Diligent reader Sigmund winds up his posts on BioLogos‘s three-part series on scientism.

________________

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?