Methodological Naturalism, So Falsely Called

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

@Paul_Nelson

A warning to those who appeal to a largely tendentious history of science, according to which MN was promoted by theists. Open your Boyle, your Newton, your Linneaus, and so forth, and you will find them explaining the origin of biological objects by the action of intelligence. MN in its modern form is the product of post-Darwinian naturalism, where theists made a virtue of necessity and baptized the naturalistic framework they inherited from T.H. Huxley and other late 19th century philosophical naturalists.

Well, to clarify that, I’ve spent a lot of time making sure I was not representing the situation. Though, I am not a historian, and the situation is complex, I think there is validity to my position. Hopefully historians, like @TedDavis and Clinton Ohlers will be able to join in.

@Paul_Nelson, you are 100% correct that there is something fishy about MN in science today. IMHO, however, that is not a reason to get rid of it. Rather, it is a reason to understand what is fishy about it, and perhaps rectify it. Like I’ve said, I think that leaves us recognizing that MN is the “term of art” in science, that was formed in an effort secularize science, but its referent remains to a theological concept: the Creator-Creation distinction.

@Paul_Nelson

Caltech physicist Sean Carroll, for instance, in his recent book The Big Picture (Dutton, 2016), argues that

“Science should be interested in determining the truth , whatever that truth may be—natural, supernatural, or otherwise. The stance known as methodological naturalism, while deployed with the best of intentions by supporters of science, amounts to assuming part of the answer ahead of time. If finding truth is our goal, that is just about the biggest mistake we can make.” (p. 133)

To add to this, the notion of science as being defined as the search for all “truth” is very dangerous slippery slope. There is no way to demonstrate human rights from science, and I think that they are “true” and important. If we start making science the arbitrator of all truth (even if we get rid of MN), we grant it far too much authority.

This the the danger that Gould was attempting to protect against with the Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA). His instinct was right, but NOMA is a failed demarcation criteria. As I gather, modern critique of MN does not consider Creation vs. Creator as a demarcation criteria, even though this is the origin of MN, and does not suffer from the problems of other criteria.