On Fish

Don:

It is just one more effort to make science and religion somehow compatible . But her argumentative tactics and overall strategy is clever, if unpersuasive. The reason science 'works', when it does, is that its theories are true, and when it does not 'work, as it often does not, the reason is that its theories (hypotheses etc) are false. If you are a cranky chemist trying to prove that water is composed not only of hydrogen and oxygen, but also helium, your attempts at experimental proof will always fail, just because your new theory of water is false, and for no other reason. Also, science cannot be reduced to merely workable procedures. Realism about truth is the very soul of science.

Larry:

"Don: The reason science 'works', when it does, is that its theories are true, and when it does not 'work, as it often does not, the reason is that its theories (hypotheses etc) are false."
Well, this is where the "fancy epistemological debates" come in, I guess. To my mind, your point above, though a familiar one certainly, has it exactly backwards: the reason scientific theories are 'true' is just that they work, and pretty much all scientific theories do indeed work up to some point at least -- e.g., Newtonian physics still being used to calculate orbits, despite being superseded by Einstein -- and where they fail to work, or don't work well, they're replaced by theories that simply work better (i.e., are "more true"). The point being that we have no way of assessing truth or falsity apart from what works (to a greater or lesser extent, implying that truth too is a relative matter).

The real if implicit epistemological shift that made science such a revolutionary methodology, in other words, is a change in the very definition of truth and falsity (not to mention knowledge, etc.).

Me:

This is two parts.

One is my first reaction to the essay written to someone else.

And in the end, her argument collapses on itself. Astrology, or channeling the dead, may be help some people find solutions or resolutions to their problems. But that does not obviate rightful attacks on their foolishness; it simply calls on the need for tact. Her argument reduces itself to a free pass justification of almost any alchemical thing that people might, say, turn to in times of difficulty that helps them. Her argument gets undeserved weight from the cultural legitimacy of religion. Let her face the implications of her argument when applied to cullturally deemed foolishness and thus not buoyed by cultural succor.

Two is a few comments on what you wrote Don which sets up themes and arguments more interesting, to me, than Fish’s essay.

I enter this tentatively because I know you have thought long and hard about this and I have not and I'll be happy to be “straightened out".

Does it matter what end of the truth/works telescope we look through? And don’t we need to draw a distinction between scientific theories and scientific facts?

So is Don’s example of what elements constitute water a theory or a scientific fact? And is the makeup of water on the order of saying Alnico consists of aluminum, nickel and cobalt. The latter is necessarily true because it’s man made and that’s how we define it. Does anything for these purposes turn on water occurring naturally? We can test for water and some things will pass the test and some things won’t, including a substance with helium provided by the cranky chemist.
The makeuo of water is different from, say, cosmological theories. I imagine as science moves up a scale from what is elementary to what can only be described by mathematical models, it is accordingly self conscious of its own provisonality. And for science to be science, it must be open to its own falsification. It is in principle always looking for a better answer/theory/hypothesis. However testing or verification occurs at these increasingly abstract levels can be encapsulated by the phrase “what works”.

So with these notions in mind, isn’t Don’s aphorism right that “realism about truth the very soul of science”. And wasn’t Don encompassing provisionality?


p.s. In Fish's essay, "what works" for Fish and his reviewee is whatever has a measure of efficacy, regardless of its lack of truth and regardless of its own truth claims and ultimate objectives. In science what is true is what works, and that's an altogether different thing, which difference is the ground on which the "Fish argument" proceeds.

Larry:

Re: the first reaction, concerning religion, I'll just say that we've pretty much covered this in an earlier email exchange involving Roger et al. I'll reiterate my position briefly by saying that I think the current crop of militant atheists take too literal an approach to religious themes and in doing so misunderstand religion, its origins and its force, in much the same way that literal-minded fundamentalists of all kinds do (including astrology-believers, gaia-worshipers, socialist true-believers, etc.). Even more briefly: science deals with matters of empirical truth, religion with matters of meaning and purpose, so that they're orthogonal, and we make a basic mistake when we try to either merge them (e.g., "scientific" creationism, devout environmentalism) or pit them against one another (e.g., militant atheism).


Re: the second issue, on the nature of scientific truth, I think it does matter which of truth or efficacy comes first, since, as I indicated, I think this is really at the heart of the epistemological shift that ushered in the scientific revolution. The older idea -- which of course retains a certain intuitive appeal -- is that truth comes first and the truth is out there, so to speak, whether in the form of a realm of Ideals, or of axiomatic logic, or of divine creation, or simply inscribed in nature; in this view, our job is just to find this pre-existing truth, whether that's by thinking about it, or by accepting divine revelation and institutional authority, or of course by looking for it.


The first step in the shift I'm talking about, then, was to distinguish empirical or fact-based "truth" from other kinds, such as logical truth (and I won't get into again the whole issue of whether there are others as well). But the next and critical step was to surrender, in a sense, to a radical and thorough-going pragmatism in how we go about "looking for" empirical truth -- we accept that there is absolutely (so to speak!) no arbiter for such truth -- no authority, no tradition, no revelation, no axiom, etc. -- apart from what works. In saying that, I'd first want to say that what makes such pragmatism radical is that it refers to what works in the most comprehensive sense possible -- i.e., in all places and times to which we have access -- and in the most efficient sense possible -- i.e., what explains the most with the least. (The reason we have such common recourse to Occam's Razor, for example, is not because reality itself is simple but simply because it's more efficient.)


But then I'd say that, once we understand the scientific basis for truth -- that there is no way to access or measure such truth at all apart from what works -- it makes sense to reverse the old order of things, and instead just define empirical truth in terms of what works (in the comprehensive and efficient senses I've mentioned). In this sense, science isn't really discovering a truth that's "out there" -- though I recognize that this sort of scientific realism is both intuitive and pervasive -- rather, it's creating or constructing ever more workable, effective truths as it progresses.


This makes no real or epistemological distinction, then, between scientific theories and scientific facts or indeed empirical facts of any sort. Of course, if we define a as b, then "a is b" is a logical, as opposed to empirical, truth. But the chemical composition of water is clearly an empirical not logical matter, and if someone were to come along and claim to have discovered helium in its composition, what would, or should be our reaction? The old notion would be to reject it out of hand, because we already know the "truth" about water; but the scientific method should be to ask for reproducible evidence of such a claim, and to be willing to change our understanding of the truth about water under the impact of this new evidence of what works.


I say "should" partly because the older notion retains its instinctive force for all of us but also of course because there really are mere cranks and it would take a lot of this sort of evidence to alter something that has been shown to work so well in so many different contexts for so long -- but the principle is simply that whatever works better is what is more true. (A simple example of this change in received notions of scientific fact, by the way, might be the long-established notion that inert gases [aka noble gases] cannot form compounds -- which was true until someone finally formed such a compound, when it became untrue.)

Me:

On orthogonality, briefly—I had to look that word up—religion and science have some different purposes but they also have a fundamental common purpose: and that is accounting for the world. A religion that doesn’t cosmoligize is self refuting. The bane of any religion is exactly its cosmologizing, its truth claims. So the very thing on which its purposes are set—its very foundation—is obnoxious to intelligence. How militant one is in his atheism is, as I said, a matter of tact, not principle.


Save as to understanding that all scientific conclusions are by definition provisional and granting that there was an epistemic shift, if I understand it, from truth as out there waiting to be discovered to “what works” as truth, I am missing the practical import of that now in our understanding of what science is and how it “works” and the relation of that practical import to Fish’s argument. For the sake of that let me give you a (albeit simple minded) paraphrased version of a commonplace account of what science involves (as I understand it).


I invite you to then to please do three things, if you will: criticize it where you think it’s wrong; and tell me how the “epistemic shift “ makes trouble for this account; and finally tell me how these matters as taken up by you relate to Fish’s argument.


The scientific method involves hypotheses, theories, and laws. The scientific method is observation. Observations are plain facts. We observe, for example, that fire gives off heat and light. A fact is “the state of things as they are; reality; actuality; truth.” So before we search for the larger truth, we first accumulate small truths. And so science grows by gathering singular, simple facts.

A hypothesis as “an unproved proposition tentatively accepted to explain certain facts or to provide a basis for further investigation.” Any explanation for an unanswered question by observation and evidence invokes the scientific method. Science s tries to explain why things happen, and proposes hypotheses to accomplish that.


Richard Feynman said, “The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific Truth.”

When two hypotheses contradict one another, at least one of them is wrong. Indeed, the entire universe does not contradict itself. Scientists must reason, or use the process of elimination, to decide which of two or more scientific experiments best explains an observation. In other words, the hypothesis must fit all the facts.

Hypotheses that survive experimental scrutiny are subjected to more rigorous tests. The original idea is re-tested. If any test refutes a proposed hypothesis, that hypothesis must be discarded or modified to account for the new facts.

As evidence is gathered, as facts are compiled, as experiments are undertaken, the working hypothesis gains support. Little by little, a hypothesis becomes a theory. The scientific method demands that, when new evidence comes to light, the theory must change to accommodate that new evidence.

Consider gravity, for example. Sir Isaac Newton first hypothesized a law for gravitational attraction over three hundred years ago, and it withstood all challenges until we discovered that the speed of light is a constant. Suddenly, Newton’s theories didn’t reconcile all the known facts. Albert Einstein modified the theory (by now called the law) of gravity to explain all these new observations.

But Newton’s Laws of Gravitation are still relevant. Einstein only added a refinement to a realm (known as Relativity) that’s rarely observed in the familiar world. Einstein didn’t throw away three hundred years of observation and testing. Instead, new knowledge is built on top of previous knowledge.


Einstein only tailored Newton’s Laws to fit the new facts. The old facts are still functional, and Relativity barely altered Newton’s findings.

How do you distinguish between a theory and law? In science a theory means “a formulation of apparent relationships or underlying principles of certain observed phenomena which have been verified to some degree.”


Webster defines the following:

1. Hypothesis — An inadequacy of evidence in support of an explanation.


2. Theory — Considerable evidence in support of a formulated general principal (as in the theory of evolution).


3. Law — Implies an exact formulation of the principle (as in the law of the conservation of energy).



Stated simply, this is how the scientific method progresses:

1. Observations lead to questions

2. Questions lead to tentative answers

3. Answers are tested in a laboratory, in the classroom, or in the field

4. Tests lead to modifications, and yet more tests

5. Modifications ultimately lead to theories

6. Theories lead to laws.


The law of gravity and the theory of evolution, for example, both lead better understandings. Newton and Darwin’s ideas have both been refined and tested for more than 150 years in every laboratory around the world. Science demands that all observations be accounted for. Any new theory must build upon existing data. Newton’s formulas and Darwin’s vigilant observations still demand a consistent explanation.

By searching for truth, we can understand how the world works. We can then learn how to change the way the world works, and discover how our observations, in turn, alter that world.

By starting with facts or “little truths,” we build a self-consistent representation of the universe that we’ve always observed. Truth is ultimately found through a slow, incremental, step-by-step process of elimination — not divine revelation.