Re: The Terms of Debate in Kansas

> George/Dave/Peter, 
>  
>     Thank you for your comments.  I agree with them but I found it
> difficult in all your comments to differentiate between what is the
> common definition of "methodological naturalism" and what is your
> worldview and opinion.  I have noticed in various PSCF articles that
> authors often took pains to distance themselves from "methodological
> naturalism" whereas I had considered it a reasonable perspective.  But
> perhaps I have misunderstood how the term is commonly defined. 
> Certainly as Wilgoren defines it, I wouldn't support it.  I guess it's
> not so much a question of how we would prefer to have the term defined
> as how it is commonly understood to be defined.  I hope Wilgoren
> missed it.
>  
> Randy

My use of the term "methodological naturalism" is simply as a
description of what science does. It is descriptive not prescriptive.
It is another way of describing what we mean by the empirical character
of scientific investigation. Science research seeks to discover the
natural cause-and-effect processes that underlie the structure and
history of the physical universe. Appeals to supernatural action
simply are not informative in understanding how the universe works.
Supernatural agents are effectively black boxes since they are
unconstrained, and appeals to such agents are equivalent to appeals to
ignorance.

Keith

Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
Received on Mon May 16 22:54:53 2005