Re: The demise ofa fiction

David et al -

I appreciate the concerns that you express here & think that science teachers should say something about the limitations of science. My doctoral prof stated clearly in his first General Physics lecture, "Science does not deal with first causes." That didn't mean, he said, that there weren't any, but that they weren't the subject matter of science. At least that should be said. But of course "should" and "shall" aren't the same.

Shalom,
George

 
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> George, I appreciate your point here, and I can see how such a distinction could be made.  What concerns me, though, is that the "separate spheres" view seems deaf to the real cultural and spiritual context in which we live our lives.  For better or worse, I guess worse, the common perception in our culture is that the only "knowledge" that counts is the "empirical" knowledge delivered by "science." 
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> Though you recognize here the limits of "science" as you define it, many scientists -- certainly many scientists who are visible to the general public -- do not.  The result is that in our popular culture, "science" is what counts as "objective" knowledge, while any other kind of truth claim is relegated to the "subjective" realm.  Every reasonable and educated person is expected to believe what "science" says, or else to suffer the derision of the cogniscenti, while everyone is free to believe whatever they want about ethics, morality, God, and such.
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> When you couple this with our establishment clause jurisprudence, and add to the mix litigious groups like the ACLU that, for better or worse (again I think worse), want to erase any traces of religion from public life, you get the volatile mix that we now have.
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> I've discussed this with some science-minded friends, and their typical response is something like "that's a cultural or political problem outside the scope of science."  To which I would say, balderdash!  It seems to me that if you're going to take a position on what constitutes "knowledge" within a given field, and that field is a vital part of common public life, you are responsible for managing the consequences.  I see lots of harangues from professional scientists -- many here -- against diluting the purity of science with ideas from other spheres, but it's incredibly disconcerting to see almost nothing about the limits of science if it is limited to the methodolical naturalist's sphere, even less about the value of other spheres of knowledge, and almost nothing about how all these spheres of knowledge ultimately integrate.
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> This last point, integration, is even a bigger concern for me than the cultural and political ones.  As ASA members, don't we all generally agree that there is indeed ultimately something called Truth?  Shouldn't we be more concerned about Truth than about the boundaries that have grown up around some human method of inquiry over the past couple of hundred years?  Shouldn't we look for a more wholistic concept of "knowledge" than one which restricts areas of inquiry into hermetically sealed compartments?  Sometimes it seems that the discussions here are more concerned about preserving a privileged domain than about Truth.  (I hope that last sentence doesn't come across as argumentative or snarky.  This is one of the deep concerns I wrestle with as I continue to formulate my own views about the meaning and place of "science," ID, and such).
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> On 1/9/06, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
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> Methodological naturalism is not a "fact" but a procedural rule of science.  We can violate it and make statements about God's action in the world which are true, but they are simply not useful scientifically. 
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> & although it sometimes isn't acknowledged, methodological naturalism implies a limitation of the competence of science.  Most obviously, a science limited to natural causes cannot explain how nature itself came into being.  When we confront that limit, the thing to do is simply to recognize that that limit has been encountered & to look to religion if we want to go beyond it.  It only confuses matters to call that religion "science," as the Kansas school board wants to do.   
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> ShalomGeorge http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Wed Jan 11 11:41:07 2006