Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics

CW: "When one considers the reaction of the scientific community to a variety of challenges from independent-minded scientists, it does not seem that science is particularly inclined to encourage or even tolerate dissent."

I'm describing individual scientists as they do their work; you're talking about the response of the scientific community to specific public results. Quite different things. Another common trait of scientists is herd behavior: they like to gang up on someone who has a new idea and beat him into submission. When he knows he's right, the guy with the new idea can get considerable satisfaction from getting beat up in this way. Happened to me once. In subtle (and occasionally not so subtle) ways I never let my colleagues--who did the beating in this case--forget it. Turned out to be a great career booster.

The herd doesn't like new stuff because the herd got where it is by endorsing and promoting the old stuff. To one degree or another the new stuff (if it's correct) implies the herd was wrong.

Herd behavior of the group may modify but not eliminate a scientist's independence as an investigator. That is, a scientist who's aware of the conventional wisdom may be afraid to step outside it because of peer pressure. Nevertheless, within his narrower scope the scientist still acts as an independent investigator.

CW: "...scientists today, like most other university professors, are *not* "questioners of the status quo". Rather, they are enthusiastic supporters of it."

Again, you're talking about scientists not as scientists but as members of a community, a herd. In their science work the scientists divorce themselves from the herd. That private, quiet environment is where scientists do their thinking and formulate their positions. Such formulating happens also in small informal group discussions. In such quiet environments they find out to what degree they agree with their colleagues and on what topics. Because scientists are all professional skeptics they often learn that they have much in common and agree with their colleagues on may issues that lie outside their areas of expertise. These acknowledged agreements can lead to herd behavior under the right conditions.

In short, the scientist does not formulate his views as part of a herd exercise but in private or in small groups. It's no accident that scientists (and academics) think alike on many issues, because in the privacy of their office or lab they're all trying to make their mark in the world by coming up with something new and impressive. To do this puts them in a frame of mind that readily rejects what is old and conventional.

You're right in that being attuned to the new in some areas does not mean that scientists will be attuned to the new in all areas. People are definitely selective. But religion and handed-down social mores IMO are natural targets for rejection because of their dependence on past authority and only past authority.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Cameron Wybrow<mailto:wybrowc@sympatico.ca>
  To: asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
  Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 1:58 AM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics

  Would that Don Winterstein's characterization of the independence of mind were true of most scientists, instead of only a very special few! When one considers the reaction of the scientific community to a variety of challenges from independent-minded scientists, it does not seem that science is particularly inclined to encourage or even tolerate dissent.

  When Duesberg challenged the HIV/AIDS connection (back in the very early days of AIDS research), he was practically lynched by the scientific community. (Whether he was later proved wrong isn't the point; the point is the irrational fury with which his dissent was met.) When anthropogenic global warming scenarios were challenged on the grounds of both theory and data, the majority of climatologists tried to close down the discussion with howls of protest; the science was "settled", they said, and there was no room for dispute; only a few "cranks" disagreed. (Note that the temperature data in recent years has borne out the view of the "cranks", who are steadily increasing in number.) And when ID people challenged Darwinian theory, how many mainstream biologists immediately condemned ID, purely on hearsay, as both bad science and/or as "creationism", without ever having read a line of Behe, Dembski, etc.? (Answer: lots.) These examples just popped into my head; I don't think it would be hard to find more.

  But even if it were entirely true that scientists as a community were exceptionally open to self-criticism and exceptionally encouraging of non-standard ideas and perspectives *within science*, Don's suggestion about how this would spill over into political and religious views does not quite work.

  True, most scientists do not hold to standard or conventional ways of thinking about religion and politics, if by "standard" and "conventional", one means the views of typical Americans of about 1959, i.e., 50 years ago. But then, not just scientists, but academics generally, and the intelligentsia generally, have been predominantly opposed to 1950s notions of politics and religion for at least four decades now. It is therefore no longer avant-garde, or any mark of great independence of thought, for scientists or social scientists or philosophy professors to be left-wing, feminist, against American foreign policy, against "Western values", etc. Indeed, to vote Democrat, to be in favour of affirmative action, to be pro-abortion, to sit very loosely in relation to orthodox Christianity or Judaism, etc. is the reigning orthodoxy at the secular university today. Thus, scientists who would have been shockingly liberal and secular in Eisenhower's day fit right in with the moral and religious universe of a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama.

  In other words, when it comes to religious, social and moral issues, scientists today, like most other university professors, are *not* "questioners of the status quo". Rather, they are enthusiastic supporters of it. A real "questioner of the status quo" in the modern university would be a conservative who questioned the wisdom of the social and religious changes of the last 40-50 years, and who wondered aloud whether America might have been a healthier civilization back in the 1950s. (Or, God forbid, even earlier.) But any junior professor who voiced such a thought in a modern secular university could kiss tenure good-bye. The "liberals", paradoxically, are more intolerant of dissent from their world-view than the "conservatives" ever were.

  Cameron.

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Don Winterstein<mailto:dfwinterstein@msn.com>
    To: asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
    Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009 12:26 AM
    Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics

    My two cents' worth:

    The very nature of scientists' work is to challenge authority, the received "truth," and replace it with deductions from carefully measured data. One of a scientist's joys is proving an accepted theory incomplete or wrong.

    The root meaning of conservatism has to do with opposing change and preserving the ways of the past. Religions also impose from on high, declare truth on the basis of "authority."

    Hence a scientist who's immersed in his work and allows its methods to reach into the rest of his life will tend to challenge and oppose both standard versions of religious truth and conventional ways of living and governing.

    The fact that scientists as kids often don't fit in probably contributes to the phenomenon.

    Don

      ----- Original Message -----
      From: Randy Isaac<mailto:randyisaac@comcast.net>
      To: asa@calvin.edu<mailto:asa@calvin.edu>
      Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 9:01 AM
      Subject: Re: [asa] Scientists, Religion, and Politics

      I recall that when I was in graduate school, oh so long ago, someone on the
      faculty made the comment that scientists tended to be more liberal in
      politics to counter their need to be so conservative in their science. I'm
      not sure if there's any evidence for a human being to need a balance of
      liberalism and conservatism in one's life, but it's an observation that
      stuck with me.

      Randy

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Received on Thu Jul 16 03:00:54 2009