I keep having to remind myself that science is self-correcting …

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 20, 2009

Ethics}

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I have often been wearied by legends in their own lunchroom huffing that science differs from other endeavours because it is “self-correcting.”

To which I reply: Aw come off it, fellas. Any system that does not go extinct is self-correcting – after it collapses on its hind end. This is true of governments, businesses, churches, and not-for-profit organizations. I’ve seen enough of life to know.

Here’s a classic: At The Scientist’s NewsBlog, Bob Grant reveals (May 7, 2009) that

Scientific publishing giant Elsevier put out a total of six publications between 2000 and 2005 that were sponsored by unnamed pharmaceutical companies and looked like peer reviewed medical journals, but did not disclose sponsorship, the company has admitted.

Elsevier is conducting an “internal review” of its publishing practices after allegations came to light that the company produced a pharmaceutical company-funded publication in the early 2000s without disclosing that the “journal” was corporate sponsored

[ … ]

The allegations involve the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a publication paid for by pharmaceutical company Merck that amounted to a compendium of reprinted scientific articles and one-source reviews, most of which presented data favorable to Merck’s products. The Scientist obtained two 2003 issues of the journal — which bore the imprint of Elsevier’s Excerpta Medica — neither of which carried a statement obviating Merck’s sponsorship of the publication.

The linked related stories and comments are most illuminating, and bear out my critique of “peer review” here. Let’s just say that peer review started out as a good idea, but …

(Note: There is no paywall, but you may need to register to view the story, .)

Also, today at Colliding Universes

Neutrinos: Sudbury Neutrino Observatory does the sun’s bookkeeping

Origin of life: The live cat vs. the dead cat

Cosmology: Wow. It takes guts to wage war with Stephen Hawking … he appeared in Star Trek

Universe: Arguments against flatness (plus exposing sloppy science writing)

Origin of life: Latest scenario gives RNA world a boost

Colliding Universes is my blog on competing theories about our universe.

Comments

R0b, Yep, that's Mapou's handiwork. It's interesting to skim. Like lots of fringe ideas, Mapou's musings on time are based on a germ of truth, but they quickly go off the rails. The germ of truth is this: Viewed from the outside, 4-dimensional spacetime is static, in the sense that there is not a fifth timelike dimension across which it can change. Every particle has a world line, and that world line does not move. It just is, now and forever. To say that a particle moves through 4D spacetime gives the incorrect impression that it has a four-dimensional position at each instant of a fifth dimension of time. To that extent, it is true that "motion through spacetime" is a sloppy locution. Where Mapou goes off the rails is that he somehow interprets this to mean that time actually does not exist, and that it is just a convenient mathematical fiction that makes the equations of relativity work out correctly. Reading through his website, you get a feel for why he sees IDers as kindred spirits. Mapou thinks that every physicist who accepts the reality of time is a "crackpot", hopelessly and stupidly deluded, failing to see something that is right in front of him and obvious. Gil Dodgen has pretty much the same opinion regarding evolutionary biologists. It apparently never occurs to either of them that the problem might be with them and not with the 99.9 percent of scientists who disagree with them. Here are some choice bits from Mapou's site:
The following is a short list of notorious time travel and spacetime crackpots... Stephen Hawking Kip Thorne John A. Wheeler Richard Feynman . . . Kurt Gödel Paul Davies Albert Einstein... String theory postulates that time is one of the 10 dimensions of nature and that dimensions can be "compactified" or curled up into tiny little balls, so tiny, in fact, they can never be detected. The brains of string theorists can be described in a similar fashion... The only thing Gödel proved, in my opinion, was the incompleteness of his frontal lobe... It is important that people see relativity for what it is, a mathematical trick for the prediction of macroscopic phenomena involving the motion of bodies in a spatial coordinate system. Spacetime is an abstract mathematical construct, that is all... Should some of you have enough courage to stand up to this crackpottery and want to have your names associated with this effort, do not hesitate to drop me a line. I would gladly attach your name to a list I am preparing. My email address is at the bottom of the page... If your name is on my list of spacetime crackpots and you wish to write a rebuttal, or an admission that you were wrong, I will be glad to publish it on this site. Along with my comments, of course...
beelzebub_{May 21, 2009
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Mapou, I'm sorry that your intelligence is insulted. Perhaps you can humor me and explain what's wrong, or not even wrong, with my post. BTW, out of curiosity, are you the author of this?R0b_{May 21, 2009
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R0b @38: Your post is not even wrong. Besides, it insults my intelligence. See you around.Mapou_{May 21, 2009
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Mapou:
The reason that nothing can move in spacetime is trivially simple. Velocity in space is given as v = dx/dt. Velocity in time would have to be given as v = dt/dt which is nonsensical.
If "velocity in time = dt/dt" were nonsensical, then how would divorcing the time axis from the spatial axes make it less nonsensical? The derivative of an object's position on the x axis with respect to the the object's position on the x axis is dx/dx = 1. Should we demote 3D space to 2D?R0b_{May 21, 2009
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hazel @36:
Could you explain what you mean by this, or point me to an explanation. I’m curious.
Spacetime is what Karl Popper called a "block universe in which nothing happens." He compared it to Parmenides' (Zeno's mentor who proclaimed that nothing changes) myth of a block universe. Source: Conjectures and Refutations. The reason that nothing can move in spacetime is trivially simple. Velocity in space is given as v = dx/dt. Velocity in time would have to be given as v = dt/dt which is nonsensical. Diehard relativists have several arguments (time dilation, meta-time, proper time, etc.) against this simple explanation but none can withstand scrutiny. I've heard them all. The hard reality is that there is no such thing as a time dimension. Time does not passes. Changing time is an oxymoron because it is self-referential. There is only the changing present, the NOW. PS. The non-existence (abstract nature) of time has revolutionary consequences for the future of physics (besides proving that time travel is bunkum). For one, it explains why nature is probabilistic and why quantum computing is crackpottery. Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, such breakthroughs will have to await a Kuhnian revolution. Coming soon.Mapou_{May 21, 2009
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Mapou writes,
Since nothing can move in spacetime, talking about the path of particles in spacetime is obviously nonsense.
Could you explain what you mean by this, or point me to an explanation. I'm curious.hazel_{May 21, 2009
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Cabal @29:
Maybe you would have a more relevant issue from established science instead of differing opinions on something like wormholes - that to me look like little more than speculation at the edge of theoretical physics?
The issue here is not time travel in wormholes (a laughable consequence of the ingrained crackpottery) but the path in curved spacetime explanation of gravity used in textbooks on general relativity. This is mainstream physics. Since nothing can move in spacetime, talking about the path of particles in spacetime is obviously nonsense. It's all hogwash and it's been known to be hogwash for a century. The question is, why is it taking physicists so long to correct the mistake? And how do people Kip Thorne and Brian Greene manage to publish their crackpottery in peer-reviewed journals?Mapou_{May 21, 2009
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kairosfocus writes:
First, if you want to be taken seriously at UD, please do not cite or link Talk Origins as a serious source. For, Talk Origins has no credibility; being sadly replete with strawman misrepresentations and similar misleading tactics.
kairosfocus, If being taken seriously requires me to state my name, location and occupation (as Denyse demanded above) or to cite only sources that earn the KF stamp of approval, then I decline. Open-minded readers will judge my arguments, and those at Talk Origins, on their merits. Whether you take us seriously is immaterial.
For one instance, there has been no “progress” or ’self correction” on the idea that the ratio of the diagonal of a square to one of its sides is 1.41 . . . and is thus incommensurate with the length of the side; for some 2,500 years. That is because the truth of that has been adequately warranted since the days of the Pythagoreans.
That's right, though getting to that point constituted progress, as did the steady improvement over the centuries in our best approximations of the value of pi. It's telling that you chose a mathematical example and not a religious one. Any intelligent, mathematically trained person (except for a few crackpots) can be convinced that in a Euclidean system, the ratio of the diameter of a square to length of a side is equal to the square root of 2. Mathematics has not merely stumbled upon the correct answer, nor has it been revealed from on high. It has been discovered and justified in a way that convinces people of all nationalities, cultures, and creeds. The Ukrainians accept it, as do the Zulus, the Baptists, and even the Scientologists. Most importantly, I know of no mathematicians who don't accept it. Contrast that with a religious question as basic as this: does the Christian God exist? Christian apologists have attempted to justify their answer to this question, but they haven't even come close to reaching a consensus among intelligent people across the globe, nor among those who are religiously trained or theologically inclined. The Pythagorean insight is not in need of progress, but Christianity surely is, and desperately so.
That science sometimes corrects its acknowledged mistakes and so makes progress...is not a sign of its superiority over other aspects of our search for knowledge of the world...
Sure it is. Science corrects its mistakes far more readily, systematically and efficiently than other truth-seeking enterprises such as religion. There is nothing comparable in all of human history to the flowering of scientific knowledge in the past few centuries. As my questions above show, religion is stuck in a rut, while science continues to progress.
...but rather of the provisionality of its explanations...
Acknowledging that provisionality openly and wholeheartedly is precisely what makes it possible for science to correct its mistakes. Wouldn't it be wonderful if religious leaders took the same attitude? Imagine the Pope saying "Well, the Bible tells us that Mary was a virgin who was impregnated by the Holy Ghost, but that's an extraordinary claim, and we could easily be wrong about it, so let's ask ourselves how realistic it is and take a hard look at alternative explanations. I encourage everyone in the Church to question this belief." The very thought of Pope Benedict saying something like that makes me laugh.
if you have personally met God in the face of Christ, then plainly one has no reason to doubt the reality of God;
If by "personally met God in the face of Christ" you are referring to some kind of religious experience, then you have every reason to doubt its authenticity. People of all creeds have religious experiences that are plainly false and internal to the brain. The depth of your conviction is not a reliable indicator of the truth of your experience. I've had conversations with a friend who in the throes of psychosis was absolutely convinced that he was Jesus Christ. When I say convinced, I mean convinced. I'm not claiming that all religious experiences are psychotic episodes, but I am pointing out that experiences -- even vivid ones -- cannot be trusted uncritically.beelzebub_{May 21, 2009
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Kfocus,
So also, when one sees a claim, the real issue is not “progress” or the lack thereof, but truth vs error.
Ah, I see your point now. Thanks.herb_{May 21, 2009
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Herb: That is my precise point as stated above -- empirical sciences (should) seek the truth and hopefully progress thereto. But this brings with it the point that the reason why one "progresses" is because there is an end-point: the truth, and we are not there yet, so on discovering how, we may make progress towards the truth. Therefore, just because a particular point or claim has not "progressed" in recent years does not entail that it is in error or is a manifestation of closed-mindedness. For, as the example i gave shows, it just may be well-warranted, credibly believable truth.. (And, that obtains for a great many contingent, empirical claims, e.g. that there was a certain person named Napoleon, who had a certain impact on European history. [Note as well how I have pointed out why Christians believe they need make no corrections to fundamental errors on the existence of God and so forth: if you have personally met God in the face of Christ, then plainly one has no reason to doubt the reality of God; whatever skeptics may want to think or argue. No more than that you would be inclined to doubt the reality of your mother, should someone try to make an objection per clever arguments, that she did not exist. Here, experienced -- millions of cases across thousands of years -- reality trumps rhetoric.]) So also, when one sees a claim, the real issue is not "progress" or the lack thereof, but truth vs error. And, that is where one who is serious about truth should focus. So, let us end that particular distractive rabbit trail. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{May 21, 2009
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Kfocus,
For one instance, there has been no “progress” or ’self correction” on the idea that the ratio of the diagonal of a square to one of its sides is 1.41 . . . and is thus incommensurate with the length of the side; for some 2,500 years. That is because the truth of that has been adequately warranted since the days of the Pythagoreans.
You bring up an interesting point, but I would just say that the lesson you draw from this mathematical example does not apply to the empirical sciences, where there is no absolute certainty. Of course we hope that our theories will gradually converge on the truth; that is not guaranteed, however, since we can't derive the correct answer from a set of axioms.herb_{May 21, 2009
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BZ (and co): First, if you want to be taken seriously at UD, please do not cite or link Talk Origins as a serious source. For, Talk Origins has no credibility; being sadly replete with strawman misrepresentations and similar misleading tactics. (Cf, True Origins, and Creation Wiki; just to let creationists have their balancing say on the matter.) More broadly, you (and others enamoured of the myth of scientific progress) seem to be missing a key point. For one instance, there has been no "progress" or 'self correction" on the idea that the ratio of the diagonal of a square to one of its sides is 1.41 . . . and is thus incommensurate with the length of the side; for some 2,500 years. That is because the truth of that has been adequately warranted since the days of the Pythagoreans. So long as the truth is "that which says of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not" (debated but never bettered for 2,300 years . . . ), and so long as knowledge in praxis is well warranted, credibly true belief, if our state of knowledge arrives at the truth on a matter, further progress will stop, for a very good reason. For, progress -- if it is to live up to its name -- is towards the truth. That science sometimes corrects its acknowledged mistakes and so makes progress -- too often, reluctantly; as Mrs O'Leary is equally correctly pointing out -- is not a sign of its superiority over other aspects of our search for knowledge of the world, but rather of the provisionality of its explanations (and sometimes, fact-claims and calculations too). The point of progress is truth, and the commitment to truth and to seeking it is not a matter for "progress." (To "progress" away from what is true or right is to undergo deterioration, not improvement.) Thus, underneath the vaunted progress and self correction of science, lie key invariants; invariants that come from philosophy, ethics and worldviews, including historically the Theistic, Judaeo-Christian one. In that context, if it is true that God is, and that people -- millions, starting with 500 eyewitnesses to the resurrection of Jesus (NONE of whom ever recanted, not even in the face of the most horrible deaths) -- have met and meet and know him in the face of the risen Christ, then there would be no "progress" away from underlying core truth claims. So, please put away rhetoric on progress. Instead, address issues of truth and warrant. For, the proper object of progress in knowledge is: truth. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{May 21, 2009
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Mapou @ 19
And yet, you still see physics textbooks by reputable physicists (e.g., Brian Greene and Kip Thorne)that explain gravity in terms of bodies following their geodesics in curved spacetime. Thorne (a friend of Stephen “black hole” Hawking) even goes so far as to argue with no fear of criticism (i.e., correction) from his peers that one can travel back in time via wormholes. Crackpottery in high places.
Maybe you would have a more relevant issue from established science instead of differing opinions on something like wormholes - that to me look like little more than speculation at the edge of theoretical physics?Cabal_{May 21, 2009
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Robert, The case has been made many times. You might want to start here.beelzebub_{May 20, 2009
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I am a evangelical biblical creationist canadian. posters here have made good replys to bad in talking about self correction of evolution science. Yet it all comes down to good old fashioned weight of evidence. Creationism can show evidence for gods existence in nature and my crowd can interpretate evidence in nature to fit within the witness of genesis. So its up to evolution and company to make a case worthy of such great conclusions. Great evidence and not just evolutionists insisting they alone are the authority of truth. its time for evidence and if they had half as much as they said there would not be such a great percentage of a intelligent American population in doubt and outright disbelief. If there is sceience behind these claims then how hard could it be to make a case.Robert Byers_{May 20, 2009
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Clive writes:
You hold a belief that you should hold all beliefs provisionally. But you don’t hold that belief provisionally, now do you?
Yes, I do, which is exactly what I told you the first time you asked. Clive, please slow down and read my comments.
I wrote that you hold a contradictory philosophy which science can never progress. Science cannot progress your philosophy.
Judging from those two sentences, you might also want to slow down and reread your own comments before hitting "Submit". Here's what you originally asked:
In which case, you still have a standing belief that you should hold all beliefs provisionally. This, again, is a contradiction, in which no progress can be made by science.
Why do you think that such a belief precludes scientific progress? That makes no sense to me, particularly because it is a commonplace among scientists and philosophers of science that all scientific knowledge is provisional. They certainly don't think that this makes scientific progress impossible. Why do you?beelzebub_{May 20, 2009
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beelzebub, ------That’s why blind faith is such a bad idea. Hold all of your beliefs provisionally and never cease questioning them. Clive responded: Excepting, of course, the belief that you should hold all of your other beliefs provisionally. Or do do you hold that belief provisionally? ------"Of course. There’s no reason to make an exception for it." You don't see the contradiction here? You hold a belief that you should hold all beliefs provisionally. But you don't hold that belief provisionally, now do you? ------"Why should provisional beliefs impede the progress of science?" You switched what I wrote. I wrote that you hold a contradictory philosophy which science can never progress. Science cannot progress your philosophy. You have it backwards. Your scientism isn't based on science, it's based on a contradictory philosophical position, of which no increase in scientific progress can help. Science cannot tell us that we ought to practice science, nor can it tell us that science is preferable to and can stand in judgment of philosophy, because it is your philosophy that ultimately concludes this. A philosophical judgment on science that science judges philosophy, is surely ridiculous.Clive Hayden_{May 20, 2009
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Beelzebub, Are you saying you have two PhD's, four Masters and a BA? If you are and your point about having a bad idea is correct, then anyone can be wrong, including you. Based upon your point, that should lead us to ask questions. Is materialist evolution a bad idea? Can scientist in the world forming consensus opinions about materialist origins be wrong? Why can they be wrong about origins? Why do some atheist believe in Panspmermia? Why did Francis Crick; a DNA Double-Helix, Nobel Prize winning discoverer appeal to Seeding on planet earth as a possibility? Ps. Denyse specified "churches" not multiple religions including atheism. You expanded the argument to shoot down your own strawman. There has been no argument in mainstream Christian churches that God exist for over 2000yrs since its beginning. With the exception of #4, all other arguments you listed are eliminated as well. Also, God's existence is not exclusive to Christianity. It is a philosophical question to atheist as well. Atheist admit they cannot disprove a Creator and change their minds. Likewise, they do the same on materialist evolution. Materialist evolution contains in it a belief that God does not exist. Therefore, it is a belief system. There are different beliefs and churches within the Evolutionary realm. Atheist and Theist float in and out of the system at different times of their lives based upon scientific discovery, increased knowledge, philosophical changes and experience. I think her point is valid with more consideration. She included business and non-profits. Science does not have any exclusivity to self-correction. Denyse noted each area, including churches do go "extinct" without self-correction. A good example of extinction is Mars, the Roman god of war. You seem to have glossed over that point. Churches, beliefs and different religions have in fact gone extinct. She is correct in her observations. Arguments today can eventually be self-corrected or face future extinction. Scientific "churches" go extinct as well. Some think the Darwinian Church is dogmatically marching to the abyss of exinction today. Why else do Darwinist appeal to churches for survival? Last Rights? Are they appealing to science or a god? A reformation took place in Christianity long ago. Some argue that a revolution is taking place in biology today. But a reformation needs to take place in the churches of academia. Universities need to shed their one sided, atheistic, materialist vision. If you can have courses on astrobiology and SETI, then universities must have courses in Design of Life. You cannot recognize possible Intelligence off the planet without recognizing it on the planet. It is hypocritical and prejudice by academia. Darwin is dead. RM & NS are not the only mechanisms for change. NS has been reduced to a weak force. The Darwinian Tree of Life is dead. Endosymbiosys and HGT obscure any real historical data of such a tree if it ever existed. New conjectures and hypotheses of FrontLoading, Bushes, Forest(multiple TOLs), etc., pop up and are being discussed today by evolutionary scientist. Even some atheist have recognized ID's right to be at the table. Was TOL a belief? Or science? How can TOL be science if it is wrong? Is it science until scientific observations and discovery make it a wrong belief? How so? If the theory is wrong, then it was wrong from the beginning and only a belief to start with in the individuals mind. If theory starts in the mind, isn't it a belief until scientifically observed? Can one observe past origins 3.7 billion years ago? Is SETI a belief or science? Why are courses allowed to be taught in universities? Cosmic Search, SETI courses What do you believe Beelzebub? Can you be wrong?DATCG_{May 20, 2009
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I wrote:
That’s why blind faith is such a bad idea. Hold all of your beliefs provisionally and never cease questioning them.
Clive responded:
Excepting, of course, the belief that you should hold all of your other beliefs provisionally. Or do do you hold that belief provisionally?
Of course. There's no reason to make an exception for it.
In which case, you still have a standing belief that you should hold all beliefs provisionally. This, again, is a contradiction, in which no progress can be made by science.
That's a complete nonsequitur. Why should provisional beliefs impede the progress of science?beelzebub_{May 20, 2009
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beelzebub, You would do well to read this essay in its entirety: "It is a common reproach against Christianity that its dogmas are unchanging, while human knowledge is in continual growth. Hence, to unbelievers, we seem to be always engaged in the hopeless task of trying to force the new knowledge into moulds which it has outgrown. I think this feeling alienates the outsider much more than any particular discrepancies between this or that doctrine and this or that scientific theory. We may, as we say, ‘get over’ dozens of isolated ‘difficulties’, but that does not alter his sense that the endeavour as a whole is doomed to failure and perverse: indeed, the more ingenious, the more perverse. For it seems to him clear that, if our ancestors had known what we know about the universe, Christianity would never have existed at all: and, however we patch and mend, no system of thought which claims to be immutable can, in the long run adjust itself to our growing knowledge That is the position I am going to try to answer. But before I go on to what I regard as the fundamental answer, I would like to clear up certain points about the actual relations between Christian doctrine and the scientific knowledge we al ready have. That is a different matter from the continual growth of knowledge we imagine, whether rightly or wrongly, in the future and which, as some think, is bound to defeat us in the end. In one respect, as many Christians have noticed, contemporary science has recently come into line with Christian doctrine and parted company with the classical forms of materialism. If anything emerges clearly from modern physics, it is that nature is not everlasting. The universe had a beginning, and will have an end. But the great materialistic systems of the past all believed in the eternity, and thence in the self- existence of matter. As Professor Whittaker[1] said in the Riddell Lectures of 1942, “It was never possible to oppose seriously the dogma of the Creation except by maintaining that the world has existed from all eternity in more or less its present state." This fundamental ground for materialism has now been withdrawn. We should not lean too heavily on this, for scientific theories change. But at the moment it appears that the burden of proof rests, not on us, but on those who deny that nature has some cause beyond herself..... No. It is not Christianity which need fear the giant universe. It is those systems which place the whole meaning of existence in biological or social evolution on our own planet. It is the creative evolutionist, the Bergsonian or Shavian, or the Communist, who should tremble when he looks up at the night sky. For he really is committed to a sinking ship. He really is attempting to ignore the discovered nature of things, as though by concentrating on the possibly upward trend in a single planet he could make himself forget the inevitable downward trend in the universe as a whole, the trend to low temperatures and irrevocable disorganization. For entrophy is the real cosmic wave, and evolution only a momentary tellurian ripple within it. On these grounds, then, I submit that we Christians have as little to fear as anyone from the knowledge actually acquired. But, as I said at the beginning, that is not the fundamental answer. The endless fluctuations of scientific theory which seem today so much friendlier to us than in the last century may turn against us tomorrow. The basic answer lies elsewhere. How can an unchanging system survive the continual increase of knowledge? Now, in certain cases we know very well how it can. A mature scholar reading a great passage in Plato, and taking in at one glance the metaphysics, the literary beauty, and the place of both in the history of Europe, is in a very different position from a boy learning the Greek alphabet. Yet through that unchanging system of the alphabet all this vast mental and emotional activity is operating. It has not been broken by the new knowledge. It is not outworn. If it changed, all would be chaos. A great Christian statesman, considering the morality of a measure which will affect mil lions of lives, and which involves economic, geographical and political considerations of the utmost complexity, is in a different position from a boy first learning that one must not cheat or tell lies, or hurt innocent people. But only in so far as that first knowledge of the great moral platitudes survives unimpaired in the statesman will his deliberation be moral at all. If that goes, then there has been no progress, but only mere change. For change is not progress unless the core remains unchanged. A small oak grows into a big oak: if it became a beech, that would not be growth, but mere change. And thirdly, there is a great difference between counting apples and arriving at the mathematical formulae of modern physics. But the multiplication table is used in both and does not grow out of date. In other words, wherever there is real progress in knowledge, there is some knowledge that is not superseded. Indeed, the very possibility of progress demands that there should be an unchanging element. New bottles for new wine, by all means: but not new palates, throats and stomachs, or it would not be, for us, ‘wine’ at all. I take it we should all agree to find this sort of unchanging element in the simple rules of mathematics. I would add to these the primary principles of morality. And I would also add the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. To put it in rather more technical language, I claim that the positive historical statements made by Christianity have the power, elsewhere found chiefly in formal principles, of receiving, without intrinsic change, the increasing complexity of meaning which increasing knowledge puts into them. For example, it may be true (though I don’t for a moment suppose it is) that when the Nicene Creed said ‘He came down from Heaven’, the writers had in mind a local movement from a local heaven to the surface of the earth — like a parachute descent. Others since may have dismissed the idea of a spatial heaven altogether. But neither the significance nor the credibility of what is asserted seems to be in the least affected by the change. On either view, the thing is miraculous: on either view, the mental images which attend the act of belief are inessential. When a Central African convert and a Harley Street specialist both affirm that Christ rose from the dead, there is, no doubt, a very great difference between their thoughts. To one, the simple picture of a dead body getting up is sufficient; the other may think of a whole series of bio chemical and even physical processes beginning to work back wards. The Doctor knows that, in his experience, they never have worked backwards; but the negro knows that dead bodies don’t get up and walk. Both are faced with miracle, and both know it. If both think miracle impossible, the only difference is that the Doctor will expound the impossibility in much greater detail, will give an elaborate gloss on the simple statement that dead men don’t walk about. If both believe, all the Doctor says will merely analyze and explicate the words ‘He rose.’ When the author of Genesis says that God made man in His own image, he may have pictured a vaguely corporeal God making man as a child makes a figure out of plasticine. A modern Christian philosopher may think of a process lasting from the first creation of matter to the final appearance on this planet of an organism fit to receive spiritual as well as biological life. But both mean essentially the same thing. Both are denying the same thing — the doctrine that matter by some blind power inherent in itself has produced spirituality. Does this mean that Christians on different levels of general education conceal radically different beliefs under an identical form of words? Certainly not. For what they agree on is the substance, and what they differ about is the shadow. When one imagines his God seat in a local heaven above a flat earth, where another sees God and creation in terms of Professor Whitehead’s philosophy[7], this difference touches precisely what does not matter. Perhaps this seems to you an exaggeration. But is it? As regards material reality, we are now being forced to the conclusion that we know nothing about it save its mathematics. The tangible beach and pebbles of our first calculators, the imaginable atoms of Democritus, the plain man’s picture of space, turn out to be the shadow: numbers are the substance of our knowledge, the sole liaison between mind and things. What nature is in herself evades us; what seem to naive perception to be the evident things about her, turn out to be the most phantasmal. It is something the same with our knowledge of spiritual reality. What God is in Him self, how He is to be conceived by philosophers, retreats continually from our knowledge. The elaborate world-pictures which accompany religion and which look each so solid while they last, turn out to be only shadows. It is religion itself — prayer and sacrament and repentance and adoration — which is here, in the long run, our sole avenue to the real. Like mathematics, religion can grow from within, or decay. The Jew knows more than the Pagan, the Christian more than the Jew, the modern vaguely religious man less than any of the three. But, like mathematics, it remains simply itself, capable of being applied to any new theory of the material universe and out-moded by none." ~C.S. Lewis, Dogma and the Universe, from God in the Dock. http://www.mwainc.net/rod/Dogma%20and%20the%20Universe.htmClive Hayden_{May 20, 2009
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beelzebub, ----"That’s why blind faith is such a bad idea. Hold all of your beliefs provisionally and never cease questioning them." Excepting, of course, the belief that you should hold all of your other beliefs provisionally. Or do do you hold that belief provisionally? In which case, you still have a standing belief that you should hold all beliefs provisionally. This, again, is a contradiction, in which no progress can be made by science.Clive Hayden_{May 20, 2009
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beelzebub, ----"Did you even read my comment? The scientific consensus I’m referring to is on the six questions I posed:" Right. I read your cherry picking of examples, and the following non sequitur of the singular coherence among all of science. Philosophy and religion is self-correcting. Science is based on philosophy, just as we find philosophy in religion. What you are expressing to me now, is your philosophy. Your scientism is a philosophy---a philosophy which judges that science is better than philosophy. Now surely, this is a contradiction, to which there can certainly be no self-correction by mere science. Any progress has within it an unchanging element, otherwise it is not progress, but merely change. "A theorist about language may approach his native tongue, as it were from outside, regarding its genius as a thing that has no claim on him and advocating wholesale alterations of its idiom and spelling in the interests of commercial convenience or scientific accuracy. That is one thing. A great poet, who has 'loved, and been well nurtured in, his mother tongue', may also make great alterations in it, but his changes of the language are made in the spirit of the language itself: he works from within. The language which suffers, has also inspired the changes. That is a different thing—as different as the works of Shakespeare are from Basic English. It is the difference between alteration from within and alteration from without: between the organic and the surgical. In the same way, the Tao [natural law] admits development from within. There is a difference between a real moral advance and a mere innovation. From the Confucian 'Do not do to others what you would not like them to do to you' to the Christian 'Do as you would be done by' is a real advance. The morality of Nietzsche is a mere innovation. The first is an advance because no one who did not admit the validity of the old maxim could see reason for accepting the new one, and anyone who accepted the old would at once recognize the new as an extension of the same principle. If he rejected it, he would have to reject it as a superfluity, something that went too far, not as something simply heterogeneous from his own ideas of value. But the Nietzschean ethic can be accepted only if we are ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and then to put ourselves in a position where we can find no ground for any value judgements at all. It is the difference between a man who says to us: 'You like your vegetables moderately fresh; why not grow your own and have them perfectly fresh?' and a man who says, 'Throw away that loaf and try eating bricks and centipedes instead.' Those who understand the spirit of the Tao and who have been led by that spirit can modify it in directions which that spirit itself demands. Only they can know what those directions are. The outsider knows nothing about the matter. His attempts at alteration, as we have seen, contradict themselves. So far from being able to harmonize discrepancies in its letter by penetration to its spirit, he merely snatches at some one precept, on which the accidents of time and place happen to have riveted his attention, and then rides it to death—for no reason that he can give. From within the Tao itself comes the only authority to modify the Tao." C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of ManClive Hayden_{May 20, 2009
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beelzebub @15:
Science corrects itself all the time, and the only threat it is usually responding to is the “threat” that an existing idea is wrong.
I believe O'Leary is talking about scientific paradigms, not run-of-the-mill experimental results. Thomas Kuhn had a lot to say about scientific revolutions. In the context of paradigm shifts, it has been known for over a century that the spacetime of relativity does not exist because nothing can move in spacetime by definition. This is the reason that Sir Karl Popper compared spacetime to Einstein's block universe in which nothing happens (Conjectures and Refutations). Nobody has dared to contradict Popper. And yet, you still see physics textbooks by reputable physicists (e.g., Brian Greene and Kip Thorne)that explain gravity in terms of bodies following their geodesics in curved spacetime. Thorne (a friend of Stephen "black hole" Hawking) even goes so far as to argue with no fear of criticism (i.e., correction) from his peers that one can travel back in time via wormholes. Crackpottery in high places. How often do scientists gracefully correct their flawed paradigms? Not very often, it would seem.Mapou_{May 20, 2009
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beezelbub I think religion is a broad category of human endeavor for to grasp at what is ultimately beyond our grasp, hence all the attendant confusion and discord. I would say that in similar fashion, Richard Dawkins appearing on TV and being asked (as really transpired) as to how did matter come into being, confusion is the result. With much feigned confidence, Dawkins assured the audience that science is on the verge of a breakthrough on the ultimate cause behind matter, and hence the cause of the universe. Thus materialism is as confused a religion as any other, as this laughable ( or pitiful, your choice) episode in the Dawkins saga reveals, to the point of faked hubris. To grasp at what will remain forever unfalsifiable is the mostly unintended intersection of science and religion.groovamos_{May 20, 2009
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Denyse:
most self-corrections came at immense cost to the scientists who had laboured to discover the facts and correct the record.
I'm curious to learn about the incidents from which you derive this conclusion. In what cases has an actual (not just attempted) correction resulted in an overall negative outcome for the corrector? I'm guessing that for every such case you report, we can point out dozens of cases in which the outcome was the opposite.R0b_{May 20, 2009
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O'Leary, on bathybius haeckeli, why are you mentioning things prior to the advent of molecular biology and biochemistry? I can say with great confidence, at the beginning of the Neo-Darwinian synthesis no one was proclaiming the cell a "simple blob of organic material." Maybe you should also mention how Darwin thought "genes" just blended together, that would realllllly disprove evolutionary theory.... Also, I am not aware of the grave circumstances which shifted the paradigm of Gal80 Gal4 inhibition-- did the disassociationists issue a Fatah against the associationists? We all remember the holocaust of PrPSc viral origin advocates... I think I get it now. Maybe, you mentioned bathybius haeckeli, to illustrate how science is self correcting, considering Huxley wrote a letter recanting his "discovery." But, we don't know the nefarious circumstances which compelled him to do so.eligoodwin_{May 20, 2009
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Denyse writes:
I will take you more seriously if you say who you really are and where you live and what you do.
Denyse, I find that the decision to take someone seriously is better based on the quality and cogency of their ideas than on their location and occupation. After all, a good idea remains good even if it comes from a Canadian journalist with no scientific training, and a bad idea from someone with two PhD's, four masters degrees and a BA is still a bad idea, isn't it?
...most self-corrections came at immense cost to the scientists who had laboured to discover the facts and correct the record.
Actually, most corrections (and there are thousands every year) happen with little fanfare and no damage except to the ego of the correctee. In any case, the issue here is not the cost of the corrections but the fact that they happen routinely in science but not in religion.
Science is rarely self-correcting except under the gravest threat - for the same reasons as a drug addict doesn’t decide on rehab until he wakes up from a coma in some hospital whose name he doesn’t recognize...
Again, not true. Science corrects itself all the time, and the only threat it is usually responding to is the "threat" that an existing idea is wrong.beelzebub_{May 20, 2009
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uoflcard asks:
What is your point? That religion sucks because people disagree?
My point, contra Denyse, is that religion is not self-correcting in the way that science is.
What do religious disagreements have to do with this discussion?
Everything. Denyse is the one who brought up religion as an example of a self-correcting system.
You seem to believe science is the search for consensous instead of the search for truth.
Where did you get that idea?
For the 6 scientific questions you posed above, they are purely analytical science, and do not fall into the areas where worldviews are called into question.
The six scientific questions I posed are basic scientific questions. Science has answered all of them in a few hundred years. The six religious questions I posed are basic religious questions. After thousands of years, every one of them is as fiercely debated as ever.
Most disputed religious claims are not scientifically verifiable, thus a concensus is much less likely. What does that mean? That we should not pursue theology because it’s impossible to scientifically verify many claims?
For the purposes of this thread, we should conclude that Denyse is wrong and that religion is not self-correcting in the way that science is. The self-correcting nature of science really does set it apart from other means of seeking the truth.beelzebub_{May 20, 2009
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beelzebub (why don't people just give their real names?*), most self-corrections came at immense cost to the scientists who had laboured to discover the facts and correct the record. Usually, the persecutions were brought on them by fellow scientists whose careers were threatened. Science is rarely self-correcting except under the gravest threat - for the same reasons as a drug addict doesn't decide on rehab until he wakes up from a coma in some hospital whose name he doesn't recognize - and he doesn't even remember how he got there. But he is informed that a detective superintendent wants to interview him as soon as his doctor feels he is well enough. *Note re real names: I have been over this ground before, but maybe not with the same people: Denyse O'Leary is my real name. Like any traditional journalist, I post under my own name. I am a Canadian citizen who lives in Toronto, and I vote and pay taxes here. I am in the Toronto phone book. I am part of my community. I will take you more seriously if you say who you really are and where you live and what you do.O'Leary_{May 20, 2009
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Off-topic: has anybody been listening to Barbara Bradley Hagerty's series about the science of spirituality on NPR this week? It covers some territory along the lines of The Spiritual Brain (though I prefer both Hagerty's writing and her approach). She's got a new book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality, that seems kind of interesting.David Kellogg_{May 20, 2009
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