Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Jerry Coyne's Scientific Faith: Is science more rational than religion? Part II

In his USA Today article on Monday, biologist Jerry Coyne declared that science is rational, while religion is not. And, remarkably he did it largely without employing the rationality he professes to champion. He makes neither a historical nor a philosophical case--possibly because he is neither a historian nor a philosopher, a contingency that quite possibly accounts for his uninformed statements about the issue.

Alfred North Whitehead once compared the Christian Middle Ages--which, according to Coyne's thesis ought to be the high tide if irrationality--with the so-called "Age of Reason": "The earlier period," said Whitehead, "was the age of faith based upon reason. In the later period, they let sleeping dogs lie: it was the age of reason based upon faith."
Science has never shaken off the impress of its origin in the historical revolt of the later Renaissance. It has remained predominantly an anti-rationalistic movement, based upon a naive faith.
Whitehead, one of the 20th century's great philosophers and mathematicians, wondered why it was that scientists had ignored the 18th century criticisms of its foundations by philosopher David Hume. Hume showed that (once you rejected the Aristotelian-Thomistic synthesis that reigned up until the Renaissance) there were some things you had to give up. Among them was the pretension that the basic assumptions behind science were rational. And so he goes on to show that the process of induction and the concept of cause and effect are entirely non-rational in their origins. There is simply no way to justify them on the basis of reason.

Induction relies on the basic assumption that the future will always be like the past. But this is an entirely non-rational assumption and can never be proved. Causation too is an entirely metaphysical concept with no empirical backing. All you can prove is that you have seen physical correlations. But, as scientist are always reminding us (but never heeding themselves) that correlation is not causation. You can never produce a cause, all you can produced are the two events that happen to always occur in a sequence.

"Our holy religion," said the empiricist Hume, "is founded on faith."

In fact, what very few people seem to have noticed is that Coyne and his fellow New Athiests have, within their own position, an inherent incompatibility. On the one hand they hold to a naive materialism in the name of "empiricism"; on the other hand they house a physicist contingent that has redefined the very idea of matter in such a way as to make materialism meaningless.

In fact, far from being rationalists, the practitioners of the natural sciences are anti-rationalists. There has long been an uneasy alliance between the mathematical sciences and the empirical sciences, with the mathematical rationalism of disciplines like physics often attracting the derision of their colleagues in the natural sciences. The physicists, on the other hand look down on the natural scientists as being philosophically and mathematically naive.

Far from enjoying a happy marriage of rationality and empiricism, science (in the abstract and dogmatic sense in which people like Coyne use the term) houses an intrinsically estranged pair of squabbling disciplines. The more mathematical and rationalist science gets, the less empirical it becomes, and the more empirical it becomes, the less rational and mathematical it is forced to be.

"Insofar as the propositions of mathematics give an account of reality they are not certain," said Einstein, "and insofar as they are certain they do not describe reality."

The only thing incompatible with science is science itself.

To be continued...

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Coyne is giving a talk to UK bio this evening.

Singring said...

'Induction relies on the basic assumption that the future will always be like the past. But this is an entirely non-rational assumption and can never be proved.'

How on earth is this a non rational assumption?

We have several hundred years of scientific history for which very precise measurements of various natural constants are available - and the data shows that they do not change over time. Therefore it is utterly rational to assume that they will not change in the foreseeable future.

Clutching at straws again, Martin.

'All you can prove is that you have seen physical correlations.'

So? The stronger the correlation the more reasonable it is to accept the conclusion derived from it.

'Causation too is an entirely metaphysical concept with no empirical backing.'

This just kills me. You blow first cause arguments for God clean out of the water with this statement.

Well done!

'There has long been an uneasy alliance between the mathematical sciences and the empirical sciences'

Very good point.

'Far from enjoying a happy marriage of rationality and empiricism, science (in the abstract and dogmatic sense in which people like Coyne use the term) houses an intrinsically estranged pair of squabbling disciplines.'

Correct. But it all comes down to empirical data in the end.

Remember how a few weeks ago you yourself pointed oout that string theory was not being accepted by teh scientific community yet?

Why was that again?

I remember: Because they have no empirical data to back up the model!

In science, unless you have the emprirical data, you have nothing but a fancy set of ideas.

Martin Cothran said...

Singring,

Let me get this straight... after just chiding me for what you (mistakenly) thought was circular reasoning you are now arguing for induction on the basis of induction?

Your argument amounts to saying that we have a rational basis for believing that the future will be like the past because the future has always been like the past.

Wow.

Singring said...

'Your argument amounts to saying that we have a rational basis for believing that the future will be like the past because the future has always been like the past.'

Exactly.

I cannot for the life of me see how that does not make sense to you. It's the most patently rational assumption (note: assumption, not certainty) we can arrive at.

Are you trying to tell me it is irrational for me to expect that the sun will rise tomorrow because all the evidence we have suggests that it has done so for the past few billion years and there are no indications to suggest it will not do so tomorrow?

How so?

'Let me get this straight... after just chiding me for what you (mistakenly) thought was circular reasoning you are now arguing for induction on the basis of induction?'

I am not arguing for induction on the basis of induction. I am arguing for induction on the basis that it is the only thing we HAVE. We arrive at decisions about the validity of models based on their reflection of reality and their predictive value.

How would you arrive at the conclusion that the sun will rise tomorrow?

Martin Cothran said...

Singring:

I didn't question the form of argumentation being valid, it is of course, I questioned the specific argument YOU were making. The argument was: 'The universe is contingent becasue it is not necessary!'. You were supporting an assertion by asserting that the inverse of the assertion was false.

I think you are just all confused here. You seem to be saying that you have no problem with the argument form being valid, but when I use that exact form it's not valid. That makes absolutely no sense at all. And no valid form is circular either.

At this point you rattling around aimlessly with no apparent point. Either the argument form I used is valid or not. If it is, then you're only choice is to attack the premises. Which one of my premises do you challenge?

Martin Cothran said...

I am not arguing for induction on the basis of induction. I am arguing for induction on the basis that it is the only thing we HAVE. We arrive at decisions about the validity of models based on their reflection of reality and their predictive value.

How would you arrive at the conclusion that the sun will rise tomorrow?


You seem to think that I reject induction. Where did I do that?

Singring said...

'I think you are just all confused here.'

You know, that tends to happen when I ask someone why the universe is contingent and the response I get is 'because the universe is self-evidently not necessary!'.

Its as if I asked someone if objects of mass were attracted to other objects of mass and instead of saying:

'Yes they do, because scientists have conducted multiple experiments spanning hundreds of years that demonstrate that this is the case. You can check the data in the published literature for yourself.'

they replied:

'Why of course they do, because objects of mass are not repelled by each other! That's self-evident!'

Perhpas that illustration helps you understand the point I'm making.

'Which one of my premises do you challenge?'

That the universe is not necessary. You claimed that this was 'self-evident', which is just another way of saying 'I just assert that this is so'.

For someone who despises unfounded assertions so much you do an awful lot of asserting, Martin.

Singring said...

'You seem to think that I reject induction. Where did I do that?

So you don't reject induction?

Then why do you say things like this:

'Induction relies on the basic assumption that the future will always be like the past. But this is an entirely non-rational assumption and can never be proved.'

Are you saying that you are non-rational because you accept induction?

I'll gladly file you under 'non-rational' if that's what you want, Martin.

Martin Cothran said...

Singring,

This is what I mean by saying that you are confused. I said that induction had no rational basis. It is based on faith, nothing more, that the future will be like the past. You interpreted this as my saying that I rejected induction on the assumption that if you don't think something has a rational basis, it must therefore be rejected.

Now I have to come along and point out the simple fact that just because something is based on non-rational assumptions it need not be rejected. Hume (whose historic argument on this you seem completely unfamiliar with) didn't reject induction after he had shown it to has a non-rational basis. He just pointed out that we accept such things in accordance with custom and habit. They are not deductively derived; They are intuitions.

How on earth is this a non rational assumption?

We have several hundred years of scientific history for which very precise measurements of various natural constants are available - and the data shows that they do not change over time. Therefore it is utterly rational to assume that they will not change in the foreseeable future.


You're not even comprehending the argument, which is clear by the fact that you keep making the same logical mistake: you keep trying to justify induction by appealing to induction. This is completely circular. I've pointed this out already and you keep doing it.

You can't say "I know past experience yields truth because it has always done so in my past experience," or "things always happen the same way in the future as they have happened in the past because it is always happened that way in the past."

I strongly suggest you go read the Stanford Encyclopedia article on the problem of induction. You seem to think I've just come up with this point out of nowhere, Hume's argument is about as airtight an argument as exists in the whole history of philosophy.

If you want to stick your head in the sand on this, then go right ahead, but you're not impressing anybody.

Anonymous said...

So, did you go to the talk?

Martin Cothran said...

Didn't go to the talk. Had a friend's 30th anniversary dinner to go to. Can you give us a report?

Singring said...

'You're not even comprehending the argument, which is clear by the fact that you keep making the same logical mistake: you keep trying to justify induction by appealing to induction. This is completely circular. I've pointed this out already and you keep doing it.'

I justify induction by comparing its predictive value against the evidence. That is not circular, it is evidence-based rationality. We have used induction to predict basic things about the future since we evolved self-awareness and so far it has not failed. THAT'S why we use induction and THAT'S why we can say its rational - because its predictions match reality pretty well.

It seems to me that we are using different definitions of the word 'rational'. You seem to think that only things that can be proved without the shadow of a doubt can be held rationally, a patently absurd position to take.

I think that any position that is supported by empirical evidence and reality or that follows from these is rational to hold.

'said that induction had no rational basis. It is based on faith, nothing more, that the future will be like the past.'

What nonsense!

As I said we have thousands of years of data that match the predictions induction has made about the future. Using induction, we can calculate down to a millisecond at what time the sun will crest the horizon in Paris in the year 3000 if nothing catastrophic happens to us in the meantime. In the absence of any data suggesting such catastrophe, it is perfectly rational (based on the evidence!) to assume that the sun will rise at precisely that time in Paris in the year 3000.

How on earth does this require any faith at all? Faith is belief in the absence of evidence - making inductions based on past data is the exact opposite.

'You can't say "I know past experience yields truth because it has always done so in my past experience," or "things always happen the same way in the future as they have happened in the past because it is always happened that way in the past."'

Of course I can't say things will ALWAYS happen the way they did in th epast or that I KNOW past experience yields truth! I never claimed any of that. You keep speaking in terms of certainty, when I have clearly stated that all we can do is make evidence based inductions that may or may not be true. However, based on past results, we can be pretty confident that our inductive reasoning is accurate, but we can never be sure.

Are you honestly going to tell me that if I asked you whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow you would say: 'Well, chances are 50:50' or 'Maybe it will, maybe it won't, I don't think it's very likely.' If you did think this way you wouldn't be able to function as a human being.

It's really fascinating to see you argue like this Martin. It appears you lack the ability to accept things tentatively or only with a limited degree of confidence. For you, things are either one thing or the other, true or false. Of course if you think like that induction will appear to be irrational because it can never provide absolute proof of anything!

By the way...

I note with interest that you once again failed to provide any argument in support of the universe being contingent or any argument why philosophy could tell us whether or not science can tell us something is true or not in any given instance.