Phil Plait say “There are many things science can’t explain *currently*, and no real scientist brushes those fields off as “irrelevant”….What he is describing is simply science, because science by its very nature is an attempt to explain all things using natural processes.”

I read through the whole thing, and it is all interesting and nothing new to learn from it. But what I found interesting was that Phil said that Todd presented a strawman argument, and literally one sentence later he confirms exactly what Todd said. That means it was no strawman argument, but *is* evidence that Todd was right.

Science does not describe what is good or bad, it doesn’t describe if the world has purpose or not, if good and evil actually exist, and it can’t do that. Science cannot tell us if there is an external world, let alone that our perceptions are representations of the external world that we can’t know to exist, aren’t representations of the external world, what this external world is made up of, or if other minds exist, or how come there’s laws of nature, how come there’s a uniformity of nature, and etc. It can’t tell us if materialism, idealism, dualism, or pluralism are correct. These can’t be answered by science, and are outside the realm of science. It can’t tell us if the world is mathematical or not, which means that numbers exist independent of human beings. Science can’t even tell us if it’s models are actually how the world is, or that a natural description is the way the world actually works. In order to say that the models are how the world is, the picture that it presents, you literally have to step outside of the world and compare the model with the actual world. This can’t be done. So science can’t explain everything, in principle. It’s very limited in it’s application and field, and it gets most of it’s strength from imagination. As David Hume stated, “This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is there produc’d.”

I’m leaving out, but I’ll hint at, how science relies on reasoning of modus bonehead (i.e. affirming the consequent). What is great about this is that Phil admits that science is imagination, which means a great many of what it talks about in it’s models are based on human imagination. This means, based on affirming the consequent, we can’t even say that what’s in the model is actually existent in the world, since it could be a logical infinity of different things. “If Bill Gates is the richest man in the US, then Bill Gates own Ft. Knox. Bill Gates owns Ft. Knox. Therefore Bill Gates is the richest man in the US.” That’s modus bonehead reasoning, which means that’s scientific reasoning by analogy.

Try to be less certain. We haven’t fully connected the classical and quantum sciences, not yet. There’re a lot of holes. There’s a lot we could be wrong about! We don’t have a theory for everything. If you don’t fully grasp the big picture (this includes quantum phenomena), and how the interlocking peices work together in a harmony, then we’ll never trully be right – local facts will conflict with big picture facts. These things aren’t yet fully observable, and even then we’ll have to accomodate them. It helps to be humble. Just imagine what we’ll know in 500 years. Do you honestly think that not much will change? Do you think that 500 years from now we’ll be in the same boat, and we’ll look back to 2009 and say, “By gosh, they had everything right!” I don’t think so. We look back 500 years and we tear apart most of the then science world. We discard what didn’t work, and keep what did. Right now I see in my mind a lot of people who’re fixating on what we kept, on what worked, and not remembering the things we were wrong about. They’re not remembering how precious and rare being right was. Being right often meant being isolated and condemned, even by established scholars. Too many people think to themselves that back then the church ruled everything, but they forge that the very same people in existence today, who pursue science with devotion, are the same people who lived in the dark ages. Ultimately, it doesn’t always pay to be humble – a lot of “scientists” were wrong, and were oh so certain. They were wrong, so obviously they were not be scientific – not being humble. Maybe what they believed coincided with what they could observe in those days. Maybe it made sense to them. Perhaps the same fate awaits us. Oneday, what makes sense presently, won’t make sense anymore.

Giving others hte impression that science is not absolutely certain, and that it could be wrong, and that indeed this has happened in the past, might help to win a few of the fence sitters who’re exceedingly irritated by absolute statements.

Thanks
Doug
Vancouver Sun spirituality and philosophy writer

Todd is very clear to define ‘scientism’ as different from ‘science’ right from the start, and he repeatedly refers to ‘scientism’ as the subject of his article all the way through.

Furthermore, Phil actually reiterates several of Todd’s points as *counterpoints* to Todd (even though they’re both saying the same thing).

Todd: “Science has always had a speculative component, as we see with theories about quantum physics and the Big Bang and evolution.”

Phil: “It took a leap of imagination for Alan Guth to think that the Big Bang theory wasn’t wrong, but incomplete, and to add inflation to explain why the Universe looks so smooth.”

Speaking of Strawmen arguments:

Phil: you have accused Todd of attacking science in this article. Todd attacked “scientism” in this article. Your entire piece is a strawman.

Here’s some more, this one from the Telegraph’s Missing the Point desk: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5081751/Why-science-doesnt-make-sense.html

Physical constants also have to be measured by statistically comparing different measurements, so they are really no better in this regard.

IIUC, the confirmation of a phylogenetic tree (e.g. comparison between two trees that were constructed using different gene sequences) is a statistical analysis that indicates the significance of the correlation. How can this statistical analysis return a correlation that has 30 (or more) significant figures?

Having said that, you should recognise that QM has given us predictions that have been confirmed in experiment to many significant figures. IIUC, it is the most preisely-confirmed of all theories in science.

I take issue with this. In biology a number of phylogenetic trees have been confirmed to dozens of significant figures, 30 or more.

All I am asking for is an acknowledgement that there is a POSSIBILITY that there are other forms of reasoning that MAY under SOME circumstances trump science.

Such as what?

Since science already uses any and every form of reasoning it can get hold of to understand and interpret the world around us, what conceivable “form of reasoning” could ever trump testing what you think you know?

I have even said that is MAY turn out to be the case that science is the be all – end all of truth. I was simply asking for you people to admit that it is a reasonable POSSIBILITY that this may not be the case.

But you are being persistently vague and woolly, and have ignored requests for clarification.

What other “forms of reasoning” are there that science does not use already?

What “form of reasoning” do you think science actually is?

What could ever be better than simply testing what we think is so against reality (with all of the allowances we can make for the fallability of human observation)?

I have to say that it is pretty infuriating that I have had to argue on so many posts for something that any reasonable individual would have given me in the beginning.

I think you have had to argue so hard because you have not understood what science is. You are arguing that science should accommodate X or Y or Z when it already does. You seem not to understand the distinction between making observations and using reason to understand those observations and formulate a testable hypothesis to explain them.

This will be my final post on this board.

That’s a shame, because there was a real possibility that you could have learnt something that you did not previously know. Also, you have left several other commenters with unanswered questions.

Yes, they [other types of reasoning] are used by science, but are not a part of science.

What? This makes no sense.

Science uses whatever reasoning helps us to understand, provided it is logical and accessible to testing. String theory, for example, is currently just a set of hypotheses and mathematical formulations, because no-one has yet worked out how to test it.

Scientists do regularly use these other forms of reasoning, but then other times they reject the conclusions of these other forms on the grounds that they are “not science.”

Without an example, it is not clear what point you are trying to make.

However, if a group of scientists dismiss something as “not science”, then the chances are it is either not logical or not testable. Or that it is already contradicted by known facts.

They say this at least once every week on the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast.

If that’s the case, it should be easy for you to provide an example, then, shouldn’t it?

Also, what I mean about being less certain about human observation is that some quantum mechanics experiments have been affected by the fact that scientists are there to perceive the experiment.

You seem to have misunderstood here. One interpretation of QM is that the observer (i.e. the very act of measuring, recording or observing something) causes a superposition of possible quantum states to collapse into a single state. Nevertheless, we only ever measure one state of most quantum objects, although experiments are afoot to tease out this puzzle. However, this has nothing to do with human fallibility because it appears to be an intrinsic property of quantum systems.

Having said that, you should recognise that QM has given us predictions that have been confirmed in experiment to many significant figures. IIUC, it is the most preisely-confirmed of all theories in science.

Look, we could all be in the Matrix right now and we would never know it.

Quite correct. Therefore, a pointless speculation. The principle of parsimony requires that we do not assume a more complicated explanation when a simple one will suffice, unless there is evidence to indicate otherwise.

Simply saying that scientific experiments are consistent with human observation does not necessarily prove that those scientific experiments are telling us about the nature of reality.

What you say here is right, but irrelevant.

How could we ever find a means of testing whether what we observe around us genuinely correlates to an external reality or is merely some kind of hallucination or delusion? This is a question for philosophers to argue about, but has almost no relevance to the day-to-day activities of learning about the world around us.

When you are trying to cross a road, do you ever say to yourself “Well, that looks to me like an 18-wheeler truck coming towards me, but who am I to judge how real that is? It could just be a pattenr of neuronal impulses in my cerebral cortex.”? Of course not. But what you are saying is directly equivalent.

It might make it more likely (and in some cases maybe a lot more likely) but we should all at least be open to the possibility that there are other forms of reasoning that can be used alongside the scientific method and stop dismissing certain statements and arguments on the grounds that they are “not science” before even listening to the arguments that people from other disciplines are making.

I challenge you to show that this actually occurs.

Science has four basic components: parsimony; logic; testability and changing when shown to be wrong. (Arguably, the first is a part of the second. Also, of course, imagination is required to come up with hypotheses and experiments to test them in the first pace) Any method of reasoning is permitted in science, as long as it fits thes bits.

Thus, anything that defies the priniple of parsimony (such as your “we could be in the Matrix” scenario) is not science.

Anything that is illogical (e.g. the sea is blue, therefore all blue things are the sea) is not science.

Anything that cannot be tested (e.g. “someone designed something biological, somewhere, somehow”) is not science.

Anything that refuses to change in the face of contrary evidence (e.g. young-earth creationism) is not science.

So, there are many ways in which humans string ideas together that aren’t science.

That’s Scientism, and that’s all that Todd was originally complaining about.

No. What you object to isn’t scientism, it is merely being reasonable. If Todd was really complaining about people being reasonable, then all I have to say is “Get over yourself”.

Science does not compare its conclusions against reality. Science compares its conclusions against human observation. If human observation is right all the time then science is right all the time. We do not know this to be true, and the more we learn, especially about things like quantum mechanics, the less certain we are that human observation is right. Everything that you said, Nigel Depledge, is so tied to this unwarranted assumption that the only thing that matters is human observation. Until you at least allow for the POSSIBILITY that other forms of reasoning might have something to offer this conversation will go nowhere.

This is just so much nonsense.

Of course science compares its conclusions with reality.

Assuming, that is, that what we observe (see / hear / touch / smell / taste / whatever) correlates with a reality external to ourselves. However, this is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make, and it is made all the time by everyone on the planet. Without it, you can never know anything.

Science does not rely on human observations. It relies on human interpretations of demonstrably reproducible obsevations. A good example comes from astronomy before CCDs and computers. When a photographic plate is taken of a portion of the night sky (or, indeed, a series of such plates), there is a permanent record of the light that entered the telescope at that time. This plate can then be examined by any number of astronomers – some of whom may miss the one dot that moves relative to all of the others. Eventually, someone will spot the dot that moves, and thus a new solar-system object is discovered.

Science recognises the fallability of human observation, and scientists have devised ways of recording, measuring and observing that minimise or avoid human fallability having an impact on the result.

All that aside, you seem to be focussed on observations in the beginning of your paragraph, but then silently segue into talking about reasoning instead.

Reasoning is entirely separate from the observations themselves (although, of course, they can be done concurrently).

Science allows for absolutely any kind of reasoning in the interpretation of results, provided that such reasoning is logical and provides conclusions that can be tested. In its simplest form, science is the process of testing that what we think we know is correct. And the only arbiter of truth available to us is reality itself.

Yes, scientists do listen, but too many don’t.

And I think this is a myth perpetuated by people peddling poorly thought out ideas.

I think that the fact that the skeptic movement has dug it’s roots so deep into the scientific community is evidence of that.

Science and skepticism go hand in hand. There’s no skeptic movement digging it’s roots into science.

All I am asking for is an acknowledgement that there is a POSSIBILITY that there are other forms of reasoning that MAY under SOME circumstances trump science.

That’s fine, but right now you can’t even conceive of what those alternatives might be might be. You can’t say it’s something like mathematics, because it’s already deeply ingrained in science. When the numbers don’t add up, science jumps to attention. Even things like clairvoyance don’t fall outside the realm of science. But before anyone should use it to further our understanding of the universe, we need to first establish that it exists. Otherwise, it’s not reasoning, it’s just making stuff up.

All I am asking for is an acknowledgement that there is a POSSIBILITY that there are other forms of reasoning that MAY under SOME circumstances trump science.

No one is saying this isn’t the case. But until one of those other forms of reasons is found, and until it is shown to trump science under at least one real-world circumstance, science is the best we have available to us. We can’t use forms of reasoning we don’t know about, and we cannot count on a form of reasoning being better than science until we know it is better than science.

Criticizing skeptics for using science now just because just maybe at some unknown point in the future a better alternative might be found is like criticizing a carpenter for using a saw to cut some wood because just maybe at some unknown point in the future a better alternative might be found. We use what we have now. If something better is found in the future we will switch to it then. But we can’t use what we don’t have.

What gets me is the idea that science and the arts are inseperable though. I’m a puppet maker, and if you’ve ever made a marionette you’d get it: try making one without accounting for weight and gravity! You end up with a very limp doll, not a puppet. And what about all those sculptors who use information about how materials interact; using fire to harden clay, soldering, etc? Yeah, cause science is just something fancy people use, and have no day-to-day use at all for us artistic folk. :p

Yes, they are used by science, but are not a part of science. Scientists do regularly use these other forms of reasoning, but then other times they reject the conclusions of these other forms on the grounds that they are “not science.”

Reason and logic are the foundation of science. Can you give an example of science rejecting conclusion based on other forms of reasoning?

Also, what I mean about being less certain about human observation is that some quantum mechanics experiments have been affected by the fact that scientists are there to perceive the experiment.

Yes, but this isn’t something that science tries to hide or ignore.

Simply saying that scientific experiments are consistent with human observation does not necessarily prove that those scientific experiments are telling us about the nature of reality.

Observations are subject to different interpretations. Science knows this.

It might make it more likely (and in some cases maybe a lot more likely) but we should all at least be open to the possibility that there are other forms of reasoning that can be used alongside the scientific method and stop dismissing certain statements and arguments on the grounds that they are “not science” before even listening to the arguments that people from other disciplines are making.

But scientists do listen. Sure, you might be able to point to a few instances where scientists have rejected ideas without even hear the reason behind an idea, but science as a whole doesn’t do this. Even things like clairvoyance or Intelligent design aren’t blindly dismissed. They get a fair shake like any other idea.

Science does not compare its conclusions against reality. Science compares its conclusions against human observation. If human observation is right all the time then science is right all the time.

Nobody says science is right all the time. Sometimes when you compare scientific conclusions against observations, they don’t match. Then it’s back to the drawing board. It’s a normal part of science.

We do not know this to be true, and the more we learn, especially about things like quantum mechanics, the less certain we are that human observation is right.

Nobody says observations are right all the time. Science takes this into account. I’m not really sure what you mean when you say the more we learn the less certain we are that human observation is right. I think that in general, the more we observe, the better we understand what we’re looking at, and that’s including weird things like quantum mechanics.

Until you at least allow for the POSSIBILITY that other forms of reasoning might have something to offer this conversation will go nowhere.

I still don’t understand what these other forms of reasoning are. The things you listed (logic, mathematics, historical, innate) are all regularly used by science.