Re: [asa] Creation Care

*You say "it's irresponsible to ingore contrarian views". I would ask, on
what basis do you decide which contrarian views to reject and which ones to
value? Who is the arbiter?*

Why must there be a single person or single community that serves
as arbiter? That approach always leads to tyranny.

Reason, wisdom, experience, common sense, faith, and revelation, in varying
proportions as the circumstances dicate, is the basis on which we need to
evaluate truth claims and make decisions. A recapture of the classicle
virtue of phronesis and the Biblical virtue of wisdom is what we need. The
last thing we need is to abrogate our duty to think for ourselves to some
supposedly authoritative community. Most people are not as stupid as other
people think they are.

It seems to me that you're coming dangerously close to the zeitgeist that
takes "the literature" as a sort of secular scripture and the scientific
community as a sort of secular priesthood. Of course practical wisdom
relies on the recommendations of trained experts and recognizes the motives
of the experts' political critics -- but it never, never sloughs off the
duty to think carefully and weigh everything in the balances simply because
of expert authority. Even beyond the simple and obvious truth that all
human knowledge is historically and socially situated, we as Christians know
in particular the every temporal social structure, every community,
scientific, ecclesiastical, political, familial whatever, is deeply
corrupted by sin and therefore cannot be authoritative in an ultimate
sense. To put it in somewhat Kuyperian terms, each of these communities
have a certain type of authority and certain roles within their given
spheres, as well as certain relationships to each other; none of them is a
meta-authority.

*String theory is not consensus in the sense of being tested experimentally
and found to be consistent.*
**
And string theorists would say that their models are sound and elegant, and
that if you don't have the many years of training required to really
understand them, you shouldn't question them. See, the authority game gets
pecked away bit by bit, and the response always is, "well *that* community
of science doesn't really have it's act together, but *this* one does." But
then *that* community of science says, "who are you to say we don't have our
act together?" Who, then, is the arbiter of which community of science gets
to be the arbiter?

*Allowing the shrill voices of critics who have no competing models, who
have no in-depth understanding of the field, to prevent action is also
unacceptable.*

Perhaps, but censoring criticism is equally unacceptable. If the critics
really have no in-depth understanding of the field, let the mainstream
voices demonstrate that through facts and argument. If that can't be
demonstrated through facts and argument, maybe the critics know more than
the mainstream thinks.

As to "no competing models" -- that line, IMHO, though, is a canard when it
comes to policy making. If a model is advanced the demands very costly
social action, criticism of the model can be very valuable *even if the
critic has no competing model*. Simply avoiding the costs of the faulty
mainstream model would be a good thing.

Having said all this, let me reiterate: I personally think global warming
is a real problem that is substantially caused by human actions, and that
some political action is necessary. I am not convinced that anyone can say
the problem will be catastrophic in any given time frame, however. But I am
most sure that censoring debate and arguing from authority is a bad
precedent to set, particularly if we want to approach the science-policy
nexus from a thoroughly Christian perspective.

On 1/25/07, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>
> I'm actually a fan of Smolin and don't like string theory either. I do
think, however, that you may be applying Smolin's comments in slightly the
wrong way. String theory is not consensus in the sense of being tested
experimentally and found to be consistent. He's talking about the relative
distribution of funds in fields where there is no consensus of proven
models. He's talking about the tendency to fund research in new areas
according to the fad of string theory. The issue of what work to fund long
before there's consensus is actually the more interesting part of scientific
research and I've spent much of my career doing that.
>
> Once a field has an appreciable degree of success in explaining data the
research in that field moves to digging deeper and refining the big picture
as well as understanding the next layer of the onion. You say "it's
irresponsible to ingore contrarian views". I would ask, on what basis do you
decide which contrarian views to reject and which ones to value? Who is the
arbiter? Are you the arbiter and we must convince you? Is the general
public? Is it the freerepublic bloggers? Is it the amateur scientists
sitting on the sidelines throwing potshots? Is it those of us on this list
with just enough knowledge to be dangerous? You say "if the contrarian view
is clearly wrong, that should be demonstrable..." but who will demonstrate
that? Who is responsible for deciding whether Glassman's paper on CO2 in the
ocean is correct or not? Who will decide if John Baumgartner is right in his
C-14 assertions? Who will decide if Russell Humphreys is right in his
cosmological cooling? Do we vote to see if we have a majority? Do we give
equal weighting to every commentator?
>
> The solution has actually evolved over a few hundred years in the
scientific methodology. Imperfect as it is, it has been shown over and over
to work. That certainly does NOT mean that all peer-reviewed publications
are correct. Far from it. In the past I've opined that as many as 80% of
published papers might have errors. The beauty of the system is that over
time, the fraudulent work gets exposed and the right ideas are independently
corroborated and confirmed. Cynics like Janice who think the system is so
thoroughly corrupt that nothing can be trusted have no evidence to back up
their conspiracy theories and have a tremendous amount of counterexamples to
explain away. As far as I know, virtually all known frauds in science have
been ferreted out and corrected from within the scientific community, not
from the outside.
>
> I really don't buy this "precautionary" stuff. Once a technical community
has reached the level of consensus like that which the climatologists have
shown, then it becomes irresponsible for us not to act accordingly. Granted,
there could be the unusual occurrence of two consecutive volcanos greater
than Mt. Pinatuba only 2 years apart and all bets are off. But we don't hold
off action because such a rare event might occur. We are responsible before
God to act on the basis of the understanding he has given us. Allowing the
shrill voices of critics who have no competing models, who have no in-depth
understanding of the field, to prevent action is also unacceptable.
>
> Jonah was reluctant to go to Ninevah because he feared his dire
predictions wouldn't come true and he would be shown a fool. God
straightened him out, he went, preached God's word and, sure enough, the
people repented, God didn't judge Ninevah, and Jonah's fears came true. The
city was spared. We can and should pray that we will be spared as well but
that shouldn't stop our actions.
>
> Randy
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Opderbeck
> To: Randy Isaac
> Cc: asa@calvin.edu
> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 10:30 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Creation Care
>
>
> ... who are the final arbiters of controversies in scientific debates? I
think we need to educate the public about scientific methodology and the
need to rely on the scientific publication process as part of authoritative
opinion. Without that, there's no resolution.
>
> Randy, let me push back and play the contrarian a bit here. I hope
everyone will forgive a long response, but I find this fascinating, and
important.
>
> [snip]
>
> So I would say this: yes, we must take seriously the consensus of working
scientists in any given field as reflected in the peer reviewed literature.
However, we must also retain the rational and political freedom to evaluate
consensus claims on the merits, being always mindful that the authority of
all human communities, including communities of science, is necessarily
limited by social dynamics and sin. Because of this, it's irresponsible to
ignore contrarian views, even if they are not a significant part of the peer
reviewed literature. This is particularly true where the science in
question is critical to public policy and democratic debate. If the
contrarian view is clearly wrong, that should be demonstrable based on the
rational strength of the consensus view, without resort to arguments from
authority.
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
Web:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com
Blog:  http://www.davidopderbeck.com/throughaglass.html
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