Guest post: Social aspects of science
Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on Will the real pseudoscience please stand up.
I’ve been studying social aspects of science as a layperson for at least 25 years, some college courses before that, and through discussions with working scientists on my podcast since, and just chatting with Greg Laden. I don’t claim to be an expert on science by any means, since I have limited practical experience designing and conducting experiments only when they are part of an undergraduate course and so that just gives basic context of how some science works. But it’s such a broad area of investigation, that even among working scientists there are concepts in the philosophy of science that they don’t accept or fail to understand. It’s likely that this is due to a lack of interest since they spend so much time mastering a specific field that the broader arguments hold no interest for them. So, when specialists speak out of their field, and I know that they are talking out of their ass but using their authority as say, a theoretical physicist, to expound on a subject that they don’t have experience in researching,. it’s maddening. I’m thinking of a couple of TV and multi-media physicists in particular.
I subscribed for a while to an email service called “The Big Think”: and they used to blast out emails with videos of famous scientists answering questions. Sometimes the questions were lame, sometimes they sparked my interest. But one video in particular was really frustrating. The question that was assigned to physicist Michio Kaku was lame, but I hear it all the time from Creationists, or people new to the evolution v creationism mess: “Has human evolution stopped?” Kako, having the physicists usual arrogance that they are the Top Scientists, decided to wing it with an answer. And, I, with my bachelor’s in business, but with extensive reading in talk.origins, knew the answer. Michio did not. Rather than pass along the question to a biologist, he answered that due to medicine and the advances that we are making, evolution by natural selection is basically over.
I canceled my subscription. The video should not have been sent out, and they should have gotten their money back from Kaku.
The point is, that when it comes to claims of pseudoscience, the reader still needs to apply critical thought, even if a scientist makes the claim. More to the topic at hand, Sean M. Carroll, another physicist, shared an image about DSDs with some verbiage about what “The Science” says about trans issues. So, as a physicist he doesn’t even know what the transgender claim is, and as a physicist, he has the god-like brain to make a declaration that is irrefutable. He didn’t respond to any of the replies that pointed out his error.
So, GLAAD, which is another organization that once existed to promote the well-being and social acceptance of lesbians and gays, wrote about how the science was settled and that the Times were promoting pseudoscience to dispute it.
Anyone with a basic understanding of science knows that the “science is never settled.” All answers are provisional, subject to further exploration.
It sticks in my craw, and grinds my gears because the proponents of transgenderism are using a propaganda technique of sounding sciency and using the language of science to promote their own pseudoscience, and all those people who have those signs on their lawns about “in this house we believe” that “Science is Real” are fooled into thinking that it’s settled. The Dutch and the Danes figured it all out years ago, and any objection is denialism. Well, no one wants to be called a denialist! Especially if they don’t fully understand how the science is supposed to work.
Along with all of the other weaknesses in our educational system, teaching the process of science is one of the weakest. Teaching critical thinking and the acceptance that even the best science can be overturned by new facts and new techniques is lacking. We are taught that science is a body of knowledge, not that it is an imperfect process of gaining understanding. We’ve lost the spirit of the IGY, and just take in as accepted fact what we hear from experts who tell us what we already agree with. It’s easier to let other people do our thinking for us, and we can then get back to doomscrolling and “liking.”
– footnote about Neil DeGrasse Tyson –
I really like him, but whenever I see that clip of him saying to Bill Maher that “Science is true, whether you believe it or not,” it pierces me. Deeply. I may be a pedant, but that is such an imprecise statement that he shouldn’t say it. It gives a completely wrong impression of what science is.
What can I say, beyond saying that I agree with you?
Top science or not, asking a physicist to pontificate about evolution would be like asking a zoologist to analyse the state of particle physics. (I’m neither a physicist nor a zoologist, I should add; an animal biochemist at one time in my career, but that was 40 years or so ago.)
Popper’s falsification theory is a simple but powerful tool that can be reliably applied (as a starting point) to (supposedly settled) scientific claims. It’s not surprising to find *believers* that try to claim some scientific ‘knowledge’ that fails to meet Popper’s criteria, and that which doesn’t, can be summarily dismissed as not scientific.
As far as ‘science is true’ goes, such generalizations are shallow and purely rhetorical.
Since the understanding of science is (as you say) important, no, not really.
At least, yes, if you demand 100.000(… large number of decimal places) % certainty, then science is always “provisional”. But vast swathes of science are “settled” in the far-beyond-reasonable-doubt sense of “settled”, which is actually what matters. Thus, the Earth is round rather than flat, and all humans today descend from a common ancestor. Those claims are not “subject to further exploration”. I don’t think it’s helpful to teach that science never reaches certainty. (“certainty”: “firm conviction that something is the case”, “the quality of being reliably true”.).
The problem with the activist claim that “gender-affirming health care” for teenagers is settled science isn’t that science is never settled, it’s the fact that there is absolutely no reliable science at all backing up the claim.
While I’m on:
Well he did a bit later, he spent 20 minutes of one of his videos discussing the Tweet and the replies.
[Note, the usual suspects here will no doubt interpret the previous sentence as implying agreement with what Carroll then said in that video; it doesn’t, the sentence says exactly what it says.]
@twiliter
And since a proper understanding of science is indeed important:
Again, not really, or at least it’s way more complicated than that. It’s not a “simple but powerful tool” since falsifying a theory is rarely straightforward, but is more a matter of accumulating lots of different strands of evidence over time. There is no clear criterion for when a given theory has been “falsified” as opposed to just needing adjustments and new features.
The one sense in which falsification is a good indicator is whether practitioners are actively trying to find evidence contrary to their theories. But even that’s not straightforward, since everyone is human and every human is prone to bias. Plenty of people who are actually good scientists can be faulted for this, while trans-ideologues will assert that behaving as good scientists is exactly what they’re trying to do, and I’m sure that that is indeed how they think about themselves.
Oi, I resent that about the usual suspects, I understood that sentence as saying exactly what it says!
And yet those of us who are scientists often will not say that. Why? Because we know that a stray outlier could turn out to mean something.
I agree that the science is settled on evolution (that it happened, not every aspect of how it happened) and global warming (same caveat) and genetics (same caveat). There are a number of laws of science that have never been repealed by the evidence and aren’t likely to be.
But scientists still don’t want to say that. Why? Because enough “settled” science in the past has been overturned. Never mind that some of the science that was “settled” turned out to be settled more because it was always believed than because anyone had collected solid evidence. Never mind that we have better tools now than we did then. We must be cautious.
So the science is settled…but it isn’t settled. If that confuses anyone, I remind them of the confusions of quantum physics and Shrodinger’s cat and a lot of other things that are confusing. If you’re confused, you’re not alone.
Okay, I am not sure when he added a video on it, so I must have missed it. Was his reply at least reflective of an understanidng of the claim?
And, thank you, Iknklast for answering from your expertise! I appreciate the assist.
Coel @4 I would submit that it indeed is just as simple as that. Take your example of round vs. flat earth. This may have been a question for science in the distant past, but now it’s a matter of common sense. Anyone who’s looked out the window of an airplane at high altitude can see empirical evidence for the Earth’s spherical composition. It is not a scientific question. Is there a God? This is not a scientific question. Can men become women? This too is not a scientific question. Science need not employ scientific method to answer these questions. Personal bias aside, and given that there are many theories in search of explanations, there are some questions (and yes science is about questions) that fall outside the scope of science proper. There is no crieria about when a scientific theory has been falsified, according to Popper, only that it has the ability to be falsified, so I think you misunderstand his thinking on this. If something is certain, like cherry trees blossoming in the spring, then what exactly would make a scientific question about cherry trees blossoming in the spring? They just do, so it’s not a question for science. No need to over complicate what just is, or try to apply scientific methodology to such mundane realities. Science leaves knowns in it’s wake, but the activities of science are answering the questions that remain unanswered. There will be no advancements in science proving that the Earth is anything other than spherical, simply because it is no longer a scientific question.
@Ophelia:
I wasn’t including yourself in the “usual suspects”, and on reflection I should have said “usual suspect” (singular).
@iknklast:
Yes, we should be cautious, and yes assumptions that had previously been unquestioned can be overturned. I would only use the term “settled science” for topics where scientists had made a proper consideration of the issue, not where they hadn’t.
I also wouldn’t talk about “overturning” settled science where it is merely improved upon, so the old science remains valid and useful in the domain where it was established, but a better theory has even wider application.
The fact that a heck of a lot of engineering and technology just works, and works very well and reliably, is testimony to vast swathes of scientific understanding that is valid and settled and won’t be overturned. All engineering is underpinned by an understanding of how the world works (aka science).
With the above two provisos. I suggest that settled science is actually rather rarely overturned.
@twiliter:
You and I seem to have a different conception of what is a scientific question:
The fact that it is amenable to direct empirical observation does not make it “not a scientific question”, quite the reverse. It’s settled science, yes, but still science. Much of what is (for example) taught to science students in universities is settled science, being observations that have been made many times before and where the outcome is known, but it’s still science.
Yes, that’s a science question also, if by “God” you many any part for an explanation for why the universe is like it is.
In the early days of “natural philosophy” (aka “science”), the involvement of God was an accepted part of the explanation. That has gone by the wayside these days (along with phlogiston and elan vital) simply because such explanations don’t work as well.
If by the categories “men” and “women” you’re asking a “how the world is” question (and not a legal “how should people be treated in legal terms?” question), then yes, that’s a scientific question.
It’s exactly because there are regularities in the world, repeatable behaviour that can be described by “laws” and “theories”, and that is thus amenable to explanation, that science works. Yes, this is settled science, but it’s still science.
If you’re wanting to use the term “science” only for things that are not yet understood then that’s a pretty eccentric usage. All of the stuff that is settled and is in textbooks and is taught to each new cohort of students and that underpins engineering and technology (and is indeed taught for that very reason) is still “science”.
I think our difference of opinion lies in that I see science as a dynamic process, and you seem to see it as a static body of knowledge.
I see scientists as rather people who find things out rather than know things. I take the same “eccentric” view of philosophers.
I recently read “The End of the World is Flat” by Simon Edge. It is a funny and disturbing novel about a legitimate science advocacy organization that has realized its goal and is convinced it needs a new purpose, so is convinced to promote flat-Earthism. The book is a thinly-veiled parody of the situation we are in regarding human sexes. It seems apropos to some of the themes discussed here recently.
@twilitler:
Not at all, it’s not static, but it does include the already-settled body of knowledge.
Indeed, using the already-settled body of knowledge is a necessary part of then pushing further.
Well to me “already settled” and “static” are essentially the same thing in this context. Of course there needs to be a foundation on which scientific questions are asked and scientific theories are tested, but if we are working with known quantities, then those known quantities are not science. It’s the furthering that *is* the science, and as Popper explains, if there is no way to disprove a theory, then it ceases to be science. It is possible to teach the history of science without doing anything scientific at all.
Oof. I can understand that in the moment of a conversation, a person’s wording might not be refined… but that statement really misses the point. Science is not a set of facts and conclusions, it is a process by which we arrive at such.
_
#6 iknklast
“So the science is settled…but it isn’t settled.”
#9 Coel replying to this
“I would only use the term “settled science” for topics where scientists had made a proper consideration of the issue, not where they hadn’t.”
I submit that on those occasions where scientists had declared something settled only to discover later that they were wrong, they said so thinking that they had considered the matter ‘properly’, whatever that means. And that’s the rub: you only find out later that your certainty was misplaced.
Ultimately, I don’t think bearing in mind the provisional nature of science prevents us saying things like “evolution is true”.
_
#8 twiliter
Agreed. “Earth is round” is an observable fact; where science enters into it is in the explanation of how Earth came about and why it is round.
I agree. Some things are sufficiently established (is that a better word than “settled”?) that there is no particular reason in casual conversation to qualify everything. “There’s probably no God”, “I’m almost certain there’s no God”, and so on. I don’t have any objection to someone declaring unequivocally “there’s no God”, with the understanding that, as with everything, new evidence can cause reconsideration of previous conclusions.
The problem with claims that, for example, “sex is a spectrum” isn’t the definition of “settled science”, but rather that they are wrong about what the scientific consensus is and what the evidence shows.
@twiliter:
Indeed so. But it is not true that science is “a static body of knowledge” (nor do I see it as such). “Science” both includes the settled stuff, and attempts to add new understanding.
@Holms:
There likely are some such occasions, yes, but not that many. Feel free to give examples if you disagree.
Okay Coel, I’ll buy that there’s some gray area about what’s settled and what’s not, as I don’t feature absolutes, but thanks for entertaining the distinction anyways.
#18
Germ-line theory of immunoglobulin diversity, Lamarckian genetics, phlogiston, spontaneous generation, multiple early models of the atom, lobotomies as treatment… Basically any time the leading academics of the period settled on something which was later overturned.
Concerning the overturning of “settled” science – this is usually (at least in the last 100 years) a process quite different from what most people imagine. NASA still uses Newtonian physics to calculate flight paths although it is “wrong” and superseded by relativity.
Established theories create a conceptual frame to integrate a vast amount of empirical evidence into a consistent model of reality. If a theory is superseded by a better one, the new theory will still explain the same empirical evidence, and it will also be able to explain why the ‘old’ theory was so successful. Chemistry can explain why phlogiston theory is wrong, but also why the observations made by the proponents of the theory were the way they were and why the phlogiston as a model could ‘explain’ them. (In some sense, oxygen is the ‘phlogiston’.) Relativity theory can explain Newtonian mechanics – in the limit of low speeds and ‘low gravitation’, the equations of relativity become the familiar Newtonian equations.
About 10 years ago, there was some evidence found at CERN that neutrinos might be faster than light. (In the end, it turned out to be a measurement error due to an incorrectly plugged in cable that garbed up some time measurement.) If that had turned out to be true, the theory of special relativity would have had some problems to account for it. So in this case, we would probably have to find a new, better theory, but that new theory would have contained special relativity as a limiting case on some sense because special relativity explains a vast number of observations, from high-energy physics to the color of gold.
You can never just throw an established theory overboard, whatever comes after will contain it either as a limiting case or will explain the observations explained by the old theory (which are still valid, after all) and the concepts used by that theory in another way.
@Holms:
I don’t agree that those were “settled” science. Being a dominant idea at the time is not enough to be “settled”. Lobotomies always were controversial. Early models of the atom were always treated as needing more investigation. Lamarkianism was a hypothesis, but was never accepted as the final, settled answer. Phlogiston was the dominant idea at the time, but not regarded as “settled”.
As above, I’m using the concept of “settled” science for the large swathes of understandings of how the world works that are so amply verified by multiple strands of evidence or by widespread use in technology and engineering that they are exceedingly unlikely to ever be overturned and are “well beyond reasonable doubt” true.
Coel, I think that if you narrow down what is settled to that extent, limiting it to what is unquestionably true, then it’s no longer science, even if it was demonstrated or proven by past scientific investigation. Take the spherical Earth example. If there was some legitimate question about whether the Earth is spherical or not, scientific investigation might be called for, but since there’s not, it’s not. Many things are explained through common sense, ordinary observations, logic and mathematics, other types of (deductive or otherwise) reasoning, but also the body of knowledge (knowns) including data and conclusions of past scientific findings, that are either not, or no longer questions for science. This is where falsifiablity comes in. There is no scientific investigation possible that would prove the Earth is flat, and there would be no observations or data to collect and record that would prove useful, therefore it is not a scientific question. Scientific theories and conclusions come from scientific questions. Where there is no scientific question to be asked by science, there is no science. My main point is that I think you have to draw the line somewhere, because otherwise you have people claiming “it’s science” about everything they believe without knowing the history of the science they are invoking, or coughing up such inane utterances as “science is true” which talk down to people rather insultingly.
I think that we could have an interesting discussion about what is meant by “settled,” because there are different perspectives just within this thread. But, in my post, when I referred to “settled” and “provisional,” I was using it in the sense that discoveries and established facts are always subject to refinement, and even a new understanding based on a broadening of the knowledge in which the fact is known. Usability is not how we would define settled science, as Newtownonan phsyics are quite strong for predicting and calculating many orbits while they cannot account for the orbit of Mercury and relativity answered the remaining questions but did not overturn Newton’s laws of motion.
In my definition, established has one meaning while settled has quite another. Settled means that there is no need for further investigation. Established means, this is the best we know.
For now.
@Mike Haubrich:
That’s a good way of making the distinction.
@twiliter:
I don’t agree that the term “science” refers only to active research, and not also to the large body of settled knowledge and understanding. That’s a pretty eccentric usage which would, for example, mean that much of the stuff taught as science at school and university is not “science”.
That’s a misunderstanding. There are conceivable observations that could prove the Earth is flat, such as pictures taken from space showing it to be a pancake shape.
Of course, in our universe, that’s not what we see, but if that made the topic “not science” then all true statements would be “not science” since valid observations will not refute true statements.
That’s not what the concept of falsifiability is about, instead it’s about hypotheses designed to be consistent with all possible observations. Thus “God always answers prayers, but sometimes he says no” is unfalsifiable since it is consistent with all possible outcomes.
The stuff taught in schools is the history of science, and how to conduct scientific investigations based on methodology, and in fact science does happen in schools. Science also happens when a kid plants carrots in different soil mixtures to gain knowledge of growth rates and such, and record results of findings. I’m not sure how I’m misunderstanding what science is due to eccentricity? Admittedly I have a clear idea in my mind about what science is and is not, which might be arguable, but it doesn’t seem weird to me or those who I communicate with at all… As far as misunderstanding of falsifiability goes, you say (@#10) that the question of God’s existence is, or can be considered a scientific one. Here is where I disagree. Since there is no way to disprove (falsify) or confirm the existence of God, then according to the theory of falsifiability, it is not a scientific question. ‘God always answers prayers’ is also not a scientific question or statement of fact, which you yourself agree with. The two statements seem inconsistent to me. I think I understand Popper’s theory just fine. I can concieve of a God, or a Santa Clause who delivers toys to all the good boys and girls at Christmas, and plenty of people (who aren’t me) can and do concieve of those very things. Sheer concievability does not equate with what Popper has put forth, and I think it’s a mistake to try to interchange the terms. Here again, I don’t think I’m misunderstanding here. Maybe I’m misunderstanding some point or idea that you haven’t clearly stated, that’s always a possibility, but you haven’t clearly told me what I’m missing here. If I’m wrong about some of this than I’d be happy to be educated toward a better understanding. Always happy for that!
Thanks for the reply, honestly, I am enjoying the debate. :)
#22 Coel
Then you are using a definition of settled that requires 20/20 hindsight, while I am talking about what is considered true in the contemporaneous view. I don’t see much value in your definition.
@Holms:
No, it only requires a level of certainty that we can indeed attain.
Take the vast swathes of knowledge and understanding of how things work (aka science) needed in order to build a Boeing 777. The Ancient Greeks couldn’t have built one, whereas we can. All of that science will not be overturned (it will be improved upon, but that’s not the same as overturned) and we know that because Boeing 777s do work as designed.
@twiliter:
Your usage of the term “science” as not including the vast body of known science is very non-standard.
Regarding God, yes, God is indeed a scientific hypothesis. That is, it’s a claim intended to explain why the world is as it is.
If one postulates a God that answers prayers, then you can test this by comparing the survival rates of sick children in religious families, where parents pray, to similarly sick kids in non-religious families.
If, to avoid falsifcation, you then postulate a “God who does indeed answer prayers but this makes no difference to the survival of any actual kid”, or indeed to anything else, then the concept becomes literally vacuous, literally having no meaningful content, and is then excised by Occam’s razor (which is central to science).
Either way, science can deal with the idea.
I am not arguing between known science and experimental science, or that science is limited to active research, that was your idea. What I’m saying is that there is a difference between science and non-science. That’s about as concise as I can express the idea. I find Popper’s falsification theory as I understand it, helpful in determining between the two.
Now, as far as explaining why the world is the way it is, and I’m assuming you mean generally or in toto, then we can look to science for general theories about how the world is, or how it came about, along with many other scientific theories about why the different particular aspects of the world are the way they are. Of those scientific explanations, theories, and conclusions, the idea of God is not one. The idea of God cannot be either verified or falsified. In fact there is no way to test it. Many have tried and many have failed — the history of philosophy is jam packed with such endeavors. Philosophy is not the same thing as science. What was known in antiquity as natural philosophy has, over time and refinement, become science. I’m going to be charitable and assume you know the difference as I’m not prepared to author a treatise on the subject, but I can point you in the right direction if you want.
“If one postulates a God that answers prayers, then you can test this by comparing the survival rates of sick children in religious families, where parents pray, to similarly sick kids in non-religious families.” — How would you propose to measure how religious a person is, or what level of wishful thinking could make a difference? How would you separate religious wishful thinking to secular hopes and dreams? Why is it the parents, couldn’t it be a whole village of prayers? How would you measure how sincere they are in their beliefs? No Coel, this is not a scientific investigation, at best an exercise in psychology (which can be very scientific, but is considered a ‘soft’ science, and again I won’t go on about why it’s considered that, I’ll assume you know the difference), but it would yield no scientific medical results whatsoever.
@twiliter:
Sure there is. For example, the claim of a God who answers prayers of Christians (but not of others) and thus saves the sick children of Christian parents (but not of others) is very easy to test.
And, as above, a hypothesis of a god that is designed to have zero discernable effect on anything is then disposed of by Occam’s razor as being empty of content.
You mean that all the attempts have had results compatible with “no gods”.
Either the postulation of a God answers those questions, and makes the concept testable, or, if the postulation is designed to be compatible with any and all outcomes (“some nun somewhere prayed”; “God said no this time”), then it is literally empty of content and is excised by Occam’s razor.
Either way, science can address the idea.
In the same way, the claim that there are large herds of wild elephants roaming the grasslands of Wyoming is a claim within the purview of science.
Science could (in principle) verify the claim by videos, sound recordings, findings of dung, etc. In there is no such evidence then science discounts the claim. If (lacking evidence), someone starts claiming that the elephants are invisible, don’t make any sound, don’t leave dung, don’t eat anything, and are utterly undetectable, then the claim becomes empty of content.
But there’s nothing that places the claim outside the remit of science. After all, if I changed the word “Wyoming” to “Kruger Park” then it’d be both true and readily verifiable.
I’ve been to Kruger, and I can verify the elephants, but I was not doing anything scientific.
I think we’re going to have to disagree on the God question for reasons I detailed above.
I’m sure I won’t be able to convince anyone who thinks every experience is an instance of science that there are boundaries around where science starts and stops, it’s too obviously false for me to argue further. I will address arguments that can’t be interpreted as “nuh uh” if you’d like to discuss further.
Also… “You mean that all the attempts have had results compatible with “no gods”.” No, I mean what I said, that it’s neither verifiable or falsifiable, therefore not a scientific question. It seems as if you’re not understanding or actually reading very carefully what I wrote. This takes the fun out of it, whether you intended to or not, so I’m going to refrain for now.
Twiliter:
First, there is no big epistemological divide between you wandering around Kruger Park and photographing elephants, and a naturalist noticing a hitherto unknown species of beetle and writing a paper describing it for a scientific journal.
Second, the postulation of a “God that saves all sick children of Christian families but not of non-Christian families” is eminently verifiable. Thus there is nothing in-principle unverifiable about gods.
If God is scientifically verifiable, then I’d definitely be interested in seeing the scientific data — and that’s a fairly outlandish claim for me not to feel patronized. Is that your intent?
Victor Stenger, a physicist who also held a faculty position in philosophy, wrote that the preponderance of the evidence is that there are no gods and it is reasonable to conclude that this is true. His book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis” is on this topic. I know people disagree, but I think his point of view is reasonable and informs my own.
So we looked everywhere and we couldn’t find God. Neither could God’s existence be proved false, just because we looked everywhere. A good illustration of Popper’s principle. It’s not an unreasonable point of view, but it’s not a scientific one either.
I’m going to disagree with “not a scientific one”. I’m in particular going to disagree with framing the argument as one about whether a conclusion is “scientific” or “not scientific”. I think my understanding and usage of the words “science” and “scientific” are more in line with Coel’s than yours. I think Stenger makes cogent scientific arguments specifically against the Christian God, and on that basis I think his conclusion that, subject to disconfirming evidence as everything always is, the Christian God does not exist, is a scientific one. There may also be scientific conclusions that disagree with Stenger’s; I don’t see any problem whatsoever with scientific conclusions contradicting each other. At least, that’s the way I use the words. Actual scientists may disagree (and often do).
To me, the argument about whether “the god question” is scientific is a quibble about definitions. The question about “sex is a spectrum” is more about ignoring evidence, promoting nonsensical definitions, and calling opponents “bigots”, none of which seems to be science. The two really seem to have little to do with each other.
Well I am of the mind that if there is no empirical data to be examined one way or the other, then it’s not a scientific inquiry. Going on a hunt for metaphysical entities in hopes of finding evidence for same might look like scientific investigation to some, but not to me (or Popper).
And quibbling about definitions is how definitions are clarified. Just because someone calls something science or scientific, doesn’t make it so. To be classified as scientific requires that it meet the criteria of the scientific process, a process which is a particularly well defined discipline. Metaphysics is beyond the purview of science in any sense of the definition. God belongs in the metaphysical, or supernatural realm. Science deals with what is, and interactions of what is, not what can be imagined or conceptualized ex nihilo.
@twiliter:
Gods can be addressed in the same way that herds of wild elephants grazing Wyoming can be addressed. It is entirely scientific to say there are no wild elephants in Wyoming.
Hypotheses that are then designed to have no empirical consequence at all (such as invisible elephants; or gods that don’t actually respond to prayer) are then disposed of with Occam’s razor. That’s what science does and this is entirely scientific.
Traditionally, people have been way too deferential towards religions and gods, bending over backwards to come up with excuses for why they shouldn’t be dealt with the same way as Wyoming elephants. We shouldn’t fall for this.
Which implies that there is never any real-world consequence of praying to this god. Is that the sort of god that believers believe in?
Well no, the process of doing science is not at all well defined. (Philosophers of science have long tried to define it concisely, but can’t do it.)
I find retaliation in kind for being patronized unpleasant, but here goes…
It’s unfortunate that philosophers of science haven’t defined what science is to your satisfaction. Maybe a simple dictionary definition will do? As far as Occam’s Razor, I’d suggest Wikipedia for a rudimentary understanding. Also, since you seem to be struggling with the principle of falsifiability, I found this, and it’s free! >>
http://philotextes.info/spip/IMG/pdf/popper-logic-scientific-discovery.pdf
Enjoy!
But if that’s too esoteric and you’d like explanations about what science is and what it’s not in very readable, almost layman’s format, maybe Bertrand Russell is worth a look. Google is your friend, I can’t do all the work!
Cheers!
P.S. I won’t be replying to comments that assume God exists, unless perhaps you’d like to discuss the epistemic foundations of that assumption.
twiliter…Coel seems to be generously disinclined to play this card, so I’m going to do it myself. He’s a professor of astrophysics.
Thanks, I did visit his website. Kind of explains the ‘everything is science’ credo.
That wasn’t my point. I haven’t seen him patronizing you; your comment @ 41 is out of order.
@Twiliter:
I’m genuinely not trying to be patronising (though I generally have a fairly terse style I guess). But, you want dictionary definitions, ok, after a quick google:
Cambridge: “(knowledge from) the careful study of the structure and behaviour of the physical world, especially by watching, measuring, and doing experiments, and the development of theories to describe the results of these activities: ”
Dictionary.com: (a) “a branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged and showing the operation of general laws:” (b) “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.”
Merriam-Webster: (a) “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method” (b) “such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena”.
Note, first, that all of these include the accumulated knowledge of science as a part of “science” (thus conflicting with your very non-standard usage of the term).
Second, all of these are rather broad and vague. None of them amounts to the process of science being “… a particularly well defined discipline”.
As I said, there really is no big epistemological divide between wandering around Kruger (or Wyoming) and photographing elephants (or not), and a naturalist describing a hitherto unknown beetle in a scientific paper.
This topic has been debated extensively by philosophers of science, and it is nowadays generally agreed that there is no concise and prescriptive account of “the scientific method” other than in very broad and general terms.
It’s also worth noting that science as it is actually done by scientists pays very little attention to accounts by philosophers such as Popper. And even philosophers of science these days accept that Popper’s analysis was too simplistic.
Well, thanks both of you for answering my question of intent. Thanks also for not patronizing me if you did not intend to do so. Sorry for the prickliness, and being out of line, as I saw some of the replies as condescending, which I tend to take personally.
Ophelia, I understood your point very clearly. I purposely avoided addressing it. Sorry for that bit of rudeness.
Coel, I am aware of the objections to Popper. I don’t see his work as the be all and end all, only that his theory of falsification is useful to distinguish science from not-science. I realize that science happens largely without the philosophy of it, as my kid planting carrots example shows. Nothing philosophical about that, it’s science.
“As I said, there really is no big epistemological divide between wandering around Kruger (or Wyoming) and photographing elephants (or not), and a naturalist describing a hitherto unknown beetle in a scientific paper.” — Other than I would submit that one is a scientific undertaking and one is not. Again.
“This topic has been debated extensively by philosophers of science, and it is nowadays generally agreed that there is no concise and prescriptive account of “the scientific method” other than in very broad and general terms.” — Agreed. However, are these broad and general terms (generally speaking) able to be employed in describing anything at all that is outside of science? That’s my question.
I don’t think science can be described at all, no matter how ill defined, without the backdrop of what is not science.
I guees we’re done here. But believe me when I say, I know what a genetic fallacy is (but I didn’t appreciate it), and I have read and understood many volumes of Popper’s writing. If you want to treat me like some random internet crank, then that’s on me, because I refuse to boast about my achievements, which are irrelevant to discourse, but don’t expect me to take insulting replies without retaliation. I can be just as petty as the next guy.
I also find it interesting how I’m the only one who is ever wrong, or apologizes for bad behavior. Are the rest of you just too wise and righteous to admit errors? What about the benefit of the doubt, too risky? How about charity, too soft? Or arguing in good faith, too humble? I’m too old to reevaluate what I think is virtuous, but I don’t think I need to, I know what kind of environment I’m dealing with, and what kind of character it produces. So if I am regarded as some random internet crank, then I probably deserve it, but I’m not in the mood for rudeness right this moment, so I’ll let it go at that.