The Nature of Scientific Knowledge Part III
2. Discovery vs. Invention
b. Natural Kinds
Most contemporary scientists are hesitant to speak of metaphysics, and especially to admit of any connection between scientific knowledge and metaphysical knowledge. This position is understandable, given the historical importance of distinguishing science from theology on the one hand and superstition or pseudoscience on the other. Maintaining the authority of science depends on such distinctions.
But modern (Western) science evolved from natural philosophy, and during the Renaissance and the period of early modern science (roughly 1500-1750), natural philosophy was subordinate to theology. Orthodoxy generally assumed natural philosophy to be consistent with revealed truth. The book of nature had to be consistent with the revealed truth in the scriptures.
Even most unorthodox scientists were, by all accounts, deists. They took the universe to be God’s creation. The role of the scientist was to understand what God had wrought. The important point here is that from the Renaissance through most of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, most Western scientists assumed a creator-God.
If the universe is the product of the mind of God, then the objects and phenomena of God’s creation may readily be assumed to be organized according to God’s plan. The universe consists of natural kinds according to God’s creative vision and will. For example, according to the Biblical book of Genesis, on the third day of creation,
"God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.'"
The bringing of order out of chaos was the essence of God’s act of creation. The task of the scientist was to discover that order using the tools of human perception and logic.
The idea of an ordered universe is not unique to Christian, Muslim or Judaic orthodoxy. Plato, the great pagan philosopher also argued for an underlying, real world of ideal forms which give rise to the ephemeral phenomena accessible to and observed by human beings. Early modern scientists such as Galileo and the Neoplatonist Kepler, like Pythagoras before them, believed that fundamental mathematical concepts expressed as natural laws provide the underlying structure of the universe - a conception that is tacitly or explicitly held by many scientists today. For Kepler, the mind of God was to be understood through the underlying mathematical principles revealed in the book of nature. This faith in the fundamental deterministic rationality of the universe is reflected, I think, in Einstein’s reluctance to embrace quantum mechanics because “God does not play dice with the universe.”
It is not, of course, necessary to believe in either God or creation ex nihilo to believe in an ordered universe. One can posit totally inanimate and non-purposeful means that result in an ordered universe. But there are three points to be made here:
1) A metaphysical presumption of the existence of natural kinds and natural laws underlies the beginnings of the scientific enterprise, and was, arguably, built into the cognitive structure of the scientific enterprise from its beginning.
2) A tacit or explicit commitment to the existence of natural kinds and natural laws predisposes and probably entails the interpretation that scientists discover knowledge, as opposed to inventing it.
3) If science, or the philosophy of science, is to abjure a metaphysical basis, then the existence of natural kinds or natural laws becomes something to be demonstrated and not something to be presumed.
Some scientists are happy to accept such a metaphysical basis as an infrastructure to scientific knowledge, for example Jesuit scientists surely must do so. But the common attitude of the past century, I think, has been that science and metaphysics are and should be separate domains. Science has nothing to say about metaphysics which is taken to have a non-empirical basis. Metaphysics has nothing to say to science - it is by definition beyond physics.
Indeed, positivist philosophers of science, who flourished in the first half of the 20th century, sought to establish a bright and distinguishable boundary between science and metaphysics. They saw science as the only source of positive (i.e., certain) knowledge of the world we live in. They tended to equate metaphysical statements with nonsense and certainly with non-science. I have met many scientists today who would endorse this distinction. They believe that the rationality of science depends on maintaining a strong distinction.
Some recent philosophers of science, such as Larry Laudan, believe that rational scientists can and do embrace metaphysical theories as part of their research programs. In particular, a research program can include a commitment to certain ontologies such as the existence of quarks or of dark energy or of multidimensional strings, which do not have a demonstrable empirical basis, and still be good science.
Just to clarify here: a metaphysical commitment may but does not necessarily imply a particular religious commitment. A scientist, for example, might believe that an ordered universe is the inevitable result of evolutionary forces and initial conditions with no participation by a prime mover or God. The commitment is nonetheless metaphysical, in that it cannot be empirically proved or disproved. A physicist might believe in the existence of dark energy because such an assumption is consistent with certain untestable hypotheses mathematically derived from other observations. A metaphysical grounds for belief is one that reduces to a statement such as, “I cannot prove it to be so, but I believe it to be so.” Often, in science, the metaphysical core of a research program are its irreducible axioms.
In short and in summary, if the universe is composed of objects and processes that participate in categoric relationships that manifest the ideas of a creator, then the concept of discovery makes perfect sense as a description of the cognitive activity of science. If the relationships among different objects and phenomena reflect natural laws that manifest the ideas of a creator, then the concept of discovery is similarly robust. If the scientist undertakes his or her research and synthesis of knowledge from the stance of a metaphysical commitment to this kind of universe, whether religiously based or not, then the language of discovery makes sense.
But the language of discovery does, it seems to me, rely on such a metaphysical authority for the validity of the scientific knowledge that is the product of discovery.
b. Natural Kinds
Most contemporary scientists are hesitant to speak of metaphysics, and especially to admit of any connection between scientific knowledge and metaphysical knowledge. This position is understandable, given the historical importance of distinguishing science from theology on the one hand and superstition or pseudoscience on the other. Maintaining the authority of science depends on such distinctions.
But modern (Western) science evolved from natural philosophy, and during the Renaissance and the period of early modern science (roughly 1500-1750), natural philosophy was subordinate to theology. Orthodoxy generally assumed natural philosophy to be consistent with revealed truth. The book of nature had to be consistent with the revealed truth in the scriptures.
Even most unorthodox scientists were, by all accounts, deists. They took the universe to be God’s creation. The role of the scientist was to understand what God had wrought. The important point here is that from the Renaissance through most of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, most Western scientists assumed a creator-God.
If the universe is the product of the mind of God, then the objects and phenomena of God’s creation may readily be assumed to be organized according to God’s plan. The universe consists of natural kinds according to God’s creative vision and will. For example, according to the Biblical book of Genesis, on the third day of creation,
"God said, 'Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.'"
The bringing of order out of chaos was the essence of God’s act of creation. The task of the scientist was to discover that order using the tools of human perception and logic.
The idea of an ordered universe is not unique to Christian, Muslim or Judaic orthodoxy. Plato, the great pagan philosopher also argued for an underlying, real world of ideal forms which give rise to the ephemeral phenomena accessible to and observed by human beings. Early modern scientists such as Galileo and the Neoplatonist Kepler, like Pythagoras before them, believed that fundamental mathematical concepts expressed as natural laws provide the underlying structure of the universe - a conception that is tacitly or explicitly held by many scientists today. For Kepler, the mind of God was to be understood through the underlying mathematical principles revealed in the book of nature. This faith in the fundamental deterministic rationality of the universe is reflected, I think, in Einstein’s reluctance to embrace quantum mechanics because “God does not play dice with the universe.”
It is not, of course, necessary to believe in either God or creation ex nihilo to believe in an ordered universe. One can posit totally inanimate and non-purposeful means that result in an ordered universe. But there are three points to be made here:
1) A metaphysical presumption of the existence of natural kinds and natural laws underlies the beginnings of the scientific enterprise, and was, arguably, built into the cognitive structure of the scientific enterprise from its beginning.
2) A tacit or explicit commitment to the existence of natural kinds and natural laws predisposes and probably entails the interpretation that scientists discover knowledge, as opposed to inventing it.
3) If science, or the philosophy of science, is to abjure a metaphysical basis, then the existence of natural kinds or natural laws becomes something to be demonstrated and not something to be presumed.
Some scientists are happy to accept such a metaphysical basis as an infrastructure to scientific knowledge, for example Jesuit scientists surely must do so. But the common attitude of the past century, I think, has been that science and metaphysics are and should be separate domains. Science has nothing to say about metaphysics which is taken to have a non-empirical basis. Metaphysics has nothing to say to science - it is by definition beyond physics.
Indeed, positivist philosophers of science, who flourished in the first half of the 20th century, sought to establish a bright and distinguishable boundary between science and metaphysics. They saw science as the only source of positive (i.e., certain) knowledge of the world we live in. They tended to equate metaphysical statements with nonsense and certainly with non-science. I have met many scientists today who would endorse this distinction. They believe that the rationality of science depends on maintaining a strong distinction.
Some recent philosophers of science, such as Larry Laudan, believe that rational scientists can and do embrace metaphysical theories as part of their research programs. In particular, a research program can include a commitment to certain ontologies such as the existence of quarks or of dark energy or of multidimensional strings, which do not have a demonstrable empirical basis, and still be good science.
Just to clarify here: a metaphysical commitment may but does not necessarily imply a particular religious commitment. A scientist, for example, might believe that an ordered universe is the inevitable result of evolutionary forces and initial conditions with no participation by a prime mover or God. The commitment is nonetheless metaphysical, in that it cannot be empirically proved or disproved. A physicist might believe in the existence of dark energy because such an assumption is consistent with certain untestable hypotheses mathematically derived from other observations. A metaphysical grounds for belief is one that reduces to a statement such as, “I cannot prove it to be so, but I believe it to be so.” Often, in science, the metaphysical core of a research program are its irreducible axioms.
In short and in summary, if the universe is composed of objects and processes that participate in categoric relationships that manifest the ideas of a creator, then the concept of discovery makes perfect sense as a description of the cognitive activity of science. If the relationships among different objects and phenomena reflect natural laws that manifest the ideas of a creator, then the concept of discovery is similarly robust. If the scientist undertakes his or her research and synthesis of knowledge from the stance of a metaphysical commitment to this kind of universe, whether religiously based or not, then the language of discovery makes sense.
But the language of discovery does, it seems to me, rely on such a metaphysical authority for the validity of the scientific knowledge that is the product of discovery.