by jimwalton » Fri Jun 30, 2017 6:19 am
It seems that you underestimate legitimate interpretation and overestimate interpretations of reality. Despite the power of knowledge through science, the improper extrapolation of science to the assumption that it, modeled on the natural sciences, is the only source of real knowledge. Ian Hutchinson, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, says, "It’s an ugly, awkward, and erroneous worldview." There are many beliefs that are justified and rational, but not scientific. We have fields of sociology, history, law, economics, politics and metaphysics that are not subject to scientific experiments. Science can't confirm personality or purpose in the world: they are social constructs—worldviews based on other than repeatable lab experiments.
There is an entire field of academic study (historians, philosophers, and sociologists) known the History and Philosophy of Science. Its conclusions are not verifiable in science labs (observation, repeatability, testing, etc.). It is the study of showing how science works, what scientists have done and said, and what the influence of science is on the wider culture. Various ones say, "What counts as verification cannot be adequately articulated, and acknowledged theories of natural science frequently did not qualify."
Karl Popper (philosopher) said that a universal proposition such as "all swans are white" cannot logically be proved, no matter how many white swans we see, but can be logically disproved by the observation of a single black swan. He concluded that verification of universal propositions through processes of induction and confirmation is not what science does. Instead, the way science works is by systematic attempts to falsify supposed universal laws. When a law successfully survives many such attempts, when it passes the most stringent of potentially falsifying tests, it is regarded as having thereby gained strong corroboration. Yet corroboration doesn't guarantee reality.
Pierre Duham (French physicist, historian, mathematician and philosopher): "A physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses. … There is no such thing as a simple empirical test of a theory; hypotheses are tested in bundles."
W.V. Quine: The distinction between analytical and empirical statements, nor the supposition that individual empirical statements can be reduced to immediate experience were supportable. Ultimately, he concluded, "the totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs is a man-made fabric that impinges on experience only along the edges."
Thomas Kuhn: Generally speaking, scientists don't try to falsify their theories; they defend them. What's more, theories aren't immediately considered defunct if a single example of a falsifying observation arises. Instead, they are shored up by adjustment of auxiliary hypotheses.
In the end, science seems to be little more than opinion, expert opinion granted, but still just an opinion. There is, in Kuhn's words, "no standard higher than the consent of the relevant community": a situation that has been colorfully characterized as scientific mob rule.
Paul Feyerabend (philosopher of science) argues that there is no scientific method, that science is, and should be, anarchic.
I'll grant these seem extreme, but these are resident smart guys of the scientific persuasion saying these things.
The real question at hand is: How confident can you actually be that revelation and interpretation are any weaker of a basis for truth than the relatively much smaller set of scientific observations?
Last bumped by Anonymous on Fri Jun 30, 2017 6:19 am.