Science – what to do with it

[Metacrock]

Looking back over human history I see a tendency on the part of many different groups, philosophies, religions to allow for an open ended sort of view of God. Open ended within guidelines so to speak. I see science is extremely valuable but atheists try to forge a real er zots religion substitute out of scinece and impose it as having the same sort of umpire-of-reality status that scinece has.

It's not scinece, it's not a religion, it's a sort of er zots religion substitutes

Meaning it does some of the major things religion does, even perhaps leaving on the adherent a kidn of quasi religious attitude in terms of devotion to it, but without the mediation or the transformative effects. It no overt object of worship but an implied object of devotion.

Keep your mythos out of my logos, buddy. Stop trying to turn religion into ersatz science.

lOl what fun we have.

[fleetmouse]

Seriously, the idea of the mythos / logos distinction is tectonically shifting my thinking on religion, philosophy and science.

Heading downtown this aft, might pick up a Karen Armstrong book.

[tinythinker]

Seriously, the idea of the mythos / logos distinction is tectonically shifting my thinking on religion, philosophy and science.

Heading downtown this aft, might pick up a Karen Armstrong book.

It is pretty good (the distinction, that is, but the book as well). I had an inkling of it from my Buddhist studies, and I also sensed it in the Christian writers I was drawn to who were nothing like the mainstream that everyone is used to. Didn't see it labeled and defined so precisely prior to The Case for God.

[mdsimpson92]

Ah, your speaking of the criticism of confucianism for placing distinctions and categorizing things, where in Zhuangzi "you make the road by walking it" not to mention the fact that Zhuangzi promoted the relativity of knowledge. Ah Zhuangzi, you are enjoyable when you are talking about becoming a rat's liver.

Oh no, I don't mean anything so learned as that. My own naive view of the dao de jing is that it speaks of structure and a recognition of structure emerging from a tension between opposites (or maybe just differences?). quote]

That is definitely Zhuangzi (sorry to bring this up again since we seem to be past this). Maybe a sort of Dialectic monism. ( I hope I am using the right term).

[mdsimpson92]

In any case, I don't care for the dichotomy of hard versus soft science, as it is sometimes described. Physics and chemistry, the physical sciences, tend to deal with very simple and fairly predictable phenomena* which are described as particles, atoms, and molecules. They are so relatively simple they can readily be described with mathematics (which itself can become quite complex for more interesting and high order interactions). The life sciences, like biology and some parts of psychology, deal with much more complex and difficult to predict (e.g. less linear) phenomena, that which we refer to as living organisms. Social sciences such as sociology and anthropology deal with the behavior of extremely intelligent, creative and highly conscious social animals known as human beings, which are even more complex and even harder to predict or model mathematically except in extremely superficial ways. I suspect this is what draws certain people to different areas, that is, they are predisposed to seeing and think of the world in ways more or less compatible with the different kinds of challenges these clusters represent.

*Speaking of Einstein, as I understand it this is why he shied away from the "spooky" nature of quantum physics.

I remember talking about this with my political science teacher. He essentially said in the case of economics and politics, while the graphs and numbers are useful it is nearly impossible to understand and fully predict human nature. Moreover, these are also the kind of situations where you cannot isolate the potential in a lab. It could be things like the economy or shark attacks in New Jersey (which actually did affect an election for Woodrew Wilson).

When you get down to it, people are a fickle bunch. But that makes life more interesting.

[Metacrock]

that's one example of the ideolgoical bais of science. Social scinece is a lost more complex because the variables are much more complex and numerous. Yet "real" scientist call it "soft science" and act like it's nothing.

I think a lot of scinece is done by people who have a hard time relating to other people.

[mdsimpson92]

that's one example of the ideolgoical bais of science. Social scinece is a lost more complex because the variables are much more complex and numerous. Yet "real" scientist call it "soft science" and act like it's nothing.

I think a lot of scinece is done by people who have a hard time relating to other people.

Careful. lets avoid potential blanket statement. Now granted when people like Sam Harris start trying to create ethics when they are neuroscientists, then we can criticize them for being out of their depth. Social Sciences is certainly more nuanced due to the fact that it is dealing with the fickleness of people, and thus far less linear.

O leave me alone! I don't like talking to people anyway.

[KR Wordgazer]

I would also question the idea that epistemology undergirds science. Up until the enlightenment science and philosophy were continuous. I don't think it's accurate to say that anything "undergirds" science OR philosophy, except in hindsight - maybe "being human" undergirds things? People didn't sit around waiting for someone to articulate appropriate theories before they began having experiences, or vice versa, whatever the vice versa would be.

I am not using the word "undergird" in the same sense as "precedes," but more in the sense of "is foundational to." This would be the case whether people noticed the foundation they were using, or not. Most people don't consciously notice the mental foundations upon which they base their reasoning, unless those foundations are pointed out to them. Most people don't notice that they operate more or less unconsciously on the assumption that there is a coherent universe which we are capable of making sense of.

Here you're making a very common mistake - you're confusing epistemology, the study of what knowledge is, whether we have it and how we come to have it, with the fact that we have it (or think we do) and that our initially unexamined mental faculties (such as our instinctive expectation of natural consistency) are a factor.

Ok, I'll grant that "epistemology" and "knowledge" should not be used as synonyms.

Hume articulated the problem of induction that you're talking about only many thousands of years after humans had developed writing, agriculture, and other technologies that rely on the assumption of regularities in nature... you might say that the experience of using applied science was what led us to formulate epistemology. As I said to mdsimpson above, we didn't sit around waiting for a theoretical framework before we started having experiences and trying to make sense of them.

True enough-- but some of the experiences people had, then and now, have been "made sense of" by attributing them to the Divine, however that is conceived. Particularly in the case of what Metacrock calls "the sense of the numinous," this way of making sense of these experiences should not be the only one subject to challenge. I have experienced the presence of God, and I'm willing to say I "know" it was God-- but am I the only one of the two of us who has to answer, "how do you know?" or "how do you know your assumption that you can consider your experience to be real, is true?"

It seems to me that to say, "It's a desperate measure to question assumptions about the basis of knowledge-- but only when we're talking about the things of science" is privileging scientifically-derived knowledge above all other forms.

[Metacrock]

ah the good old days. I came across a link to this on my blog. I decided to resurrect it in hopes of getting back to this level of discussion.

[mdsimpson92]

Well, to add to other things science can do. It can basically help to understand the natural world in all ways that are measurable. If something can be measured and contrasted, it can potentially be covered under the perview of science. It can also help us understand parts of human nature, helping in ethics in the few instances where is does help form an ought, but mainly in the area of showing what we can do and in fulfilling a function or teleology like the value of a tool.