Hi
On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Mike Scoles wrote:
> 2) Do you know of anyone who teaches science as completely accurate and
> fool-proof. If so, they obviously know little about what they are teaching.
I certainly don't wish to be identified as someone who "obviously
know little about what they are teaching," but I think we need to
be very cautious here about not undermining the rightful validity
of scientific approaches to understanding. Just a couple of
observations.
(1) No matter what the blemishes of science there is _no_ better
way of trying to answer questions and develop understanding of
natural phenomena, including human behaviour and experience.
One danger in saying that science is not fool-proof, especially
to people who believe or hope (usually they _know_) that there
are fool-proof approaches to knowledge, is that they may then
think that we are agreeing that science is a second-rate approach
to knowledge.
(2) One needs to distinguish clearly between the process of
science and the current state of knowledge in any domain. I
would argue that the process of science is "fool-proof" not in
the sense of being without error, but in the sense of allowing
even "fools" who follow its principles to ultimately arrive at
the correct answer. It often seems to me that people, including
academics, who think that they can intuit or otherwise arrive at
correct answers to complex problems without the slow, methodical
methods of science are simply too smart for their own good.
Perhaps this is part of the appeal of the "grand" but ill-founded
frameworks (e.g., Freud, Marx, ...) in the social sciences, as
well as some of the fascination with things like parapsychology
and the supernatural.
(3) Science does in fact approach completely accurate
explanations for phenomena. Our understanding of the physical
and biological world is vastly superior to what it was a few
centuries ago. It does an injustice to the achievements of
science to put too much emphasis on the unanswered (at
present) questions, especially when people would never even be
able to appreciate the unanswered questions without the
tremendous progress of science. As psychology all too slowly
(with numerous regressions) adopts whole-heartedly the principles
and methods of science, the same kinds of achievements are being
realized in psychology. Although psychology seems determined at
times to leave itself behind and pass the scientific torch over
to neuroscience and like disciplines.
That is probably enough evidence of my incompetence for the
present, but I would add the following since Jim Guinee started
this thread with respect to science and religion. I believe that
too many scientists are too polite with respect to non-scientist
critics, including the many religious critics, by trying to
maintain an unsupportable arms-length (football-field-length?)
distance between the claims of science and those of religion.
I also believe that there would be considerable room for debate
as to whether scientists or religious spokes-people are more
tolerant of or silent about the other. A google search on
science and religion turned up _many_ sites (over 1,000,000), but
the large majority adopt a religious orientation, pointing out
the essential role of religion. For a notable exception, try
www.godless.org. At http://www.godless.org/sci/herosci.html the
site's authors suggest some arguments why scientists are reticent
to face religion head-on. The privileged (i.e., protected)
status of religion was also the topic in the article that we
discussed here a month or so ago.
Best wishes
Jim
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James M. Clark (204) 786-9757
Department of Psychology (204) 774-4134 Fax
University of Winnipeg 4L05D
Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CANADA http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark
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