nameandnature (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nameandnature) wrote2006-10-29 12:31 pm
nameandnature) wrote2006-10-29 12:31 pm
Entry tags:
The Two Cultures
I was part of an interesting discussion last night at a party. We got onto science and religion, and one of our number, who I'll call F, was pretty steadfast in asserting that science and religion were the same sort of thing. Her reasons were partly that science grew out of religion, I think, and partly that both are engaged in a search for truth.
We got side-tracked a bit by trying to define religion in a way which doesn't include ballroom dancing, say (funny clothes, weekly meetings, rituals... hmmm). Like the judge asked to adjudicate between erotica and pornography, we know religion when we see it, so we agreed that Christianity was a religion, say, so we could talk about that rather than religion in the abstract.
The scientists (or at least, people who'd studied science as undergraduates) argued that the methods that religion and science were the key difference between them. Christianity typically begins with the statements of the church or of the Bible, science typically begins with a hypothesis which is confirmed (or refuted) by experiment. While it's not true to say that there's no valid knowledge outside the scientific process, where Christianity does make claims about things happening outside people's heads, those claims are susceptible to science, per Dawkins.
F made the point that we might eventually supersede the scientific method with something else, and that science might lead us to evidence for the existence of God. Both of these are things which are possible but haven't happened yet, I suppose.
She also pointed out that people like Dawkins would want to exclude bad or fraudulent scientists from our definition of science, but were happy to rail at the worst of Christianity, people who most Christians think are crazy. In other words, Dawkins is aiming at straw men. I didn't get a chance to think about this properly, but in the Dawkins case, his argument in The God Delusion is intentionally very broad, and takes in the mainstream version of Christianity as well as the fundamentalists. I'd also add that science is better at correcting for bad science than Christianity is at correcting for bad Christians, precisely because it is actually possible to show someone's science to be wrong.
We then talked about reality as a construct and F said that maybe there wouldn't be gravity if people didn't believe in it. Nobody was willing to jump out of the window and try this, although someone did drop a cracker on the table to confirm that they even keep it on at weekends. We did say that it was easy to see how that might be the case if solipsism were true, but it was hard to see how many minds agreed on a reality if each of them had the power to change it (which sort of begs the question, since we were assuming that people do agree). I mentioned that people on uk.religion.christian who think that matter arises from consciousness, and not vice-versa, who might believe something similar to F.
At the end of it all,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scribb1e and I were struck by the failure of the majority, who were scientists or mathematicians by education, to connect with F, a liberal arts person, and vice-versa. I hope F didn't feel too put upon. More than that, though, I wondered how many people hold similar sort of views to hers, who I never meet because I mainly have these sorts of discussions with scientists.
[Poll #855650]
We got side-tracked a bit by trying to define religion in a way which doesn't include ballroom dancing, say (funny clothes, weekly meetings, rituals... hmmm). Like the judge asked to adjudicate between erotica and pornography, we know religion when we see it, so we agreed that Christianity was a religion, say, so we could talk about that rather than religion in the abstract.
The scientists (or at least, people who'd studied science as undergraduates) argued that the methods that religion and science were the key difference between them. Christianity typically begins with the statements of the church or of the Bible, science typically begins with a hypothesis which is confirmed (or refuted) by experiment. While it's not true to say that there's no valid knowledge outside the scientific process, where Christianity does make claims about things happening outside people's heads, those claims are susceptible to science, per Dawkins.
F made the point that we might eventually supersede the scientific method with something else, and that science might lead us to evidence for the existence of God. Both of these are things which are possible but haven't happened yet, I suppose.
She also pointed out that people like Dawkins would want to exclude bad or fraudulent scientists from our definition of science, but were happy to rail at the worst of Christianity, people who most Christians think are crazy. In other words, Dawkins is aiming at straw men. I didn't get a chance to think about this properly, but in the Dawkins case, his argument in The God Delusion is intentionally very broad, and takes in the mainstream version of Christianity as well as the fundamentalists. I'd also add that science is better at correcting for bad science than Christianity is at correcting for bad Christians, precisely because it is actually possible to show someone's science to be wrong.
We then talked about reality as a construct and F said that maybe there wouldn't be gravity if people didn't believe in it. Nobody was willing to jump out of the window and try this, although someone did drop a cracker on the table to confirm that they even keep it on at weekends. We did say that it was easy to see how that might be the case if solipsism were true, but it was hard to see how many minds agreed on a reality if each of them had the power to change it (which sort of begs the question, since we were assuming that people do agree). I mentioned that people on uk.religion.christian who think that matter arises from consciousness, and not vice-versa, who might believe something similar to F.
At the end of it all,
scribb1e and I were struck by the failure of the majority, who were scientists or mathematicians by education, to connect with F, a liberal arts person, and vice-versa. I hope F didn't feel too put upon. More than that, though, I wondered how many people hold similar sort of views to hers, who I never meet because I mainly have these sorts of discussions with scientists.[Poll #855650]
no subject
For myself, at least, I believe in "science" based upon certain axioms that are accepted on faith alone. Yes, these axioms might be subject to review, but the same can be true of religious axioms (witness the many "redefinitions" of Christianity at Ecumenical councils etc.
What eventually dissuaded me from the "science" = "religion" viewpoint, was a conversation with
no subject
Buddhism does come with a "story of how things are" (worldview?) in some sense. But you're not required to believe it.
Firstly, there's a very full account of why there is suffering, and what we can do about it. That is central to Buddhism. You don't have to take it on faith, though - you are invited to "come and see for yourself".
Secondly, there is a whole lot of ancient Indian worldview that permeates the Pali canon and Mahayana sutras (and probably Tibetan in the Vajrayana sutras that I'm less familiar with). For example, endless cycles of rebirth, lots of different planes of existence containing gods and demons and mythical creatures, quite incredible timescales and a universe with no beginning and no end.
Some people have described this worldview as a cultural accretion. There's a certain amount of debate about where to draw the line between metaphorical and literal. For example, references to gods and bodhisattvas have been seen as metaphors for mental states for a long time among educated Buddhists. However, rebirth is seen as literal by many Eastern Buddhists but metaphorical by many Western Buddhists, and there isn't really a consensus. My own view is that literal rebirth seems unlikely but it doesn't really matter either way.
I could possibly make the argument that Buddhism is a science, since it places great emphasis on investigating the Buddha's teaching and finding out for yourself if it's true :-)
no subject
I think part of the ambiguity here is that the word "science", like "engineering", has become rather corrupt. I have a computer science qualification and my business card calls me a software engineer, yet I would make no claim to have studied any real science during my course, nor to be working as an engineer today. What I do does not follow the basic, fundamental principles of scientific or engineering disciplines (though of course it's not wholly unrelated).
I think this is a rather different issue to the fact that for many people, science is something they are taught. I am not in favour of the increasingly theoretical/waffly science curricula taught in schools; they have about as much relevance without any understanding of experimentation and the scientific method as cookbook stats has to someone who doesn't appreciate what they are -- and aren't -- learning when they test a hypothesis. (Indeed, the course on electromagnetism in my maths degree, which began by stating Maxwell's equations as facts and proceeding from there, with no justification or motivation at all, was the point that convinced me eternally that I have no interest whatsoever in applied maths.) Nevertheless, there is a qualitative difference between something you are taught that is experimentally observable (even if you've never performed that experiment yourself) and falsifiable, and something you are taught that is based purely on someone's personal belief. The kind of faith you place in a teacher of science and the kind of faith that underpins religion are very different things.