If science has so many effective voices, certainly you could name ten of them.
You’re painting a very basic, primary colour picture of science and scientists there Bizz, you’re either a technician using other peoples methods and ideas or you’re Leonardo da Vinci, a natural philosopher really advancing the field of science. There are probably less than one hundred people worldwide who fit the latter category, given the way science currently works and is funded. If you want to reserve the term scientist for these people thats fine, an argument can be made for that. It paints a ludicrously hardline and inaccurate picture of how science works, though. Great advancements in science are built on incremental observations made by allsorts of people, often people with no discernable “deep philosophical drive”.
The synthetic chemist you mention is almost certainly making novel molecules, ones that have never been made before. He may not be advancing chemistry directly through his work, but the new molecules he synthesises will eventually become the drug to treat schizophrenia, or parkinson’s disease, or Alzheimers etc. , great scientific questions each. Its only by his scientific observations that you have a job, and its only through your scientific observations that he does (unless you work in marketing, in which case you’re the one definitively wearing the trousers).
Actually, I agree that many scientists are ignorant, not of the scientific method, but of science’s limits in determining meaning in the universe. I hear many scientists who believe that one can create a scientific justification for preferring science as an explanation of the cosmology over other explanations, seemingly unaware that science, like all systems, is predicated on axioms.
The axioms for fundamentalist Christianity are, basically, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” These axioms lead to a worldview that is intrinsically different from the axioms of science.
Science rests on axioms such as:
-The cosmos operates according to principles of logic (e.g., if p is true, then ~p is false.)
-If cause A resulted in effect B under circumstances C, then cause A will result in effect B under circumstances C. Note the word “result.”
-Our senses provide a means of detecting an objective universe.
-The most parsimonious explanation is likely to be the correct explanation.
There is no way to prove any of these statements without assuming that the statement is accurate; but without any one of these statements, science’s best conclusions become meaningless.
This is why, I think, it’s so difficult to argue with Creationists: they’re starting with different axioms. While some scientists get this, I’ve met plenty of scientists who do not, and who are very irritated by the idea that science cannot justify itself on a metaphysical level as a cosmological explanation superior to any other.
Daniel
I can’t argue in the field of cosmology. I know no more about it than any other educated layperson.
But, in biology, we have axioms. Take for example that DNA is the heritable material. If someone were able to disprove this tomorrow, and replace it with a new theory, then everyone would wave goodbye to DNA.
It’s unlikely to happen, obviously, because it’s damn near a certainty that DNA is the heritable genetic material. But, we use the term “theory” to leave the door open for the possibility that we’re not correct.
I don’t think anything is taken as fact in science (maybe just biological sciences?), and someone is always trying to tear it apart.
That’s a theory, not an axiom. An axiom is something that you have to assume before you can do any work; there’s a proof somewhere (I don’t know the exact parameters) that any system must contain at least one axiom that cannot be proven within the system.
There’s nothing shameful about having axioms, but they exist in science just like in any other system.
Daniel
Your illustration does not refute Liberal’s observation. You are describing the technique by which particular tests are examined for their adherence to protocol and their ability to establish that the test demonstrated what it was intended to demonstrate.
This is a necessary part of conducting the experimental practice within science.
However, Liberal was addressing the larger issues in which (some–many? few?) scientists and supporters of science fail to recognize the philosophical underpinnings of their inquiry. Note the specific examples he gave in his first post, here or the examples set forth in the post of Left Hand of Dorkness in response to your post.
No one is claiming that scientists have failed to master their technique; we just assert that some scientists are good technicians while failing at some of the higher thought that should precede and follow the experiments.
I have to assume that DNA is the heritable material when I transfect it into a cell to get gene expression. I don’t prove this for an experiment every time I do it. Though I guess that the result (that I do, in fact, get gene expression) does prove it in the end.
Do you have any examples of particular scientists that you fault for such behavior? I’m not being snarky. I’m just not sure that I understand the arguement.
In the axiom argument as I have seen it, religious believers typically assert that because scientists do accept that axiom about their senses reflecting reality of some sort, science is just another religion.
It is not: science absolutely minimizes the number of unfounded assumptions that must be made, whereas religion seems to positively dwell on them. Frex, if scientists were to take a religious approach to the idea that one’s senses reflect reality, they might then say that anything that can’t be detected by the senses is not real, and deny the existence of microwaves, supersonic sounds, subatomic particles and whatnot, and refulse to investigate any such “unscientific” phenomenon.
What science has done instead is thoroughly investigate the human sensorium and how we process the information in our brains, the better to understand the limitations and biases that we impose on the physical world because of our physical makeup. Science in short tries to minimize the effect of bad data collected by the senses so that our understanding of the physical world will be that much clearer.
This is NOTHING like religion, which is very touchy about examining its axioms. And with good reason, generally speaking.
Well, a good distinction would be between Stephen J. Gould and Richard Dawkins. Both are (were in Gould’s case) atheists. Both are/were scientists. Gould, however, while openly expressing his disbelief in God, did not made the mistake of asserting that scientific studies demonstrated that there is no god.* Dawkins does make that error on many occasions. Each took their belief (or lack) regarding the existince of the divine from their own observations of the world, but Dawkins has gone further to assert that his obserevations have demonstrated that there is no god. Probably, among the greater scientists, you will have fewer that make that mistake (or are wise enough to express it only in private). However, Liberal was pointing out how advocates of science who post in these fora (several of whom could, themselves, be classified as scientists) have made such fundamental errors as claiming that science can prove that 1 + 1 = 2. Their error is not one of religious or anti-religious belief, but one of failing to distinguish the role of science in human inquiry. 1 + 1 = 2 can be established through mathematics, but mathematics is its own discipline, one on which science depends, but which is not, itself, science.
- (Gould did make one assertion, widely quotedy that edged dangerously close to that error, but his writings were not rife with such errors.)
lekatt, hmmm, I did read your links and did find the abstract for the article and also searched for other data on NDE finding out, for example, that NDE can be reproduced by ketamine which mimics some neurochemical processes that occassionally occur under anoxic stress. Not much else other than some speculative stuff. If “the truth is out there” then please provide for me the study that shows a prediction made by the model that would be inconsistent with a biologic physical basis for consciousness that has been verified in a reproducible and valid manner. Again anecdotes need not apply. Percieved memory of an event is not objective proof of the event having occurred. I’ve been near people on drugs who felt that they were experiencing transcendental clarity when they were just stoned fools. I’ve been near schizophrenics who percieved and remembered aliens implanting radio receivers in their heads but I do not accept that as proof that such occurred. What we can currently say, based on the evidence, is that some people who have experienced serious anoxic damage and then recovery, report that they recall an experience that has been described as a NDE, and that similar experiences can be reproduced by certain psychotropic drugs. We cannot even say that they had those actual perceptions, only that they believe that they had those perceptions. No more is supported by the data, either way. It certainly could be that such experiences did occur and were the result of a transcendental soul out of the body. It certainly could be that such an experience is a manifestation of some individuals’ physiologic responses to severe anoxic stress, or that a false memory of having such an expereince is the result of recovery from such an event in some individuals. The latter two explanations are consistent with a large body of other past predictions and observations, the former is not. Which does not disprove the concept of an everlasting soul, whether it is destined for Hell, Heaven, or beyond the River Styx, it merely states that such explanations are not required or justified by the evidence or by the evidenciary method.
Okay. Mostly everybody else,
Exhibit A: Lekatt. An individual who likely has had some substantial education, is the willing beneficiary of much of what science and technology has produced and is apparently no Luddite, yet is entrenched in a misunderstanding of how science works and in disputing science for his perception that it threatens the basic foundations of his faith, including but likely not limited to, a soul everlasting. I think that (s)he is a good achetype of the segment of the American public that, at a minimum, is gaining power in controlling the direction of education and research funding in this country.
Easy to ridicule, sure, easy to dismiss in a forum like this, but this country is not well represented by this forum. Can we reach these people? Failing that, can we at least do better than they at reaching the rest of cerebrii populii?
Ok, so to address these in terms of my experience as a scientist: Numbers one, three and four seem to be guidelines that tend to be true, but if an experiment shows them not to be true, then so much the worse for the guidelines.
I can tell you that number two is patently frowned upon in science. I’m writing a paper now, where I used a specific cell line to show a specific thing. My conclusions are that under these circumstances in these cells, this happens. I certainly speculate in the Discussion section that this is applicable broadly, but that is the portion of the paper designed for such speculation. Were I to title the paper “This results in this in disease X”, it would be rejected by any journal as having overreaching conclusions.
I think the problem is that the “scientists” are not the people on the news and in the public eye as discussing science. The people involved in the debates are science educators, who are understanding science second hand, and not involved in running the experiments or formulating the hypotheses; thus, they don’t fully understand what an experiment can and can’t show.
This is the fault of scientists for not being accessible and broadly looking down on scientists (Sagan comes to mind) who are accessible to the public.
I think
Ok, I would agree with that. I think Dawkins does overreach.
But, I also think that his balance sheet in fighting ignorance is firmly in the green despite this.
Okay, I think you’re not clear on the difference between an axiom and a theory. You do recognize that scientists have established that DNA is the heritable material, right? And you do recognize that scientists could establish this again, given the facts as previously established, if it were necessary? And those previously-established facts could themselves be re-established as necessary, right?
That’s a theorem.
Now, at what point has the existence of an objective universe been established, and how has it been established? Remember, you may not assume that you’re working within an objective universe when you’re trying to demonstrate that you’re working within an objective universe.
Science cannot establish the existence of an objective universe. Yet it pretty much assumes that universe. That’s what makes it an axiom, not a theory.
While this may be true, so what? Remember, Occam’s razor is itself an axiom of the scientific method; it has no meta-value that means we ought to apply it to a system that doesn’t hold it as an axiom.
Not at all. Scientists do not observe microwaves directly, but they do observe them indirectly: they devise instruments that they can see, hear, and touch, and believe that their sight, hearing, and tactile sensations of these instruments provide a means to detect the objective reality of microwaves.
I am unaware of anything that science investigates without having any means of sensing some aspect of that phenomenon. We study particle physics by having particle accelerators that can themselves “sense” particle collisions and translate their “observations” into light waves and sound waves detectable by human senses. The scientists them draw conclusions about the universe based on what they sense from these machines.
If we do not assume that our senses provide reasonably accurate information about an objective universe, then we cannot draw conclusions based on experiments.
Daniel
Can you give an example of an experiment that could show that p and ~p were both true? Are you aware that, in any system in which any statement p and ~p are true, any statement q can also be proven to be true?
Can you give an example of an experiment that could show that there is no such thing as a subjective universe accessible by human senses?
I wrote that one carefully–not that given A, B happens, but given A under circumstances C, B happens. What you said agrees with what I said, not contradicting it.
Again, if science has no axioms, then it’s disproving an accepted mathematical theorem about closed systems. I think it’s extremely unlikely that science is the one system in the cosmos that has no axioms; I think it’s far likelier that many scientists, while understanding the scientific process very well, haven’t given much thought to the fact that they have to make some assumptions in order for science to function, just like anyone operating in any other conceivable system must do.
Daniel
However, no one here is suggesting lynching him or even getting out the tar and feathers. The point of this aspect of this discussion is that there are people either practicing or supporting science who have made the same errors that he is popularizing. In the context of a discussion as to what we can do to encourage a better appreciation of science in this country, the errors of Dawkins feed the errors of lekatt and impede our ability to effectively promote science.
I’ll go through everything you wrote in a more detailed fashion, but if this is the conclusion of it, then I think we’re going to disagree. We often talk about the things that have to be assumed in our experiments (I’m assuming that this chemically induced tumor cell behaves like a real colon cancer), and thus the limitations of the conclusions.
Again, your parenthetical statement is NOT an axiom: it’s a premise.
Daniel
Then you should be more specific in your conclusion that scientists don’t understand the “assumptions” that they make. My rebuttal is that they do.
Oh, for Pete’s sake. I’ve used the word “axiom” seventeen times; I’ve used the word “assumption” once as a synonym for “axiom.” Don’t even go there.
Daniel