Luiseach

Hi Hugo:

Sorry again for the question...I was reading along with the developing conversation and sometimes these tangential queries pop into my head and I say 'Hmmm, what is the difference between truth and knowledge anyway...I wonder if any of these folks have asked themselves that, as I often have, and can contribute to my edification.'

I am plagued by such questions...another thing - I am a literary critic, not a philosopher, and so I'm trying to enter the conversation sideways, to get the lay of the land as it were, get comfy-womfy with the lingo. Hence the question...

So if I am to contribute in some way to your analysis, I will most likely read the linked article as the literary critic I am, but if I cannot contribute anything worthwhile, I'll enjoy watching the debate anyway.

dublczek

I have been following this thread since its beginning. Just because you are charitable does not mean others will be. I suggest you ignore them and continue on from where you left off. Please reconsider and remember the spirit of your first post in this thread. It would be a shame to see this thread die.

Luiseach

Seconded with much enthusiasm...

Luiseach

To be perfectly clear: I was offering an explanation for posing my wee 'aside' question.

I wasn't re-posing the question.

Hugo Holbling

Given that i have received such kind words of support and an explicit request to continue, i shall see what comes of trying again.

Gill begins his article with a discussion of various ideas from the past and goes on to contrast them with science:

He is quite mistaken, as any study of the history of science would show. This is why i brought up the subject in the first place; in particular, the quest for meaningful demarcation criteria was relevant because it demonstrates how various thinkers have struggled to frame any discussion of science in methodological terms that would take into account the varied history of the discipline in which scientists refused to play by any rules. An example (which Joel rightly queried) is the atomic theory, which was discarded but not forgotten by those commited to theory more than experiment, famous examples being Einstein, Millikan, and the amusing contests at Alpbach between Ehrenhaft and the theoretical physicists. The very basic point is that Gill's assertion is simplistic and not borne out by a close study of the field.

Gill then goes on to discuss the philosophy of science in a way that merely prompts the informed reader into questioning why he fails to provide any depth in his account. He does not move beyond a naive falsificationism while ignoring the theory-laden aspect of facts or the under-determinancy of theories. Since it is unlikely that he is unaware of these aspects, the only charitable explanation that would appear to apply is that he is not seeking to overwhelm the reader with ideas: this is a reasonable approach, so long as he does not come to sweeping conclusions.

Gill then declares:

Here he segues into metaphysics himself without bringing the move to the attention of the reader. It is not at all obvious that we have knowledge "of material things", that our access to matter is "direct", or that our measurements provide us with information as to its "change of states". All of these claims are metaphysical and subject to considerable attack (and often unrelenting skepticism) in the philosophy of science by (variously) instrumentalists, irrealists and anti-realists, as any textbook will show. To placate any realists, we may state the caveat that there may be an external world with these properties and that calling these claims metaphysical in no way implies the thesis that there is no reality.

As for his additional statement, it is unfortunate also that verificationism is yet another criterion that was found to be flawed and the claim that metaphysical knowledge cannot be verified while scientific knowledge can is no argument at all unless or until the reader is satisfied that Tarski's reply to Church was adequate. Once again, an area of some controversy is brushed aside a little too quickly.

Next Gill remarks that "there is no absolute certainty of [the] veracity" of metaphysical epistemology, but this does not help his case because the same may be said of science - as even positivists today admit. When he moves on to discuss the so-called laws of nature, he does not mention the conditional sense in which they are understood today (cf. Dretske, for example), the considerable criticism directed at them (for example, van Fraassen), nor that they fail to surmount Goodman's paradox unless we admit that they are assumed in order to provide us with the possibility of prediction (but not explanatory power). Indeed, Dretske comments that "unless a statement of law goes beyond what is asserted by such universal truths, unless it asserts something that cannot be completely verified (even with a complete enumeration of its instances), it cannot be confirmed and used for predictive purposes." To do so, he writes, "we require an ontological ascent." He is able to avoid the charge of Platonism (which he brings up himself) because he asserts the conditional nature of such laws, whereas Gill's account is metaphysical.

The next move Gill makes is to explain that approaches vary between differing metaphysics and religions, but this applies equally to science precisely because a unified methodology has yet to be found (and appears impossible in principle), in spite of the want of physicists to propose theirs as the surpreme example. He claims moreover that "blind faith in an Omnipotent God has sealed the minds of many people", but the same may be said of many dogmatists in the history of science who disagreed with the plain implications of experimental results on theoretic grounds or by refusing to countenance the possibility that their ideas could be mistaken. (The problem for a unified account, yet again, is that some of them were correct to do so, at least according to the realist reading.) In addition, this same "blind faith" has opened the minds of those theists who contributed to the foundations, growth and modern sucesses of science; indeed, we are left to wonder how it was that science came about at all if the theologically minded were so opposed to it, and not just in the Christian world. It seems rather more plausible that the hermetic injunction "as above, so below" and the generic theistic belief that (whatever) God had ordained the universe to run in an orderly fashion and who's laws could be discovered by man were at least contributory to the rise and methodologies of science.

In concluding his piece, Gill offers several sweeping statements that are quite clearly in error. Firstly:

Instead, the common person continues to take an interest in these concepts and to explore them with or without the inane baggage that Gill sees as attendent.

Secondly:

Instead, we have touched (briefly) on the common theistic injunction to explore our universe, with theists making up some of the most inventive and undogmatic scientists. I will not comment on the nonsensical conception of all theists believing blindly in a rigid understanding of their respective holy books.

In summary, Gill has failed to establish a meaningful demarcation between scientific and metaphysical epistemologies. I attribute this to his article being intended for a general readership, but it hardly bears mentioning that no-one with an interest in this question can be convinced by it.

I hope that this piece is satisfactory to those who asked me to continue, although i may have written it rather too quickly. I should appreciate it if any criticisms are accompanied by suggestions as to how to achieve the distinction that i think Gill has missed. Finally, i was not kidding about having little time to keep up with the pace of several respondants, so i ask for your patience.

Dominus Paradoxum

Well, I'd have to say that I agree with your last post pretty much completely. At first I admit I had you pegged as a typical relativist/post-modernist who was trying to say science was just an arbirtray social construct. I apologise for jumping to conclusions.

Btw, while I agree that it is true that science could not have gotten started without the conception of a rationally ordered universe, theology has indeed made many attempts to thwart science, as Mr. White has amply demonstrated.

Celsus

Hi Hugo,

Well you've got yourself a veritable fan club, and I've got my foot in my mouth to show for this thread. Anyway, I appreciate your response(s), and I think you will find that I am the one having trouble keeping up with all of your replies. Will get to all of this soon (starting with your email).

Joel

Hugo Holbling

DP:

No need to apologise, but thanks anyway.

[Note to Joel: stop reading here and guess what i'll say in response. ]

This is only a minor point, but here is an essay by our own Bede which disagrees. I don't think White is regarded too highly in scholarly circles these days (although i may be mistaken), so perhaps Lindberg would be a better source?

Hell no, i just didn't want another interesting discussion to become autistic theorising - and i'm just as much to blame for that.

I look forward to your response. Perhaps you'd have a crack at defending and opposing Gill yourself?

Bede

Repeating something I posted elsewhere that even managed to shut Butters up, a feat previously thought to be impossible. Let me know if you want references to particular points.

A lot of posters here are still hooked on the idea of the historical conflict between science and religion. The most famous and successful exponent was Andrew Dickson White who is commonly quoted at the start of modern books on science and religion as representing the soon to be debunked traditional view. It is worth briefly examining whether White was being entirely honest in his work as no one doubts that John William Draper (another Victorian writer found at the Positive Atheism website) was engaged in anything more that polemic. Neither were professional historians and both did seem to sincerely believe in the warfare theory they were expounding. Unfortunately, this meant that they set out to prove what they already believed rather than take their conclusions from the facts. White is quite explicit about this when he writes “I saw that it was the conflict between two epochs in the evolution of human thought -- the theological and the scientific.” Any such statement should immediately set off alarm bells which grow louder as we look at his work. His usual tactics are to scour the sources for some stick-in-the-mud reactionary and claim this represents the consensus of religious opinion and then find another thinker (who is usually just as faithful a Christian as the reactionary) who turned out to be right, and claim that they represent reason. Hence using anachronism and claiming obscure figures were in fact influential, he is able to manufacture a conflict where none exists. His fantastical treatment of the flat earth in ch 2 (which was never believed in by the church) is a case in point. In fact, a part from the odd nutter, no Christian thinker ever believed in a flat earth, the church never had it as a doctrine (even though the Bible does imply the earth was flat) and certainly no one was persecuted for believing it. Try figuring all that out from White.

A detailed critique of his work from Lindberg and Numbers exists but I would like to point out a few errors in the specific area of religious persecution of scientists.

His examples of actual prosecution are few and far between which is not very surprising as the only scientist the Christian Church ever prosecuted for scientific ideas per se was Galileo and even here historians doubt that was the major reason he got into trouble. This is an embarrassment for White as he thought that in the Middle Ages especially, the Church was burning freethinkers left, right and centre. The lack of any examples of this at all is a serious problem so he is forced to draft in non-scientists or else to claim that prosecutions on non-scientific matters were scientific persecutions after all. Here are some examples:

- Roger Bacon has been a popular martyr for science since the nineteenth century. He was a scholastic theologian who was keen to claim Aristotle for the Christian faith. He was not a scientist in any way we would recognise and his ideas are not nearly so revolutionary as they are often painted. In chapter 12 of his book, White writes of Roger “the charges on which St. Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli imprisoned him, and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, were "dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery.” This is untrue. As Lindberg says “his imprisonment, if it occurred at all (which I doubt) probably resulted with his sympathies for the radical “poverty” wing of the Franciscans (a wholly theological matter) rather than from any scientific novelties which he may have proposed.”

- In chapter 2, White informs us “In 1327 Cecco d’Ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this [the doctrine of antipodes] and other results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery, driven from his professorship at Bologna and burned alive at Florence.” Cecco D’Ascoli was indeed burnt at the stake in 1327 in Florence. He is the only natural philosopher in the entire Middle Ages to pay this penalty and was executed for breaking parole after a previous trial when he had been convicted of heresy for, apparently, claiming the life of Jesus Christ was subject to the stars. This is not enough for White who claims, entirely without foundation, that Cecco met his fate partly for the scientific view that the antipodes were inhabited as well as dishonestly calling him an ‘astronomer’ rather than an ‘astrologer’ to strengthen his scientific credentials.

- In the same chapter White claims “In 1316 Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, having promulgated this [the habitation of the antipodes] with other obnoxious doctrines in science, only escaped the Inquisition by death.” We have no good evidence that d’Abano was under investigation from the inquisition at his death. However, he did gain a posthumous reputation as a sorcerer when spurious works were attributed to him. This may have led to the reports of his bones being dug up and burnt after his death. There is again, no evidence whatsoever that the antipodes debate or science had anything to do with the matter.

- It is hard to confirm some of White’s victims existed at all. “The chemist John Barrillon was thrown into prison,” he says in chapter 12 “and it was only by the greatest effort that his life was saved.” The great historian of science, George Sarton, with a better knowledge of the sources of anyone before or since, says this episode is ‘completely unknown’ to him. Needless to say, White gives no reference.

- Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, is also held up as a martyr to science. White explains in chapter 13 “Vesalius was charged with dissecting a living man, and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II admit, he became a wanderer: on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, apparently undertaken to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to the world…. His death was hastened, if not caused, by men who conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion.” The trouble is that hardly a word of this has any basis in historical fact. Vesalius did go on a pilgrimage and was drowned. But there is no hint he was ever prosecuted and the idea his death was hastened by those who supposed he was injuring religion is simply wrong .

- Discussing the heliocentric system, White goes on “Many minds had received it [the doctrine of Copernicus], but within the hearing of the papacy only one tongue appears to have dared to utter it clearly. This new warrior was that strange mortal, Giordano Bruno. He was hunted from land to land, until at last he turned on his pursuers with fearful invectives. For this he was entrapped at Venice, imprisoned during six years in the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome, then burned alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds.” In fact, we do not know the exact reasons Bruno was prosecuted but modern scholars like Frances Yates suggest it was because he was a magus who was trying to start a new neo-Platonic religion. He did believe the earth revolved around the sun but this was purely for religious reasons as he effectively worshipped it. In any case, it was incidental to his fate as were his other pseudo-scientific ideas.

One would like to the charitable view that White really believed his theory and was not making up evidence to support a position he knew to be false. Instead, he skews the evidence by accepting that which agrees with his hypothesis while being sceptical of what does not. This means that he has included falsehoods that he would have noticed if he had taken a properly objective attitude towards all his evidence. The points given above together with Numbers and Lindberg’s criticisms noted in their article are sufficient, however, to prove White’s work as utterly worthless as history.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Luiseach

*bump*