Diligent reader Sigmund winds up his posts on BioLogos‘s three-part series on scientism.
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Scientism and the problem of detecting purpose
by Sigmund
Ian Hutchinson, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, continues his BioLogos series on the dangers of “Scientism” with a post called “Monopolizing Knowledge, Part 3: Clarity” (my reviews of parts 1 and 2 are here and here)
The latest installment begins with a description of “scientism” taken from Hutchinson’s new book on the subject.
“Scientism says, or at least implicitly assumes, that rational knowledge is scientific, and everything else that claims that status of knowledge is just superstition, irrationality, emotion, or nonsense.” (Monopolizing Knowledge, page 1)
After briefly discussing “Clarity”, essentially meaning a scientific measurement of some unambiguous feature, an aspect that Hutchinson claims is characteristic of the knowledge gained from natural science, he finally provides (at long last – remember this is part three of his series) some examples in which knowledge is supposedly gained through non-scientific means.
“Consider the beauty of a sunset, the justice of a verdict, the compassion of a nurse, the drama of a play, the depth of a poem, the terror of a war, the excitement of a symphony, the significance of a history, the love of a woman.”
Or, perhaps, consider the lily?
Now that we’ve considered them, where exactly is the non-scientific knowledge we were promised and why does “scientism” constitute such a problem?
“Yes, a sunset can be described in terms of the spectral analysis of the light, the causes of the coloration arising from light scattering by particles and molecules, and their arrangement and gradient in the sky. But when all the scientific details of such a description are done, has that explained, or even conveyed, its beauty? Hardly. In fact it has missed the point.”
Hutchinson’s approach to his task is to link “scientism” to the idea of reductionism. He suggests that complex personal experiences—seeing beauty in a sunset, feeling love or appreciating great music or literature—require a type of contextual understanding that is quite separate from that produced from the kind of measurements that result in unambiguous and reproducible scientific knowledge.
“Removal of ambiguity destroys that significance, because ambiguity is at the very heart of their meaning. One cannot appreciate ambiguity unambiguously. Consequently, matters such as these cannot be encompassed scientifically.”
Rather than tackle the obvious question of whether one can appreciate unambiguous ambiguity unambiguously, Hutchinson highlights instead what he views as the inherent reductionism involved in “scientism”.
“A scientistic viewpoint very often adopts reductionism not just as a useful method, but as an inviolable principle.”
Hutchinson suggests that this type of approach cannot lead to an adequate understanding of complex systems.
“It is definitely helpful to analyze animal bodies in terms of their cells, but it is unhelpful, and fundamentally untrue, to conclude that if one completes such an analysis, then animals are demonstrated to be nothing but assemblies of cells.”
But animals ARE nothing but assemblies of cells – albeit very precise assemblies of specific types of cells that exist and function within their appropriate environment. The various genome projects, including that formerly headed by BioLogos founder Francis Collins, are based on the principle that reading the DNA code of an organism can allow us to understand or in some way ‘reconstruct’ them. Scientific investigation points us towards a conclusion that living organisms are the result of an interaction between those organism’s genes and their physical environments, a hugely complex interplay that forms the basis of much of modern biological research. What it doesn’t suggest, however, is the involvement of an additional factor that is distinct from genes and environment.
It is here that Hutchinson finds fault and he finishes this installment with a description of what he sees as a key failing in the scientific method – its inability to deal with Purpose.
Hutchinson levels the charge of scientism against Nobel prize winner, Jacques Monod, quoting from Monod’s book Chance and Necessity:
“The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective. In other words, the systematic denial that ‘true’ knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes—that is to say, of ‘purpose’.”
In other words, the scientific method functions by ignoring questions of “why?” and concentrating on questions of “how?”
It is only now that we see the threads of Hutchinson’s argument against “scientism” come together.
- Scientific knowledge requires accurate, unambiguous and reproducible measurement.
- Complex phenomena such as art, music, love and purpose are refractory to such measurement.
- Therefore science is limited by its lack of ability to detect purpose in the natural world.
“There are, then, strong reasons founded in science’s reliance on reproducibility and Clarity why science effectively rules out explanations in terms of purpose. Purpose presupposes an agent, a personality. Persons can’t be adequately described within the rubrics of reproducibility and Clarity. They are methodologically excluded. And so is purpose.”
But Hutchinson is so intent on finding a gap in which to squeeze Purpose that he ignores the possibility that purpose is not invisible to science. The scientific method, while focusing on the “how?” questions does not necessarily exclude conclusions that encompass elements of purpose. Think of the many examples from biology where a purpose, such as gaining food or increasing reproductive potential, are the conclusions from the study of the behavior of animals or plants. Consider the work of a forensic science laboratory that uses the scientific method to understand the “how?” and frequently resulting in conclusions as to the “why?” of crimes. One can even extend this to the ultimate question of the purpose of the Universe. Every piece of evidence about the natural world to date suggests that if a God designed it for a purpose, its purpose is to make us believe he doesn’t exist. Many of us, however, just choose to cut out the unnecessary middleman and conclude that anyway.
Or is that simply being scientistic?
The comments on the oroginal post are amazingly terrible and well worth a glance. Misunderstood pseudophysics to justify shallow mysticism.
The philosophical defence comes down to “you scientismists refuse to be convinced by my bloviating? Well, well, I refuse to be convinced by your scientism! So there!” Which is indeed balanced; but our science still has the clear advantage of, ahh, working.
Quote: “Every piece of evidence about the natural world to date suggests that if a God designed it for a purpose, its purpose is to make us believe he doesn’t exist.”
Well, of course, except that it was Satan who created the world with exactly that purpose in mind, as any well educated Gnostic could explain to you.
Sheesh, haven’t you been paying attention, at all?
Stackpole, scripture is quite clear that god created the world.
Satan (if you spin around rapidly, then stand on your head and squint your eyes while having someone bash your skull with a golf club) is responsible for creating and placing fossils to test your faith!
So…Satan was a rogue subcontractor?
Why didn’t YHWH just fire his sorry ass and bring in somebody licensed and bonded to clean up the mess?
Bloody incompetent ancient Mediterranean deities…couldn’t manage a job right if it were wiping their own asses with the blueprints printed on the toilet paper….
b&
Reminds me of a message printed on a toilet roll I once saw;
‘Unprocessed photograph of God.
Just wipe to develop.’
I am so hanging that over my toilet.
Maybe Satan created the scripture to lead you in error. It certainly would make a lot of sense.
If Satan did all that, he did a bloody great job. The fossil starlight, the fossil microwave background, the craters on the moon, the pseudo-hydrodynamic placement of every grain in the sedimentary layers of Earth, not to mention the staggering variety and abundance and (at the same time) teasing incompleteness of the biological macrofossil record are just amazing, but what really impresses me is the fossils of population processes (introgression, adaptive sweeps, incomplete lineage sorting…) that we’ve really had to dig into the DNA to discover at all. Really have to wonder what’s left to attribute to the other guy.
Well, of course, except that it was Satan who created the world with exactly that purpose in mind, as any well educated Gnostic could explain to you.
If Christianity had adopted the Gnostic framework of the rogue idiot creator god and the higher-level “savior” god who wants to save the idiot god’s creations from the idiot, at least there would be an answer to the riddle of Epicurus. There would be other problems, but at least the idea that this world was created by a madman who likes to torment his creation and there’s another god who wants to rescue us from him has some merit behind it, even if it is just as unprovable as any other god claim tends to be.
But it didn’t, so you can’t slough the work off onto Satan or Iadabaloth or whatever. Christianity chose to embrace the critique of Epicurus by sticking its fingers in its collective ears and chanting “lalalalala I can’t hear you” a few thousand years ago, so they need to contend with the repercussions.
What’s funny is there are still Gnostic ideas lurking under the surface. Christians are told to reject “worldly” things in favor of the ways of God. Yet God created the world.
I saw this in a movie so it must be true …
Evil: What sort of Supreme Being created such riffraff? Is this not the workings of a complete incompetent?
Baxi Brazilia III: But He created you, Evil One.
Evil: What did you say?
Baxi Brazilia III: Well He created you, so He can’t be entirely…
Evil: [Blows Baxi to bits] Never talk to me like that again! No one created me! I am Evil. Evil existed long before good. I made myself. I cannot be unmade. *I* am all powerful!
Sean Connery movies get +1. (Time Bandits)
Terry Gilliam movies also get +1.
b&
(Although it was David Warner playing “Evil.”)
Because this here measuring tape can’t reach to the Moon, we can therefore conclude that the Moon’s purpose is to have dominion over the night.
Is that about it, or am I missing something?
Cheers,
b&
So science is incapable of evaluating subjective opinions, like whether god is beautiful or not, but perfectly equipped to handle objective fact claims, like whether god exists or not. Am I missing something?
Hutchinson presumes that sunsets are beautiful. I would daresay that those who have been blind from birth would have a different opinion. As would those born without visual receptors. Even fully sighted persons are not universally enthralled by sunsets.
+1
I love when they think they’re arguing for their side but they’re really arguing for ours.
Also, merely telling me “how beautiful” something is doesn’t convey how beautiful it is. It conveys no actual useful information.
It conveys how beautiful the speaker thinks it is (or at least how beautiful he says he thinks it is). That information may or may not be “useful.” But at that level it has been derived empirically (under the broad definition previously specified).
Kyn Kukec, I was responding to the statement “consider the beauty of a sunset” and “… has that explained, or even conveyed, its beauty? Hardly.”
In those statements, nothing descriptive about ‘the beauty of a sunset’ has been conveyed. Someone saying the words “how beautiful is a sunset” conveys nothing, even whether the person saying it has ever experienced a sunset in their lives, or is capable of experiencing a sunset.
In fact, it appears to be the speaker presuming that whatever mental picture the speaker has about their sunset experience (which may or may not be a single sunset, or a combination of many sunsets) is shared by the reader.
Is it a sunset with clouds? Against an ocean? Against the mountains? Against the desert? Against the forest? Against a cityscape? Is it a sunset with rain and a rainbow? Is there a moon visible? Stars? Just the horizon? Is the viewer looking down from a height, or straight out from sea level?
You see, you don’t have any idea. No real information was conveyed.
No, you haven’t missed anything. You saw right through all the hand-waving and the shiny, shiny things they were dangling.
Ooooo, Beauty! Me want!
Squirrel!
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In other words, get in the fucking sack.
I don’t really have so much trouble with what Hutchinson does say, it is what he leaves unsaid.
I’ll accept that there is nothing in reproducibility and scientific clarity that gives us any inkling of purpose. But it does totally undermine religionists supernatural claims and without those how does religion have any special voice in deciding what our purpose is? Religion’s take on purpose is absurd and insulting.
Regarding Jacques Monod, Hutchinson is barking up the wrong tree.
Purpose was central to Monod’s philosophy. But purpose as a human construct. He insisted upon that aspect to the very last line of Chance and Necessity. The realisation that all life was the product of chance and rigourous natural laws would free mankind from all illusions of teleonomy; humans would be free to invent their own purpose.
Nor can it be said that Monod or his colleagues Jean-Pierre Changeux and André Lwoff were insensitive to the complexities of art. Changeux is a fine organist and art connaiseur; Lwoff was a keen painter; Monod, as I can testify from a musical encounter by pure chance a few months before his death, was an accomplished cellist. It just happens that he and his colleagues were realistically modest in their expectations of what scientific analysis of such complex subjects can accomplish at the present level of understanding and methodology. Hutchinson is lacking both their clarity and their humility.
Science is not only reductonionism.
Is true than is better to have a deep understanding of the cell to make inferences or derive knowledge about animals, but you can study complete systems “ignoring” the cell dimension. You had more variation that way, bigger error margins, but it works.
Another aspect I hate is the using art, music or love like something mysterious, without unambiguous and reproducible measurement.
Musicians and artist in general had a lot of knowledge about what to do or don’t in their craft: how to diffuminate the eyes of the Mona Lisa to give the illusion of life, how to combine colors, the layout of a paint, the “perfect” proportions of the human body, how to express fear in a face. And music! The making of a instrument demands a lot of precission. The arts and love are not ambiguous and irreproducible.
“you can study complete systems ‘ignoring’ the cell dimension”
Valid point. But Hutchinson isn’t deriding the lack of systems-level analysis; he’s promoting anamism.
Three parts to get to “purpose”? Really?
The most-abused theist code for “my place in the after-death”?
That’s it? The whole megillah? Purpose?
And, let’s for a minute assume he’s right. Science cannot deal with purpose…
….
….
OK. How does that prove that religion can? Or that any of the truth claims about any specific religion are correct?
It’s a multi-part red herring logical fallacy.
You don’t prove your philosophy/theology is correct by noting the flaws in someone else’s philosophy/theology.
Honestly, I’m not a sophisticated philosopher, nor am I a trained theologian. But a monkey with a typewriter could make a more coherent argument that would give me more pause for reflection than “purpose”.
All this just seems special pleading for solipsism and the primacy of the highly intra-subjective feelings of the moment.
Substitute the warm fuzzy feelings mentioned in the quote above and substitute other highly energizing subjective feelings and emotions that are anti-social and violent and you get a far different set of ideas.
Here is another useful exercise, search/replace the word “science” with “medicine” and they come out nonsensical, e.g.,
“Medicine is the most remarkable and powerful cultural artifact humankind has ever created. What is more, most people in our society regard medicine as providing us with knowledge about the natural world that has an unsurpassed claim to reality and truth. That is one reason why I am proud to be a physicist, a part of the medical enterprise. But increasingly I am dismayed that medicine is being twisted into something other than what it truly is. It is portrayed as identical to a philosophical doctrine that I call “scientism”. Scientism says, or at least implicitly assumes, that rational knowledge is medical, and everything else that claims that status of knowledge is just superstition, irrationality, emotion, or nonsense.” (Monopolizing Knowledge, page 1)
“It is definitely helpful to analyze animal bodies in terms of their cells, but it is unhelpful, and fundamentally untrue, to conclude that if one completes such an analysis, then animals are demonstrated to be nothing but assemblies of cells.”
Wow… Here is where someone might refer Hutchinson to the ecological sciences — population, community, ecosystem & any other of the scales-of-study where the ‘assemblies’ are a tad grander than cellular.
Good work, Sigmund.
But FSM above! Hutchinson is clearly capitalizing on being a scientist to make a bait-and-switch.
There is no such thing as “clarity” appended to scientific observation. As all empirical observation they are measured with certainty and precision. If observation has well formed definitions and testable hypotheses such things as reproducibility and communication on the market of ideas follows.
The bait-and-switch is that Hutchinson starts in on the market of ideas for theories, then changes “purpose” for ‘clarity’. Try it, it makes sense everywhere even if it is perverted and humorous apposition:
“The second major characteristic that natural science requires I refer to as ‘[Purpose]’. I use capitalization to indicate that the word is being used in a specialized sense. [Purpose] is a requirement for the expression and communication of reproducibility; so these two scientific traits are partners.”
“There are many important questions that inherently lack the kind of [Purpose] that science requires. Consider the beauty of a sunset, the justice of a verdict, the compassion of a nurse, the drama of a play, the depth of a poem, the terror of a war, the excitement of a symphony, the significance of a history, the love of a woman.”
“There are aspects of [Purpose], also, that exclude agents and purpose. Natural science generally regards introspective observation as lacking sufficient [Purpose] to be admissible as science.”
“There are, then, strong reasons founded in science’s reliance on reproducibility and [Purpose] why science effectively rules out explanations in terms of purpose. Purpose presupposes an agent, a personality. Persons can’t be adequately described within the rubrics of reproducibility and [Purpose]. They are methodologically excluded. And so is purpose.”
Apparently Hutchinson in his eagerness to promote religionism over scientism prefer fumbling the cards above a presentation with clarity.
I guess he’s never heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, less still that people have been studying human responses to visual stimuli for many years. People are still developing ideas about why humans go “ooh! aaaah!” Subjective statements such as “that’s a pretty sunset” do not constitute knowledge. Hutchinson then reveals his inner idiotphilosopher by making the ridiculous claim that understanding how things works spoils the fun – what a moron.
Yes! I’m with you there, as I was explaining to Phil on another post. Feynman too.
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Oops! This was meant as a reply to Wayne #15. It kind of fits here, but works better there…
More haste, less speed. :-/
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Theology (and the supernatural beliefs it defends) is category error made into an art form.
Yes, let’s. Let’s put it all into a nice and pretty list, too.
The Sunset ….. the beauty of a sunset
A verdict …. the justice of a verdict
A nurse … the compassion of a nurse
A play …. the drama of a play
A poem …. the depth of a poem
A war …. the terror of a war
A symphony … the excitement of a symphony
A history … the significance of a history
A woman …. the love of a woman
First you have a fact claim. Open to objective and inter-subjective investigation and verification.
Then you have a subjective/inter-subjective evaluation about that fact claim.
So we have
God … the purpose of God
and also
The purpose of God …. the love and justice of the purpose of God.
God is a fact claim. It’s not a subjective evaluation or a meaning claim. Nor is the mind itself a magical essence outside of the purview of science. “Purposes” do not exist in the immaterial ether. Stop reifying abstractions.
Category error. So sloppy — and juvenile. All this bloviating for “Hey, you can’t see LOVE with your microscope, can you, Mr. Smarty-pants Scientist???”
It’s been done to death.
And refuted to death. Seems even science-minded apologists can’t do better than these failed arguments.
“Stop reifying abstractions”
Now that would be a great slogan on a T-shirt!
How about
“Stop reifying abstractions — they hate that!”
Ah, the “I apprehend beauty, which cannot be explained or defined, but you agree with me that this example is beautiful, ergo God,” argument. Thomas Dubay apparently made a career of that, as surely others did before him, and clearly (here) are doing since. They don’t reference each other, do they?
Regardless of that, here’s a question if there are any historians of sophisticated theology among us. Was this same argument applied to the sensations of taste once upon a time? I’m going to suppose that it was. But now, since Axel & Buck (Nobel Laureates, 2004) we know a good bit more about how that all works?
Actually, I think these folks seem to be claiming that “god” *is* a subjective reaction.
That this is heretical, makes nonsense over the believer’s own religion, would be not what the fundies want, etc. is of course seemingly ignored and regarded as besides the point.
I think Dan Barker gave the best explanation of beauty in ‘Godless’, when he was driving back from Las Vegas with a believer who pointed at a huge rock formation in the landscape and said ‘Isn’t that beautiful!’. Dan Barker replied ‘Yes, it is beautiful. You can see how the multicolored ancient sedimentary sea beds were thrust upwards after millions of years of tectonic pressure and are now tilted at an improbable angle’. His believer friend snapped ‘Do you have to ruin everything?’
Personally, I think knowing how something works adds to the beauty.
+1
See my reply to MadScientist #12.
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The fear that knowledge of how the parts work will spoil the whole is a common feature of magical thinkers. For them, it’s like performing a vivisection on your pet frog.
Such a limited perspective. Don’t the realize how much more interesting a rainbow is once you’ve figured out how to unweave it?
And that extends to our senses and subjective reactions. That’s why I greatly admire musicians (qua musician, anyway) – they seem to have absolutely astonishing signal processors I seem to lack.
We also have a lot of training. There’s a lot to be said for natural talent, but there’s not much you can do without the accretion of experience.
I know that knowledge adds to beauty and enjoyment. I used to think that it didn’t matter that I knew nothing about music, I could still enjoy it just the same. Then I studied music for a while and I found that I enjoyed it a lot more because I had a clearer understanding of how it worked. The same thing happened with geology.
I haven’t studied music, but reading This Is Your Brain On Music was very illuminating. Recommended. Even those who’ve studied music may get something our of its neuroscientific insights.
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*out of
& that was supposed to be a correction to my comment at 5:20 pm, above. Too tired. AFK until tomorrow!
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The connotation of the word “assemblies” is doing all the work here. Animals are nothing but assemblies of cells. But he wants all assemblies to be mere assemblies – but there’s not much that’s “mere” about the organization of even the simplest animals.
Also, if I think a slug is beautiful, that has very little to do with anything objectively measurable about the slug. Ditto sunset, music, etc. Do we not still have psychology (broadly construed)?
Well, you smartypants are all saying very clever things indeed, but you fail to consider that ooga booga. Booga boo.
You are Alvin Plantinga and I claim my 5 qualia.
http://xkcd.com/877/
has a nice take on science and beauty
So, you say we can’t use science or rational thinking to appreciate music, love, poetry, etc?
So, when you look at, hear, feel, small, taste, or apprehend those things, you are not using your empirically-based sensory apparati to perceive something real, and then to subsequently use your physical brain to process the information into a meaningful image with related concepts? Is not that beauty, and the appreciation of it, the result of that physical process? Is that appreciation itself not another physical process in your brain, perceives subjectively?
Is the experience of appreciation of beauty nothing but what it is like to be that process, born of experience with a real world perceived empirically?
And what is science but the use of empirical tools to gather information then to use rational methods to organize that data into meaningful ideas, which may include images, concepts, etc? And when we can predict the behavior of reality based upon the principles learned from this, we have knowledge and understanding.
What is scientism, then, but accepting that the world, all of it, can be understood in terms of empirical methodologies and rational analysis?
http://shaunphilly.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/scientism-put-more-succinclty/
I have yet to find any evidence for “purpose” at all. I just don’t see the point of even having discussions about it until there’s a good reason to even think we have purpose (other than that we assume of ourselves).