Professor Schaff has staked his personal reputation on the fact that his last post on this subject was his last post.
Last post by me on this topic. Honest. Ken Blanchard responds to my response to his post on "dangerous questions" posed by science.
I am not sure why he is so insistent on closing off the topic, as this seemed to me to be an interesting exchange; but I suppose I can now reply without fear that any deficiencies in my reasoning will be revealed by him.
Professor Schaff wants to draw a sharper line between questions that science can answer, and those that it cannot answer, than I do. I differ in so far as I don't think that scientific inquiry is all that different from other forms of rational investigation like history or political science. Professor Schaff says this:
One of the foundations of the scientific method is that scientific investigation must begin with a hypothesis that is falsifiable. For example, if I argue that in a vacuum a ton of lead falls faster than a ton of feathers, that hypothesis can be proven false by experimentation. If, however, I argue that if Stonewall Jackson had not died at Chancellorsville the Confederates would have defeated the Federals at Gettysburg, this is not a falsifiable hypothesis, thus is not a scientific question. We cannot go back in time, resurrect Jackson, send him to Gettysburg and see what happens.
I think this gets it wrong. Lots of historical propositions are falsifiable. If one says that person X, and not John Wilkes Booth, killed Lincoln, that might be falsified by showing that person X was somewhere else, or dead. If one argues that a better designed ironclad ship would have won the war for the South, one might falsify that by showing that the South did not have the industrial capacity to produce such ships in sufficient numbers.
Likewise, a lot of scientific propositions are not falsifiable when they are made. Relativity theory stood for a long time before it was confirmed by experiment. It is only necessary that the proposition be falsifiable in principle. To the degree that the suggested historical thesis above, that Stonewall Jackson would have turned the tide at Gettysburg, is not falsifiable, then it isn't really a legitimate historical question either. It is mere child's play.
The difference between history and science is analogous to the difference between physics and biology. Physics has lots of firm laws. Biology has almost none. The reason is that the subject matter of each presents different problems. The kind of precision physics can achieve is not possible in biology; even less precision and decisiveness is possible in history or political science or ethics. But I suppose that this is because the subject matters differ in their degree of complexity and access, rather than because there is some sharp division between scientific and non-scientific questions.
I confess to a certain suspicion here: that Professor Schaff's insistence on limiting the reach of science belongs to what I call the "Olympian strategy." Take what you want to protect (the Olympian gods, certain ethical principles, aesthetic judgments), and put it behind a toddler gate that the scientists can't cross. I do not say that this is never warranted. As Professor Schaff notes, I was trained as a Straussian. But I think that in the contemporary world, the device should be used very sparingly. Anyway, the point of Pinker's article was to protect those who ask dangerous questions, not to encourage such questions for their own sake.
There. That'll teach my colleague to declare that he has had the last word.
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