Re: The demise ofa fiction

David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote: 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.
   
  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).

  Bill Hamilton:
  Integration is indeed important, but to a great extent it's outside the bounds of science. In part, the creationists may have gotten their stimulus from people like Richard Dawkins who seem to forget the limits of science. But the creationist "strategy" of accepting Dawkins' (and others -- I don't mean to be picking on Dawkins exclusively) view that anything outside the scope of science doesn't exist -- or at least its existence is questionable -- is clearly the wrong response.
   
   It seems to me David has a very valid point: ASA ought to strive to instill in Christians a view of the world and life that puts science in its proper place -- good for understanding problems that are somewhat limited in scope, but not good for forming conclusions about Life, the Universe and Everything. This is probably fairly easy classical mechanics, chemistry, electronics, and other sciences that deal pretty much in concrete phenomena that can be easily measured. Where we probably get into a much deeper problem is in the "big picture" sciences like astronomy and evolutionary biology. But I think we have to try.

Bill Hamilton
William E. Hamilton, Jr., Ph.D.
586.986.1474 (work) 248.652.4148 (home) 248.303.8651 (mobile)
"...If God is for us, who is against us?" Rom 8:31
                        
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Received on Wed Jan 11 16:49:55 2006