More On Fish, Science and Religion

Larry:

Thanks for the reply, and sorry about "orthogonal" -- it's kind of a computer nerd thing, but I couldn't resist popping it in after coming across this: That time Professor Friedman said "orthogonal." (showing that it's use extends beyond the realms of computer nerds, but maybe not quite as far as the US Supreme Court).

Re: "religion and science have some different purposes but they also have a fundamental common purpose", all I can say, finally, is that I think the last part of the sentence is wrong, at least since the epistemological shift that gave rise to science as such in the first place (i.e., differentiated it from religion); and I would urge you to just stop a moment over the first part of the same sentence and consider more carefully what those different purposes might be, and whether or not they both might be served without conflict.

Re: your account of what science involves, I don't so much find it wrong as maybe just too "commonplace". I think people like Kuhn, Polanyi, and others would say that it's wrong in a more fundamental way, and while their critiques of the positivist accounts of science are well-taken, to my mind, I'd rather not get off on that here. For now it just seems to me that your account doesn't really say anything about the nature of the epistemic shift, or about the real way science functions in order to construct, as opposed to find, its truths. But you say that you're "missing the practical import" of that shift, and since we're talking about a purported shift toward a "radical pragmatism", its practical import should certainly be a concern. I'm afraid that such import might be a little subtle though, perhaps because the effect is so broad and deep, but I also think, for similar causes, that it's ultimately of great consequence. Here are some reasons:

1) With this shift, the notion of Truth (capital T) is dethroned, though certainly not abandoned. Empirical truth, in the first place, becomes just one kind of truth, to be distinguished at least from logical truth. In the second place, empirical truth is no longer a simple binary function, as is logical truth, but instead can have a range of values, so that assertions can be more or less true rather than flatly true or false (as illustrated by your Newtonian/Einsteinian gravity example, which I had used too). And in the third place, truth becomes not some ultimate, unreachable goal but rather a derivative of a much more graspable or practical notion of workability, albeit in a comprehensive and efficient sense. And all of that, I think, has a powerfully liberating effect on how we go about creating and working with plastic concepts in order to construct the facts, hypotheses, theories, and laws that form the body of the sciences. Which brings up --

2) "Theory", in the sense of constructed sets and structures of concepts (which themselves are made of concepts, and observational abstractions) permeates science at all levels, even what we think of as the most simple, "factual" observations. Early theories about the spontaneous generation of life, for example, arose from close (but later shown to be erroneous) observations of fairly careful experiments, and early difficulties with quantum phenomena also arose from what seemed like insuperable difficulties reconciling the assumptions (aka theories) contained in observations. Some things, of course, are better established than other things, but this simply means that there's a spectrum of acceptability for scientific concepts and conceptual structures, the division of which into "facts", "hypotheses", "theories", and "laws", is almost entirely arbitrary (Webster's notwithstanding). Another part of the epistemic shift, then, is the realization that everything, not just hypotheses and theories, but so-called facts and laws as well, is open to question, in the perpetual drive to find ever more workable theories. And that leads to --

3) Maybe the most intangible aspect of this putative shift, but one I find most significant, has to do just with its inversion of the goal of science -- if we think we're searching for a pre-existing truth, or for a representation that will match up to an external reality, then the idea that such a search is endless can be dispiriting, to say the least; and in fact, it can frequently enough lead us into the temptation to want to call a halt at some point, and say okay this much at least is the truth and we'll fight to hold on to it. On the other hand, if we think instead that we're engaged in a process of constructing ever more workable theories, then the endless nature of such a project is a feature I at least find attractive and even energizing -- and it becomes much easier to be flexible in the face of new evidence not yet assimilated into the body of science.

All of which is, admittedly, a long way from the little book review that started this, and I'm afraid I've kind of lost that thread myself. As I faintly recall, it began with the notion that the book under review itself apparently emphasized the primary nature of workability in establishing scientific truth, but I forget now how that was supposed to tie into the different roles of science and religion....

Regards in any case, and by all means reply if you have time and interest.

Don:

Larry, theories, hypotheses, scientific laws etc etc are NOT constructed. They are indeed formulated, but the slippage from 'formulated' to 'constructed' is just nonsense. Constructions are inventions. Scientific truths are not invented; they are discoveries. It was discovered that water is comprised of oxygen and hydrogen in the relations expressed in the formula H2O. Nobody ever invented the constitution of water, or even the formula that expresses it. Everything is what it is, and not another thing. An invention is an invention. An invention is not a discovery. A discovery is a discovery.

Larry:

Don: " Larry, theories, hypotheses, scientific laws etc etc are NOT constructed."

Well, actually I'm saying that theories, etc. ARE constructed or invented, Don -- and I appreciate your use of the notion of "formulated" as a means, by contrast, of making this point as clearly as possible. I know this can seem crazy or nonsense, or at the very least counterintuitive. But even strongly counterintuitive notions can, after all, be recognized as true, however we understand that term -- e.g., the idea that length, or mass, or time itself should be affected by relative velocity, among many others. Here's the man who discovered or constructed that particular truth, for example:

"We now know that science cannot grow out of empiricism alone, that in the constructions of science we need to use free invention which only a posteriori can be confronted with experience as to its usefulness. This fact could elude earlier generations, to whom theoretical creation seemed to grow inductively out of empiricism without the creative influence of a free construction of concepts. The more primitive the status of science is the more reasily can the scientist live under the illusion that he is a pure empiricist."
Quoted in Subtle is the Lord by Abraham Pais, p. 14

Or, here's a quote from near the end of an old and famous paper of Quine's;

" The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges."

And a little later: "... in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience."

I don't put these quotes out as authorities, of course, but simply to show that others too have arrived at this sense of the constructedness of science and knowledge generally, and that, however outlandish it might sound, there are strong reasons why people for some time now have been struggling to overcome a representational notion of truth, and move toward a more relational, or radically pragmatic one -- one that views all truth as a "man-made fabric" that's more, or less "efficacious".