In further addressing the now commonly promoted idea that methodological naturalism is an innocent, “natural” part of the definition of science that properly keeps out those who wish to smuggle in “the supernatural” where it does not belong, I have had occasion to add an appendix to the recent June 17 post promoting Nancy Pearcey’s 2005 sleeper article on Christianity as a science starter, not a science stopper.
That appendix is worth a post in its own right, as — by utter contrast with Wikipedia’s enthusiastic citation of Judge Jones channelling the NCSE on how methodological naturalism has been the prevailing rule for doing science since the 1500’s & 1600’s — we can see how in his 1704 Opticks, Query 31 Newton blows apart the Wikipedian talking-point:
___________________
>>For some further primary source documentation, given highly misleading claims like this cited by Wikipedia in its article on Naturalism, which endorses Lewontin-Sagan style a priori materialism under the name of methodological naturalism, presented under the pretence that it is the historic way that modern science was done:
Philosopher Paul Kurtz notes two senses to naturalism. First, nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, that is, by mass and energy; physical and chemical properties. Second, all scientific endeavors—all hypotheses and events—are to be explained and tested within methodological naturalism’s reference of natural causes and events.[2] Naturalism in Kurtz’s first sense, insisting that nature is all there is, is called metaphysical naturalism or philosophical naturalism.
In the second sense, methodological naturalism provides assumptions within which to conduct science. Methodological naturalism is a way of acquiring knowledge. It is a distinct system of thought concerned with a cognitive approach to reality, and thus a philosophy of knowledge or epistemology.
- Expert testimony [–> According to Judge Jones at Dover (i.e. not a qualified historian of science), copying the post trial submission of the NCSE, an evolutionary materialism pressure group] reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries [i.e. the 1500’s – 1600’s — this is blatantly false as the above shows], science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena…. While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science. This self-imposed convention of science [–> cf Newton below on imposing question-begging, censoring metaphysical, speculative a prioris on science], which limits inquiry to testable, natural [–> notice the censorship: chance, necessity and art based on choice all leave empirical traces that can be studied with profit using scientific methods . . . ] explanations about the natural world, is referred to by philosophers as “methodological naturalism” and is sometimes known as the scientific method. Methodological naturalism is a “ground rule” of science today which requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify.[3]
. . . let me cite Newton in Opticks, Query 31, 1704 (and thus well within the NCSE/Jones window where science was supposedly atheistical in its methods, and of course I am citing the leading single scientist of the past 400 years, maybe all time]:
>> Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
from Query 31 of Opticks (London, 1704)
All these things being consider’d, it seems probable to me, that God in the Beginning form’d Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable Particles, of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and in such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the End for which he form’d them; and that these primitive Particles being Solids, are incomparably harder than any porous Bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first Creation. While the Particles continue entire, they may compose Bodies of one and the same Nature and Texture in all Ages: But should they wear away, or break in pieces, the Nature of Things depending on them, would be changed. Water and Earth, composed of old worn Particles and Fragments of Particles, would not be of the same Nature and Texture now, with Water and Earth composed of entire Particles in the Beginning. And therefore, that Nature may be lasting, the Changes of corporeal Things are to be placed only in the various Separations and new Associations and Motions of these permanent Particles; compound Bodies being apt to break, not in the midst of solid Particles, but where those Particles are laid together, and only touch in a few Points . . . .
Now by the help of these Principles [of gravity, laws of motion, observations of the evident stability of material properties of e.g. water, etc], all material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles above-mention’d, variously associated in the first Creation by the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order. And if he did so, it’s unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature [= chance + necessity without intelligence, i.e. he is pointing to inferior alternatives under comparative difficulties, which would be discussed in the General Scholium to Principia]; though being once form’d, it may continue by those Laws for many Ages. For while Comets move in very excentrick Orbs in all manner of Positions, blind Fate could never make all the Planets move one and the same way in Orbs concentrick, some inconsiderable Irregularities excepted, which may have risen from the mutual Actions of Comets and Planets upon one another, and which will be apt to increase, till this System wants a Reformation. Such a wonderful Uniformity in the Planetary System must be allowed the Effect of Choice. And so must the Uniformity in the Bodies of Animals . . . .
As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses [= a priori controlling/censoring speculations] are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy. And although the arguing from Experiments and Observations by Induction be no Demonstration of general Conclusions; yet it is the best way of arguing which the Nature of Things admits of, and may be looked upon as so much the stronger, by how much the Induction is more general. And if no Exception occur from Phaenomena, the Conclusion may be pronounced generally. But if at any time afterwards any Exception shall occur from Experiments, it may then begin to be pronounced with such Exceptions as occur. By this way of Analysis we may proceed from Compounds to Ingredients, and from Motions to the Forces producing them; and in general, from Effects to their Causes, and from particular Causes to more general ones, till the Argument end in the most general. This is the Method of Analysis: And the Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discover’d, and establish’d as Principles, and by them explaining the Phaenomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations [ –> notice the definition of science and its methods]. . . .
And if natural Philosophy in all its Parts, by pursuing this Method, shall at length be perfected, the Bounds of Moral Philosophy will be also enlarged. For so far as we can know by natural Philosophy what is the first Cause, what Power he has over us, and what Benefits we receive from him, so far our Duty towards him, as well as that towards one another, will appear to us by the Light of Nature [–> this is an allusion to Romans 1:19 – 32 etc]. And no doubt, if the Worship of false Gods had not blinded the Heathen, their moral Philosophy would have gone farther than to the four Cardinal Virtues; and instead of teaching the Transmigration of Souls, and to worship the Sun and Moon, and dead Heroes, they would have taught us to worship our true Author and Benefactor, as their Ancestors did under the Government of Noah and his Sons before they corrupted themselves. >>
Thus, we see from a prime source document, that explanation by chance/chaos, necessity and agency were well understood as alternatives in the founding era of science, by leading scientists. Second, that inference to art based on choice of intelligent agent was rooted in empirical considerations, and that science was not to be held in thralldom to a priori question-begging impositions. Instead, the empirical, provisional analysis and resulting inductive generalisations were to be held based on empirical testing, and subject to further empirical testing. All this, in a context of a worldview that was plainly Biblical and indeed creationist.>>
____________________
A major bonus in the above is that we see here a root for the common Grade School definitions of science and its methods.
Perhaps, then, the time has come to look at the roots of modern science with fresh eyes, untainted by a priori Lewontin-Sagan materialism and associated impositions of materialism on even the definition of science and its methods, not to mention smearing of design thinkers — not to mention, Creationists; who plainly have a point when they say that many of the key founders of modern science and key fields in it were not only personally creationist but worked in a creationist context.
For, is not Newton clearly amongst such? END