This ties very well into a little disagreement I got into about whether science should be limited to methodological naturalism. In the course of the disagreement I found Plantinga’s essay on the subject and pulled some wonderful quotes from it.
The person I was having the discussion with questioned whether I could give an example of non-Duhemian science. After thinking about it a little, I found it’d be any theory stating whether space is or is not infinitely divisible.
If it isn’t and is somehow found to be a superfluid composed of parts, then what? Those parts are going to have a spatial (maybe even non-classical) relation.
Space is a continuum that is simultaneous in all its parts. Viewed from a mathematical perspective there is no end to the divisions of it.
Roy
Hi Roy. That doesn’t seem to be a common definition reflecting either common or academic usage.
This does not strike me as reflecting the attitude of scientists toward actual scientific theories, nor does such an idea of the fundamental nature of reality seem necessary for a functioning theory. A theory is a model for the patterns in physical phenomena; it can be attached to any of a range of beliefs about the ultimate source of those phenomena or indeed to no belief at all.
What makes something divine?
Could you describe how this works for the origin of a raincloud and rain? Is condensation an explanation of the divine?
Steve,
Condensation is an observable process, and has been observed in clouds as well as on the ground. As such it is not a theory - an educated guess - that it takes place. We might make a theory about it, but it’s existence is observable and not a theory. In the book I give extensive examples of how divinity beliefs regulate the way the natures of postulated entities are conceived. The examples are drawn from major viewpoints in math, physics, and psych.
The divine is whatever is the self-existent origin all else.
Roy
Your descriptions of my position and the book are all correct, Steve. But I would like to add one clarification. My position is not a version of a presuppositionalist apologetic such as is associated with Van Til’s apologetic. Pointing to the way some divinity belief or other regulates theories doesn’t settle with divinity belief - if any - is true. The Myth of religious Neutrality doesn’t develop an apologetic.
That is done in a new book I’ve not yet published called “Can We KNOW God Is Real?”
Roy
The definition I defend of the primary sense of “religious belief” is more widely held than you might suppose. Plato, Aristotle, virtually all the medievals, Calvin, Spinoza, and many others have held it. In the 20th century alone it has been advocated by Eliade, James, Tillich, Barth, NK Smith, Jaeger, Heisenberg, Wittgenstein, and many more.
But the reason it’s right is not how many people have agreed with it, but rather the overwhelming evidence in its favor. In the book I show that it’s true not only of Judaism, Christianity, & Islam but also Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, and dozens of ancient religions and tribal religions.
Keep in mind that a person doesn’t have to be thinking of a certain belief for it to influence him/her. A presupposition can be quite unconscious and still exert great influence on a scientist’s work.
Roy
No. Having shown why theories cannot avoid presupposing some divinity belief or other, I then raise the question as to whether there should be a distinctly Christian philosophy (theory of reality and theory of knowledge). The last three chapter then introduce the idea of a Xn philosophy as that was developed by Herman Dooyeweerd of the Free University of Amsterdam.
Roy
Scientific theories aren’t educated guesses. They are well established and well evidenced explanations for facts. Gravity is a theory. Condensation is a theory. Germs are a theory. Atoms are a theory.
We observe that liquid water appears in the atmosphere. The explanation as to why is theory. So does that theory assume an idea of the divine? How does the theory of condensation relate to the divine?
‘The divine’ as @RoyC is using it is maybe an esoteric application and should be understood as being in scare (or air ; - ) quotes?
@RoyC may need to correct me on this, but maybe it has to do with the underlying worldview of the scientist? A Christian worldview would presume that natural laws (fundamental physical constants, for instance) are instituted by God, not just impersonally ‘that’s the way it is’.
@glipsnort got to the heart of the issue in an earlier post:
“This does not strike me as reflecting the attitude of scientists toward actual scientific theories, nor does such an idea of the fundamental nature of reality seem necessary for a functioning theory. A theory is a model for the patterns in physical phenomena; it can be attached to any of a range of beliefs about the ultimate source of those phenomena or indeed to no belief at all.”
I suspect that @RoyC is not a practicing scientist. I could be wrong, but that’s the feeling I get. People outside of science can sometimes arrive at a very distorted view of how science works or how scientists work, and this distorted view is often the result of different “culture wars” and clashes of worldviews. Of course different scientists will have different worldviews just as with any large group of human beings anywhere, but as I have mentioned many times, I would challenge anyone to read a standard scientific paper and try to deduce the authors’ religious beliefs from the content of the scientific article. In my own experience, scientists are a wildly diverse group when it comes to religious and philosophical beliefs, and yet we can easily come together and judge the scientific merit of a scientific theory and find common ground for both our agreements and disagreements.
Having just quickly read your chapter on physics, I think you are eliding two meanings of ‘theory’ that are distinct to (most) scientists. Theories about natural phenomena are one class of thing, while theories about the relationship of theories and reality are quite a different thing. At one point, in the context of atomic theory, you refer to the former as theories and the latter as interpretations, which is a usage more consistent with that of scientists. My point above was that, regardless of their quite different interpretations of a particular theory – including whether it represents a physical reality at all – different scientists are all working with the same theories (in the first sense).
To use your example from your book, followers of Mach, Einstein, and Heisenberg will have very different understandings of what it means to postulate the existence of a neutrino. They will, however, all do the same calculations based on Pauli’s theory and they will all do the same experiments (or, more likely, get their experimental colleagues to do them) to test that theory. That’s why the philosophical or religious worldview of physicists (and of other researchers in the natural sciences that I’m familiar with) do not in practice matter to the science that they do. The reality is that an outsider cannot tell the difference between physics done by a Machian from physics done by an Einsteinian, nor can one tell the difference between evolutionary biology done by an atheist and that done by a devout Christian.
ETA: I see that @T_aquaticus has already said some of this above. Parallel processing…
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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