[Deckard]

Lots of directions have opened up in your last post - the question of knowledge, the question of God's existence, the problems of religion, the modern atheist resurgence - but I'm going to have to be disciplined and ration my time on this one!

Originally Posted by Strangelet

I have no desire to knock science nor scientists for that matter. I just want to argue that knowledge is illusory within the scientific method. I'm not doing this to open up the possibility of God. I'm doing this to curtail the arrogance of religious conviction towards the outcomes science produces, up to and including the assertion that there is no God.

This statement intrigued me.

If when you say 'knowledge is illusory' you mean in the philosophical sense - that the very notion of certainty is fundamentally an illusion - then I'm not sure how the scientific method ever really concerns itself with this. Scientific discovery works the same way irrespective of this underlying question, and has no critical bearing on outcomes beyond perhaps that raised by certain interpretations of quantum theory, which is more about the limitations of experimental objectivity rather than the limitations of knowledge.

If you mean knowledge is illusory in the empirical sense - that scientific knowledge is only ever as good as we have been able to make it to date - well sure. To a large degree, that is the scientific method and is how knowledge develops. I think most people with some intellectual honesty who value the scientific method would accept that any clinging they do to 'knowledge' is temporary and only until something comes along to falsify or refine it. Which is a point you've made later on in the post, so I assume we're in total agreement on this.

If you mean scientists sometimes have a tendency to be dogmatic and closed-minded - yes, they're human. Of course that's a problem of dogmatism and human frailty rather than a flaw in the scientific method. I'm tempted to condense that down to a question of good scientists versus bad scientists.

If you mean they express themselves too rigidly or with too much certainty about something that, while it may appear to be correct today, may well be proven wrong tomorrow - I generally sense this is just a rounding up exercise in convenience, and is made with the unspoken caveat of "this is the best we have - currently everything overwhelmingly points to this..." A little humility never goes amiss of course, but at some point and with some 'beliefs' that have been supported by so much evidence, communication would become awfully tedious if we prefaced everything as being uncertain or had to assemble a percentage level of probability. It would be unworkable as a consistent whole system. This goes back to the point you made earlier about applying analog language. Either way though, I'd say it doesn't necessarily mean scientists aren't ultimately aware of the 'illusory' sense of knowledge.

So when you say "knowledge is illusory within the scientific method", well if this is a limitation, it seems to me either a generally acknowledged one (at least if you pushed scientists hard enough!), or a somewhat irrelevant one, if we're taking the more existentialist angle.

Talking of good and bad scientists, and I think this is relevant - let me quote one of the good ones. This is Feynman addressing the question of why, in a science lecture, students may not understand the speaker...

"Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen any more. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it. It's a problem that physicists have learned to deal with: They've learned to realize that whether they like a theory or they don't like a theory is not the essential question. Rather, it is whether or not the theory gives predictions that agree with experiment. It is not a question of whether a theory is philosophically delightful, or easy to understand, or perfectly reasonable from the point of view of common sense. The theory of quantum electrodynamics describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it agrees fully with experiment. So I hope you can accept Nature as she is - absurd."

As to the assertion that there is no God, this is surely just an overconfident rounding up of the statement 'there is no evidence for God's existence'. I see this 'overconfidence' as more a reflection of the human ego than of the scientific method. Whether or not it's in the realm of the scientific method at all depends of course on how we're defining God.

Originally Posted by Strangelet

I argued against such convictions and blind acceptance of scientific "knowledge", but I can give more. Kuhn talks about the process by which we throw away old scientific paradigms for new ones. To paraphrase crudely, in the beginning there is paradigm A and general hostility and shock towards anything that refutes A. Then there's a small bridge of time where paradigm B supercedes A. And finally a long period of general hostility and shock towards anything that refutes B.

What does this describe besides the process of fixating one's *beliefs* as if they were thumb tacks going from one position on the bulletin board to the next?

People hate not "knowing", the lack of believing is painful, which is why the bridge between A and B is so comparatively short. But that's ok because the scientific method is user friendly. It says: start believing something, and I'll show you how much you can believe it.

Yes, I'm glad you ended with that paragraph!

Fixating beliefs - truly blind acceptance of scientific "knowledge" - is, I'd say, far from common. It seems to me that, certainly since the time of Newton and Galileo, and even moreso recently - there have been far more open minds on the big issues than closed ones, even though those closed ones have been on quite significant matters. And most closed minds are not permanently closed to the degree that every challenge should be taken as a test of faith and character.

I've been reading a lot about string/M-theory lately, currently widely viewed (though not by all) as our best candidate for unifying matter and the four forces. [Apologies if you're familiar with this and I'm coming across as patronising.] Some of its leading proponents (not 'believers') have been working painstakingly on this for 25 years or more, yet when faced with the possibility that as a model of reality it may all turn out to be completely and utterly wrong, they are remarkably candid in acknowledging this. The thing about string theory at this point in time is still the lack of experimental data. It's essentially mathematics drawing on existing 'knowledge' of physical phenomena (theories that agree with experiment). Now that we're reaching the stage where some of these (relatively) new theories can themselves be put to the test, the conversation is not about string theory "being proven right", but rather string theory "being given a boost". When string theorists talk about a positive result, they talk about it representing "the best evidence to date in support of" string theory. Even though they define themselves - "string theorists" - by their theory. Now that's an admirably open-mind if ever I saw one!

Do these scientists secretly hope that they've been on the right path for all these years? Of course. But these and other theoretical physicists display an honesty that, to me, bears the hallmarks of a thorough appreciation for the scientific method, for doubt, and for the warning signs of clinging too hard to a single rigid view of the world. Certainly the history of science is littered with examples of major breakthroughs suggesting that - on the big things at least - science progresses in fits and starts rather than smoothly. I think it was the aforementioned Feynman who once made the point that on the really earth-shattering discoveries, paradigm B is sometimes only widely accepted once the scientists proposing paradigm A have died out, such is that unique combination of ego and influence (a combination I'd note is much akin to religion). But generally, scientists are constantly checking to see if there is something the matter with a theory. And on the shock and sometimes hostility to altering paradigm A - be it the position of the earth in the universe or the nature of light or whatever - we merely come back to the fallibility of mankind, and the consolation that, eventually, paradigms more closely resembling reality are accepted, even if a step or two back is necessary to get there. As you've said, so I'm thinking we're still, for the most part, in agreement. Science might progress in fits and starts, it might appear biased even with the concept of falsifiability, but the idea of fixed dogma is ultimately the antithesis of the scientific method, even if not all scientists are successful in avoiding it. The late Fred Hoyle's refusal to accept the Big Bang/inflationary model of the universe for instance struck me as being rooted more in stubbornness and ego than anything else, given the astonishing evidence that exists to support the theory, and the lack of evidence to support a steady-state universe.