The blogosphere is abuzz over the recent article in the NY Times by physicist Paul Davies. In the article Davies has a go at repackaging the old fallacy that science requires blind faith in the orderliness of nature.
Taking Science on Faith
By PAUL DAVIES
SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.
The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified. (continued here...)
But hang on, science doesn't presume orderliness, it just looks for it. Scientists examine various phenomena looking for reliable relationships between things -- rules that reality seems to hold to most of the time -- and sometimes they find them and sometimes they don't.
"Ah, but you wouldn't look for these reliable relationships and orderliness unless you believed (i.e., had faith) it was there" Davies might say.
Um, no! One looks for something because one entertains the possibility that it might be there.
For instance, let's say that I was playing a game of hide and seek with the readers of this blog. You all hide, and I begin to search for you. And the first place I choose to look is in a cupboard.
"Why are you looking in the cupboard?" Davies might ask.
"To see if anyone is in there," I reply.
"So you expect someone might be in there. You believe they might be in there. You have faith that they might be in there? You must, otherwise you wouldn't look."
"Well, I think someone might be in there, and I'm putting that hypothesis to the test. I certainly think it is possible that no one will be in there, Paul."
Scientists don't need to believe in an orderly lawful universe, they just look for it and very often find it. But scientists are quite open to the possibility that they won't. That's completely different from religious faith.
More analysis of the Davies article can be found over at Edge.
2 comments:
Ah but you started looking for us in the first place because you were under the assumption/belief that we are going to be playing by the rules of the game. I wonder how long you would keep looking for us until you started to question whether we had not just gone home? Scientists have a baseline of beliefs in which they set a benchmark by - That is the universe is not random and is in fact governed by laws (which we defined). But what if we are just finding what we expected to find, the self fullfilling prophecy? It does take Scientists a long time to admit when they are wrong, and that is because their faith in the benchmarks are so damn strong. Im with Paul on this. I think scientists should theorise more like rule breaking artists. Painters like Monet and Van Gogh turned the benchmarks and rules upside down because they were not afraid to question whether the old rules were not just there to maintain boundaries and limitations. We humans thrive on limitations because if we have none we tend to go mad. But it is the mad ones who usually pave the way to new ways of seeing things.
Maybe the laws of the universe are only there because we want to see them.
Next time you play hide and seek, why not try eating ants instead, you never know what will come of it.
Ok i win then, cool.
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