Vanderzyden

Vorkosigan,

The scientific method has five steps:

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

5. Refinement of the hypothesis based on experimental results.

Comment on step 1: Observation isn't necesssarily direct. Consider the human mind, for example. On your view, Vorko, study of the human consciousness is examination of that which is non-natural.

For steps 2 through 5, the presuppositions of the scientist will have direct bearing on what is taken into consideration. He will draw particular conclusions if he believes that design and purpose are inherent in the subject of investigation--this is the position of the theistic realist. Similarly, methodological naturalism is INDEED DISTINCT from the scientific method and entails a pre-scientific systematic exclusion of the non-natural (supernatural, invisible).

Albion

There is nothing pre-scientific about excluding supernatural causes from scientific investigations. That's how science has always been done, regardless of the religious beliefs of the scientists. How do you propose to design experiments to test a hypothesis while including the possibility of divine intervention? What's the equation for God? Divine intervention can be whatever you want it to be, and it doesn't have to stay within the bounds of the laws of nature, so how could you study it by methods bound by the parameters of the laws of nature? Since science is and always has been defined in terms of NATURAL causes (that's why it's still called natural science in a number of universities), that excludes supernatural causes BY DEFINITION.

TooBad

So if a theistic realist observes a living cell, and hypothesizes that Divine Purpose played a causative role in the formation of its structure, how are steps 3 and 4 likely to proceed? What sort of quantitative predictions might be thought to follow, and how might these be put to experimental test?

Quetzal

Listen up, everyone. We're still permitting Vanderzyden to define the terms of this discussion by allowing him/her to get away with conflating methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. Although briefly addressed on the other thread, Vanderzyden has been able to avoid admitting to this obvious fallacy. Let me try and clarify things.

Hey, Vanderzyden, here's a quick, overly simplistic primer on the two concepts that even YOU should be able to grasp:

methodological naturalism: an epistemology that uses nature and natural processes to describe nature and natural processes. Methodological naturalism = science.

metaphysical naturalism: the belief that nature and natural processes are the only things that exist. Metaphysical naturalism = philosophy.

Dawkins uses methodological naturalism in his research and in all his peer-reviewed papers. Every scientist does. Even Behe, one of the high priests of the ID movement, used methodological naturalism in those few peer-reviewed papers he published way back when. It is the only way known to obtain consistent, independendently verifiable results.

Dawkins propounds - often vociferously - in his popular writings (including the anti-creationist "Blind Watchmaker") and speeches the philosophy of metaphysical naturalism. Behe, on the other hand, rejects metaphysical naturalism as a philosophical position inconsistent with his idea of an ill-defined "designer". In both cases, this is their opinion, not a scientific position.

Your entire argument rests on the conflation of these two - completely separate and practically unrelated - concepts. You CAN have one without the other, and as they are not incompatible, you can have both.

I challenge you, on the other hand, to show an example of ANY scientist who uses an epistemology that includes some kind of "supernatural" explanation or methodology to understand nature. By definition, this individual cannot be doing science, since science does not - cannot - include supernatural explanations by definition.

Albion

You don't suppose Vanderzyden is really Phillip Johnson, do you? The arguments are depressingly familiar.

hezekiah jones

Pure, unadulterated Alvin Plantinga, without the Ernan McMullin antidote.

Vorkosigan

Originally posted by Vanderzyden:
The scientific method has five steps:
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
5. Refinement of the hypothesis based on experimental results.

Lots of layman think this, so don't feel bad that you are only about fifty years behind in the philosophy of science....
<a href="http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/bridgman.htm" target="_blank">In short, science is what scientists do, and there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists.</a>

You might try also reading For and Against Method: Including Lakatos's Lectures on Scientific Method and the Lakatos-Feyerabend Correspondence edited by Lakatos. Giere's Explaining Science is also good. A simple way to verify this would to type "no one scientific method," in Google, with quotes, and watch the sites fall out. You can read many points of view about the philosophy of science.

Comment on step 1: Observation isn't necesssarily direct. Consider the human mind, for example. On your view, Vorko, study of the human consciousness is examination of that which is non-natural.

Huh? Consciousness is most emphatically a natural phenomen amenable to scientific study. You have obviously misread my views completely.

...theistic realist. Similarly, methodological naturalism is INDEED DISTINCT from the scientific method and entails a pre-scientific systematic exclusion of the non-natural (supernatural, invisible).

Obviously, you didn't read a word I wrote. METHODOLOGICAL naturalism IS the basis of science, and all working scientists work within the framework of MN. Since various proto-sciences existed prior to the development of western science, it is obvious that MN grew up during and after the development of science, and thus cannot be considered "pre-scientific," except by people who know nothing about the development of science. A good intro work is the textbook Science and Culture in the Western Tradition. Long before people formulated an explicit philosophy of MN, they were thinking in recognizably scientific ways (see, for example, Agricola's On Metals, 1552).

METAPHYSICAL Naturalism is a philosophical system. It is not used by scientists in their work, although many subscribe to it.

The framework of five steps you posted above is not the scientific method, but simply one possible (and VERY incomplete) way to do perform a limited form of scientific inquiry. For example, your "method" does not address various sciences that do not often advance by experiment, such as paleontology or astronomy. Nor did you say anything about logical/mathematical modeling, publication, credit, openness, standards and measurement, and so on. In short, nobody could possibly do science using your method.

In any case, we are breathlessly awaiting your explanation of the chromosome difference between the other apes and H. sapiens, and those pesky fused telomeres.

Vorkosigan

[ August 14, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

bluefugue

And it goes back well into the ancient world, no? For instance, how scientific would you consider Galen's anatomical studies (c.2nd/3rd century A.D. or thereabouts) to be? Or the brilliant, albeit erroneous, astronomical theory of Ptolemy in the Almagest etc.?

[ August 14, 2002: Message edited by: IesusDomini ]</p>

Vorkosigan

That's an interesting debate. Certainly Galen is a lot closer than Ptolemy (did he derive circular orbits from observational data, or from prior beliefs about the perfection of circles and their relationship to heavenly bodies?)

I generally like to point to Agricola because he took a pretty amazing step in <a href="http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/treasures/science/agricola.html" target="_blank">De Re Metallica</a>, which was tossing out both religion and magic as explanations. He didn't really arrive at an explicit and formal ideal of methodological naturalism, but he set his foot on the right road.

Have you read Cromer's Uncommon Sense: The Heretical Nature of Science? He makes a strong case for the origins of science in Greece. I don't agree with him, but the book is written for non-specialists and is enjoyable and informative.

bluefugue

No, I haven't read that, but I remember Sagan discussing Cromer in "The Demon-Haunted World." Sagan offered, as a counter-example, Kalahari hunters who used sophisticated observation and induction methods to track prey, etc. Apparently Sagan felt that at least the germs of scientific thought are present in many cultures (Mayan astronomy also comes to mind). I offhand don't know where a country like China, which was technologically so far ahead of Europe in many ways, fits into all this, or to what extent anything like a scientific methodology existed there in the middle ages or ancient times...

Any culture with a highly developed technology must have adopted some degree of methodological naturalism in order to achieve that technology, no? A certain degree of experimentation, deduction, observation, and articulation of general principles, are all required for major technological achievements going back millennia before the Greeks -- i.e. the Egyptian pyramids, which certainly were not built with prayer. I guess there is a distinction between mere technological advancement and "pure" scientific thought, however.