On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, jim clark wrote:
> 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
>
But Science is unable to understand musical compositions,artistic
creations and other affairs of the heart and internal sensibilities.
This emphasis on scientic approaches is quintessentially
Eurocentric and fails to account for the other ways of knowing.
Michael Sylvester,PhD
Daytona Beach,Florida
