Ever since the Enlightenment there’s been a lot of talk about science, mostly about how great it is. The scientific method of observation and hypothesis-forming has lead to innumerable discoveries and advancements in technology of every kind, from industry to medicine. There are T-shirts, now, which read, “Science: it works, bitches.” No doubt it does! I don’t actually think there’s anyone who denies this. But in the great success of the scientific method, I think people got carried away. They started to think that science was “all one needed,” and somehow (I cannot quite discover how) the jump was made from the success of empiricism to total assent in materialism, and the buzzword of “science” permeating through it all. Empiricism raised its banner in defiance of all other truth-claims. “Truly,” its adherents sighed, “with this we can master all things.”
But wait, we have a problem. The problem is that the empirical method of science is not philosophy. Not philosophy? What does philosophy have to do with this? Well, philosophy was the discipline that used to claim the capacity to answer all of life’s questions, and I think its quite safe to conclude that it still firmly sits upon that throne. What I think was not realized was that science was only a sub-discipline of philosophy, only a small specialization of the great study of Reality. Why is that? Because science cannot answer a number of questions about reality. Which ones? Start at 1:10 if you want to cut to it:
The dubious claim is Atkins’, that “science is omnipotent.” Craig shows by counterexample that this statement is obviously false, and I want to dwell on the last one in particular. Whether or not you buy Craig’s example about the Theory of Special Relativity (or even his other examples) is not the issue, the point he raises is profound: The empirical method is entirely circular: it cannot justify itself. Empiricism lays great emphasis on the superiority of its method, because it yields results which we can touch and see. But what does that mean? Essentially, it’s a claim to the superiority of empiricism because its methods yield empirically-verifiable results. One is appealing to empiricism to prove empiricism to be true, and hence becomes entirely circular.
What are we not saying here? No one’s saying that science doesn’t “work.” Of course it does. What we have discovered is that empiricism cannot itself be its own justification, and therefore is not a substantial, self-subsisting worldview, not to mention the number of other things Dr. Craig points out which science lacks the ability to explain. Why? Because those things are not scientific questions. To quote CS Lewis in Mere Christianity,
“Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, ‘I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2.20 a.m. on January 15th and saw so-and-so,’ or, ‘I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so.’ Do not think that I am saying anything against science; I am only saying what its job is.”
And science’s job, we might add, is not to create a self-subsisting worldview or to “achieve omnipotence;” for it cannot, even in potentiality, do either. Those tasks are the duties of Philosophy and the philosopher, to which Science and the scientist must ever be subservient. The last few centuries have shown science to be a usurper; but the time has come for its humbling.
Dear Zachary,
I was looking over Lance’s shoulder as he read this and thought I’d evaluate it for myself. While I agree with your point, I believe it could be for other unevaluated reasons. My concerns are thus:
“They started to think that science was “all one needed,” and somehow (I cannot quite discover how) the jump was made from the success of empiricism to total assent in materialism, and the buzzword of “science” permeating through it all.”
Maybe I am confused as to what you mean about this but it says to me through the truth of scientific study, scientists got greedy? Is that right? Here you have to entertain the nature of human motivation, and which as abhorent it is to me, remains the only reason why humans have developed the science and technology we enjoy today. Usually yes the motivation is material or financial, however the idea that scientists would do research and scientific evaluation for pure knowledge of the truth leads to some sort of starving artist syndrome. I ‘have’ to believe that at the beginning they did want to at least in part know the answer to question or a solution to a need or problem no matter how many millions they made.
I’m not quite sure whether i agree that philosophy still sits on the throne of being the discipline that answers all lifes question. Philosophy, as useful as it is, is a discourse between humans. It’s a conversation we have and continue to have about answers to lifes questions but while philosophy hypothesizes the answers to lifes questions and conjectures about them science offers irrefutable truth (at least till someone figures out how to refute it anyway). What is the saying…”You can prove over and over something is true but you only have to prove once that it’s false?” Also, as humans we have our limits, there are some truths we simply can not attain by social discourse.
The quote up there is at the very heart of empiricism as well. As long as the truth can be proved to which we can see and touch it is the very definition of what empirical proof is. A definition which existed as its own entity long before the scientific method.
All that being said I agree that we can not simply explain everything with science. The mysteries behind the human brain, for example, can attest to that. However, due to human limitations and biases philosophy and philosophers have their limitations as well and can not be the be-all end-all.
Miriam,
I’m going to try to tackle your response, though if I interpret your commentary incorrectly, by all means, please correct me!
You make three points that I want to respond to.
1) Zac says that “[people have] started to think that science was ‘all one needed’”. You responded by trying to figure out what he’s saying here about scientists’ goals, and guessed that he’s talking about the motives of scientists. I sounds like you’ve interpreted Zac’s commentary here to mean that scientists have abandoned their pursuit of truth in favor of the pursuit of monetary gain, and that you’re not convinced that scientific greed is the case.
I don’t think that’s what Zac is saying. What he’s trying to get at is the idea that scientific practice is a powerful tool, but that it now has been put in the position to fill the shoes of philosophy, for which it is not equipped. Think of science , if you will, like a powerful over-the-counter pain-killer called “Pain-Be-Gone” (for the sake of clarity). The invention of Pain-Be-Gone is wonderful, and helps a lot of people who are normally in chronic pain get through their day, but perhaps some people are trying to use Pain-Be-Gone to cure cancer, heal sunburns, and mix with food for vitamins. The fact that Pain-Be-Gone can’t actually to do those things isn’t bad or even says anything about how powerfully it does get rid of pain – it just says the nature of Pain-Be-Gone isn’t compatible with curing cancer, sunburns, or providing vitamins. What Zac is saying is that scientists have generally started to say that science is all that one needs to understand the world at large, in the same way that someone who is really excited about the strength of Pain-Be-Gone might start to say that it cures cancer, when that’s simply not within the makeup of the medicine (or the makeup of the scientific method) to do so.
2) You say that philosophy is a “discourse between humans”, and it seems like you’re saying that the discipline of philosophy is a useful tool for challenging assertions that people make, but that the conclusions of philosophers ultimately leans too far on opinions – like the philosophy of Marxism, feminism, or capitalism – to be considered as important to truth-seeking as empirical science. Opinions, after all, are man-made and are fallible, whereas science is impartial and can only report what is true.
I understand where you’re coming from here, and if I’ve understood your position correctly, it is based on a misconception about what we mean by the term “philosophy”. I think I did a decent job summing up what I think is your position about philosophy above. Philosophy studies the nature of things – so, when I use the term “philosophy”, I am also talking about logic, metaphysics, language, epistemology, ethics, and anything I can question the nature of. Now, Ayn Rand’s work (“The Fountainhead”, “Atlas Shrugged”, etc.) is poor philosophy because it is riddled with logical fallacies like straw man arguments, non sequiturs, ad hominem, and false dichotomies – and most philosophical work after the Renaissance has similar problems. Modern philosophical work has the tendency to have exactly the qualities that you’re calling out that seems to make it inferior to empirical science, so I don’t blame your position here. Contrary to the example that recent “philosophical” work has set, real philosophy uses logical argumentation to discuss truths about the nature of the world in a way that empirical science has no way to get at.
Science is not the study of all reality, but the specific study of nature, or the natural law that exists in reality. Thus, questions that are not about nature (like whether or not something exists outside of nature) are not questions that science has the capacity to address. Science is observational – it tells us what is and how existing things interact, but the laws of nature can’t explain why the laws of nature exist. CS Lewis draws a great metaphor for this:
“If a man says ‘Humpty Dumpty is falling,’ you see at once that this is not a complete story. The bit you have been told implies both a later chapter in which Humpty Dumpty will have reached the ground, and an earlier chapter in which he was still seated on the wall. A Nature which is ‘running down’ cannot be the whole story [referring to entropy in the universe]. A clock can’t run down unless it has been wound up. Humpty Dumpty can’t fall off a wall which never existed…Admittedly, science discerns no ‘king’s horses and men’ who can ‘put Humpty Dumpty together again’. But you would not expect her to. She is based on observation: and all our observations are observations of Humpty Dumpty in mid-air. They do not reach either the wall above or the ground below.”
That being said, Zac is commenting on the inflated sphere of influence that empiricism has, which has reached inappropriately into philosophy. Science and philosophy are not mutually exclusive (on the contrary – they’re quite complimentary fields), but recently the general consensus seems to be that science is the only field needed.
Miriam,
Thanks for your comments. I was not saying anything about the monetary gain of scientists, but rather the competing claims of empiricism against other kinds of epistemologies. The success of science in the empirical sphere does not grant it success in other spheres, like the spheres of rationalism and philosophy.
Three things:
1) You argue for scientifically verifiable claims as “irrefutable evidence,” and I don’t think this is very fair. David Hume talks about the logical fragility of propositions arrived at based solely on observable phenomenon, stating that there cannot be an “necessary” link proving causality or other relationship in any way more certain that repetitive association. Indeed, to offer the “irrefutableness” of empirical observation is merely to appeal to empiricism to justify itself; something we might take as a very common-sense thing to do (I can see it and touch it, therefore it’s real!) but is not a strictly logical conclusion. That’s why I accuse this line of thinking as circular.
2) Granted, the scientific method IS able to grant us a kind of comfortable certainty about certain parts of reality, but it is unable to tell us everything about the universe. The examples Dr. Craig lists (logical and mathematical truths, ethical normatives, even science itself) can none of them be “proven” by the scientific method, as he says, science merely *assumes* mathematical and logical truths, and does not prove them. The proposition “A is A” and “A is not B” cannot be arrive at by a strictly empirical method.
3) Philosophy, however, CAN deal with these matters. Philosophy, real philosophy, is not the mere conjecture of the opinions of learned men and women, but a detailed and systematic pursuit of truth via reasoned argumentation, logical proofs, and comprehensive essays. It is with these tools that philosophy can obtain “irrefutable” proof of certain laws (such as the laws of logic and mathematics) without the clunky and problematic assumptions necessary for empiricism.
i think you mis-defined science as *just* about empiricism. i can think of fields of study that have no observable phenomena but are generally accepted as science ex string theory and more generally mathematics; these are certainly not referred to as philosophy. further, by your definition of philosophy, it might be argued that it is merely a subset of mathematics like logic, set theory, etc.
So you find my definition of science as empiricism too narrow? The wiki entry for “science” does some good in helping explain the different uses of that word, but whatever the case, I think my issues remain.
The lauded “testableness” of natural science (the term I’ll now use) is exactly what makes it unable to justify itself or any of its presuppositions. You DO need to import something else to back science, and if you want to add mathematics and “pure” logic to the mix, as you seem to be proposing, then we now have a rational methodology which absolutely supports metaphysics. If we make that move, something I’m more than happy to do, we can no longer engage Christianity as “mere superstition,” “wish-fulfillment” or any of the other straw-man arguments people try to mount in order to dismiss it. It cannot be dismissed at that point merely because it falls outside of “observable” phenomenon, for we have added pure reasoning to our trusted methodologies, and from then on, empirical standards need not be the end-all.
I am for consistency.
The weaker part of your piece may lie in your evaluation of the scientific method as non sufficient because it assumes itself to be true. “pure” Logic also does this baseline with the law of non contradiction.
(I do agree however with the spirit and majority of your blog. It would seem the baby went out with the bath water post-enlightenment)