Why should you think that experimental sciences are the only sciences that test hypotheses? What follows is a strawman fantasy of your own devising, bearing no resemblance to anything anyone else is talking about. A test is merely subjection of hypotheses to evidence. If there’s evidence supporting the hypothesis that the pyramids were built (“design” is a poor term for it), then that’s a test. Science would not claim otherwise.
True. But it’s a limitation on our ability to discover reality. What alternative “way of knowing” are you aware of?
I do not think you are wrong here, but there are practical overrides which dominate at both ends of a science education. In some respects, the 101 year is the most challenging due to the sheer breadth of material. From atomic orbitals to xylem and phloem, it is an enormous amount to take in - the object being that if you claim a degree in science that one is not embarrassedly clueless about some general area. As it is, there is much material in the textbook which simply gets skipped over. Program wise, geology tends to get short shift for graduates in other disciplines. So time is a huge constraint.
On the PhD end of training, the object is to extend knowledge, and that is really hard to do apart from very focused research. It is pretty hard to come up with big picture musings which have not been mused before.
I think there is recognition that there has to be some degree of exam incentivization to induce budding physicists to learn botany, where as natural curiosity will motivate investigation of more philosophical aspects. The popular science press and documentary industry is healthy and heavily used, and is full of history of science, probing of ultimate questions - the weirder the better, personal drama and rivalries of individual scientists - the more maverick the better. While some of this material is questionable, some is quite decent, so the rabbit hole is all yours.
And of course, if one wants to study the philosophy of science, there are always degree programs in precisely that.
Only to the extent that we could also say flat earthers believe the earth is a solid object with some sort of shape, so they have no disagreement with the standard scientific theory regarding the shape of the earth. Right?
No, and the reason no one thinks that is that there is no plausible mechanism by which such structures arise thru unguided processes, but it is known that human beings can and do create such structure.
That is exactly the opposite of the case with biological systems and structures.
I do mean the first bit, but not the last. What other means of testing can there be except the methods of the empirical sciences? But those methods are not limited to inferring only natural causes. Still, that does get into a whole can of worms about what you mean by non-natural causes. How do we distinguish natural from non-natural? Can any non-natural cause be well enough defined so as to provide predictions of what will and will not be observed? That may be doubtful.
To follow up on this point, @terrellclemmons: By your understanding, how does one test for “non-natural” factors that may be involved in a phenomenon under investigation? How does this differ from the way we test natural factors? Can you give examples of where people are using these investigative techniques?
Do you know that your parents loved you? Or is that a rubbish, “unscientific” hypothesis which should be discarded, because there is no lab test that could verify or falsify it? Do you know that representative democracy is better than totalitarianism? Or is that “unscientific” twaddle which, being unconfirmable in the lab, should not be believed, or taught in schools?
Indeed it does, and you raise another good question.
I’d like to note two things we seem to agree on. (1) There are some valid questions that we may not be able to know the answers to with empirically verified certainty. And (2) the methods of science do not necessarily have to be limited to inferring only natural causes.
It strikes me that these are among the kinds of questions that might have been discussed in Hedin’s Honors course called “The Boundaries of Science.” Note that one of the questions his students said they were interested in exploring was, “Are there things which lie outside the scope of science?” and that he made extra effort to explain how knowledge is obtained and to acknowledge when science does not have the full answer. Your questions, though they are about science, are not questions that science can answer. They have entered the realm of philosophy.
At this point, I’d like to quit while we’re ahead, having noted some points of agreement. While I had not started Hedin’s book when I first entered this thread, I started it over the weekend. It appears that he will discuss questions like these. Perhaps some of the PS regulars who don’t have a prejudicial hostility toward Dr. Hedin, if they’re interested in exploring these questions, will find some good food for thought about them there.
If you decide to read it and have some thoughts afterwards and you post them here, feel free to tag me. I’d be interested in hearing them.
We have someone here who seems to have spent a whole career in molecular biology without realizing this, since he keeps saying that science is about data, data, data, and never about argument.
You’re mixing apples with oranges. The ether, phlogiston, etc. were physical concepts testable by physical means. Teleology involves metaphysical and well as physical considerations. Scientists are trained how to think about testing concepts by physical means, but there is almost never anything in their training about the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of science itself.
When I infer that the Pyramids were designed I postulate no invisible intenders. I use reason and our empirical knowledge of how things work.
Yes, because we have records of ancient Egyptian life, coming from people like Herodotus and later from the translation of Egyptian texts themselves. But if we had no such records, if all we had were those Pyramids standing alone in the desert, on the principles typically enunciated by the atheists here, it would be “unscientific” to infer that the Pyramids were designed.
Not if the only question we are asking is whether they were designed or arose by chance plus blind natural laws. If that is the only question we are asking, then it is irrelevant whether humans or aliens designed them. But if we ask the further question: “Who designed these structures?” then of course we have to consider the possibility that they are of alien origin. That possibility, however, is fairly easily discounted, since we have plenty of reason to believe that human beings were capable of building them without alien help, and generally we prefer the simpler hypothesis to the more elaborate one.
I thought we were talking about what was taught in an elective course, on the subject of the interface of science with other human questions, at Ball State University. I did not think we were talking about whether intelligent design theory should be made part of “standard scientific education” and hence made mandatory in the lower school science curriculum. But while I don’t think that intelligent design should be made a compulsory part of the science curriculum, I do think that science education, from elementary grades on up, should include more discussion of foundational (epistemological and metaphysical) questions than it currently does, in most schools, colleges, and universities in the world.
If we had never seen a termite, wasp, or ant, and found those structures, do you think most scientists would allow the inference: “These structures must have been designed?” I suspect the answer is no. I think the scientific literature would be chock-full of speculations based on chemistry, physics, geology, etc. over how such structures could have formed.
Interesting. When Denton wrote Nature’s Destiny he was surprised that his results turned out to be useful in the defense of natural theology; it wasn’t his intention to construct such an apologetic. The facts of nature just pointed that way. (And even then, I hasten to add, he drew no Christian conclusion, and no conclusion in favor of any Scriptures or revealed religion.)
No, I don’t, because the prestige and authority of science has taken many hits lately. The shameful way Michael Mann and company behaved, for example. And it has become more and more obvious how ideological and polemical scientists (or a least a significant minority of them, the ones that become involved in public affairs and pushing particular policy goals) have become, and scientists are less trusted now than they were back in the 1950s and earlier, when they were seen by the public as politically and socially clueless, but still lovable eggheads (who might, in the extreme, forget to show up for their own wedding because they were so preoccupied by their research questions, as Fred MacMurray does in The Absent-Minded Professor). The new, more activist scientists are seen as bullies for the ideological left, and there is a reaction against them.
Gee, I wonder what those goals are, in your mind. The main goal, I would say, is to bring universities back to the way they were in the 1960s, when they were lively centers of intellectual debate, and much more balanced than today in faculty regarding their political and social perspectives, and there was no political correctness replacing actual correctness in the fields of psychology, religion, philosophy, sociology, political science, English, etc., and one was almost as likely to find a faculty member in a state-subsidized Religion Department who believed in God or in traditional religion as one who hated the guts of God and traditional religion, and one was almost as likely to find a conservative or a moderate in most Arts departments as a liberal, radical, or fire-breathing anti-male feminist. What a horrible, evil goal, to long for balance and open, fear-free public debate in the academic centers of society!
No, not at all. But the method does not exhaust the means of getting at the truth, not even the truth about nature. That’s what Hedin’s course was about, and that’s what his book was about. That’s why you should read the book, to broaden your perspective. But if the thought of reading book written by a Christian is too upsetting to you, you can read similar arguments in Denton instead, who brings no Christian slant to his discussion.
Looking at the question from a slightly different angle . . .
If I claimed that gravity is supernatural would this mean scientists can no longer study gravity? I think most of us would agree that scientists could study gravity no matter what we call it, be it supernatural or natural. It is really the method of science that determines what it can study. In other words, natural is best defined as “what science can study”. If God did interact with nature in a detectable manner, then why couldn’t science study it?
Then what is the supernatural? Within science, the supernatural appears to be a set of beliefs that are inherently scientifically untestable. That is essentially what we mean by the supernatural.
You are fixated on laboratories, aren’t you? There’s plenty of science that doesn’t involve labs or experiments. Science is really about finding and evaluating observations in order to make inferences. Based on observation, yes, my parents loved me. Yes, democracy is better, for a particular meaning of “better”. Stop equating science with laboratories.
It’s never the obligation of anyone to prove that a thesis advanced by someone else is false. The obligation is always on the person advancing the thesis to give reasons for thinking the thesis is true. You have given no reason, in three years of posting here, for thinking that “nature shows signs of having been produced by foresight” is a religious claim, as opposed to an inference from the facts of nature.
So show me that when Henderson argued for fine-tuning in nature back in 1912 or so, he had a religious motivation or used religious premises. Show me that Fred Hoyle, atheist, had a religious motivation or used religious premises when he said that an honest inquirer would be inclined to conclude that a superintelligence had monkeyed with the laws and constants. Show me where Denton, who had ceased being a Christian when he wrote Nature’s Destiny, was trying to vindicate Christian or some other revealed theology in his discussion of nature.
You’re the one making the claim, so you’re the one who has to provide the demonstration. I’m not obliged to do anything but sit back and watch your attempts to reason from textual evidence. Deal with the texts that argue for design. Show me the religious premises and arguments you have found in No Free Lunch, in Signature in the Cell, in Nature’s Destiny, etc. Page numbers and passages, please. Oh, I forgot, you have never read any of those books, and are just guessing what’s in them, so you won’t be able to do anything as scholarly as what I’m asking for. Well, if not, whose problem is that? Certainly not mine.
Why would I rewrite 400 pages? It would take you just as long to read my rewrite (which would be 400 pages as well, only in my style instead of Denton’s) as to read Denton’s original, so it would be more rational for you to read Denton’s original. But that would require an attention span for reading 400 pages. If your education has not given you that attention span (all arts grads have such an attention span), that is your problem, not mine. The evidence is there, and if you don’t have the energy or patience to look at it, I just ignore your petulant (and in my view adolescent) demands for “proof.”
Your inability to understand what people write here is already well-known, but thanks for the reminder.
Yeah, never miss a chance to deride scientists as a bunch of ignorant bumpkins.
The fact is that epistemology and metaphysics, whatever their uses, are not able to reveal the slightest bit of knowledge regarding the world and how it operates. Only science, broadly construed, does this. That’s why the ID Creationists try so desperately to persuade others that their arguments are based in science. Since you are such big fans of theirs, however, maybe you can try persuade them to come clean and admit that all they have going for them, if anything, is metaphysics and epistemology. It would be refreshing to hear that from them.
And, to be clear, I am not belittling epistemology and metaphysics. One just needs to understand their role and limits, just I recognize that for all the benefits that my training affords, it does not qualify me to remove a tumour fro someone’s brain.
I take your points, but if the “big picture” thinking is spread out over 20-22 years (from kindergarten through the end of the PhD program), it need not take up much classroom time in any given year. I’m not asking for the first-year chemistry prof to talk for half of a semester on the history and philosophy of chemistry. I’m talking about a more generally philosophical attitude toward one’s subject matter which can be cultivated sometimes with very little class time – the occasional 30-second remark by a professor about the limitations of his science, the occasional mention of the origin of a modern field of science in an introduction in the textbook, the occasional two-minute classroom exchange over a student question, the odd chat in the professor’s office after class, etc.
Another device that can be used is segregating the meat and potatoes “stuff” of science from the reflection on science into different courses. E.g., suppose that chemistry, etc. all continue to be taught as now, with no attention to big picture questions, but that every chemistry major had to take, at some time during the B.S. program (student’s choice, whenever convenient), one semester of either history or philosophy of chemistry, or history or philosophy of science generally (again, student’s choice). The course could be taken from the student’s department (e.g., in my Math department two professors rotated in teaching History of Mathematics), or it could be taken from some other department (history, history of science, philosophy, etc.). Students in science courses always have at least a few electives in their B.S. programs anyway, so this course would not take away any of their science requirements, but would simply replace one of their electives with a compulsory history/philosophy of science course. So they would take a history/philosophy of science course instead of a lightweight elective in sociology or anthropology or “moral issues”. No loss in time to their technical scientific education at all, but it would round them out intellectually.
Almost all other academic subjects make “big picture thinking” about their own intellectual foundations mandatory. In my fourth year of religious studies, we had to take a course on “methods in the study of religion” which raised large questions about whether religious studies was or ever could be “scientific” in any sense, whether the various approaches (psychological, sociological, anthropological, historical, literary, etc.) had characteristic biases and blind spots that had the danger of falsifying or distorting the phenomenon to be studied (religion), etc. In other departments – sociology, history, literary theory, etc., such method/philosophical foundations courses were often compulsory and in any case very commonly taken. On the other hand, I knew the undergrads in all the science subjects at my university, and I knew all their program layouts (having started in science and considered all the possible majors I might do), and I talked to them incessantly (to their chagrin) about such things, and they never had to take any such course, never had to take a self-reflective and self-critical look at what they were doing as biologists, chemists, physicists, etc. They spend all their time cramming stuff into their heads in case it might be on the exam. (Exactly what Einstein hated about modern science education.)
Your remarks confuse “inferring supernatural activity” with “inferring design” – a confusion not at all uncommon in critics of intelligent design. The intellectual tools used to infer design do not necessarily implicate the supernatural (though they are compatible with the existence of supernatural agents).
We can safely infer that an automobile factory was designed, and we never to have to ask the question whether supernatural activity was involved in order to be sure of that. We know that parts just don’t arrange themselves in that way by chance. Whether God or Henry Ford designed the factory is irrelevant as far as the design inference is concerned.
Similarly, if we saw a system that manufactured complex entities (far more complex than automobiles), complete with quality checks, repair mechanisms, etc., in another setting, e.g., within the organic realm, it would not be unreasonable to infer design there as well. The onus would be on the person who thought there was no design to provide a stepwise non-design account of the origin of such organic systems. In the absence of such a stepwise account, no one would accept the “chance plus blind laws” explanation. One doesn’t have to raise the question whether the actual cause of the system was supernatural. Design becomes the best explanation, and what lies beyond the design, natural or supernatural, is another question entirely.
" Non sequitur , since the unstated premise, i.e., that intelligent design is a religious belief, is false."
" Denton wrote a 400-page book arguing for design in nature which presupposes zero religious belief; all conclusions about design in the book are reached by reasoning from the facts of nature, facts confirmed by modern science."
I can’t agree with the first, as it’s too badly stated. What’s constitutes a valid question? And since when has certainty been the standard? But I can agree with the second.
@Eddie just may not be up to that task. A while ago I asked some questions about that book, and while Eddie piped in with his usual verbiose insults, he would not answer my rather basic and simple question, saying it was “unscholarly behaviour” on my part to even ask such a thing.
So I wouldn’t assume he understood this book as well as he lets on.