The Scientific Method - Radio 4 - In Our Time - Melvyn Bragg

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01b1ljm/In_Our_Time_The_Scientific_Method/


From the link above:
'Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought.

In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.

The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.

With:

Simon Schaffer Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge

John Worrall Professor of the Philosophy of Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science

Michela Massimi Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Science at University College London.'

Philosophy of Stephen Fry

thanks to Matthew for this link: http://www.facebook.com/groups/dorsethumanists/10150692397203943/




 Stephen Fry talks about how loosely the term philosophy is used; philosophers dont give us a way of living life but rather raise lots of questions. Bertrand Rusell history of philosphy: Xeno and the pre-socratics, Plato, socrates, aristotle (logic but had a pernicious effect on medieval thinking by categorising), Spinoza, Kant (questions make rethink everything), Locke, Hegel (like grabbing a salmon, feel very stupid). Buddhism or spiritual, niceness is good. Logic takes very hard work, often ignored - talking about 'spiritual' is just not good enougth!

3:40 Imagine there's no heaven (John Lennon) - Even IF it isn't true you must absolutely assume their is no afterlife, you cannot for one second abrogate the responsibilty of believing this is it. If you think your going to have an eternity to talk to Mozart on a cloud, or have an eternity to understand stuff, you won't bother NOW! I may be wrong and their is an afterlife, but at least I'll have had a crammed THIS LIFE.

5:01 What do you believe? Atheism comes in for bad press, Humanism is better. I don't believe in A God, but if I were to believe I'd believe in GODS (plural) (I can understand that eg mountains might be considered to have an inner animous and to personify as the Greeks did into Athena and other gods), monotheism is a staggering misapprehension. The world is beutiful and wonderful - but that doesn't mean that there is a god, you have to account for bone cancer in children, a parasitic worm eating a lambs eye etc, most animals in the wild live under stress and will die a violent bloody death. Atheists and Humanists wonder about the world. God was everything when we knew nothing a millenium ago. Now god is now a 'god of the gaps'. Greeks said that if there were gods, they were capricious, not loving. 

8:49 Good without God - empower ourselves to create own ethical standards. Euthrypro. God did not give us free will. Enlightenment of 400 years - no new Dark Ages - the battle lines must be drawn

10:57 What is Religion Good for? Music (composers write for power and money), paintings (same), pieces are numinous not devine; architecture and churches, kind people who give to the poor - not necessary to justify religion

13:01 Are ther religious leaders you admire? Trevor Huddlestone, Archbishop Tutu - forght for justice; Bonhoffer spoke out against Hitler, Dalai Lama.

In Defense of Naturalism: A Response to Timothy Williamson by Gary Williams

source: http://philosophyandpsychology.com/?p=1829 September 5, 2011

I think Gary Williams gets at the core of what is wrong about Timothy Williamson's objection to Naturalism: 'In my opinion, the essence of naturalism is not a defense of the “hypothetico-deductive method” as the only worthwhile method of inquiry. Rather, the essence of naturalism is the claim that there is no supernatural realm and no supernatural entities inhabiting that realm. The essence of naturalism is thus negative, in the sense that it denies that there is something beyond the natural world (whatever that might turn out to be). Gary Williams meaning of Naturalism agrees with how HASSNERS defines naturalism viz 'The natural world (i.e. the Universe) is all that exists. All observable events in nature are explainable only by natural causes. Nothing supernatural or mystical exists.'

In full Gary Williams says (with some bold emphasis by me):-

'In a recent article in The Stone, (with emphasis by HASSNERS & another critique by Alex Rosenberg posted on HASSNERS) Timothy Williamson has some strong opinions on the intellectual strength of naturalism as a comprehensive worldview. What does Willamson mean by naturalism? He says “ [Naturalists] believe something like this: there is only the natural world, and the best way to find out about it is by the scientific method.” This is supposed to be a bad thing. Why? Because, for starters, the current science of physics might be superseded by a different physics in the future. Hence, ”Naturalism becomes the belief that there is only whatever the scientific method eventually discovers.” And how does Williamson characterize the scientific method? “[Science] involves formulating theoretical hypotheses and testing their predictions against systematic observation and controlled experiment. This is called the hypothetico-deductive method.” What’s the problem? For one, Williamson doesn’t think this method can handle the science of mathematics. Moreover, “Which other disciplines count as science? Logic? Linguistics? History? Literary theory? How should we decide? The dilemma for naturalists is this. If they are too inclusive in what they count as science, naturalism loses its bite.”

Apparently, “I don’t call myself a naturalist because I don’t want to be implicated in equivocal dogma. Dismissing an idea as “inconsistent with naturalism” is little better than dismissing it as “inconsistent with Christianity.”

And coming to the crux of his attack on the intellectual respectability of naturalism, Williamson says “Where experimentation is the likeliest way to answer a question correctly, the scientific spirit calls for the experiments to be done; where other methods — mathematical proof, archival research, philosophical reasoning — are more relevant it calls for them instead…Naturalism tries to condense the scientific spirit into a philosophical theory. But no theory can replace that spirit, for any theory can be applied in an unscientific spirit, as a polemical device to reinforce prejudice. Naturalism as dogma is one more enemy of the scientific spirit.”

 I find this whole article to be fantastically misguided in its attempts to attack naturalists as “dogmatic” or antiscientific in “spirit”. For one, I think Williamson has not adequately captured the intellectual core of naturalism as a worldview. In my opinion, the essence of naturalism is not a defense of the “hypothetico-deductive method” as the only worthwhile method of inquiry. Rather, the essence of naturalism is the claim that there is no supernatural realm and no supernatural entities inhabiting that realm. The essence of naturalism is thus negative, in the sense that it denies that there is something beyond the natural world (whatever that might turn out to be).

But contra Williamson’s caricature, naturalism, in my view, does not impose strict edicts on the best method for investigating the natural world. Naturalism is merely the view that the natural world is all there is, with nothing extra left over. Of course, one can step into dogmatic waters in trying to explicate what exists in the natural world. But I don’t think naturalism is required to say what the ultimate constituents of the natural world is, be that atoms or some kind of quantum foam.

Is there only one universal super object and all other objects are merely modes of that super object? Or are there a lot of fundamental objects? I take it that we can’t decide on these issues from the armchair. But this is not a failure of naturalism for naturalism is essentially a reactive enterprise. Our species’ religious history has caused us to inherit theological baggage such that many people would say that there exists both a natural world and a supernatural world. Naturalism is simply the thesis that the supernatural world is a figment of our overactive imaginations. In order to make this claim, the naturalist need not say anything substantial about the best method to inquire about the natural world. It is only a thesis about the fictive status of historically proposed supernatural realms like heaven and hell as well as the supernatural entities which inhabit these realms like angels, demons, and gods. 

Accordingly, we can see that Williamson has it exactly backwards in regards to the supposed “dogmatism” of naturalism and the scientific spirit. For who is more dogmatic? The naturalistic who “dogmatically” proclaims the supernatural realm is an illusion based on the latest and greatest brain science, or the supernaturalist who proclaims he “just knows” the supernatural realm exists because he has faith in it?

For this is the great advantage of naturalism: what it “dogmatically” proclaims to exist (the non-supernatural reality) is, in principle, discoverable or encounterable by means of our fleshy sensory apparatuses coupled with whatever tools we can harness, like the telescope or atom-smasher. In contrast, what supernaturalism dogmatically proclaims to exist is not, in principle, encounterable by such flesh for the supernatural is defined as being outside of time and space. Of course, supernaturalists often claim that supernatural entities do in fact interact with our world, but such claims cannot be brought into the respectable scientific arena of prediction and manipulation, so the claims are often left unprincipled and taken on faith. And of course, supernaturalists often report experiences of the supernatural.

But in regards to explaining such experiences, it strikes me as obvious that brain science and evolutionary theory (including theories of cultural evolution) does a better job of accounting for why people believe their experiences of the supernatural are veridical. A better explanation than “the experiences are accurate” is that the brain is capable of causing hallucinations that are triggered by specific cultural contexts such as being raised in a religious environment where the interpretational framework of supernaturalism exists. It remains to be seen if a far-future atheistic society would interpret hallucinations in the same way as most people do now.

In conclusion, I have attempted to argue that Williamson is wrong to claim naturalism’s most basic claim is about the hypothetico-deductive method being the only method of inquiry. Instead, naturalism’s most basic claim is that the supernatural realm implicitly and explicitly assumed to exist by religious people throughout history is in fact, fictive. All that exists is the natural world. But naturalism as a basic thesis makes no claims about about (1) what the natural world is most fundamentally or (2) what the best method(s) for inquiring about that world are. Both of these questions need not be completely resolved in order for us to see that supernaturalism (the only true opponent of naturalism) is intellectually bankrupt.'

What Is Naturalism? By TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON

source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/what-is-naturalism/

 September 4, 2011, 5:00 PM

Edited. My emphasis in bold.

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? Not for any religious scruple: I am an atheist of the most straightforward kind.

But accepting the naturalist slogan without looking beneath the slick packaging is an unscientific way to form one’s beliefs about the world, not something naturalists should recommend. What, for a start, is the natural world? If we say it is the world of matter, or the world of atoms, we are left behind by modern physics, which characterizes the world in far more abstract terms. Anyway, the best current scientific theories will probably be superseded by future scientific developments.

We might therefore define the natural world as whatever the scientific method eventually discovers. Thus naturalism becomes the belief that there is only whatever the scientific method eventually discovers, and (not surprisingly) the best way to find out about it is by the scientific method. That is no tautology. Why can’t there be things only discoverable by non-scientific means, or not discoverable at all? 

Still, naturalism is not as restrictive as it sounds. For example, some of its hard-nosed advocates undertake to postulate a soul or a god, if doing so turns out to be part of the best explanation of our experience, for that would be an application of scientific method. Naturalism is not incompatible in principle with all forms of religion. In practice, however, most naturalists doubt that belief in souls or gods withstands scientific scrutiny.

What is meant by “the scientific method”? Why assume that science only has one method? For naturalists, although natural sciences like physics and biology differ from each other in specific ways, at a sufficiently abstract level they all count as using a single general method. 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. Although a few naturalists, such as W.V. Quine, argued that the real evidence in favor of mathematics comes from its applications in the natural sciences, so indirectly from observation and experiment, that view does not fit the way the subject actually develops. When mathematicians assess a proposed new axiom, they look at its consequences within mathematics, not outside. On the other hand, if we do not count pure mathematics a science, we thereby exclude mathematical proof by itself from the scientific method, and so discredit naturalism. For naturalism privileges the scientific method over all others, and mathematics is one of the most spectacular success stories in the history of human knowledge. 

Which other disciplines count as science? Logic? Linguistics? History? Literary theory? How should we decide? The dilemma for naturalists is this. If they are too inclusive in what they count as science, naturalism loses its bite. Naturalists typically criticize some traditional forms of philosophy as insufficiently scientific, because they ignore experimental tests. How can they maintain such objections unless they restrict scientific method to hypothetico-deductivism? But if they are too exclusive in what they count as science, naturalism loses its credibility, by imposing a method appropriate to natural science on areas where it is inappropriate. Unfortunately, rather than clarify the issue, many naturalists oscillate. When on the attack, they assume an exclusive understanding of science as hypothetico-deductive. When under attack themselves, they fall back on a more inclusive understanding of science that drastically waters down naturalism. Such maneuvering makes naturalism an obscure article of faith. 

I don’t call myself a naturalist because I don’t want to be implicated in equivocal dogma. Dismissing an idea as “inconsistent with naturalism” is little better than dismissing it as “inconsistent with Christianity.”

Still, I sympathize with one motive behind naturalism — the aspiration to think in a scientific spirit. It’s a vague phrase, but one might start to explain it by emphasizing values like curiosity, honesty, accuracy, precision and rigor. What matters isn’t paying lip-service to those qualities — that’s easy — but actually exemplifying them in practice — the hard part. We needn’t pretend that scientists’ motives are pure. They are human. Science doesn’t depend on indifference to fame, professional advancement, money, or comparisons with rivals. Rather, truth is best pursued in social environments, intellectual communities, that minimize conflict between such baser motives and the scientific spirit, by rewarding work that embodies the scientific virtues. Such traditions exist, and not just in natural science.

The scientific spirit is as relevant in mathematics, history, philosophy and elsewhere as in natural science. Where experimentation is the likeliest way to answer a question correctly, the scientific spirit calls for the experiments to be done; where other methods — mathematical proof, archival research, philosophical reasoning — are more relevant it calls for them instead. Although the methods of natural science could beneficially be applied more widely than they have been so far, the default assumption must be that the practitioners of a well-established discipline know what they are doing, and use the available methods most appropriate for answering its questions. Exceptions may result from a conservative tradition, or one that does not value the scientific spirit. Still, impatience with all methods except those of natural science is a poor basis on which to identify those exceptions. Naturalism tries to condense the scientific spirit into a philosophical theory. But no theory can replace that spirit, for any theory can be applied in an unscientific spirit, as a polemical device to reinforce prejudice. Naturalism as dogma is one more enemy of the scientific spirit.

Timothy Williamson is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University, a Fellow of the British Academy and a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been a visiting professor at M.I.T. and Princeton. His books include “Vagueness” (1994), “Knowledge and its Limits” (2000) and “The Philosophy of Philosophy” (2007).

Why I Am a Naturalist By ALEX ROSENBERG

Organised by WW Norton and Chris Street for AtheismUK, HASSNERS & Humanists4Science, Alex Rosenberg will talk about his book 'The Atheists Guide to Reality' at Conway Hall, London on 25th February 2011 at 2-3pm. Details at HASSNERS.org.

September 17, 2011, 3:00 PM
source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/why-i-am-a-naturalist/

Edited extracts.

Naturalism is the philosophical theory that treats science as our most reliable source of knowledge and scientific method as the most effective route to knowledge.

In a recent essay for The Stone, Timothy Williamson (with my emphasis here on HASSNERS) correctly reports that naturalism is popular in philosophy. In fact it is now a dominant approach in several areas of philosophy — ethics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science and, most of in all, metaphysics, the study of the basic constituents of reality. Metaphysics is important: if it turns out that reality contains only the kinds of things that hard science recognizes, the implications will be grave for what we value in human experience.

The confidence that science can solve problems of naturalism shouldn’t be mistaken for “dogmatism.” Naturalism is itself a theory with a research agenda of unsolved problems. But naturalists’ confidence that it can solve them shouldn’t be mistaken for “dogmatism,” nor can its successes be written off as “slick packaging,” two terms Professor Williamson used in his essay to describe why he rejects naturalism.

 Before taking up Professor Williamson’s challenges to naturalism, it’s worth identifying some of this success in applying science to the solution of philosophical problems, some of which even have pay-offs for science. Perhaps the most notable thing about naturalism is the way its philosophers have employed Darwin’s theory of natural selection to tame purpose. In 1784 Kant wrote, “There will never be a Newton for the blade of grass.” What he meant was that physical science could never explain anything with a purpose, whether it be human thought or a flower’s bending toward the sun. That would have made everything special about living things — and especially us — safe from a purely scientific understanding. It would have kept questions about humanity the preserve of religion, mythmaking and the humanities. Only 25 years or so later, the Newton of the blade of grass was born to the Darwin family in Shropshire, England. “On the Origin of Species” revealed how physical processes alone produce the illusion of design. Random variation and natural selection are the purely physical source of the beautiful means/ends economy of nature that fools us into seeking its designer.

Naturalists have applied this insight to reveal the biological nature of human emotion, perception and cognition, language, moral value, social bonds and political institutions. Naturalistic philosophy has returned the favour, helping psychology, evolutionary anthropology and biology solve their problems by greater conceptual clarity about function, adaptation, Darwinian fitness and individual-versus-group selection.

While dealing with puzzles that vexed philosophy as far back as Plato, naturalism has also come to grips with the very challenges Professor Williamson lays out: physics may be our best take on the nature of reality, but important parts of physics are not just “abstract,” as he says. Quantum mechanics is more than abstract. It’s weird.

400 years of scientific success in prediction, control and technology shows that physics has made a good start. We should be confident that it will do better than any other approach at getting things right. The principles of natural selection are unlikely to be overtaken by events. Naturalists recognize that science is fallible. Its self-correction, its continual increase in breadth and accuracy, give naturalists confidence in the resources they borrow from physics, chemistry and biology.

The second law of thermodynamics, the periodic table, and the principles of natural selection are unlikely to be threatened by future science. Philosophy can therefore rely on them to answer many of its questions without fear of being overtaken by events. “Why can’t there be things only discoverable by non-scientific means, or not discoverable at all?” Professor Williamson asked in his essay. His question may be rhetorical, but the naturalist has an answer to it: nothing that revelation, inspiration or other non-scientific means ever claimed to discover has yet to withstand the test of knowledge that scientific findings attain. What are those tests of knowledge? They are the experimental/observational methods all the natural sciences share, the social sciences increasingly adopt, and that naturalists devote themselves to making explicit.

... what about other items on Professor Williamson’s list of disciplines it would be hard to count as science: history, literary theory? Can science and naturalistic philosophy do without them? This is a different question from whether people, as consumers of human narratives and enjoyers of literature, can do without them.

... That doesn’t mean anyone should stop doing literary criticism any more than forgoing fiction. Naturalism treats both as fun, but neither as knowledge.

What naturalists really fear is not becoming dogmatic or giving up the scientific spirit. It’s the threat that the science will end up showing that much of what we cherish as meaningful in human life is illusory.

Alex Rosenberg is the R. Taylor Cole Professor and philosophy department chair at Duke University. He is the author of 12 books in the philosophy of biology and economics. W.W. Norton will publish his latest book, “The Atheist’s Guide to Reality,” in October 2011 in USA and in the UK January 2012.

Skeptics in the Pub, Portsmouth with Jim Al-Khalili

crabsallover question to Jim Al-Khalili, HASSNERS Meetup / Skeptics in the Pub (Organisers)

Promoted by HASSNERS Meetup. I attended this event in Portsmouth, Hampshire on 8th September 2011 and asked a question (@33'45") to Jim who explained that since E=2mc2, re-arranging mass = E/2c2. Double energy because make a positron (antimatter) AND an electron (matter). I also plugged his 'The Life Scientific' Radio 4 programme which he appreciated.

A question to Jim about parallel universes from another member of the audience.

Parallel Universes - Do they exist?

A question about the Higgs Boson in which Jim talks about the nature of science. If no Higgs Boson is found that's great news because scientists will have to completely re-write the Standard Model! Like a child just opened all his Christmas presents - then it's boring; scientists long for new mysteries to solve. NB. 3 months later scientists at LHC said they had possibly glimpsed the Higgs!!

Jim Al-Khalili talks about time travel, the Universe from Nothing, the big bang and more...