Re: [asa] Richard Lewontin quote on Naturalism

I don't think that the commitment is arbitrary. It is a commitment
which is necessary for science to be meaningless. If science were to
accept that that which we do not yet understand must therefor be
designed, powered by the belief that the designer could intervene at
any random time in any random fashion, then science will fail or at
least be severely handicapped.

I agree that science needs to remain open to new methods and practices
and that it should take the stance of 'show me the beef'. If let's
say, intelligent design wants to claim that methodological naturalism
is insufficient and that a third component is needed in addition to
regularity and chance, then it is up to intelligent design to show
that such a position is 1) necessary and 2) leads to better or
different science.

I cannot speak for my friends at PT but I am sure that many could
accept a healthy skepticism, which I believe is why science is so
successful not only in finding explanations for the world around us
but also in keeping scientifically vacuous concepts where they belong,
until they too can play a relevant role in our understanding of the
world.

Science is not necessarily blind to claims of the supernatural,
science has been quite instrumental in laying to rest various claims
that appealed to the supernatural. However, science does rightly point
out that supernatural claims explain anything and thus nothing. Like
saying that whatever happens it will be God's will. Sure, since we do
not know God's will we can live under this assumption, forgetting that
perhaps God's will is that we do take individual responsibilities.
Belief in the supernatural can be a guide to doing science as well as
a major obstacle.

On 1/12/07, Ted Davis <tdavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
> I don't think that the rest of the quote alters in any important way the
> arbitrary, a priori commitment that Lewontin displays in the paragraph
> orignally quoted--and often quoted. I would respond in two ways.
>
> (1) Devout theist (and, really design theorist) Robert Boyle also refused
> to appeal to supernatural divine activity in explaining how things happen in
> nature. We must not rise above the level of natural causes, he told Francis
> Line when they argued about what sort of entity it was, that existed above
> the meniscus in a mercury barometer. Was it a real void, or not? Line
> thought that God's absolute power could stretch the atoms there to fill the
> space, without creating empty spaces between them. Boyle declined to appeal
> to God's absolute power in this way. So, on that score Lewtonin has a point
> that Christian scientists can readily agree with.
>
> (2) At the same time, on the other hand, consider what the late Reijer
> Hooykaas wrote about being open to divine freedom in understanding nature.
> I very much agree with the following thoughts, which I suspect Lewontin
> would reject:
>
> "The history of science shows many examples of the 'irrational' notions and
> theories of today becoming the 'rational' notions and theories of tomorrow,
> that it seems largely a matter of being *accustomed* to them whether they
> are considered rational or not, natural or not. Modern geologists deem a
> geology in which everything happens within a rather short period
> 'miraculous'; but the long periods Hutton wanted in order to dismiss the
> marvellous from geology, were at first rejected as marvellous by his
> contemporaries who were wont to think in short periods...
>
> 'Love of the marvellous' is the opposite of the scientific spirit. The
> scientist has the duty to reduce the seemingly marvellous to the constant
> course of nature and to prove that wonder is no wonder. But 'fear of the
> marvellous' is just as harmful to the progress of science. A dogmatic and
> rationalistic attitude which proclaims the present state of experience or
> the present state of 'rational explanation' as final truth, and condemns
> anything not conformable to them as 'miraculous', neglects also the duty of
> demonstrating that 'wonder is no wonder'. Science is blind to the
> supernatural; in order to widen its scope, however, it should not be anxious
> to discard everything reason does not understand. Its first concern should
> be to establish the actual course of nature, not to discard everything
> unusual or non-rational. The realm of the 'natural' should be expanded as
> much as possible by revising the 'laws of nature' and, when necessary, the
> whole way of thinking. The best guarantee for undogmatic, truly free
> science has always been a submission to facts, even when they seem to be
> against reason, and a mild scepticism toward the 'reasonableness' of our
> theoretical systems, even when they seem to be most rational."
>
> --"Natural Law and Divine Miracle," (Leiden, 1959), pp. 167-68.
>
> It would be interesting to know your opinion, Pim: would your friends at PT
> be sympathetic to such a view?
>
> ted
>
>

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Received on Fri Jan 12 12:45:34 2007