explanatory universal theory is true or** that it is false** be justified by ‘empirical reasons’; that is, by assuming the truth of certain test statements or observation statements (which, it may be said, are ‘based on experience’)? (Popper, 1979: 7).[/ul]And here, of course, the answer is yes. Pretty nifty. We can never verify theories through observation or experiement, but by means of empirical testing we can reject obviously untrue theories through the process of falsification. Go back to the example above, concerning tossing coins. Suppose that we do make the general assumption that coins always land “heads up” when tossed; on the basis of our limited experience this is not an unreasonable theory. However, upon tossing our coin for the 11th time, we discover it has landed “tails up”. While it is true that we cannot derive a general law from this experience, it is certainly the case that we can rule out our first theory, i.e., that coins always land “heads up,” as false. It is from this perspective that Popper’s so-called “demarcation criteria” for differentiating between science and non-science, which leads in turn to his classification of psychoanalysis as a pseudo-science, becomes interesting.[/li]
In other words, on the basis of a limited set of observations, we posit a general law. If we accept Hume, as Popper does, we can never know if that law is true. However, if the law is formulated correctly, we can determine that it is false. We thus escape Hume’s dilemma: we have discovered a method of arriving at knowledge that does not rely on induction. Certainly, we can induce and guess and speculate all we want, even as scientists: Popper believes that sort of activity to be integral to the development of science. But all that sort of guesswork ain’t scientific until it is expressed in such a way as to be falsifiable. My example of coin tossing is extremely simplified, but relevant. Note that what makes the theory “Coins always land ‘heads-up,’” scientific is that it is easily falsifiable – not that it is true. Even if I derived the theory by means of induction, its status as science is based on its falsifiability. I could have induced a non-falsifiable theory about the coin as well – “Coins are steered by invisible spirits;” such a theory might even be true, but it isn’t scientific.

Now I’ll take some concrete examples from our discussions above to exemplify what I mean:

Strike one against Popper. To my knowledge, he never successfully addresses this issue. He seems to have a kind of step-for-step vision of science, in which General Concepts (GCs) imply Specific Models (SMs) imply Observations, such that, should the observation “fail,” the SM is falsified, which in turn falsifies the GC. This understanding of the structure of scientific knowledge is clearly unsatisfactory.

**Hence, falsifying examples do not falsify the theory, because one can adjust the theory to “explain” the falsifications; i.e., the theory (speaking globally) is not falsifiable. Therefore, the theory is not scientific, according to Popper. The argument you present here, while providing a good example of how useful falsification can be as a scientific technique, works against its usefulness as a demarcation criteria.

Me:

You:

**Well, if you rely on a scientific theory to explain an observation, and you claim that what differentiates science from non-science is falsifiability, then by your own argument the theory should predict falsifiable observations. You continue:

The argument above seems to imply that, due to all of the complications involved, evolutionary theory is non-falsifiable, strictly speaking – which is precisely my point. Unfortunately, Nature does not present herself to us in neat, conceptual boxes that allow us to easily falsify our theories regarding her underlying mechanisms. We are forced to use other techniques as well. Falsification is thus not a sufficient criteria.

**None of these observations have any bearing whatsoever on the falsifiability of evolutionary theory. They serve to verify the theory inductively, which ain’t the same thing. Popper would claim that one can inductively verify psychoanalysis in exactly the same manner, and that it is precisely PA’s overwhelming explanatory capacity which reveals its poverty as a scientific discipline. I keep getting the feeling that we are at cross purposes. Certainly, there is an overwhelming amount of strong evidence that supports the theory of evolution. I don’t dispute that. But I do wonder if evolutionary theory is, technically, falsifiable in Popper’s terms.

This is better, but I’m not sure how to deal with these sort of “absurd” examples. I suppose they do represent a kind of falsification: but unfortunately, using such standards, I would claim that both SC and ID are falsifiable. Certainly, a crocodile with a face on its stomach would not be a very “intelligent design,” not to mention being an abomination unto the Loooord our Gawd; we are therefore left with three competing theories still in the running. In other words, if the example above represents a falsifiable prediction of evolution, one could also plausibly argue that ID and SC are falsifiable on the same grounds.

Perhaps. But I can’t imagine what other mechanism they would refer to if not evolution, and what other alternative could a scientist propose, with the hope of being taken seriously?

I will wait with a detailed response to your last post until you give me a bit of feedback on what I’ve written above. I think we are going to tangle on the difference between knowledge and opinion if we continue this discussion. Popper claims that falsification allows us to make an end-run around Hume’s critique and actually achieve a kind of absolute knowledge: we can know, definitely, when our theories are false. And unlike you, I do not think that science “precludes” absolute knowledge: rather, I think it tends to claim that it has achieved such absolutes, at least in the sense that the knowledge it produces is “objectively” true, in all places and all times, regardless of culture, politics, and so forth. I think that your account of science will run into difficulties if you can’t differentiate more clearly between doxa and episteme as we go along; but that will require even more sophisticated epistemological analysis than the above.

Of course. But have you successfully defended falsification?

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Yet another small contribution to a learned debate:

Before psychoanalytic theory is tossed out as totally unscientific, let us please acknowledge that we can call things by other names and find the basics in the neurobiology literature as canon today:

Id is just drives. Testable as being located in the amygdala and other locations.

Superego is just learned societal constraints. Very little debate that this occurs.

Ego is just executive functions, felt to be frontal in location. Impulse control, balancing our drives with learned constraints.

It is still a reasonable model and still falsifiable with adequate experimental design. And again all science is, is a model. Subject to improvement as we learn more.

As to the rest, I fail to see how this differs with my original statement: science holds its positions with a tentative faith whereas faith in religion is absolute. Every act of induction is a tentative bit of faith, or call it “probable certainty” if you object to the “f word”. If it is true 50 times then it is very likely true on the 51st. Even more so after 500. Our doubt aproaches zero, but never reaches it … even if we forget that it is there.

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DSeid:

Well, one can discuss the status of psychoanalytic knowledge until the cows come home and still not arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. There are those who claim that it is scientific because it is experimentally falsifiable; because it is clinically falsifiable; because it is based on observation and induction, and that science actually isn’t falsifiable, and so on. There are those who claim that it isn’t scientific because it isn’t falsifiable; because it is falsifiable but “epistemically flawed;” because it isn’t a science to begin with, but a hermeneutic discipline, and so on.

I personally take the position that:

  1. Falsifiability is an unsatisfactory criterion for determining the difference between science and non-science;

  2. Psychoanalysis is not falsifiable, but that particular fact has little bearing on its status as a science;

  3. Psychoanalysis is not scientific for methodological reasons; and

  4. The “non-scientific” status of psychoanalysis does not have a significant bearing on the validity of knowledge produced by its methods (although a lack of access to scientific methodology imposes important constraints on such knowledge).

Hope that was clear, even if it sounds a little complicated. I disagree quite fundamentally with your argument concerning the falsifiability of psychoanalytic theories, for a lot of different reasons, but alas, such a debate is not pertinent to the discussion at hand.

I beg to differ (you knew I would say that, didn’t you?). Science is more absolutist than you give it credit for being. Or do you mean that you seriously doubt that the earth is round, that it circles the sun (instead of vice versa), that e=mc2, or that evolution has really occurred?

Science prides itself on being able to separate the wheat from the chaff; on being able to produce real epistemé (knowledge), rather than mere doxa (opinion). At any rate, that is what it strives towards, as I understand it. To get there, it utilizes a very strict methodology which serves to guarantee the knowledge it produces. It seems contradictory to me to claim that on the one hand science is superior to religious insight because its methods guarantee it epistemologically, while simultaneously claiming that in reality it is nothing other than a “tentative faith.” I mean really, understood in your terms, classical Freudian psychoanalysis is also just a “tentative faith,” most definitely subject to revision and what not. Does that make it scientific?

In addition, I still think you paint religious faith with too broad a brush. Even the Pope has claimed that Genesis must be understood as a metaphorical creation myth, and that evolution must be accepted as a scientific theory. Only the most fundamental interpretations of the Bible, the Koran, and so forth require an absolute belief in a Supreme Deity; the vast majority of religious folks out there understand their faith in broader, and more metaphorical, terms. In short, I argue that science is significantly more dogmatic/absolutist, and religion considerably less, than you and Abe would have it.

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“Seriously doubt”? Nah. The cases you cite are ones in which the doubt comes very close to zero indeed; they have become canon. But are they subject to revision as more information becomes available? Sure. Can I even imagine the evidence that would be great enough to cause the central tenets oif any of them to be thrown out? No. But for any theory, such is still a possibilty, even if it is infintessimal.

How about this for a challlenge? Define “science” as an operational entity in 100 words or less.

My take on it remains that science is the attempt to systematically develop ever more accurate models of how things work. Such a process of model improvement require constant doubt as to whether or not the current model has it quite right. Falsifiabilty is thus desired although not required; a model may be replaced not because it was falsified, but because another model fits the data better, or fits more data more comprehensively.

Religion is not about that constant improvement of the model, but resists it greatly; the current Pope may be willing to relegate Creation to myth status, but generations of Popes oppressed science and mathematics as threats to Church dogma.

They are both models of how the universe works but that is where the similarity ends. Science has more in common with Art than with Religion. Art too is about forming representations of the world, trying to understand what is hard to grasp.

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Part Two:

A revisit of a comparative operational definition of Religion- Religion’s prime focus is not its explanatory power, but its social function. Religion uses the models (myths or otherwise) to support a social structure. The emphasis is not on the explanatory power of the model but on how these models provide a basis for the rules of behavior. Science may indeed have some social structures, but they are secondary to the end of having explanatory power.

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DSeid:

Good one!

Science: the interrogation of Nature by means of instrumental measurement, and without reference to theoretical constructs beyond its realm. Probably won’t cut the mustard, but you’ve got to admit, its a nice try.

Hmmm…

I disagree (you knew I would say that, didn’t you?).

You can certainly focus on the social aspects of religion if you like, but I suspect that you’re missing the basic thrust of the OP. As I understand him, Illuvatar originally argued that “religion” and “science” both represent “belief structures.” He felt that this is what they had in common.

Admittedly, I’m not too comfortable myself with such a broad comparison, but I’ve tried to argue that myths, religion, and science can be fruitfully understood as sub-categories of the set, “generalized historical narratives.” All three function in such a way as to help us orient ourselves within the cosmos. Certainly, there are important differences between “science” and “religion.” There are also important differences between Christianity and Islam. Nevertheless, Christianity and Islam are both considered religions. Can we say the same of science?

I wouldn’t put science under the category of “religion,” but I would point to the fact that science and religion have a lot of commonalties – that they might arguably belong to the same family of phenomena. I would also point out that the social structure surrounding a belief, or faith, cannot be anything other than a reflection of that belief. Science attempts, as it were, to “read the Book of Nature;” in doing so, the narrative structure of the natural sciences does not include Gods, Deities, or other supernatural creatures such as would require worship or sacrifice. Thus, the scientific narrative does not generate rituals, ceremonies, or any of the other paraphernalia one generally associates with religion. It represents a “secular” belief system, one that focuses on the evidence presented to our senses by Nature, and attempts to explain that evidence exclusively in the terms of Nature (i.e., as Natural Law). Understood from this perspective, “science” is really just the final expression of a general tendency toward “secularization” that has followed in the developmental footsteps of capitalism and industrialization. To argue that science is not a religion because it does not generate the same social structures as a religion is to me a little like arguing that Islam is not a religion because Muslims don’t worship the Cross.

In other words, I think that the social structure surrounding any given religion is a by-product of its beliefs, and not the other way around.

Lookit – every day, each of us is presented with a huge volume of sensory impressions that we must somehow “make sense” of. To do so, we must sort them into categories, and in general we use these categories to produce a kind of “narrative,” which is the narrative of our daily lives. We “translate” events in the external world so as to “fit,” as it were, with the “narrative structure” we are constantly producing, and in which we are constantly participating. This process requires that we select from a constant stream of impressions those “facts” we are going to focus on in producing our narrative; in fact, it probably requires that we start out by defining for ourselves exactly which impressions are “facts,” a priorí.

To explain my point from a different angle: we select from competing explanations of a given phenomena that one explanation which best fits the narrative structure we ourselves are most comfortable with. We inherit these structures from our family, from our culture, and from our history, and as we go along we change them through our own contributions to them. We select the narrative structure which most appeals to us (or sometimes have one forced upon us), but I doubt we can ever find an objective set of criteria with which to defend our choice. In other words, we cannot come to know God by staring at a test tube any more than we can understand chemical reactions by praying to the Almighty.

Does any of the above make sense?

If it does, then I argue it is from this vantage point that it becomes interesting to speak of science and religion as belonging to the same category.

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Of course. That’s the fun here, isn’t it? Not a bad try, sounds good and it has brevity! Still, I don’t think that “instrumental measurement” is the key feature of science … afterall, Einstein mainly did thought experiments, and “constructs beyond its realm”? If science as a system of knowledge references a theoretical construct it is placing it within its realm, isn’t it?

And I agree that they have this in common. But a key difference is the end to which the belief systems serve. Thus belief systems in science are subject to refinement or even wholesale revision in its attempt to improve itself as a representation of reality, for that is its end, whereas religion only revises a belief system as a last resort, for the beliefs serve another function, another end. I appreciate the distinction that you have made between myths and religion and see much more in common between myths and science. They both do serve the role of, as you say, orienting ourselves in the cosmos. Myth makers may have been the theoreticians of their day. Religion is another thing altogether.

You’ve never applied for a grant, have you? :slight_smile:

The last part of this quote first: Not my point. I don’t care if the social structure was identical, in science they are incidental, not primary. Myths may have developed out of a desire to understand the cosmos, but religion, as you point out, is more than the myths that it contains (and for believers, let me specify no disrespect by that word, for all I know any religion’s myths may be factual, I mean only the stories that are the models contained within the belief system), it is the rituals and rules for living that those myths justify.

But I was waiting for that secularization part! I left theism out of my definition of religion, mainly out of defernce to that Buddhism discussion. (Although some would classify Buddhism more as a spiritual philosophy than a religion) I didn’t even include a reference to spirituality. I question those omissions, for without such a qualification any secular government meets the definition of religion as well. “Self-evident” truths are accepted with an absolute faith … despite substantial evidence that all men are not created equal, for example. But it is no coincidence that the era of modern science has coevolved with the era of secular government. The iron grip of the Church throughout the Middle Ages stopped science in its tracks. Science could not flourish while religion was in absolute control. And secular government could not supplant religious government without science to replace religion’s myths with models that adapt to new times. Yes, science serves the same function as myths, and secular society, which contains science and statements of faith like The Bill of Rights and which uses both to support the rules of social strutures, serves the same function as religion. (Totally off the thread, but, IMHO, this is the threat of Western values that drives Osama to terror.) For most, religion is left as a group membership, and as a spiritual guide.

Yes. And while I may think that some us see God in the wonder of what happens in a test tube, I agree with much of what you state. But not with the conclusion that

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i think a lot of people treat science the same way some people treat religion. they will go “science says this and science says that” and yet they have very little understanding of science. i suspect some scientists play into this by making science seem mysterious and complicated instead of trying to get people to understand. i saw a program that said that Carl Sagan failed to get an award because other “scientists” were jealous of him.

if we adopt the hypothesis that god created the universe then the universe could be regarded as a crime scene and scientists are detectives trying to gather evidence on the criminal. this might lead to THEOLOGICAL AXIOM NUMBER ONE. “God cannot be stupid.” relativity is too complicated for the stupid.

that might lead to the conclusion that god doesn’t practice any religion. every religious leader must have at least a masters degree in physics to prove he/she is intelligent enough to vaguely comprehend god.

Dal Timgar

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Those who believe strongly in science would probably not believe in most religions because there is no substantial evidence of a god or things of that sort.

Those who belive strongly in god would probably not believe in science because it demands proof that something is real and god can’t exactly come down from heaven and say, “hey, I’m here!”

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Jantom, Einstein believed in God. So did Newton. Theism is held and disputed by scientists just as it is by nonscientists. Some devoutly spiritual individuals have become great scientists. Science and spiritual-theistic faith are different and not mutually incompatable. But religion and secular systems for social structures need to be careful about bumping into each other in dark alleys.