Science Fuller Religion
Good, someone else besides Richard Dawkins and PZ and me who thinks science and religion are not compatible.
At an August 2005 City College of New York conference featuring a panel of Nobel Laureates, one scientist created a stir by arguing that belief in God is incompatible with being a good scientist and is “damaging to the well-being of the human race.”…Hauptman: The only significant negative reaction came from Cornelia Dean, a reporter from The New York Times. I was later told by several of the other Nobel Laureates that they agreed with me, but for reasons of their own, they just did not respond…[O]bviously this view is unpopular in this overly religious society. People who are outspoken about it are more than just regarded as cranky, they are deeply disliked…I spoke out because of this frustration I have only lately begun to feel about the religiosity in our society.
In other words the pressure of public opinion and social conformity silences a lot of people. I think it is really necessary to resist that pressure and that trend. That’s why I keep yapping about it – I’m applying social pressure from the other direction. (Not that that’s much use, with the NY Times doing its bit for the wrong side.)
The interviewer asks if he thinks there is a relationship between being a good scientist and being a religious skeptic.
What are religions based on? They are not based on evidence but on faith. On the other hand, a good scientist insists that, before one assents to a claim, there must be good evidence for that claim…I think we would be better off if scientists were more open about their lack of belief in God.
So do I. I’ll tell you who doesn’t, though, and that’s Steve Fuller. He would accuse Hauptman of ‘demonizing’.
The contributors to this volume consist of some veterans of the Science Wars over the past fifteen years, including the editor, Gerald Holton, and Paul Gross. Some pieces demonize the quite different senses of “fundamentalism” on offer in contemporary Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism – each of which supposedly threatens the future of science.
Gosh, why would anyone think Christian, Islamic or Hindu fundamentalism would threaten the future of science? There’s no possible reason, therefore those horrid blood-spattered veterans of the ‘Science Wars’ have to resort to demonization. Some people will stop at nothing!
While it is relatively harmless to insist that mastery of a scientific specialty requires training in certain techniques, it is more problematic (pace Kuhn) to insist that all such specialists share the same disciplinary narrative – and still more problematic to require that they pledge allegiance to the same philosophical world-view, say, what the US National Academy of Sciences calls “methodological naturalism.” It makes for bad philosophy, bad science, and bad politics. Yet, we seem to be sliding down this slippery slope, which in the past has led to loyalty oaths and in the future could lead to the genetic profiling of people as unfit for scientific endeavors because of their propensity to belief in, say, the supernatural.
‘Disciplinary narrative’ – right. It’s just a story. And methodological naturalism is a ‘philosophical world-view’ coercively forced on all aspiring scientists. That’s a line that the defense (the ID side) tried to push at the Kitzmiller trial, the one where Steve Fuller covered himself with glory by helping his side to lose the case (by giving his ‘expert’ testimony that ID is indeed religion, when the defense was trying to claim that it wasn’t – boy, I bet they were sorry they’d invited him to the party). Barbara Forrest wouldn’t play.
Q. And methodological naturalism is a convention that’s imposed upon scientific inquiry, is it not?
A. Forrest: No, it’s not a convention that is imposed upon scientific inquiry. Methodological naturalism is a methodology. It’s a way of addressing scientific questions. It reflects the practice of science that has been successfully established over a period of centuries. It’s not imposed upon science. It reflects the successful practice of science.
So now Fuller is setting the record straight, now that there’s no pesky judge to interfere.
Perhaps the volume’s strongest suit is that it does not feature arguments to the following effect:…(b) That the research and educational agendas of democratic societies should be turned over to scientific specialists, by virtue of their superior knowledge, so to prevent society from egregious error…To this reviewer, the absence of (b)-style arguments is the surest sign that the contributors, despite their uniformly establishmentarian scientific sympathies, are still republicans – and not authoritarians. It will be interesting to see whether a successor volume still holds fast to this ideal, since some contributors seem to be chomping at the bit to grant authorized scientists unilateral control over the science curriculum.
How dare they. How dare they want to grant ‘authorized’ (what does that silly dig mean?) scientists ‘unilateral’ (what does that mean?) control over the science curriculum? How dare they not want to include lots of those unfairly ‘demonized’ fundamentalists along with lots of clued-in sociologists of science and lots of, um, baseball players? How dare they not want to hand control over the science curriculum over to The People at large, to do with it as they will? Is this a democracy, or is it not? It is a democracy. Therefore all curricula should be under the control of unauthorized democratic unauthoritarian non-specialists, because that’s democratic and the other thing isn’t. Scientific specialists who have (ew, ew, ew) ‘superior’ knowledge (can’t you just see them, those bastards, sitting around their labs in their horrible white coats fawning on each other for having so much ew superior knowledge and specialistism?) and establishmentarian sympathies are bad, bad, bad people who don’t belong in a democracy, they should all be locked up in missile silos or something, we hates ’em.
Forrest’s effectiveness was reflected in the presiding judge’s interpretation of the US Constitution’s separation of Church and State doctrine in Puritanical rather than Whitmanesque terms: He went beyond ruling that a religiously inspired viewpoint should not dominate the public school curriculum to pronouncing that no such viewpoint whatsoever should ever be introduced into scientific matters. Why science, as opposed to other subjects in the curriculum, should be treated so preciously remained unaddressed. However, it would make sense if a certain self-consciously non-theological conception of science were treated as a secular religion of a civic republican polity, as Dewey seemed to wish for the United States.
Oh, gawd, what a pile of steaming ordure. What a horrible, sly, insinuating, eelish way of deploying rhetoric instead of argument he has. How annoying he is. How I wish he would give it all up and become a church warden instead.
What a steaming heap! It’s difficult to understand how educated people like Fuller come to their world views.
I thought this was the kicker:
Why science, as opposed to other subjects in the curriculum, should be treated so preciously remained unaddressed. However, it would make sense if a certain self-consciously non-theological conception of science were treated as a secular religion…
This is the kind of shite that drives me ’round the bend.
A funny word ‘demonizing’. It seems to mean ‘criticizing something I don’t really mind’. Many of those who use it are quite happy to attack the likes of Bush and Blair, but that apparently doesn’t count as ‘demonizing’.
A funny word ‘demonizing’. It seems to mean ‘criticizing something I don’t really mind’. Many of those who use it are quite happy to attack the likes of Bush and Blair, but that apparently doesn’t count as ‘demonizing’.
Regarding “Why science, as opposed to other subjects in the curriculum, should be treated so preciously remained unaddressed”:
It is well to remember that what Fuller describes as precious treatment is simply the right of science to make its own rules, and that with science the value of those rules is shown in its successes. The former is shared with any area of expertise, let alone those in academia. The latter makes science rare, if not unique.
The icing on the steaming ordure was the following sentence in prepenultimate paragraph of Fuller’s essay:
This staggering of the pace of scientific innovation is out of respect for our common humanity, which prevails over particular individuals’ desire to jump ahead of the pack.
Looks as though Fuller also added a few passages straight from the Postmodernism Generator as well: Civic republican attempts to sublate the dialectic of liberalism and communitarianism can generate a bipolar disorder ..
Anybody for sublation?
Sorry, I’ve got a bipolar disorder this afternoon.
Bob-B, yup. See the Fashionable Dictionary.
Demonising
Sharply criticising something that I approve of.
That’s one of the very first entries, from September 2002.
Yeah, that sentence about certain individuals jumping ahead of the pack does take the biscuit, doesn’t it. Especially given Fuller’s personal arrogance and self-regard – see his comments on the thread about him at Michael Bérubé’s blog. He’s an unpleasant character.
‘authorized scientists unilateral control over the science curriculum.’
Far better for evangelical used-car salemen to have unilateral control over the science curriculum, perhaps.
‘…in the future could lead to the genetic profiling of people as unfit for scientific endeavors because of their propensity to belief in, say, the supernatural.’
or, ‘in the future could lead to people having marmalade forced up their nostrils.’
or, ‘in the future could lead to people having their eyebrows shaved while dozing.’
Hey, this works. Kind of the GTi version of the slippery slope fallacy.
I can’t figure out how “methodological naturalism” constitutes a philosophical world view.
Quibbling pedantic note to Cathal Copeland: the proper form is “antepenultimate”.
“I can’t figure out how “methodological naturalism” constitutes a philosophical world view.”
It doesn’t. The claim that it does is a great favourite of IDers and their fans and enablers, but it’s a bogus claim.
Dear Aunty Penultimate. She used to bring me chocolates on my birthday.
Don, you’re a hoot! I laughed out loud. Very apt, too.
Dang, I missed Don’s. A hoot indeed. A whole ‘Bad Moves’ in three lines. A smile, two bangs, and a religion.
How come scientists are forced to do loads of experiments and argue about things in their literature for years before they can make claims about the way the world is, but all science studies people need to do is quote a short narrative history of science that makes wild and inconsistent claims about the nature of teh scientific method to undermine the whole edifice. I speak of course of Kuhn, a man who proved nothing but changed the world.
G. Tingey, I must disagree with your analysis.
The “methodological” in methodological naturalism precludes Your underlying assumption [being] that all causes are natural, that there is/are NO “supernatural” interventions. “Methodological” here means that the naturalism is strictly limited to the methods and makes no assumptions beyond that.
There is a considerable difference between asserting that all causes are natural and asserting that the only causes I know how to investigate are natural. This is why I don’t understand how Fuller can still be making this leap, even after Forrest’s testimony.
“This is why I don’t understand how Fuller can still be making this leap, even after Forrest’s testimony.”
Sheer unadulterated brass-plated gall, is the only answer I can come up with.
You’re nevertheless wrong, GT. What you’re talking about is methodological naturalism, not metaphysical naturalism. It is quite possible to have the first without the second. And it’s advisable to be clear about that, or the ID crowd will tie you in knots.
“This is why I don’t understand how Fuller can still be making this leap, even after Forrest’s testimony.”
Fuller discussed this when he came here to give a lecture a few months ago, and I talked to him about it afterwards. In short, his opposition to “methodological naturalism” is simply this: we don’t have a scientific-theory-independent definition of what is ‘natural’.
We could say that science itself defines what counts as natural. But then any claim that “only natural phenomena have a place in science” (or suchlike) boils down to “only those phenomena to which present-day science gives its blessing have a place in science”. Now that can’t be right, since science must be capable of expanding its ontology. For example, if eventually someone passes one of James Randi’s tests and consistently and repeatably demonstrates some kind ‘psychic powers’, then we might have to admit such phenomena into the realm of science, even though we currently dismiss them as ‘supernatural’.
Now, this is not to say that Fuller wants to allow ghosts, pixies and ‘Goddidit’ into the lab, nor into the science classroom. Rather, (he says that) he wants a better analysis of why those things are to be excluded – one that doesn’t rely on undefined terms like ‘natural’. Probably the best alternative for naturalness is ‘testability’ – science can only consider phenomena which can be subjected to tests (of a certain kind, to be spelled out precisely).
Now, I think his other views — on ID in theory, the present advocates of ID in practice, what should be taught in schools, and on whose behalf one should be willing to testify in court — are largely wrong, and in some cases dangerously naive. But on this specific question I suspect he has a valid point.
In making our arguments we should strive to say only correct things, and stop saying false or unjustified things. One of Fuller’s aims in testifying, he says, was to stop scientists and philosophers of science from claiming falsely that ‘naturalism’ is a keystone of scientific method, until and unless they can spell out just what they mean by that.
But do scientists really mean the circular ‘non-supernatural’ when they say natural, or is that simply shorthand? By methodological naturalism do they not normally mean testable and not defined as utterly untestable (e.g. psychic powers that only work if the scientist testing them believes)? People have researched supposedly supernatural phenomena for years, they haven’t found much evidence to support them, but they’ve studied them. In this second case scientists reject supernaturalism because it is a term used to refer to a whole raft of unsupported phenomena.
I think this is just another example of ‘philosophers’ playing word games, games they can only get away with because no one else is paying any attention to what they have to say.
And yet, despite his noble motives, he is still capable of churning out screeds of egregious bullshit…
How noble is it, please, to intervene in a debate on the side of people who want science to take cognisance of things that are *just made up*…? That, after all, is the kicker in ‘methodological naturalism’ — without it, you are allowe to *just make up* your explanations. To assert that it reifies a fixed ‘nature’ is to run counter to the whole fashion in which scientific enquiry has actually peeled back layer upon layer of previously-unknown and unforeseen complexity in the last 400 years, and continues to do so.
For a really apologetic stance on all this, there’s
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/SelfApptdExp.htm
sh*t, ‘unapologetic’…
In and of itself, is not ‘metaphysical naturalism’ oxymoronic? The concept can only exist as a nonsensical extension of the larger and more commonly accepted concept of ‘metaphysics’ itself, which is equally nonsensical, revolving as it does entirely around things that can only be speculated on without physical evidence, and are yet asserted to have a ‘real’ existence….
‘Methodological naturalism’ is, on the one hand, a modest straightforward statement of how science — and indeed most branches of enquiry that reside in actually being able to *show* something — operates. On the other, it is of course a rampart against those who would insist on importing nonsense into science lock, stock and barrel. It should not need to be more than the first, which would render it almost not worth stating, but it does need to be the second, alas for the world.
PM: I think this is just another example of ‘philosophers’ playing word games
That’s a common, and often fair, complaint against philosophers. But I don’t think it’s right here. The point of going through an argument like this (i.e. that ‘natural’ should be replaced by ‘testable’) is to make sure that the words and ideas we use are capturing just what we want to assert, without accidentally asserting or implying false things. That’s the aim of a whole section of philosophy – to be a kind of conceptual janitor.
In this case, the concern would be that by saying (and thinking) ‘natural’ when what we mean is ‘testable’, we may be prone to lapse into unneccesary error.
True, to really motivate the discussion properly one ought to demonstrate the kind of errors that one might lapse into, and show that people do in fact make those errors (for example, that people inadvertently treat ‘natural’ as a fixed category, rather than something that changes as science develops). But (some, many?) philosophers take the need for this sort intellectual hygiene as a given, and leave the collection of such errors as an exercise for the reader.
And your question: “By methodological naturalism do they not normally mean testable[…]?” remains open. If they don’t, then what *do* they mean? And if they do, why do they call it ‘naturalism’ instead (and, as above, what errors does this leave them open to)?
logopetria, my point is that it is the philosophers, not the scientists, that came up with ‘methodological naturalism’ as a description of what scientists do. Scientists do science, and that science consists of testing stuff. If the philosophers don’t like their description, that is their problem.
If scientists use the expression ‘methodological naturalism’ they do so purely as they have been told it is a description of what they’re doing, and by what they’re doing they mean testing stuff.
You and Fuller are making a very dodgy argument here, you’re redefining an expression used by scientists as a decsription of what they do (and a description that they didn’t come up with in the first place), then telling them that their expression is inconsistent and thus their methodology is flawed.
I hope you can see the breathtaking arrogance in that approach. The question is very simple, do you want science to be about testing stuff or not? Because that is what science is, and what creationism, and a whole range of supernatural gobbledygook is not.
Fuller is a charlatan and his line about naturalism being circular is just one more line of many (often mutually inconsistent) attempting to justify his essentially anti-rational position. If you look at his exchanges on Michael Berube’s blog you’ll see that he actually thinks creationism (sorry ID) is going to be good and fruitful science. And that is probably because, as he demonstrates, he neither understands the science, nor thinks he needs to.
Some quality Fuller quotes:
“However, mainstreaming ID – especially as a talking point in science classes – allows for non-religious, non-rightist people to take up the ideas…But I don’t see any of this happening…without some sort of legal intervention…I just don’t see the fact that ID lacks a substantial track record very telling in a pedagogical context. Education should be future- not past-oriented.”
“Linus Pauling gambled that the genetic material would be a protein…Pauling DID predict correctly” [tee hee]
“Christian and Muslim fundamentalism, in contrast, are attempts to revive and update religious traditions that have actually motivated good science in the past, and the latter have to do with the postulation of a monotheistic God as being the source of the order we perceive in the universe……the East’s tendency has been to become to reach for mystery (‘holism’) as it aspires to higher levels of synthesis. The West’s trick was to become more unified AND more precise: synthetic and analytic at the same time. Why? Well, because silly old Westerners – not just Christians but Jews and Muslims too – believed that some One Big Guy designed the universe and our job as humans created in his image and likeness is to figure it out and perhaps even complete it. I know this is a multicultural obscenity – but what can I say? I believe that it’s true as an empirical fact. If you think something like the Scientific Revolution would have ‘eventually’ happened outside a monotheistic culture, then I’d love to see the counterfactual historical argument: e.g. try to reinvent Newton using only the resources of the Indian or Chinese intellectual tradition.”
PM – thanks for your replies.
I hope you haven’t picked up the impression that anything I’ve written above is intended to be critical of what scientists do while they’re conducting research. Nor am I defending anything else Fuller has said or done on this matter – which I thought I made clear before. I will happily (indeed, enthusiastically) set out why I think he’s wrong, ignorant, and dangerously naive when it comes to ID (which is itself — need I say it? — the work of charlatans and an insult to the intelligence). But that’s a separate discussion, for another time.
All I’m expressing an interest in right now is this particular question: is it true that a well-defined concept of ‘naturalness’ plays a central role in science, or is all talk of ‘naturalness’ really elliptical somehow for ‘testability’? That seems like a straightforward question in philosophy of science. It’s about what people say about science. I’m interested in changing the way philosophers (and others) talk about scientific practice in order to better fit that talk to the facts of what scientists do — not in changing scientific practice itself.
Here are some other questions I’m not in the business of asking right now (and which aren’t forced upon us by the asking or discussing of the question above):
a). Whose fault is it that anyone talks about “methodological naturalism”? (Philosophers of science. But how is that not relevant to anything?)
b). Is the ordinary practice of scientists – hypothesising, testing, etc – in need of radical change? (No, it’s just fine as it is, and best left unmeddled with. We certainly can’t let in nonsense like ID and its God of the gaps to mess things up for us!)
c). Do you want science to be about testing stuff or not? (Yes, of course I do. See above.)
d). Is Steve Fuller ill-informed, self-aggrandising, on the wrong side (etc.), and does he say apparently just-plain-crazy things that make no sense? (Yeah. But even so, that doesn’t make every individual claim he makes automatically false. And I’m just investigating one particular claim.)
“is it true that a well-defined concept of ‘naturalness’ plays a central role in science, or is all talk of ‘naturalness’ really elliptical somehow for ‘testability’?”
Well I think this is really my point, it is a very odd question to ask. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone refer to science as only being about ‘natural’ phenomena (except perhaps to distinguish ‘natural’ science from ‘social’ science, but that is not the role you wish ‘natural’ to play here). It is quite true that scientists explicitly reject ‘supernatural’ phenomena or explanations when these things have been investigated and shown to be bogus (e.g. psychic powers). But that isn’t really a question of ‘natural’ versus ‘supernatural’ but ‘tested and found to be the case’, and ‘tested and found not to be real’, or in extremis, ‘considered to be highly unlikely given current knowledge’. People also talk about the ‘supernatural’ as code for religion, but again, that is because the claims of religion are just not the kind of thing that science can investigate, or at least, those areas left that it hasn’t already debunked aren’t. In other words, the natural world is simply defined in opposition to the ‘supernatural’, where the ‘supernatural’ is that which science cannot investigate.
So I’m left somewhat puzzled, ‘methodological naturalism’ as an expression refers to making scientific explanations based on observable and testable things in the world (‘nature’), as opposed to arbitrary forces beyond our ken (‘supernatural’), but I don’t think the concept of ‘nature’ per se plays any role in science, ‘nature’ is simply that which scientists study, and in the broadest sense has to include most observable phenomena (e.g. social phenomena).
In other words, ‘naturalness’ is the sort of thing you hear mentioned in health food stores, not by scientists, many positively hate the word and its connotations. It just seems to me that you (and Fuller if I want to give him the benefit of the doubt) are being misled by the use of a derivative of the word ‘natural’ in the expression ‘methodological naturalism’. But then we get back to my point about word games, it is you that is claiming ‘natural’ plays a role in science, I don’t think it does, and the adherence to ‘methodological naturalism’ is not evidence that it does either. ‘Methodological naturalism’ means what it means, we can’t just riff on individual words. And if we take that position, Fuller’s rejection of ‘methodological naturalism’ on the grounds that it has the word ‘naturalism’ in it, rather than because he disagrees with what it actually means seems to be just another example of his pseudo-academic posturing rather than a serious argument. My point about philosophers was not specifically to blame them, but to point out that this is a manufactured argument with no tangible connection with actual science and its practice.
Hmm, that post made more sense when I had distinguished between positive and negative definitions of ‘natural’. Ah well. Think of it this way, do you think a scientist ever says, ‘oh no, I cannot investigate that for it is not -natural-‘, or does said scientist just go about investigating whatever they like, while the Discovery Institute rails against what it calls ‘methodological naturalism’ because it doesn’t seem to have room for creationism?
PM: “My point about philosophers was not specifically to blame them, but to point out that this is a manufactured argument with no tangible connection with actual science and its practice.”
Welcome to philosophy of science!
But seriously, the point you make is pretty much right. The things that philosophers of science debate amongst themselves are not, in general, the issues that scientists are directly concerned with. In fact, they can sometimes appear to be quite orthogonal. And, on the whole, both parties are generally content with that situation.
As [a paraphrase of what] Peter Lipton has said, the relationship between philosophers of science and science itself is like that between astronomers and stars: they’re not trying to influence it, they just find it interesting and want to know all there is to know about them and how they work.
Anyway, I’ll concede that the point about ‘natural’ vs. ‘testable’ is little more than a technical matter for philosophers to worry about, and gladly get back to a more interesting subject: ripping on Fuller!
Yeah. This whole wrangle over methodolgical v metaphysical naturalism is an artifact of ID. Fuller’s point is empty. It’s strawman stuff. It’s supernaturalists who accuse scientists of being hung up on naturalism; scientists of course do include testability as part of what science is.
I agree with OB. And I think Fuller is wrong to pin his argument on “naturalism”; the key word in the phrase is “methodological”. It amounts to saying “There may be things out there which my science cannot comprehend, but I’ll nevertheless stick to what I can work on in my lab. If you show me how to experiment on God and I’ll be happy to give it a whirl”.
OB: Thanks for tackling Fuller’s review. Kindly old Dr. Fuller continues to be his engaging self, doesn’t he?
PM and logopetria: I’m a little confused about the issue. I thought that ‘methodological naturalism’ was a term introduced by philosophers to describe the desire to do philosophy in a way consistent with empirical science, rather than a description of how science itself was supposed to work. I’m not sure, but I think the early misapplication of the term in the way Fuller was using it was by Philip Johnson, one of the founders of the ID movement.
Lee, thank you for alerting me to it!
You guys see this yet?:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAFC8.htm
One sentence I liked: “For Fuller and other cultural critics of science, the loss of scientific objectivity is a small price to pay for a chance to undermine the dominance of the scientific elite.”
“How I wish he would give it all up and become a church warden instead.”
And if you weren’t so stubbornly wedded to facts, you’d be able to believe he’d already become one.
Picking up on some points that that Spiked article doesn’t make, one of the reasons that ‘science’ has left itself open to idiots like Fuller is that, until VERY recently, it did maintain an air of patrician disdain for common humanity. ‘Racial science’ was pretty popular with eggheads until Hitler made it unfashionable, in the 1950s govt scientists routinely tested toxic substances on ‘volunteers’ without actually telling them what they were doing — up to and including nerve gas! Within the lifetimes of most people, ‘science’ has pulled some very dodgy stunts indeed. Now, mostly, of course, this has been because states bent ‘science’ to their service, and it is those states that ought to be held ultimately responsible — but unfortunately it’s the science that people have become wary of.
Are you saying “Where was Steve Fuller when we needed him, seventy, eighty years ago? Why does he pop up now, when he’s a useless hindrance?”
“but unfortunately it’s the science that people have become wary of.”
Yeah, but a lot of that is thanks to a great deal of help from Fullerines, Fullerians, Fulleroids. Meaning from people who argue from ‘some scientists have done bad things’ to ‘all science is elitist hierarchical dreck’.
This issue is part of the subject matter of Why Truth Matters.
And why does none of this opprobrium stick to anyone else?
PM:
I think it’s because scientists are puffed-up elitists who insist that you must work and study for years before they will listen to your objections. How undemocratic!! That’s so unfair!