Re: MN (was Re: [asa] Anti-Creationist Psychobabble On the Web)

Bill -

1st, I'm not sure what you mean by this sentence: 'The question is whether by constraining what we can "see" in the world, whether we can "see" it.' Do you mean
'The question is whether by constraining what we can "see" in the world, we also constrain whether we can "see" it'?

Then on your argument. Quanta were discovered by scientists trying to find natural explanations for radiation phenomena. Planck proposed discontinuity in emission & absorption 1st of all because he (with the help of the experimentalists in Berlin) had "seen" that the traditional explanation didn't work. He was going against a long-held belief that "nature does not make jumps" but he wasn't appealing to anything "outside nature." When Einstein carried the idea further to say that light actually consisted of quanta it was because physicists had "seen" the photoelectric effect. Both phenomena were indeed always there to be seen - in principle - but until you (a) had good measurements of blackbody spectra, (b) worked out the classical Rayleigh-Jeans result & saw that it was nonsense & (c) had good enough equipment to see the peculiar features of the photoelectric effect, you had no reason to develop new theories.

I agree that the progress of science sometimes requires us to modify our understanding of what the natural world is. But such changes are connected, immediately or remotely, with observations of the way the world is. And they are always subject to the test of further observations.

Shalom
George
http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm

----- Original Message -----
From: "wjp" <wjp@swcp.com>
To: "George Murphy" <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com>
Cc: "Kirk Bertsche" <Bertsche@aol.com>; "David Clounch" <david.clounch@gmail.com>; "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: MN (was Re: [asa] Anti-Creationist Psychobabble On the Web)

> George:
>
> To respond but briefly (I hope), I wholly agree (I think).
>
> The question is whether by constraining what we can "see" in the
> world, whether we can "see" it. The answer I believe is a
> qualified yes. We did "see" quanta, despite their "impossibility"
> and the fact that they were always there to be "seen."
> What will it take to see monads?
>
> Science's idea of what is "matter" has changed, radically I think.
> So that I don't know what it is any longer, and whether spirit and
> matter have now dissolved so that matter is now spirit, and spirit matter.
>
> This is to suggest that MN is a moving target. What is "naturalistic" today
> would surely not have been so in Newton's time.
>
> bill
>
> On Fri, 3 Apr 2009 11:00:17 -0400, "George Murphy" <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>> MN, at least as I defined it in an earlier post, is a statement about what
>> types of explanation are to be considered appropriate within science. If
>> doesn't constrain the world but science. It does not say that there are
>> no
>> phenomena that cannot be explained in terms of entities & processes within
>> the world, but that only such explanations are scientific. I.e., MN does
>> not say that science can explain everything that happens in the world.
>> Such
>> a claim is ontological, not methodological, naturalism. (I use the
>> adjective "ontological" here rather than "metaphysical", though it might
>> not
>> be ideal, to avoid getting getting into shadow boxing with positivists &
>> others about metaphysics. In addition - in response to Burgy's point -
>> in
>> an age of acronyms it avoids confusion by allowing us to abbreviate the 2
>> concepts as MN & ON.)
>>
>> Now it's true that there is a tacit assumption that a large class of
>> phenomena can indeed be explained by science in that sense. If that
>> weren't
>> the case there would be no point in doing science, & the fact that science
>> has succeeded so well within the limits of MN gives some ex post facto
>> justification for that belief. But MN itself makes no statement about how
>> large that class is. Goedel's theorem suggests that the set of exceptions
>> is not empty.
>>
>> Shalom
>> George
>> http://home.roadrunner.com/~scitheologyglm
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Bill Powers" <wjp@swcp.com>
>> To: "Kirk Bertsche" <Bertsche@aol.com>
>> Cc: "David Clounch" <david.clounch@gmail.com>; "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>;
>> "George Murphy" <GMURPHY10@neo.rr.com>
>> Sent: Friday, April 03, 2009 12:09 AM
>> Subject: Re: [asa] Anti-Creationist Psychobabble On the Web
>>
>>
>>> Kirk:
>>>
>>> You say that MN is neutral with respect to religion.
>>>
>>> Let me leave that aside and ask whether you (or George) thinks that MN
>> is
>>> metaphysicially neutral.
>>>
>>> Whether you think them questionable or not it appears to me that science
>>> surely makes some metaphysical presumptions, even they may vary with
>> time.
>>> The kinds of explanations we permit, even MN itself, is metaphysical.
>> Were
>>> it not metaphysical what would it be? Surely not empirical. Is it
>> merely
>>> a convention? No, I think not. What we mean by a particle, or what is
>> a
>>> "thing." Are these metaphysical? They fit a template, perhaps a
>> changing
>>> one.
>>>
>>> I guess what I am briefly suggesting is that science, whether it be MN
>> or
>>> something else, paints a possible picture of the world. It constrains
>> the
>>> world, only permitting some ill-defined possibilities, and excluding
>>> others. There can be no discontinuities, the world is a Uni-verse; it
>>> must obey rational law. This is certainly a more classic view, although
>>> Nancy Cartwright suggests that the world is "messy," a different "world"
>> I
>>> think.
>>>
>>> Finally, how do we distinguish metaphysics from religion? Heidegger is
>>> famous for saying that no one worships the causa sui. So perhaps no
>> one,
>>> but Hegel, sings to metaphysics. Still they touch noses, it seems.
>>>
>>> bill powers
>>>
>>> On Thu, 2 Apr 2009, Kirk Bertsche wrote:
>>>
>>>> David,
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand your comments about "George Murphy's views on
>>>> methodological naturalism" being "religion."
>>>>
>>>> Based on George's comments, his view of MN seems to be pretty standard,
>>>> and is the way that we we do science. (And I would argue that this is
>>>> the way that we SHOULD do science.) It is METHODOLOGICAL, not
>>>> METAPHYSICAL naturalism. It makes no religious claims at all, and
>> keeps
>>>> science neutral with respect to religion.
>>>>
>>>> What am I missing?
>>>>
>>>> Kirk
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Apr 1, 2009, at 10:56 PM, David Clounch wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> This is why I oppose George Murphy's views on methodological
>>>>> naturalism. To me it's religion and I want that religion separated
>> from
>>>>> school as far as the east is from the west.
>>>>> I don't mind if George Murphy holds his view personally because he is
>>>>> entitled to his religion. I just don't want a public school to base
>>>>> its science curriculum on George's religion.
>>>>
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Received on Fri Apr 3 13:25:26 2009