Nobel physicist calls ID "dead-end" idea for science

[ceo_esq]

Eric A. Cornell, co-winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics, has an essay in the current issue of TIME magazine in which he addresses, among other things, the notion of teaching intelligent design theory in science curricula:

"What Was God Thinking? Science Can't Tell"

 

[Bronze Dog]

Nice.

 

[Melendwyr]

"Not to say that the God answer is unscientific, just that the methods of science don't speak to that answer."

Is this one of his jokes, or not? I can't tell.

(edit) Also: "Now for my call to inaction: most scientists will concede that as powerful as science is, it can teach us nothing about values, ethics, morals or, for that matter, God."

Has this gentleman never heard of Game Theory or attempts to study the evolutionary function of ethical systems?

 

[Dylab]

I think when he says unscientific he means it in the negative way and not the neutral sense. Basically that it isn't antiscientific not that it is non scientific.

I think his basic argument is that science is descriptive not prescriptive. I would think that is true even for the study of the evolution of ethics.


My question is who is arguing otherwise?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

A little too much need to discriminate between unscientific and nonscientific.

~~ Paul

 

[ceo_esq]

A little too much need to discriminate between unscientific and nonscientific.

The distinction between what is not scientific and what is counter-scientific is sometimes lost in the ID debate, however. I agree with Dr. Cornell that it's important.

 

[Melendwyr]

I must admit I'm not seeing the distinction. If you use methods other than those allowed in science, you're being unscientific. There isn't any middle ground: either the methods are scientific, or they're not.

 

[ceo_esq]

I must admit I'm not seeing the distinction. If you use methods other than those allowed in science, you're being unscientific. There isn't any middle ground: either the methods are scientific, or they're not.

If you use methods other than those allowed in science to do science, you're being counter-scientific, or anti-scientific, or what have you. On the other hand, you have to use methods other than scientific (empirical) ones in order to do things in areas that are beyond the scope of science (pure mathematics, ethics, philosophy, art, etc.). In so doing, you are being unscientific in the sense that you are operating in a different domain from the scientific one, but you are not contradicting science.

 

[Melendwyr]

I don't agree that all of those things are outside the scope of science, but those that are deal with entirely subjective concepts. Is this physicist saying that God has no objective existence and expecting people to accept that as a statement without religious content?

 

[ceo_esq]

I don't agree that all of those things are outside the scope of science, but those that are deal with entirely subjective concepts.

Science is, first and foremost, a method. Anything to which that method cannot reliably be applied is, by definition, outside the scope of science. Which of those previously mentioned things do you think fall within the scope of science? And how do you know that the remaining things (math? logic?) are necessarily subjective?

Is this physicist saying that God has no objective existence and expecting people to accept that as a statement without religious content?

I think he is saying that science is incapable of telling us whether or not God has any objective existence, and science is unconcerned by that.

 

[eri]

At the end, I think his argument is that science can (potentially) explain everything in nature, but can't tell us how to live our lives. And if you want to use religion/God for that purpose - defining your own moral code - then go for it. Science can tell you what is true, but not what's right. Seems like he's trying to seperate the two - you can both influence people's lives; you don't have to fight for space if you stay on your own side. We could lose the possibility of advancing science further if we attribute the rest to God, but we can't use science to figure out if we should lie on our taxes. OK, bad example.

 

[Dylab]

At the end, I think his argument is that science can (potentially) explain everything in nature, but can't tell us how to live our lives.

Who is arguing that, though?

 

[eri]

Well, not me. But I've heard some people make that admittably rash claim in favor of atheism, and I always cringe. There are far better reasons to be an atheist.

 

[ceo_esq]

At the end, I think his argument is that science can (potentially) explain everything in nature, but can't tell us how to live our lives.

... Or whether God exists; or whether the wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering is due to God's desire that the sky be blue; or whether the central idea behind intelligent design is false; or many other things. So Dr. Cornell seems to be saying, at any rate.

 

[Melendwyr]

Which of those previously mentioned things do you think fall within the scope of science?

Philosophy, mathematics, ethics.

And how do you know that the remaining things (math? logic?) are necessarily subjective?

Art is notoriously subjective. To my knowledge, there is no generally-accepted definition that can be used to distinguish 'art' from 'non-art'. Aesthetics, like all responses to stimuli, are essentially arbitrary.

I think he is saying that science is incapable of telling us whether or not God has any objective existence, and science is unconcerned by that.

If God is real in any meaningful sense, I fail to see why the scientific method could not be productively applied; if the scientific method cannot be applied to a real thing, I see no reason why thinkers shouldn't be deeply concerned.

 

[ceo_esq]

Philosophy, mathematics, ethics.

When I suggested that philosophy, (pure) mathematics, and ethics are beyond the scope of science, I meant that the truths of philosophy, mathematics, and ethics cannot be ascertained scientifically, that is, through experimental method. (I don't mean, of course, that science is irrelevant to those fields of inquiry.) If you are asserting the contrary, you must be employing a non-standard definition of the term science.

Art is notoriously subjective.

More accurately, the existence and nature of an objective aesthetics are notoriously incapable of proof. Many kinds of statements or hypotheses about art are not falsifiable either empirically or logically (and sometimes, people use subjective as shorthand for describing this state of affairs). This does not mean, however, that such statements or hypotheses are not objectively either true or false (i.e., that they have no truth-value independent of the subjective consciousness). We cannot establish absolutely whether aesthetic assertions are true or not; neither can we establish that they have no intrinsic truth-value and are merely matters of opinion.

If God is real in any meaningful sense, I fail to see why the scientific method could not be productively applied; if the scientific method cannot be applied to a real thing, I see no reason why thinkers shouldn't be deeply concerned.

Productively applying the scientific method to something entails coming up with empirically falsifiable hypotheses about it, and then designing and carrying out experiments to test such hypotheses. To the extent you can do that with regard to the existence and nature of God, fine. To the extent you can't, you are not in scientific territory. Dr. Cornell sees no reason for this fact to be a matter of deep concern, and I daresay that such attitude is traditionally characteristic of the scientific enterprise.

 

[Melendwyr]

When I suggested that philosophy, (pure) mathematics, and ethics are beyond the scope of science, I meant that the truths of philosophy, mathematics, and ethics cannot be ascertained scientifically, that is, through experimental method.

Well, let's look at mathematics as one example. An experiment occurs when a specific set of circumstances are set up and permitted to work themselves out in order that we might observe the results. (In a few cases, such as astronomical experiments, we lack the ability to set up and control the circumstances; however, nature provides us with such a diversity of cases that we can seek out and identify conditions that match the situations we wish to study.)

Each and every mathematical proposition can be evaluated only sending data through a computational system that represents the mathematical rules in question and determining what the result is. It's irrelevant whether this system is artificial (as in electronic computers and calculators) or natural (as in the human brain).

That's the scientific method. And it's the only way the validity of mathematical statements can be determined.

More accurately, the existence and nature of an objective aesthetics are notoriously incapable of proof.

They're also notoriously lacking in evidence, much less proof. For that matter, there's a complete dearth of substantive definitions of such objective standards.

This does not mean, however, that such statements or hypotheses are not objectively either true or false (i.e., that they have no truth-value independent of the subjective consciousness).

If we cannot, even potentially, determine whether such statements are true or false, they're meaningless, and any claims made about their truth value are invalid.

We cannot establish absolutely whether aesthetic assertions are true or not; neither can we establish that they have no intrinsic truth-value and are merely matters of opinion.

So? We cannot establish that things we acknowledge as matters of opinion do not somehow have an unknowable truth-value. That does not mean that we shouldn't consider any claims to be opinions!

To the extent you can do that with regard to the existence and nature of God, fine. To the extent you can't, you are not in scientific territory.

To the extent that statements about the nature of God have meaningful content, we're within science. To the extent that contentless claims are made, we're not.

 

[ceo_esq]

Well, let's look at mathematics as one example. An experiment occurs when a specific set of circumstances are set up and permitted to work themselves out in order that we might observe the results. (In a few cases, such as astronomical experiments, we lack the ability to set up and control the circumstances; however, nature provides us with such a diversity of cases that we can seek out and identify conditions that match the situations we wish to study.)

Each and every mathematical proposition can be evaluated only sending data through a computational system that represents the mathematical rules in question and determining what the result is. It's irrelevant whether this system is artificial (as in electronic computers and calculators) or natural (as in the human brain).

That's the scientific method. And it's the only way the validity of mathematical statements can be determined.

Sorry, that's not exactly the scientific method. Pure mathematical computations are not empirical in the sense that the physical sciences are empirical. They are abstract; their truth does not rely on observations about natural phenomena (indeed, they do not even depend on the existence of the natural universe). A calculation is not an experiment, as Wittgenstein said, and he was right with respect to what experiment signifies in the context of empirical scientific method.

What distinguishes the natural sciences from mathematics is precisely the way in which the validity of mathematical statements can be determined - a priori, rather than by reference to empirical evidence. Any statement which cannot not be falsified by any empirical data is not scientific, and the fields of mathematics and logic abound with such statements.

Chrystopher Nehaniv puts it concisely: "[W]hether empiricist science and engineering like it or not, mathematical results are neither physical nor subject to Popper's notion of 'falsifiability', viz. the possibility of disproof by experiment. Thus mathematics is a branch of metaphysics providing tools applied by science and engineering, while remaining itself outside their epistemological scope."

If we cannot, even potentially, determine whether such statements are true or false, they're meaningless, and any claims made about their truth value are invalid.

In that case, we are compelled to conclude that the statement you just made is meaningless, and any claims made about its truth-value are invalid.

To the extent that statements about the nature of God have meaningful content, we're within science. To the extent that contentless claims are made, we're not.

Science certainly doesn't provide a basis for any such value judgment about the meaningfulness of statements. You are essentially making a metaphysical claim here.

 

[Melendwyr]

Sorry, that's not exactly the scientific method. Pure mathematical computations are not empirical in the sense that the physical sciences are empirical.

Sure they are - they're based on the behavior of physical systems.

What distinguishes the natural sciences from mathematics is precisely the way in which the validity of mathematical statements can be determined - a priori, rather than by reference to empirical evidence.

The empirical evidence in question is the behavior of computational systems. (How do we know that the number seventeen isn't "really" equally divisible by a number other than one and itself? Empirically - we give the problem to a physical system and observe the result. If there was a fundamental flaw with our brains that caused them to report that seventeen is prime when it isn't, or that it isn't prime when it really is, there's no way we could determine that.

Chrystopher Nehaniv puts it concisely: "[W]hether empiricist science and engineering like it or not, mathematical results are neither physical nor subject to Popper's notion of 'falsifiability', viz. the possibility of disproof by experiment.

Oh, really? Take away all physical tools, and let him produce mathematical results. Let him perform a single calculation without the physical world.

Science certainly doesn't provide a basis for any such value judgment about the meaningfulness of statements. You are essentially making a metaphysical claim here.

It's not a value judgment, it's a linguistic one. If you make a statement about God that is a prediction, or that permits a prediction to be made, you're within the bounds of science and reason. If you don't, your statement has no implications.

 

[drkitten]

Oh, really? Take away all physical tools, and let him produce mathematical results. Let him perform a single calculation without the physical world.

I'll be delighted to. Just explain how you plan to permit "him" to still be there to produce the results -- and how you plan to have him communicate them to you without use of the physical.