Re: definition of science (MN)

If you don't insist on methodological naturalism, how are you going to
maintain your motivation to discover cause-effect relationships? Science
can't start out by assuming nonphysical causes or it would quickly
degenerate into simply describing instead of explaining.

This is one of the problems that besets ID in its claim to be science.
Certain ID protagonists are aiming to do good science, science that would
not be done under conventional assumptions. That is, assuming ID, they
claim, leads to testable hypotheses. I'm skeptical but willing to let them
have a go. As a rule, though, a belief in ID would seem far more likely to
discourage the search for cause-effect than stimulate it. And it is the
success of that search heretofore that has earned science the status it now
has.

Trite but true.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Dawsonzhu@aol.com<mailto:Dawsonzhu@aol.com>
  To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 6:11 PM
  Subject: Re: definition of science (MN)

  Within a post from Burgy: Richard Lewontin is quoted as saying:

>"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against
  common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between
science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of its
failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in
spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated
just?so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to
materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow
compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on
the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material
causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that
produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for
we cannot allow a Divine Foot in
  the door."
>

  I take some issue with this:

  Methodological naturalism requires
  reproducibility independent of who is
  doing the experiment. Methodological naturalism means
  that religious commentments (including atheism) must be
  left at the door.

  Well, ok, I am starting to sound a little like Moorad's
  hard science view. More correctly,
  if it can, without too extensive a stretch, be called a
  "natural process" (something not involving culture and
  civilization), it should _in principle_ be reproducible.
  So the geologist would point to similar rock formations
  to propose a particular stratigraphy. A geologist is usually
  not fortunate enough to have "an experiment" demonstrated by
  nature in a timely fashion and one should probably hope in
  general that such does not occur to quickly or unexpectedly
  in heavily populated areas.

  If on the other hand,
  it we speak of historical, one would produce documented
  evidence, or persuasive circumstantial information to make
  a particular point. Implausible claims in history would
  be rejected for much the same reason as they are for natural
  processes, they are inconsistent with human activity and
  culture.

  So back to the so-called hard sciences (which seems largely
  to be what Lewontin was implicitly focusing on but with
  more effort could be extended to the "hard to do sciences")
  the limitations come in because we must use testable
  models to examine nature. I don't think anyone here
  is willing to volunteer a testable and reproducable
  model for God's interaction with the world independent
  of who is conducting the experiment. Certainly, I don't
  have any bright ideas.

  So it is not that methodological naturalism "cannot allow
  a divine foot in the door", it is simply that we have no
  way to test for this "divine foot".

  by Grace alone we proceed,
  Wayne
Received on Fri May 6 05:07:20 2005