Late Night Thoughts on Science & Civilization

Science enjoys the kind of unique authority in modern civilization that religion once enjoyed. It is the one source of wisdom that is all but immune to challenge. To be openly "anti-science" is to be discredited in modern eyes. The only viable resistance to the authority of science that remains is to attempt to construct protected enclaves. Yes, science can tell you about physical nature but it can't tell you about morality, or the soul, or your relationship with God. That is largely a strategic retreat, as the enclaves are mostly shrinking over time.

Science, however, is in a radically different position than the authority that it displaced. Religion spoke directly to every human heart. The idea of an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibeneficent God may be in large part the work of brilliant theologians and bilingual church fathers, but any street worker can love it. Science, by contrast, speaks directly to the hearts and minds of a rather smaller group of persons, persons with certain aptitudes, inclinations and, I dare say, leisure. That difference underlies much of the modern situation.

It is conventional wisdom that the right is anti-science. Conservatives frequently reject the theory of evolution. They don't bow to the consensus on global warming. Those are trump cards of the chattering classes. The same is true, however, of persons on the left.

Steve Hayward, who has been posting fine pieces at Powerline, raises this provocative question:

Which ideology is it that throws a hissy fit over genetically modified organisms and childhood vaccinations? Or files lawsuits to stop de-listings of recovered species (like the gray wolf) even after the government's science advisory bodies say "the science" says they should be de-listed? Who's not respecting science now?

But rather than stopping with the simple observation that ideology or politics drives acceptance or rejection of certain domains of science, it is worth pressing on to ask why liberals dislike some kind of science, and conservatives other kinds. Liberals in the case of childhood vaccinations and GM organisms dislike certain forms of authority (especially private sector, for-profit authority—does anyone think the liberal outcry against GM foods would be as loud if it were a government lab rather than Monsanto that was leading these innovations?).

Conservatives have a symmetrical view, about which I have been trying to persuade liberal environmentalists (but I repeat myself) who will listen: even if catastrophic global warming were proved, we do not consent to being governed by Al Gore.

Steve is right, of course. I would add one item to the list. E. O. Wilson was viciously attacked for suggesting that human behavior could be interpreted by biologists. His persecutors (that is the right term) included many scientists. All of them were attacking from the left. That was in the 1970's. Today the discipline he gave birth to, sociobiology, flourishes on college campuses and research centers across the modern world. Add that also to the list of shrinking enclaves.

Science is born out of a curiosity about the world and how it works. It is always shaped by the suspicion that things aren't always what they seem and that what we are inclined and want to believe is often an obstacle to seeing things as they really are. It necessarily runs afoul of our conceits and for that reason is always susceptible to corruption. How would I feel if I encountered solid, scientific evidence that Asian immigrants are just smarter on average than Daughertys, Martins, and Blanchards?

I can offer no remedies to this modern conundrum. I can say that the view of science and philosophy much richer, more open ambiguity and awe, than those who fear it usually recognize. Timothy Williamson has an excellent piece on naturalism at the New York Times.

Many contemporary philosophers describe themselves as naturalists. They mean that they believe something like this: there is only the natural world, and the best way to find out about it is by the scientific method. I am sometimes described as a naturalist. Why do I resist the description?

Williamson, who confesses atheism, raises the obvious question.

Why can't there be things only discoverable by non-scientific means, or not discoverable at all?

That sounds a little like enclave entrenchment. Fortunately he goes on to argue that naturalism is not as restrictive as it seems.

What is meant by "the scientific method"? … For naturalists… it involves formulating theoretical hypotheses and testing their predictions against systematic observation and controlled experiment. This is called the hypothetico-deductive method.

One challenge to naturalism is to find a place for mathematics. Natural sciences rely on it, but should we count it a science in its own right? If we do, then the description of scientific method just given is wrong, for it does not fit the science of mathematics, which proves its results by pure reasoning, rather than the hypothetico-deductive method.

Yes. Mathematics is solidly in the camp of rationalism, whereas most scientists carry the card of empiricism. Empiricism means the exclusive focus on observable data. Yet the empirical sciences depend on a vast realm of mathematical knowledge that is itself not derived from observation. It is generated by pure reason. What does that mean?

Science opens up a domain that is rich and wonderful, but it opens up only to those who have the means and inclination to pursue it. These will always be few. Those few are no less immune to corruption than anyone else. Yet science remains the chief authority of modern civilization. That is our peculiar situation.

Comments

[Bill Fleming]

Well, there are certainly a number of paradoxes in that reasoning, KB, not the least of which is that if it takes "means" to pursue rational thought, then those with means would appear to be the "authority," not science.

The other is the relationship between math (theory) and science (experiment). There is actually a process here, whereby (typically) math makes the predictions and science attempts to disprove them. I think it's this check and balance system that people tend to trust, although, especially in the US we seem to still have a significant majority who derive their beliefs neither from math nor science, but rather via persuasion from those with "means."

For a great read on all this and how it relates to the "God Problem" see Mario Livio's "Is God a Mathematician."

http://www.mariolivio.com/

[Ken Blanchard]

Bill: I respectively disagree on both points. Philosophy and science require time and time requires means. It also helps if you have a functioning toilet or latrine. That doesn't make the means or the toilet any kind of authority. Lots of scientists and other scholars regularly bite the hand that feeds them.

It is great source of status for mathematics that it is necessary in both science and technology. That utility, however, doesn't verify any truth of math. The latter truths are verified entirely within the practice of math by entirely rational work.

[Donald Pay]

There's a bit too much simplicity involved with some of the assumed beliefs here. Regarding the delisting of the Gray Wolf, these issues have gotten complicated because of scientific studies which have resulted in recent changes to the understanding of the taxonomy of various wolf subspecies. Some subspecies have been elevated into species. In taxonomy these sorts of splitting/lumping arguments are common, but they have implications for endangered species decisions.

http://www.fws.gov/midwest/wolf/delisting/index.htm

Second, the assumption that liberals are more likely than conservatives to be vaccination deniers is not proved by polling data.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/04/27/more-polling-data-on-the-politics-of-vaccine-resistance/

Third, grassroots conservatives (as opposed to those whose think tanks receive funding from corporate ag) are nearly as opposed to GMOs as liberals and independents.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/poll010619.html

[Bill Fleming]

So Ken, you're disagreeing with me that your observations are paradoxical? Pretty funny.

[Dave]

So many things wrong here... Ken must have tied his mind in knots and had the blinders on to produce this!

[Donald Pay]

"E. O. Wilson was viciously attacked for suggesting that human behavior could be interpreted by biologists. His persecutors (that is the right term) included many scientists. All of them were attacking from the left. That was in the 1970's. Today the discipline he gave birth to, sociobiology, flourishes on college campuses and research centers across the modern world."

Sociobiology is a very broad subject and includes much more than human behavior. None of the controversy over sociobiology involved Wilson's framing of the subject regarding animal behavior, which was very well received, partly because it was mostly just a small step from ethology to the genetic component Wilson added.

In his original work, Wilson's chapters on human behavior are fairly weak and more speculative. It was both more tentative and less established and at the same time a fairly audacious and bold postulate. There were valid scientific arguments against extending sociobiology to humans. As a grad student in ecology at the time, I attended many discussions on sociobiology. Sociobiology always had nearly unanimous support in biology departments. Anthropology departments were split as were genetics departments. There were vehement arguments against the various aspects of extending sociobiology studies to humans. The major issue involved a b.s. argument about what percent of human behavior could be accounted for by genetics and how much from environment. The scientific controversy lasted about two years. Studies started to come in, which bolstered sociobiology, and everyone moderated their views.

[Ken Blanchard]

Donald: that was a very interesting comment. I had no idea that you had an interest in this subject. You are wrong to say that the controversy lasted "two years." It went on for decades. It still goes on. Lawrence Summers lost his post as President of Harvard for suggesting that biology might be relevant to the distribution of men and women in the hard sciences. His remarks were perfectly reasonable, but they made one of his colleagues ill.

There is some opposition to sociobiology from the right. The left, however, has been much more effectively hostile.

[Donald Pay]

No. The scientific controversy is pretty well settled. Summers statement was half cocked and not backed up with data. It was more of a hypothesis. The data in IQ and aptitude indicate no difference in averages, maybe a bit more variability in males. The problem is he was wrong, not that sociobiology was being attacked.

[Dave]

Steve Hayward (quoted here) at Powerline states that "Conservatives have a symmetrical view" and questions whether liberals would be opposed to GM if the government rather than the private sector were producing it...

3 questions...
1: Do conservative (corporatist) favor GM?
2: Would conservatives (corporatist) support GM if it were being promoted and marketed by a "government lab"?
3: That being the case, why does Ken use this idiot as a resource for this somewhat confusing piece?

[Ken Blanchard]

Donald: Summers wasn't forced from the Harvard Presidency for being wrong. He didn't make any substantive claims. He suggested that biological differences between men and women might be one reason why women are under-represented in the hard sciences and that knowing this might be useful precisely if we want to redress the imbalance. A reasonable person might disagree, but it was a reasonable proposal. You don't fire someone for being wrong.

Summers was forced out because he violated a taboo. He said something that his colleagues did not want to hear. The animosity toward biological explanations for human behavior is still very much alive.