SCIENCE AND THE IRRATIONAL — AGAIN
"Maybe so, but once religious inspiration got the project of science going, there was no longer any need for religion, and science has fared quite well without that noxious body of superstitious mumbo-jumbo." Both Anthony Pagden and Bertrand Russell may be imagined to make this highly effective retort. As Holton and Roller observe: "In modern science, personal philosophic persuasions do not intrude explicitly into the published work — not because they are nonexistent, but because they are expendable.(emphases original)"1
The scientific method, in short, is an impersonal, rational affair.
Holton and Roller outline the method used by Galileo in his Two New Sciences (italics original): "First, Galileo will discuss the mathematics of a possible, simple type of motion, namely, motion with constant acceleration. Then he will assume or hypothesize that this is the type of motion that a heavy body undergoes during free fall. Third, he will deduce from this hypothesis some predictions that are amenable to experimental tests. Lastly, he will show that these tests do indeed bear out the predictions, thus confirming the fundamental assumption, namely the constancy of acceleration in free fall." No wonder John Gribbin describes Galileo (and Gilbert) as the first scientists, as opposed to the last mystics, Brahe and Kepler! Where is there room for faith in the above procedure?
The procedure — used in scientific experiments — may be generalized thus:
If the hypothesis, H, is true, then the test implication, I, is true.
(As the evidence shows) The test implication, I, is true.
Therefore, the hypothesis, H, is true.
Or more succinctly:
If H is true, then I is true.
I is true (as the evidence shows)
Therefore, H is true.
In logic, this is known as the fallacy of affirming the consequent. Consider a similar argument:
If I am in Paris, I am in France.
I am in France.
Therefore, I am in Paris.
Both the premises may be true, and yet the conclusion can be completely false: I could be in any French city other than Paris (or in the lovely, subsidized French countryside!).
Now, let us extend the above schema:
If H is true, then I1, I2, ...In are true.
(As the evidence shows) I1, I2,...In are true.
Therefore, H is true.
And yet H may be entirely false.2
The upshot is momentous: no amount of favourable evidence can ever verify a scientific hypothesis as true.
What remains, then, but faith — the selfsame faith in the unseen, unknown and mysterious reality behind phenomenon so dreaded and lauded by people of a religious persuasion? The worship of science turns out to be as irrational as the worship of any deity.
This point was taken to its — logical — conclusion by the philosopher P. K. Feyerabend. He complains that many people take science to be the paradigmatic form of knowledge, rejecting other subjects as non-science (and almost, and sometimes definitely, nonsense). Since there is no rational criteria by which to judge a scientific belief system, one approach to interpretation of reality is as good as another.3 We have seen above the mutual hostility between science and logic — and logic must be our only guide to rationality (if not logic, then what else?). The logical mind is that which is amenable to reason and argumentation — which, when it accepts the premises of a valid argument as true, must accept the conclusion to be true also.
"One of the strangest arguments I have seen put forward — apparently seriously — is that using a word such as gravity to describe the cause of the fall of an apple from a tree is no less mystical than invoking 'God's will' to explain why the apple falls, since the word 'gravity' is just a label," complains John Gribbin. "The difference between the scientific description of how apples fall and the mystical description of how apples fall is that, whatever name you ascribe to the phenomenon, in scientific terms it can be described by a precise law (in this case, the inverse square law) and that the same law can be applied to the fall of an apple from a tree, the way the Moon is held in orbit around the earth and so on out into the universe."4 The long-suffering John Gribbin deserves a decent reply.
One can imagine a more sensible mystic arguing perhaps as follows: "But, John, the inverse square law has only been proven for a finite number of cases. Every successful verification of the inverse square law entails the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. Therefore, defining gravity in terms of the inverse square law is a circular procedure."
Indeed, the mystic might continue, when you go beyond the evidence, you are claiming that your belief in the inverse square law (or any scientific law) is evidence-transcendent. If you can be permitted this privilege, then why not I? For you accuse me of inconsistency when you say I hold three mutually incompatible premises to be true: (1) that God is good; (2) that He is omnipotent and (3) that He allows people to get hurt.
For I can reply, after your fashion, that the goodness of the deity is evidence-transcendent, just as the eternal truth of the inverse square law is evidence-transcendent. How do you and I differ?
Furthermore, I can be perfectly consistent after your fashion by introducing the devil as the one who allows people to get hurt, and not God, and that ultimately God will prevail; or I can, as the Gnostics maintained, affirm that God did not create the world, that he does not interact with an evil world, and that people get hurt because of the evil inherent in matter. "First of all, for the Gnostics, the true God is not the creator God, that is, Yahweh. The creation is the work of the lower or even diabolical powers, or, alternatively, the cosmos is the more or less demonic counterfeit of a superior world....Not only is the creation of the world no longer a proof of God's omnipotence; it is explained by an accident that occurred in the higher regions or as the result of the primordial aggression of Darkness against Light."5 Or I can, like the Buddhists, deny everything as illusion, and posit no God at all; or, like the Confucians, I can do away with the notion of God and gods and focus on the state, society and family....
The above paragraph is intended to impress on the reader the fact that the word 'religion' has, so far, not been defined at all: indeed, when it comes to talk about religion, the most slipshod methods are allowable.
The most comprehensive and exhaustive definition of religion known to the author is that put forward by Ninian Smart in his book The World's Religions.6
(1) First, there's the ritual dimension; (2) then there's the experiential or emotional aspect; (3) the narrative or mythical dimension; (4) the doctrinal dimension; (5) the ethical dimension; (6) the social and institutional aspects and (7) the material dimension.
Thus, practices and belief systems ranging from Christianity and Confucianism to Marxism, nationalism and democracy come under the definition of religion. We have already seen how the French revolution, and French nationalism, were religious phenomena, ones that persist to this day. The words "secular religion" do not constitute an oxymoron.7
Notes:
1 G. Holton and D.H.D. Roller, Foundations of Modern Physical Science, Addison-Wesley, 1959, p. 238
2 Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science, Prentice-Hall, 1966, p. 8
3 A.F. Chalmers, What is this thing called Science?, Open University Press, 1983, p. 140
4 John Gribbin, Science: A History 1543 – 2001, Penguin, 2003, pp. 615-6
5 Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Volume Two, trans. Willard R. Trask, University of Chicago Press, 1988, p. 373
6 Ninian Smart, The World's Religions, Prentice Hall, 1989, pp. 10-25
7 See my article on nationalism at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_iftekhar_070307_the_two_religions_of.htm, and on democracy as religion at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_iftekhar_070709_the_seven_dimensions.htm.
