Science as a matter of faith?

A recent New York Times article by Paul Davies stirred the hornet's nest. Some excerpts --

"SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term "doubting Thomas" well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

"... [S]cience has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn't be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed.

"... Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

"... In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus."

More on the subject in the next post/s.

Paul Davies is both a respected physicist-cosmologist and science popularizer.

[Image: Galileo before the Holy Office, from Wikimedia Commons]

cosmology

Comments

[Clement]

I would argue at the second paragraph, when he states "All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way" that this is not an assumption. I think that people have observed Nature and have remarked a certain number of trends regarding the way things behave. They have then tried to simplify them to try and express results that corresponf as closely as possible to reality - and that's what science is all about. I don't claim that science is always right. In science, a truth is a truth until someone finds a better one.

[Roy]

Suppose one drops that assumption, then. How does one "do" science?

Put differently, what meaning does the word "trend" have apart from the assumption you wish to deny?

[Clement]

Here's what I would say: you've just used scientific reasoning to prove that science is based on an assumption (you've used logic to undermine my point), and that therefore it could possibly be wrong. That means that you are denying what you just said. If the universe is not based on reason, then neither are you, otherwise the universe is based on reason.
And that applies to my reasoning as well: If you can't use reason, what can you use? unreason, or just chaos and randomness? If you do not believe that the universe is governed by reason, you cannot use it yourself, otherwise you are contradiciting yourself. Therefore if you do not make that assumption, you can't do anything or say anything that's true, which makes reason a necessity - and if you extend that, it's not an assumption then.

[Roy]

Clement wrote (Roy provides divisions):
A) If you do not believe that the universe is governed by reason, B) you cannot use it yourself, C) otherwise you are contradiciting yourself.

Observe how you have used "believe", Clement. Your reasoning stands on a foundation of faith.

So, BTW, does mine. Unlike you, however, I do not deny it. I believe God is. Because He is, the creation is rational. Hence I can use reason (your B does not follow) and do not contradict myself (your C does not follow).

Further, at least one difference between your foundation of faith and mine is, interestingly enough, internal consistency. Your faith insists on the ultimacy of chance. Which precludes the very reasoning by which you hope to order your thinking. Mine insists on the absolute, detailed sovereignty of The God who reveals himself in scripture and by whose revelation I know that I can reason, can do science. He, not chance, is ultimate.

[socratus]

Clement wrote:
I would argue at the second paragraph, when he states "All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way" that this is not an assumption.
==============.
What is our intellect ?

1.
We don't know what we are talking about"
/ Nobel laureate David Gross referring to the current state of string theory ./
2.
It is important to realize that in physics today,
we have no knowledge of what energy is.
We do not have a picture that energy comes in little
blobs of a definite amount. ”
(Feynman. 1987)
3.
When asked which interpretation of QM he favored,
Feynman replied: "Shut up and calculate."
4.
when I was first learning quantum mechanics as a graduate student
at Harvard, a mere 30 years after the birth of the subject.
"You'll never get a PhD if you allow yourself to be distracted
by such frivolities," they kept advising me, "so get back to serious
business and produce some results."
"Shut up," in other words, "and calculate."
And so I did, and probably turned out much the better for it.
/ N. David Mermin /
5.
The problem of the exact description of vacuum, in my opinion,
is the basic problem now before physics. Really, if you can’t correctly
describe the vacuum, how it is possible to expect a correct description
of something more complex?
Paul Dirac .
6.
“ Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things,
you just get used to them.”
/ John von Neumann ./
7.
Since the mathematical physicists have taken over,
theoretical physics has gone to pot.
The bizarre concepts generated out of the over use and
misinterpretation of mathematics would be funny if it were not
for the tragedy of the waste in time,
manpower, money, and the resulting misdirection.
/ Richard Feynman./
8.
" I feel that we do not have definite physical concepts at all
if we just apply working mathematical rules;
that's not what the physicist should be satisfied with."
/Dirac /
9.
Etc……..

Conclusion from some article:
"One of the best kept secrets of science is that physicists
have lost their grip on reality."
================= .
P.S.

What is our intellect ?
We can see this practically :
after “ big bang “ all Galaxies run away from us.
#
This is our normal intellect in our normal Orwell’s farm.

=================..
Best wishes.
Israel Sadovnik. / Socratus.
http://www.socratus.com
http://www.wbabin.net
http://www.wbabin.net/comments/sadovnik.htm
http://www.wbabin.net/physics/sadovnik.pdf