Re: Faith and Science (was comm.)

Posted by Russ Abbott on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-comm-was-Re-FW-Re-Emergence-Seminar-BritishEmergence-tp3654051p3663513.html

Eric, your message confused me. You start out by saying that you thought you were "defending the real." Yet as I read it your message is entirely about what people believe -- their "faith" as you say. How would your position apply, for example, to the "scientific" study of astrology by "scientists" who had faith in astrology?  How would it distinguish between astrology and astronomy -- or would it distinguish between the two?  I don't understand where you are coming from.

-- Russ_A

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 6:55 AM, ERIC P. CHARLES <[hidden email]> wrote:

Trying to reply in a single inquiry to all emails in the thread:

Actually, I thought I was defending the real! Miles had suggested that scientists should know better than to believe in the real, and I was saying "quite the opposite".

I argued that it serves scientists well to believe that what they are studying is real (hence the reference to faith). For example: People who study personality believe that the word "personality" refers to a real phenomenon, a real happening in the world. At the least, they routinely convince me that they think it is real. This is the standard, lay use of the word "real", which conforms reasonably well to many (but not all) philosophical specifications of the term.

Now I do not believe in "personality", at least not in the way those researchers do, but most of them don't believe in "perception" the way I think perception works. What goes on at the higher levels is a war over what is "real". In Science (with a capital S), we like to think that will be decided on the merits of empirical evidence (which again necessitates belief in the real). I get the impression that if any researchers, in psychology, chemistry, physics, art, history of Europe, etc., stopped believing they were studying something real, the whole enterprise would fall apart. Given that many of these endeavors do, in the long run, produce useful things, it would be sad to see them go. Thus, there is good reason for scientists to have faith in the reality of what they are studying.

I remember old-timers (heh, heh, heh) telling me stories about the initial release of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. My understanding is that a reasonable percentage (say 5-15%) of scientists simply could not go about their business after reading Kuhn. This because the book, on some level, shattered their ability to believe what they were doing was real.

Eric

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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