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Scientism

There is good science and then there is bad science (“Scientism”).

Good science is based on suitable experiments, empirical testing of conjectures and presupposes a common sense understanding of natural phenomena:

  1. that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists;
  2. that this world is governed by regularities of cause and effects;
  3. that the human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularities.

We should add one more principle of common sense:

  1. We live in a world buzzing with plan and purpose. The purpose of the eyes is to see. The purpose of the heart is to pump blood ensuring that oxygen and nutrients are transported to every part of the body, keeping organisms alive. The purpose of the sun is to provide light and heat, which are essential for various processes on Earth, most notably photosynthesis. Through photosynthesis, trees and plants produce the sugars they need for their growth and development. This process not only sustains plant life but also provides the fruits and vegetables that are vital for the survival of animals and humans alike.

Bad Science. Amazingly, the philosphers and scientists of the “Enlightenment” (Hume, Kant, Marx, Darwin) rejected §4 and even aspects of §1-3. They did this by wishful thinking and not with actual evidence. Consider Darwin’s admission to a horrid doubt:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all at trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? 1

Elite modern scientists–almost all are atheistic naturalists–should share “Darwin’s doubt”. This is because they believe in blind evolution (“The Blind Watchmaker”)–in evolution that occurs without any prior intelligent purpose or planning which at best leads to “survival of the fittest” but not necessarily to reason and truth. So they have no basis for assuming that we have reliable cognitive faculties and thus undercut their trust in science. If they cannot trust their cognitive faculties that would include Marxist style materialism itself. They would need to replace atheistic naturalism with plan and purpose and thus with intelligent design.

Hume stated that the laws of nature are simply regularities of events; there is no relationship of necessity between these events, nor are laws conceived of as something that govern the regularities. Hume thus claims that “we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second”, and that “all events seem entirely loose and separate” (An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding 1748, section VII). According to this, a stone striking a window does not smash the glass but might just as easily turn into candy floss, given that we can “imagine”such a scenario. Kant wrote (Prolegomena, 4, 260; 10):

I freely admit that it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction.

Thus, it was Hume’s “attack” on metaphysics (and, in particular, on the concept of cause and effect) which first provoked Kant to awake from his dogmatic slumbers to undertake a fundamental reconsideration of cause and effect. His solution was ven worse than Hume’s.

Scientism

What is scientism? Scientism is the view that science alone gives us knowledge of reality. Philosopher Alex Rosenberg characterizes scientism as follows:

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/11/reading-rosenberg-part-ii.html

“Scientism”… is the conviction that the methods of science are the only reliable ways to secure knowledge of anything; that science’s description of the world is correct in its fundamentals; and that when “complete,” what science tells us will not be surprisingly different from what it tells us today. (The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, 2011 pp. 6-7)

If we’re going to be scientistic, then we have to attain our view of reality from what physics tells us about it. Actually, we’ll have to do more than that: we’ll have to embrace physics as the whole truth about reality. (p. 20)

He does not deny that chemistry, biology, and neuroscience also give us knowledge. But that is only because he thinks they are reducible to physics. But even if chemistry and biology are not reducible higher-level, as others argue, the features of material reality are no less real and part of atheistic scientism.

The problem with the claim that science is the only reliable source of knowledge is that it is self-defeating because there is nothing in any of these sciences or the scientific method that has established that there no other sources of knowledge of reality. So that science itself is even a rational form of inquiry (let alone the only rational form of inquiry) is not something that can be established scientifically. In fact, science itself is based on metaphysical presuppositions, for example:

  • that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists;
  • that this world is governed by regularities of cause and effects;
  • that the human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularities.

Since science presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguing in a circle. And if it cannot even establish that it is a reliable form of inquiry, it can hardly establish that it is the only reliable form. Both tasks would require “getting outside” science altogether and discovering from that extra-scientific vantage point that science conveys an accurate picture of reality—and in the case of scientism, that only science does so.

That is why the investigation of the philosophical presuppositions of science has traditionally been regarded as the province of philosophy. What is it to be a “cause”? Is there only one kind? (Aristotle held that there are at least four.) What is the nature of the universals referred to in scientific laws—concepts like quark, electron, atom, or what is the nature of a law of gravity for the concept of matter. Scientific findings can shed light on such metaphysical questions, but can never fully answer them. Yet if science must depend upon philosophy both to justify its presuppositions and to interpret its results, the falsity of scientism seems doubly assured. Perhaps philosophy, and not science, is a stronger candidate for rationality.

Failed arguments

Is there any evidence for scientism? had a really powerful argument in favour of scientism? Not really:

The technological success of physics is by itself enough to convince anyone with anxiety about scientism that if physics isn’t “finished,” it certainly has the broad outlines of reality well understood. (p. 23)

And it’s not just the correctness of the predictions and the reliability of technology that requires us to place our confidence in physics’ description of reality. Because physics’ predictions are so accurate, the methods that produced the description must be equally reliable. Otherwise, our technological powers would be a miracle. We have the best of reasons to believe that the methods of physics – combining controlled experiment and careful observation with mainly mathematical requirements on the shape theories can take – are the right ones for acquiring all knowledge. Carving out some area of “inquiry” or “belief” as exempt from exploration by the methods of physics is special pleading or self-deception. (p. 24)

The phenomenal accuracy of its prediction, the unimaginable power of its technological application, and the breathtaking extent and detail of its explanations are powerful reasons to believe that physics is the whole truth about reality. (p. 25)

Rosenberg’s argument, then, is essentially this:

  1. The predictive power and technological applications of physics are unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.

  2. Therefore what physics reveals to us is all that is real.

How bad is this argument? About as bad as this one (Superstition):

  1. Metal detectors have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places than any other method has.

  2. Therefore what metal detectors reveal to us (coins and other metallic objects) is all that is real.

Of course, the world is filled with non-metal objects such as earth, water, trees and animals. Metal detectors are keyed to those aspects of the natural world susceptible of detection via electromagnetic means (or whatever). But however well they perform this task – indeed, even if they succeeded on every single occasion they were deployed – it simply wouldn’t follow for a moment that there are no aspects of the natural world other than the ones they are sensitive to.

Similarly, what physics does – and there is no doubt that it does it well – is to capture those aspects of the natural world susceptible of the mathematical modelling that makes precise prediction and technological application possible. But here too, it simply doesn’t follow for a moment that there are no other aspects of the natural world.

Those who reject scientism, then, are not guilty of “special pleading or self-deception”. Rather, they are simply capable of recognizing a non sequitur when they see it. Those beholden to scientism are bound to protest that the analogy is no good, on the grounds that metal detectors detect only part of reality while physics detects the whole of it. But such a reply would simply beg the question once again, for whether physics really does describe the whole of reality is precisely what is at issue.

Bertrand Russell was well aware that, far from giving us an exhaustive picture of reality, physics in fact gives us is very nearly the opposite, and is unintelligible unless there is more to reality than what it reveals to us:

It is not always realised how exceedingly abstract is the information that theoretical physics has to give. It lays down certain fundamental equations which enable it to deal with the logical structure of events, while leaving it completely unknown what is the intrinsic character of the events that have the structure. We only know the intrinsic character of events when they happen to us. Nothing whatever in theoretical physics enables us to say anything about the intrinsic character of events elsewhere. They may be just like the events that happen to us, or they may be totally different in strictly unimaginable ways. All that physics gives us is certain equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what it is that changes, and what it changes from and to—as to this, physics is silent. (My Philosophical Development, p. 13)

Among the features of the world physics deliberately ignores for its purposes are those that involve final causality. As Rosenberg writes:

Ever since physics hit its stride with Newton, it has excluded purposes, goals, ends, or designs in nature. It firmly bans all explanations that are teleological… (p. 40)

As the words “exclusion” and “ban” indicate, though, this is, yet again, merely a methodological stipulation. By itself it tells us nothing at all about whether teleology is real.

Footnotes


  1. Letter to William Graham, Down, July 3rd, 1881. In The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray, Albermarle Street, 1887), Volume 1, pp. 315-16.