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Don’t Tell the Authorities
7 CommentsPhilosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds. – attributed to Richard Feynman (h/t to Leiter Reports)
But perhaps philosophy of science might come in a little handy for scientists and the rest of us when we’re trying to respond to believers a bit more than “I’m not very religious, thanks”
We respond, especially in public forums, in the hope that somebody‘s listening, — it’s usually not the believer, unless that believer is one of those rare birds of that species for whom life is actually a dialogue, not a monologue.
“Here’s your bible,” they shout, and then point to something by Darwin. I can’t imagine missing the point worse. It’s like hollering “Here’s my Godfather of Soul” and pointing to that picture of the dogs playing poker. Not just pointing to Hannah Montana, but these guys.
It isn’t that Darwin isn’t the authority we all follow. Scientists and nontheists don’t have authorities. In fact, we’re lousy followers. That isn’t the way science, skepticism and nontheism work.
I think it was PZ Myers who said
Scientists have heroes, but they don’t have authorities.
Well, I guess that shows what kind of authority Myers is around these parts. I couldn’t even remember his name, but I enjoy reading what he says. It shows thought and wit.Believers can quote scripture (some of them love to quote scripture) till they’re blue in the face. They might as well be speaking Swahili. Worse than that — some of us actually know a few words of Swahili Authorities, holy or otherwise, just don’t mean that much to us, ahsante sana. They aren’t speaking our language. Speaking in tongues would work better.
Don’t tell the authorities. That is, don’t tell me the authorities you follow if you’re into that sort of thing.
Maybe believers should forget the scriptures for a while and try a little thought and wit. Maybe dogs should try playing poker. They can — not the dogs,silly, but anybody who’s halfway human can think and have a sense of humor and have wit enough to know when they’ve stopped communicating.
I’ve just done that. Fortunately I also stopped typing.
Published on April 14, 2008 · Filed under: Uncategorized; Tagged as: apologetics, evangelism, nontheism, philosophy, religion, science
7 Responses to “Don’t Tell the Authorities”
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Justin said on April 14th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Or, as in the title music to the computer game Civilization IV, they could quote scripture in Swahili. That happens to be a great piece of music as well, IMO.
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Justin said on April 14th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Tried to post this once before, apologies if it doubles up on you.
Or, as in the title music to the computer game Civilization IV, they could quote scripture in Swahili. That happens to be a great piece of music as well, IMO.
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tim said on April 14th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
This is a post I feel a responsibility to respond to, fancying myself acquainted with both things. And I’m not going to disagree with Rev Bob. But I will say there are different things that people think about when they say “philosophy of science.” One of those things is the philosophical implications of various scientific positions. (Determinism and the clockwork Newtonian universe, persistence and relativity, etc.) That’s what I would call philosophy of science. Another is what Bob seems to be talking about – the approach of scientists to their task.
The first of those is generally a fruitful field of study, even if Feynman isn’t much interested in it. (One might argue that this is what made Einstein the physicist he was: having the kind of larger view to ask not just what seemed to work, but what were the larger implications of, for example, Newtonian space-time.)
The second is argued with gusto by idiots who have made a cottage industry out of trying to prove that science has no special connection to the truth, but is instead just another source of knowing based on authority and sacred texts. Einstein and Darwin are authorities. Physical Review is a sacred text. Scientists believe Einstein because he was a prophet, and they believe what they read in Physical Review because they have faith that what is printed there is True. It’s nonsense, naturally; not that there aren’t kernels of fact in there, just that the idiots spinning theories around them get it wrong.
On the other hand, it is worth being careful about the line one draws between science and scientists. I mean, I’m certainly sympathetic to the idea that scientists are god-like creatures who have risen above the masses by virtue of their intelligence, vision, and training. But in practice, scientists are ordinary people, subject to the same kinds of psychologies that ordinary people are: scientists might, in fact, have authorities. And scientists might, like anyone else, be overly defensive of their team or pet theories. But science as a discipline and as a process doesn’t respect authority, only evidence.
Which leads me to the tiny irony and the Sokal hoax.
The tiny irony is that in a blog post about an absence of authorities, the opening cites an epigram (allegedly) from an authority. We are clearly to take the epigram as more authoritative because of its provenance. (It’s a small sin, and I am only using it for the transition.)
Those of you old enough to know the Sokal Hoax, and interested enough to get beyond the surface truthiness will know that Sokal had a harder time than he expected getting his nonsense into print. The editors were a little reluctant to publish it, though they did in the end. I don’t mean this as any defense of Social Text at all. But I do it to point out that anyone who has read the stuff of Social Text and of the Sokal article will recognize immediately that there are vast differences in style and tone. Sokal created a hoax, but he was unable to truly mimic the style and form of the articles he wished to parody. And one of the most important reasons he failed to do that was his failure to recognize the importance of authority in that kind of writing – or, at least, his inability to mimic it. The bread and butter of that sort of analysis is the compiling of authoritative quotes (they can be misunderstood or misused, of course, only the cumulative weight of authorities matters). And anyone who has ever tried to do both kinds of writing (scientific and authoritative) will understand that it is so much easier and more fun to do the latter.
There’s a narrow middle ground, of course, where authority is legitimate and citing authority is a reference to results. But the discipline to handle that sort of thing carefully requires work.
Just to add a crowning irony, here’s what CP Snow (now there’s an authority on philosophy and science!) had to say about the difference between doing science and doing other fields of study:
I think you can romanticize students’ reasons for not going into science. Largely its very hard work. Very much harder work than any arts subject except a difficult language. You really have got to spend most of your student life thinking about what you are doing. Well people don’t like that. Much easier to do English, or Sociology, or something where there is no hard content.
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Rev. Bob said on April 15th, 2008 at 2:30 am
Can I please get a little credit around here for sabotahging the epigram in the very next sentence?
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Rev. Bob said on April 18th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Apologies to Leiter Reports and Michael Whelan S. M. for missing the citations to their work when I originally posted this.
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Rev. Bob said on April 21st, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Actually, it was Steven Weinberg who said (at Beyond Belief, 2006) that scientists have heroes, but they don’t have authorities or prophets.
