Semester after semester, I continue to encounter students for whom the proposition that science alone is the embodiment of unimpeded Reason is axiomatic.\u00a0 But it isn\u2019t just my college students who think as thus; most adults seem to be just as mistaken on this score.\u00a0 That this notion of science pervades not just the popular culture but academia as well can be gotten from the readiness with which specialists in a variety of non-scientific disciplines seek to impose a scientific character on their work.\u00a0 Considering the image of science that they affirm, an image according to which science is, if not necessarily the exclusive means by which to secure the Truth, certainly the most legitimate of such means, this should come as no surprise.\u00a0 And if the Intellect reaches its glorious culmination in the practice of science, this is only because the scientist alone among the mortals that walk the Earth has succeeded in bracketing his prejudices in order to attain an \u201cobjective\u201d and \u201cimpartial\u201d perspective on the world.\u00a0 The scientist has liberated himself from all preconceptions; he is concerned with the brute \u201cfacts\u201d and only these.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is the conventional understanding of science and the scientist.\u00a0 Besides being popular, it is also appealing and even grandiose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But it is also an out-and-out fiction from which no slight degree of mischief has sprung. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Although what we today call \u201cscience\u201d is commonly identified with modernity, in the interest of historical accuracy, it is imperative that we take stock of the conveniently forgotten fact that the origins of the study of \u201cthe natural<\/em> world\u201d trace back much further than this.\u00a0 Over 2500 years ago, the \u201cpre-Socratic\u201d philosophers of ancient Greece labored long and hard to achieve a \u201cscientific,\u201d as opposed to a mythical, <\/em>account of the cosmos.\u00a0 To the objection that Democritus, Pythagoras, Empedocles and others weren\u2019t doing real science but only philosophy, three replies are in the coming.<\/p>\n First, insofar as their analyses characterized the universe in natural, basic, quantifiable terms, they were indeed engaged in a scientific enterprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n Second, since the pre-Socratics were the progenitors of Western philosophy, since it is they <\/em>who are responsible for enriching the Western mind\u2019s vision with the yearning to move beyond myth in exploring the world, science and philosophy at this juncture were one.\u00a0<\/p>\n Third, if by philosophy critics refer to a set of metaphysical assumptions underwriting \u201cthe science\u201d in question, unspoken yet controversial suppositions that foreclose from the outset those possible lines of inquiry that fail to comport with them\u2014and this is <\/em>indeed the conception of philosophy that such critics typically have in mind\u2014then we need to point out the painful fact that no science is devoid of them.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n So-called \u201cmodern science\u201d is as dependent on non-empirical, \u201cphilosophical\u201d presuppositions as any other.\u00a0 That there is something that can aptly be called the universe; <\/em>that this universe is a candidate for study; and that it is orderly are just some of the assumptions without which science wouldn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 Yet there are others.<\/p>\n Scientists make predictions.\u00a0 The laws <\/em>of the universe are nothing more or less than probabilities regarding future patterns that scientists predict on the basis of their observations of past patterns.\u00a0 The operative principle here is what the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher and empiricist, David Hume, called \u201cthe principle of induction.\u201d\u00a0 This principle, Hume said, is simply the assumption that the future will resemble or be continuous with the past.\u00a0 That it is <\/em>an assumption and not <\/em>the product of scientific discovery must be readily admitted once it is grasped that there is no way to prove it: since, by definition, the future has not yet occurred, it cannot be known what it will be like.\u00a0 Logically speaking, it is conceivable, however unlikely, that tomorrow could be radically discontinuous with today.<\/p>\n In addition to the assumption that Hume characterized as the principle of induction, the modern scientist also has a tendency to suppose that reality is ultimately composed exclusively of material <\/em>entities.\u00a0 His map of the universe resolutely disallows any place for any considerations with so much as a whiff of what we would be inclined to call \u201cthe supernatural\u201d (thus, the derisiveness with which the theory of \u201cintelligent design\u201d is met by the vast majority of scientists).\u00a0 Yet this robust \u201cnaturalism\u201d that pervades the contemporary scientific project is not scientific; it is philosophical.<\/p>\n There are other considerations to behold.<\/p>\n However brilliant or talented any given person may be, he will not become a scientist unless and until he immerses himself within a tradition of science.\u00a0 That is, science, not unlike any other <\/em>thing with which we are familiar, is an activity<\/em> or a habit <\/em>distinguished on account of the considerations that are proper to it.\u00a0 A person becomes a good scientist in the same way in which he becomes a good anything: through practice.\u00a0 So, for example, the knowledge of how to formulate hypotheses is something that only a practitioner of science can have.\u00a0 And \u201cthe facts\u201d that the scientist investigates, far from being self-explanatory, derive their intelligibility from the theories that they inform.\u00a0<\/p>\n Science is a good and noble thing, for sure.\u00a0 But its character has for far too long been radically misunderstood.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick,\u00a0Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Semester after semester, I continue to encounter students for whom the proposition that science alone is the embodiment of unimpeded Reason is axiomatic.\u00a0 But it isn\u2019t just my college students who think as thus; most adults seem to be just as mistaken on this score.\u00a0 That this notion of science pervades not just the popular…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n