“The truth” versus the truth
I’m breaking it into pieces, because it’s a large subject. Thomas Dixon also said
I stand by my emphasis on the political aspects of all of this. Claims about the nature of reality and who has the authority to discover and describe it, and by what methods, are questions about power, and thus political. I don’t say that the Scopes or Galileo cases were nothing but politics, but I do say they were political.
That’s true, but incomplete. That’s where the postmodern turn does its turning: in treating that idea (despite the disclaimer) as if it were complete, or if not complete then of predominating interest.
The claim itself is in fact political. It’s a useful claim; useful to people who want to make science a matter of power rather than one of inquiry and evidence, of politics rather than truth. Yes, of course, priests and scientists are in some sense competing for “power”; their rivalry is certainly political (though a good deal more political on the religious side than the scientific side, which is not surprising, since politics and power are all religions have); but science, at any rate, is fundamentally about something else, so making power central just does obfuscate the real issues.
Power and politics are ultimately irrelevant, because whoever wins, whoever is stronger, the truth is what it is. Power can decide “the truth” but it can’t determine the truth.
Religion started it – they’re the bullies. Science is forced to stand up for itself.
I already hear the deafening silence in reply. Sometimes it comes in the form of “well that’s obvious, but what I mean is…” And always in the form of triumphing over a naivety. But still, accompanied by a larger silence.
Eric ended his latest post thusly:
Indeed. The whole Science-n-Religion thing is a wholly owned subsidiary of religion, not science. And as such, the existence of this field of study will be beneficial only to religion. And that’s by design.
The people who are taking part in this field, and I would include Dixon here, know exactly what they’re doing. Agnostic or not, Dixon knows what he’s contributing to—which is a larger effort to paint science as merely one of many “ways of knowing,” not better or worse than religion, just different. The truth about science (that it is the very best mechanism humankind has devised to separate fact from fantasy), and the truth about religion (that it is fantasy), appear to be but footnotes to Dixon.
Even if it is mainly a political conflict, it is still a political conflict between science and religion. How could Dixon possibly deny that?
Also, if the conflicts are indeed about “the nature of reality and who has the authority to discover and describe it, and by what methods”, as Dixon says, then not discussing epistomoligy is a serious omission.
And finally, if this is indeed a power struggle, doesn’t that mean that you might as well give up your desire for harmony? It seems that almost all outcomes that you see in practice fall in one of three categories:
1. Declare eternal war on science because science is a tool of the devil that will turn you away from God.
2. Wall off religion from science (NOMA).
3. Surrender religious authority about reality to science (God of the gaps).
None of these seem very harmonious to me, although the latter two may be fairly peaceful. But since science keeps progressing into what used to be religious territory (not only can science say a lot on the creation of the universe, it will soon also be able to say a lot about the human soul), new conflicts are pretty much inevitable.
Analysing the caricatured versions of ‘science’ put forward by religion can be a way of identifying where we are falling down in communicating about science to the public. It’s pretty clear that most people just don’t ‘get’ scientific method, for instance, and take the view that scientific knowledge is just brilliant guesswork. Concepts like falsifiability are poorly understood, and the distinctions between a hypothesis, a theory and a fact are beyond most people. Not all of this is the fault of scientists and science educators, but I do think a sort of CSI self-image has crept into most researchers’ heads: it’s nice to be regarded as a glamorous person who makes brilliant guesses which always turn out to be correct than a lowly-paid drudge working long hours gradually eliminating alternative hypotheses.
I think for instance that there should be a concerted effort to publish negative results; that mistakes, plagiarism and fraud should be widely publicised rather than buried, and that we should honestly admit that a high proportion of published results (over half?) will ultimately turn out to be wrong or misleading. We should be honest about where the money comes from, and what the effects of that are. The emphasis should be on the overall long-term results of the process of science, rather than the dramatic guesswork of occasional stars like Darwin or Galileo. For every scientist who guesses right, there are a hundred who guess wrong, and theirs are far more representative and interesting stories.
Until ordinary people can identify and understand what scientists actually do, there will always be people like Ben Stein who can dismiss it all as ‘bad’, and other people who are prepared to listen to them. Presenting science as an infallible and indivisible package only plays into their hands.
@Ron Jermy: I do hope you’ve just worded that poorly and that you are not in fact suggesting that Darwin and Galileo were doing guesswork.
In my opinion, religion is fundamentally politics and nothing but politics. It’s all about telling other people what to do — I have very powerful friends, you see, so you’d better do what I say if you know what’s good for you. The fact that these powerful friends are imaginary makes epistemology a crucial weapon in combatting such political maneuvers.
I agree with Jon Jermey, that popular science education is more necessary than ever. This appears to be a general failing of education, journalism and the mass media.
I am particularly pleased, Ophelia, to see the postmodernism issue thematised, as you do in this post. It is painfully obvious that, by concentrating on cultural complexity, and traditions of discourse, this is precisely what is happening in the ‘field’ of ‘science and religion’. And even that name is a way of privileging religion, by accommodating it more closely to science, that is, by making it look as though religion is of some concern to science, as such, and not just to religiously motivated scientists, or politically motivated science organisations.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rational Humanist, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: “The truth” versus the truth http://dlvr.it/Bgwmf […]
Well, they were, at least at first. Quite a number (but not all) of their key hypotheses did indeed get backed up by experiment and further research. But truth does not come from science fully formed, it massages, cleans up, and gradually becomes validated (or sometimes invalidated). This differs from religion and some aspects of philosophy where knowledge wanders around forever in this vague ‘maybe’ state.
Some years ago I read a long article about the influence of scientists in the cold war era (specifically regarding the arms race) under different US presidents. All well and good. Toward the end of the article, however, I was bothered by the unspoken premise, namely that scientists were not sufficiently in control of national policy. This was an example of science stepping outside of it’s area of expertise: scientists can provide good information on potentials of various weapons, educated guesses on the dangers associated with each, and somewhat informed speculation about how different policies might play out… but this is farther and farther away from a scientific question. Science can tell us the odds of different poker hands, but it cannot tell us how to read a skilled opponent. This is where, as I saw it, a certain degree of overconfidence came into play.
What does this have to do with religion? Probably little. But it is something to seriously consider in regards to politicization of science.
There’s a fourth, “sophisticated” move, too, to add to Deen’s list, which the pomos often slide into when pressed: antirealism. It is sort of ad hominem to say so, but I get the impression that this is the motivation of Bas van Fraassen, for example, and is certainly at work in the Galileo affair. Of course, as I mentioned on a previous thread, there’s a good case to be made that by doing this, the (not scientific, but …) realism of Thomism was forgotten or pushed aside. The antirealist reaction can also be focused on the religious “discourse”. A little known book, which seems to have been written long before the current waves of pomo and such, The Sciences and the Humanities takes this line: science is allowed to be understood in realist terms, but religion, poetry, etc. not. I dare say that many believers would not find this an acceptable compromise. Moreover, it comes dangerously close to a purely emotive account, which in my view guts poetry as well.
@Jay: surely learning how to read a skilled opponent involves careful observation, finding correlations between behaviors and game outcomes, and forming and rejecting hypotheses? I get what you’re trying to say, but you’re going to have to find a better analogy.
@Philosopher-animal: I agree with what you’re saying about anti-realism, but I’m not sure this isn’t just another case of walling off religion from science. In your example, the wall separates realism from non-realism, with science on the one side, and religion on the other. A similar kind of walling off religion is what I like to call the “religion as an artform” argument.
Maybe I’m being a bit nit-picky here. Separate category or not, it should be clear that if your view of religion goes along these lines, there is no need for a “field” of religion and science – the two have nothing to do with each other. I therefore doubt someone like Dixon would support such a view.
Yes, it is a special case -and no more successful, ultimately: I certainly don’t endorse such a strategy, but it is used, and it seems to me that the special case introduces “qualitative novelty”, to use Bunge’s interesting way of discussing emergence. As for whether it would result in such a field as “religion and science” – maybe. Arguably that book I mentioned is on that topic, but if one accepts its arguments, there’s nothing left to say. I guess then the field would exist only to disappear when no longer needed.
Of course it goes without saying how science can conflict with science, or at least how scientists can conflict with scientists. Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton are a famous example, and relativity and quantum theory are another. It is actually considered ‘healthy’ for conflicts to exist within science, but there is a tendency to get them resolved eventually.
And there are conflicts within religion too, of course, but how they are resolved is far more worrying.
The presence of observation does not make it science. Animals respond to detailed observations of other animals, but are not doing science. Until there is a sufficient model of mind that can actually predict what an opponent will do (not on the horizon), this is not science (and that itself can be very frightening, i.e. ‘Minority Report’). A skilled poker player may not know anything of science, and a scientist can still be a very poor player.
Even when scientific approaches are used the results are often very unreliable (i.e. economic models).
in fact science is democratic, religion is against democracy
The more I look at it, the more this “Science & Religion Studies” bullshit seems to be of a piece with the long academic embarrassment of postmodern “Science Studies” produced by people who always pronounce the word “Theory” with a capital ‘T’. Just a few days ago, Michael Bérubé wrote about how the radical anti-realist social constructivism of pseudo-leftist postmodernists became a tool for science-deniers on the right: I think the Templeton Foundation is funding exactly the same sort of science-undermining movement that the oil industry and creationists are funding, for not entirely dissimilar reasons. If Dixon is going to focus so much on politics and power struggles, he might want to start with the politics of the people who are trying so desperately to ignore epistemology and pretend that science and religion are not really in conflict.
G, yep. I read the chapter on social constructivism in Why Truth Matters this morning, and it’s all very apropos. And it’s funny…I was just thinking of Michael Bérubé a few minutes ago, in connection with the Sokal hoax and social constructivism. I was thinking that he was a bit disapproving of the Sokal hoax at the time and that he changed his mind later (largely thanks to reading Meera Nanda, if I remember correctly). I shall now read the piece you linked.
Jay @ #11
No – neither Galileo nor Darwin were guessing; they formed hypotheses. It is sloppy thinking to equate one with the other. To guess is to decide without information or evidence. Any guess must, by definition, be made on the basis of belief. Any hypothesis, to be of value to a scientist, must be made on some evidentiary basis to make it worth pursuing. The fact that many hypotheses are shown, in time, to be in error does not make them equivalent to guessing. I cannot determine whether a guess is valid or not. Give me a hypothesis and I may be able to design an experiment which will validate or falsify it.
I’m not clear that your example of scientists stepping beyond their area of expertise contributes much to your argument – this behavior is not limited to scientists and it has nothing to say about the validity of the scientific method. I suppose that the pope felt that Galileo was guilty of this since, at the time, the church considered itself the only arbiter of truth.
Galileo and Darwin made ‘intuitive leaps’ not guesses.
That this was stated in this way at all is a serious flaw, one which in fact assumes that the religious side of the argument is more valid. It’s almost never the case that scientists qua scientists are concerned with this question. By this I don’t mean that science requires the democratic view that “everyone has the authority to discover and describe truth” (true perhaps in a platitudinous sense). Rather I mean that the concept of authority is completely divorced from the scientific method; there’s no place for it at all. (Neither is “the nature of reality” a scientific question, since science is concerned with describing observable events and objects, not “reality” in the broadest metaphysical or ontological sense.)
This is perhaps less true with respect to the public face of science; when advising or educating a lay audience, there’s a particular form of authority (expertise and qualifications) which is considered necessary to “speak for” science. But this authority is provisional and (ideally) based on a demonstrated effectiveness, just as with any other occupation. It’s not like being a member of the clergy, where a supposedly exemplary personal character and supernatural distinction are frequently used to add to one’s authority. In any case, while this may be a central question in certain cases of communication about science or public policy (teaching creationism, for example), it’s much less relevant to questions about the doing (and publishing) of scientific research itself.
No it is not. Science is about evidence. Many scientific hypotheses start as a minority view and earn acceptance through evidence and careful testing of the evidence.
The majority of scientists may believe that X is true but it is the evidence supporting the truth of the hypothesis that creates the consensus, not the other way around.
Well science is democratic in some senses and not in others. It is democratic in the sense that it’s not aristocratic – it’s open to all who put in the effort as opposed to being restricted to people born to certain kinds of status.
True, but it is not democratic in the sense that popular opinion decides what is right, which is a pretty standard view in some quarters. The American news media often cites polling results as if they actually answer important questions. Democratic perhaps, but very unscientific.
Yup.
Using the same rationale, I could argue that the conflict in the middle east has nothing to do with either religion or territorial disputes or a clash of cultures or racism… nope, it’s all just about political power.
The French Revolution had nothing to do with a conflict between the monarchy and Enlightment era ideals — it was just about political power.
The debate over same-sex marriage in the United States has nothing to do with religion, marriage, or homosexuality — it is just about political power.
Please.
Yeah, “democratic” is a funny word. The tools of science are (theoretically) available to everyone, and that’s pretty damn democratic. But, in the more colloquial sense, science is the most un-democratic thing imaginable—e.g., even if every single person in the U.S. were to vote that the Earth is 6,000 years old, it wouldn’t matter; the science is what it is, and, in this respect, the “will of the people” is meaningless.
@27
You’re being facetious, of course, but what you propose in jest is quite literally a viewpoint that is (sadly) taken seriously in some academic contexts. The whole “everything’s political” thing seems like it might be part Hegelian, part postmodern, or something like that. Who knows where it came from. But make no mistake: there are so-called serious people who would claim that this debate over gay marriage is, in fact, entirely about political power, and nothing at all to do with religion or anything else. I’d laugh at the folly of this, but then I think of the countless dissertations currently being written with this faulty, naive presupposition.
@27
I was going to point out the same thing that Andy did: there are plenty of people who make those arguments quite sincerely. I’ve definitely seen that argument about the middle east made exactly as you put it.
Galileo Galilei was, indeed, caught up in a political contest, but the debate itself was about who had the authority to determine what was true – this was a religious issue – Galileo was charged with heresy, a religious “crime”. He was only able to escape Giordano Bruno’s fate by *recanting his position.
Some of the confusion regarding what is, today, political and what is religious results from the fact that, until recently, in our history, politics was religion. It wasn’t until our American republic was established that the two were, finally, established as separate realms. For people in the Middle Ages the issues of whether Mary was a virgin upon giving birth to Jesus or that the holy ghost (What a great name.) was an actual manifestation of god’s love, were hot topics of discussion, even among ordinary citizens. The question of who should rule a given constituency and the manner of that rule was religiously determined – the king was, after all, god’s representative on Earth and as such, required the church’s approval.
*The derivation of the words ‘cant’ and ‘recant’ are interesting. The, now out of date, use of ‘sing’ as a term for a criminal’s confessing may have its roots in this usage – (not on topic but nonetheless interesting in this context)
Ms. Benson, maybe I’m wrong, but I think you’re missing the point. I imagine Dixon means “power” in the Foucauldian sense (rather than the everyday sense), something virtually omnipresent and existing at the most micro of micro levels.
Is science “a matter of power rather than one of inquiry and evidence, of politics rather than truth”? In the every day sense of “power”, no — at least that’s how it seems for the most part. But if it’s “power” the way Foucault sees it, then the question creates a false dichotomy. Science is, of course, about inquiry and evidence, but human beings carry out the scientific enterprise, and therefore science is also a social process, i.e. a process involving Foulcaudian power relations.
Power is not “ultimately irrelevant” because regardless of the final ontological status of truth, whatever we human beings take to be the truth will come to us via social processes, which are dynamic systems of power relations. Power matters.