© Colman Hogan, 2022
Science/Scientism
Q: what is science? – examples: gravity, the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root theory
Qs of accuracy and prediction: Mayan calendar (~100 BCE) is extremely accurate – 1/10,000th
of a day more exact than the standard calendar the world uses today
Miasma Theory – Up until about 1900 Western science thought many contagious diseases were
caused by ‘bad air’ – miasma; after 1900 the competing ‘germ theory’ won out (although 1919-20
Influenza pandemic showed the ‘miasma theory’ still dominated the popular imagination).
Newton’s hypothesis of ‘Action at a distance’
“It is inconceivable that inanimate Matter should, without the Mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual Contact…That Gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to Matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance thro’ a Vacuum, without the Mediation of anything else, by and through which their Action and Force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical Matters a competent Faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.” Isaac Newton, letter to Richard Bentley, 1693
Euclid
Euclidean geometry explains the human body’s interface with material reality: roads, wheels, train tracks, houses, etc.
Newton
Einstein
Quantum
GUT: a hypothetical Grand Unified Theory would explain quantum behaviour within a frame that includes Euclidean geometry, Newtonian gravity and Einsteinian relativity
Inter-relation of theories
Euclid
Newton
Einstein
Quantum
GUT?
Each of these theories expands the domain of relevance and gets more and more accurate
Quantum mechanics is the most precise scientific theory ever devised – it can predict certain properties with an accuracy of 10 decimal places
= 0.0000000001 margin of error
1/10 billionth
Further, the theories do not surpass each other; rather, each subsequent theory incorporates the previous and expands its domain of relevance and accuracy
Science is
An unprovable hypothesis – no direct experience; rather, epiphenomena; there is no measurement of gravity, but the effects of its hypothetical force are seen everywhere
Explains a vast quantity of known phenomena (much of which was not thought to be linked); Newton’s theories explained the movements of galaxies not discovered until centuries later
Is predictive – newly discovered phenomena explained by exactly this hypothesis; Einsteinian extrapolation of Newtonianism in 1915 predicted gravity waves, first measured in 2017
Historical Linguistics: fulfils the three rules of science
Sir William Jones (1746-1794) – discovery of historical linguistics
John shares a common origin with Shaun, Eoin Ian, Juan, Ivan, and Yahya. Surprisingly, the Catalan words Joan ‹John› and xoni ‹Vulgar girl› are also related. They are all come from the Biblical Hebrew phrase God is gracious, over 30 centuries of evolution. Historical linguistics tries to analyze such changes and their links, and even recreate disappeared forms through comparing those that are known.
“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.”
William Jones, Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society (1786)
Historical linguistics, the analysis of the similarities of the root structures in the grammars of multiple living and dead languages, posits the – unprovable – hypothesis of an Ur language Proto-Indo-European (PIE). No evidence of PIE has ever been found. Yet the hypothesis of PIE explains the incredible similarity of all the languages in the language tree below, and also accounts for their diversity. Over the 250 years since the first formulation of the PIE theory, more and more evidence has been found that verifies its necessary existence – how else to explain the similarities (which cannot be random)? And indeed, the theory is predictive: on the basis of the hypothesis certain structures are supposed to exist throughout the history of languages, and in fact research over the centuries has sought for and found textual evidence of those structures and changes.
Historical linguistics, like the theory of gravity is an unprovable hypothesis; of great explanatory power; and predictive.
Scientism – a socio-political meta-theory, about ‘science’ (it is not science)
i.e., a theory of knowledge which takes ‘science’ as its core model of understanding
Scientism is the view that modern Western natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, that, in the words of philosopher Hilary Putnam, “science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective” (i.e., to the exclusion of history, philosophy, psychology, literature, social science, etc.)
It has four principal doctrines:
The only real knowledge is scientific knowledge, based on the scientific method
The method is appropriate for all domains of knowledge; human sciences (arts, humanities, social sciences) must adopt this method to be considered bona fide knowledge
Exaggerated confidence in the method – assumption that the world is amenable to being understood only by the method (a metaphysical presumption: how do you prove this?)
Unlimited extrapolation – a series of claims not just about science, but with metaphysical import; the world is really like what the method assumes it to be (without this, the claim for the legitimacy/power of science is groundless)
* this claim provokes the critics of scientism the most: they charge it with:
overconfidence – not youthful exuberance
narrow-minded dismissal of all ‘non-scientific’ knowledge
hubristic prescribing of method for all knowledge domains
The Six Signs of Scientism
from Susan Haack, “Six Signs of Scientism”. Logos and Episteme, III, 1 (2012): 75-95
1. Using the words “science,” “scientific,” “scientifically,” “scientist,” etc., honorifically, as generic terms of epistemic praise.
2. Adopting the manners, the trappings, the technical terminology, etc., of the sciences, irrespective of their real usefulness.
3. A preoccupation with demarcation, i.e., with drawing a sharp line between genuine science, the real thing, and “pseudo-scientific” imposters.
4. A corresponding preoccupation with identifying the “scientific method,” presumed to explain how the sciences have been so successful.
5. Looking to the sciences for answers to questions beyond their scope.
6. Denying or denigrating the legitimacy or the worth of other kinds of inquiry besides the scientific, or the value of human activities other than inquiry, such as poetry or art.
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