How would you define "science"?

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@Eddie

We can see the various germs – microbes – with microscopes. And we know what they do.

That was not so obvious when the germ theory was first proposed.

[T_aquaticus]

@Eddie

Does anybody who holds that microbes cause infectious disease based on scientific evidence seriously take the position that “microbes cause disease” is not also true “in an ontological sense”?

I do. Or to put it in a different way, I am not at all interested in the idea if Germ theory is an ontological truth or not since I am more of a pragmatist. There are well known traditions in philosophy that call everything into question, such as radical skepticism and Cartesian doubt. I thought you would know that.

@Eddie

I doubt there is any research that ID people could do that you would accept as providing “positive evidence.” I think you would class every possible argument for design as an “argument from ignorance” – i.e., you would say that there may be non-designed causes that we haven’t discovered yet, and it is premature to infer design until we have canvassed all those possible causes. So even the strongest prima facie case for design (and I think there is plenty in the basic architecture of cells, the DNA-protein system, etc.) would be regarded by you as inadequate, unscientific, etc.

That seems to be an admission that ID is not science.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@nwrickert

I’m not seeing that “without commenting on how those predictions connect with the reality” part. Science is very much concerned with how its statements connect to nature. That’s what measurement is all about.

Well, yes, I agree, but then I guess I misunderstood your original statement. Way up top, you wrote:

“I mostly agree. But I disagree with the “truth about nature” bit, because a scientist should not presuppose that there is such a thing as truth about nature.”

But now you are saying:

“Science is very much concerned with how its statements connect to nature.”

What is the point of figuring out how one’s statements about nature connect to nature, if there may be no such thing as a truth about nature? If a scientist says that rain is caused by condensation of water vapor in clouds, is he not trying to state a truth about nature? I grant entirely that future research might cause him to change his mind about the cause of rain, but in that case, surely the scientist would say that his former explanation of rain was not the true explanation. Your stickling about “truth” is not clearly motivated, from what you have said so far.

I suspect that you are working from some sophisticated philosophy-of-science discussion of “truth” that you have read, whereas I am working from the everyday use of the word “truth” – the way the word is usually used by everyday people in everyday situations, and the way it is very often used by scientists when they are speaking without worrying about philosophers of science looking over their shoulders. I have certainly heard many, and read many, Ph.D.s in science using the words “true” and “truth” with regard to nature, to convey the sense that thanks to scientific study, we now know how nature works (whereas previous generations did not know). What have you got against the everyday use of “true” and “truth”?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Mercer

@Agauger has been dancing all around a straightforward one, that creation of enzymatic activities at the levels we observe in nature requires design–that’s the reason she has concocted for refusing to acknowledge 32 years of data from thousands of papers on catalytic antibodies that contradicts Axe’s extrapolation from a single study.

@mercer, @agauger has raised a legitimate question about the study you pointed her to here: Beta-Lactamase, Antibody Enzymes, and Sequence Space. Please help make sense of it when you can.

[T.j_Runyon]

Why was her post flagged? I don’t get it?

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@Eddie

What is the point of figuring out how one’s statements about nature connect to nature, if there may be no such thing as a truth about nature?

A lion is concerned with how its behavior connects to nature, because otherwise it won’t get the food it needs. But the lion is not concerned with truth, because it is not using language. And the same for just about any organism.

Concern about connection to nature is prior to language, and is thus prior to truth.

The scientist is concerned with making sense of nature. Truth does not enter into this, until he begins to express his discoveries and ideas with language. Truth is part of the language package.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

I see your point about language and truth, but because you are adhering to Anglo-American positivist accounts of what philosophy and science are, and because I adhere to Greek and European accounts, we are not going to agree, so we will just have to let this discussion go for the time being.

[Jordan (Jordan Mantha)]

@Eddie

I adhere to Greek and European accounts

Can you explain this a bit more?

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

Hi, Jordan. I have time for merely the crudest simplification. Anglo-American philosophy in the 20th century turned increasingly to the study of logic and of the analysis of statements, and moved farther and farther away from classical metaphysical analysis, i.e., from consideration of “what really exists”. Classical European philosophy was much more interested in the big metaphysical and ontological questions; Anglo-American philosophy tended to sidestep them. In many ways, it tried to make itself a handmaiden of modern science, providing “cleanup” work on proper use of language, etc. When a European philosopher spoke of “truth” he never meant just the truth of statements, but a sort of matching of statement to reality – what really existed. Neil seems skeptical that science ever talks about what “truly” exists. That’s a very “Anglo” approach to philosophy of science, and very modern. Newton, etc. didn’t talk about science in that way, or Leibniz, etc.

One might say that in Germany, Kant did give some support to such a view of science, of nature, and of statements about nature. But Kant was a radical critic of the whole Greek and European tradition. Most intellectuals in philosophy departments, where they aren’t deconstructionists, are strongly in the Anglo-American tradition, or are Kantians, or are a combination, and their influence explains why so many Americans (and Australians, like Neil – in Australia the analytic approach to philosophy from England really took hold) think about language in and truth in the way that Neil thinks of it.

Decisions about these matters can never be reached by quick arguments. Deciding what school of philosophy one adheres to requires much time, and deep personal wrestling. It takes years to immerse oneself in the history of philosophy. I can’t justify why I reject modern Anglo-American philosophy in this sort of forum. It would require an undergrad course or graduate seminar. Anyhow, the point is, as long as Neil is going to use the vocabulary he is using, we will be talking at cross purposes, because the words he is using don’t always mean the same to both of us. So I have let it go.

[Jordan (Jordan Mantha)]

@Eddie

Anglo-American philosophy in the 20th century turned increasingly to the study of logic and of the analysis of statements, and moved farther and farther away from classical metaphysical analysis, i.e., from consideration of “what really exists”. Classical European philosophy was much more interested in the big metaphysical and ontological questions;

Thanks, that helps! I understand what you’re saying better.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@nwrickert

That was not so obvious when the germ theory was first proposed.

Yes, agreed. But I thought you were talking about the status of your statement now. In 2019, I would regard “germs cause disease” as:

1. A fact.

2. Genuine knowledge of nature. (Not mere opinion or conjecture, but established knowledge.)

3. A truth about nature.

If you are willing to use the words, “fact,”, “knowledge,” and “truth,” as I use them above, then we have no disagreement on vocabulary. But if you would say that only one or two those terms, but not all three, apply, then we are using words in a different way, and I’m not sure what can be done about that, as I suspect such a difference would be rooted in an acceptance of different philosophical traditions about the relationship of language to reality.

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

I have no problem saying that “germs cause disease” is a fact and a truth about nature. But it was not originally considered a fact. If science is a search for truths about nature, and this was not considered a truth at first, then that cannot have been what science was searching for.

That’s an example of why I don’t want to describe science as a search for facts. Let science dig out the evidence, and the philosophers and society at large can decide what’s a fact.

As for whether that statement is knowledge – I just disagree with the characterization of knowledge as justified true belief. I see knowledge as having to do with our causal connections to nature.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@nwrickert

If science is a search for truths about nature, and this was not considered a truth at first, then that cannot have been what science was searching for.

This sounds very strange, almost confused, or at best some kind of tricky word-play. To say that science is searching for truth about nature does not rule out the possibility of making all kinds of false judgments along the way. “Search for” does not always equal “find” or “correctly identify.” But this is no more a problem in science than in any other endeavor that human beings engage in: history, legal trials, etc. It doesn’t warrant abandoning the idea that scientists or historians or lawyers search for the truth. You seem to be making unnecessary difficulty over something that is everyday English usage, and that everybody understands without any academic training at all, i.e., that we try to find out what is true, and to avoid believing in what is not true.

@nwrickert

I just disagree with the characterization of knowledge as justified true belief

Well, I didn’t introduce that definition – you did. I was using “knowledge” in a common-sense way. I didn’t defend or comment on the definition.

@nwrickert

I see knowledge as having to do with our causal connections to nature.

Well, I don’t think I disagree, but I would like to arrange the words a little more pointedly, to give it focus: “Scientists seek knowledge of the causal connections exhibited in nature.”

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@Eddie

This sounds very strange, almost confused, or at best some kind of tricky word-play.

Perhaps that’s because you don’t think like a scientist.

If you ask a scientist to search for truth, he is going to ask “truth about what?” And if you just say “about nature” then he will see that as unhelpful.

Most scientists are driven by curiosity, rather than concerns about truth.

Yes, they may well finish up with true statements. But they were not searching to find whether those statements were true. Those statements are just the way that they present their conclusions.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@nwrickert

Perhaps that’s because you don’t think like a scientist.

I know many scientists who use these words exactly the way I do. Indeed, I have never met one who has expressed himself on these points the way you do.

@nwrickert

Most scientists are driven by curiosity, rather than concerns about truth.

Curiosity about what? (To use your own complaint.)

@nwrickert

But they were not searching to find whether those statements were true.

Of course not. I never said that scientists started from statements and then searched to find out whether they were true.

You were the one who linked the idea of truth with the idea of statements. I’ve maintained that truth is about objects; statements are merely a means of expressing truths about objects. In the case of science, the objects discussed are natural objects.

Of course scientists are not investigating statements; they are investigating nature. What is so hard to understand about this? Aristotle knew that he was investigating nature. Galileo knew it. Newton knew it.

You are getting tangled up in mere words, in part because you are trying to bring in unnecessary concepts from certain philosophers of science and philosophers of language. Their language is bewitching you, and clouding your mind. Just use everyday language, and all the problems you are creating, by trying to be too subtle and academic, will vanish.

[nwrickert (Neil Rickert)]

@Eddie

I’ve maintained that truth is about objects; statements are merely a means of expressing truths about objects.

But the scientist often doesn’t know what objects he is dealing with, either.

And then we have important scientists who thought they were studying phlogiston or the luminiferous ether.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

Neither of your “objections” touch the heart of my assertions. They are easily dealt with in the usual “footnotes and special cases” way. Obviously the scientist is trying to find out what objects really exist, as well as how those real objects work. So part of his task is to ascertain which alleged objects are fictional and which really exist. Again, this is common sense, and leaves my general statements intact.

In any case, neither the ether nor phlogiston were actually “objects” in the sense that a rock or mountain or river or volcano or butterfly are objects. They were never perceived by the senses, or part of the uneducated man’s world view. They were theoretical constructs invented by scientists to explain the behavior of other objects. In getting rid of them, science did not get rid of anything that was ever an object in the first place. It got rid of nonexistent theoretical entities. That still leaves intact my statement that science wants to understand natural objects – volcanoes, earthquakes (using “object” broadly), plants, animals, lightning, stones with magnetic properties, planets, etc. It may in the process of trying to understand, invent theoretical constructs, which may in time be discovered to be unnecessary or nonexistent. But the goal is always to understand the external reality that the theoretical constructs were invented to explain. So scientists can prevent themselves from spinning too far out into speculation by always returning to the phenomena that are to be explained. The phenomena have a way of producing sobriety to counteract theoretical intoxication. So always the scientist is focused his natural objects and their behavior, and trying to learn why they behave that way.

As I say, everyone from Aristotle to the present has understood this without much problem. You are overthinking something that does not require such intense intellectual anxiety on your part. If you were content to follow everyday usage, you would find that my formulation is quite sound, for general purposes. A biologist studies living things, a chemist studies substances, a physicist studies matter and motion in their more general properties, a geologist studies the earth. Scientists study nature, natural objects and connected processes. They seek knowledge about these things. And they hope that the conclusions they come to will be true and not false. So scientists seek knowledge and truth about natural things. Why you want to complicate the matter beyond this is beyond me. I see no intellectual gain in what you are doing, only the introduction of obscurity.