[asa] Re: [asa] Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Dini's statement is even purer baloney than Ted suggests. The "Ph." in the
current Ph.D. is a result of bundling lots of different disciplines into the
"philosophy" category, going back to the days when what we now call
"science" was "natural philosophy." Of course when someone gets a doctorate
in some scientific field she/he is supposed to know something about the way
in which that field works, its limitations &c but there seldom is any formal
training in "philosophy of science" in the modern sense. Maybe there should
be but there isn't. & this isn't limited to science. As a classical
scholar my late father of course studied a certain amount of Greek & Latin
philosophy but when he got a Ph.D. in classical philology I don't think he
did much if any formal study of "philosophy of language."

Shalom
George
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
To: "American Scientific Affiliation" <asa@calvin.edu>;
<wdwllace@sympatico.ca>
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 8:49 AM
Subject: Re: [asa] Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

I want to comment on these closing lines from the Times article:

<Dr. Dini, of Texas Tech, agreed. Scientists "ought to make certain the
people they are conferring advanced degrees on understand the philosophy of
science and are indeed philosophers of science," he said. "That's what Ph.D.
stands for.">

It's a nice sentiment, but I doubt that most scientists have much
understanding of the philosophy of science. And what "philosophy of
science" means to Dini is probably not what it means to Marcus Ross, or even
me. There are various approaches to philosophy of science, and I suspect
that Dini is thinking of something pretty strongly positivistic.

List members may recall that I mentioned Ross some time back, in connection
with talking about Kurt Wise and Paul Nelson as YECs with a new attitude--an
attitude not appreciated in many YEC circles. I noted his contribution to
the DVD on the Cambrian explosion that he did with Steve Meyer, esp the fact
that he apparently accepted the earth's great age for purposes of doing the
DVD.

ted

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Received on Mon Feb 12 10:08:35 2007