One possible source of confusion is that Ken Miller, in Finding Darwin's
God, refers to methodological naturalism as "scientific materialism".
(Miller, pp. 26-28)
It might be better to call Sagan's view simply "materialism".
Jim Hofmann
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Ted Davis
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2007 8:12 AM
To: ASA list; Louise Margaret Freeman
Subject: Re: [asa] Question for Ted {was: American ScientificAffiliation
* Whatever happened to its mission?
"scientific materialism," as I use the term, usually refers to the idea
that
"The cosmos is all there is, all there ever was, and all there ever will
be," to borrow Carl Sagan's words.
"methodological naturalism," as Robin Collins and I defined it in an
encyclopedia of sci & rel, is "the belief that science should explain
phenomena only in terms of entities and properties that fall within the
category of the natural, such as by natural laws acting either through
known
causes or by chance"
Ted
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Received on Tue Apr 24 12:08:15 2007
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