SCIENCE!
I'm supposed to be doing my homework, but I'd rather not (c'mon, you guys, I have a Chinese midterm, give me a break :P), so instead, I'm going to write about evolution. One of my classes this year is an upper-division biology class, Experimental Ecology & Evolution (E3, for short, and I love it more than any class ever), which is giving me uppity ( Read more... )
3) "The scientific method is the best way we have for analyzing our
perceptions of this reality."
Yet again, you are using what you are trying to argue to prove what you are trying to argue. This is why arguing against materialists is exactly like arguing with Christian fundamentalists. It's as if you are defining a word by restating the word. I'm saying, "The scientific method is NOT necessarily/always the best way we have for analyzing our perceptions of this reality." What do you say? The scientific method is the best way we have for analyzing our perceptions of this reality, therefore, the scientific method is the best way we have for analyzing our perceptions of this reality. I am forced to simply say WTF??? Again, let's presume the above statement is true. Well, then why don't we just let scientists run our countries? Why don't we preface every moral question with "what would science have me do?" This is obviously ridiculous and an over exaggeration, but my point is that to take this statement as true, then you presume science has the right to determine truth in every domain of our lives. (Hell, every domain of existence! Not even philosophy is quite that arrogant, and philosophers are arrogant, let me tell you. You do realize that this sounds an awful lot like the religious doctrine science pretends to refute, but that's exactly the point, isn't it? There is no OUT of science. It's ubiquitous. It's God. I'll borrow a saying from Freud (who was ironically a big fan of science) and say that science allows us humans to become prosthetic gods. or at least, that's the goal.
4) "Even if the scientific method first leads us to a conclusion that's
inaccurate in absolute terms, its very nature makes it likely that
someone will eventually discover this and bring us closer to the truth."
Gorgeous. You just stated science's #1 maxim: PROGRESS. Without progress, science would be rather pointless. First off, this presumes that there exists "absolute terms". Basically, this means that there's this thing called 'truth' out there, somewhere. It exists empirically in the real world. It's objective. A scientist proposes a hypothesis about the nature of this truth. On this scientist's side are all of the "proven" truths that come before. In order for progress to be possible, one must build upon foundations set down by others. We know the speed of light in a vacuum because some guy, (was it Planck? I don't remember) did the work to determine that was the case. Science takes for granted textbooks full of knowledge and then uses it to "analyze reality". Thus, the scientist, by using this body of pre-existing material and raw data which it collects my measuring real things, draws a conclusion. The key here being that the scientist draws the conclusion, nature doesn't do it for itself. This conclusion may refute a previously taken for granted conclusion. Thus we come 'closer' to the truth. Of course, there is no way of determining when a theory moves closer or further from said truth, but the scientist has FAITH that one day, we might get real close. Oh boy, the religious undertones... actually, not really undertones. More like overtones. This creates a picture of a "probable reality", as the reality science determines is as close to the truth as we can get.
Reply
Leave a comment