This question keeps popping up in numerous threads, particularly in the common anathema that a particular position is "unscientific", though such a position might be held by otherwise respectable scientists. So I figure we might as well duke it out in a separate thread in order to settle the matter once and for all.

Here's Judge Overton's take in McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education:

Of these, I would only consider (3) to be essential. . . .

What is Science, you ask?

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

One of my faves. Here's his synopsis:Skepticism, in other words.

Sounds good to me as long as "experience" is taken to be empirical experience, rather than, say, mystical experience. That's an open, pluralistic definition that allows maximum freedom of inquiry.

But somehow I'll bet that KenG won't find it entirely satisfying since Intelligent Design theory and the Anthropic Principle could be construed as real science under Feynman's definition. . . .

I can't imagine much "duking" is needed. Wiki has a pretty good definition of science and quite a bit of discussion. Scientists are generally not too interested in philosophy.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Excellent thread, Warren.

You are certainly correct that the judge's definition of science is far more complete than Feynman's, but this does not leave me unsatisfied-- I love Feynman precisely because his goal is never to supply a complete or exhaustive view of anything, it is to supply a blindingly simple flash of insight that makes sense of the complete and exhaustive definition. That's just what Feynman always does, and this is perfectly par for the course. It would be missing the point entirely to substitute Feynman's definition for a complete definition of what we call science, just as his book on QED would never pass as a graduate textbook in that subject. I suspect, with Cougar, that Wiki's discussion of what science is is most likely a pretty good and fairly complete reference on that topic, but I will never miss a word by Feynman to help me make sense of the whys.

By the way, Feynman goes on to talk about science as a means for making sure you don't fool yourself, recognizing that you are the easiest person to fool. That's just brilliant, and puts both ID and anthropic thinking into its proper perspective, I would say. This is the point I have been making-- the test of science is not whether or not it affords you with a warm fuzzy feeling of understanding something, it is whether or not you can make a testable prediction that actually plays out. The understanding is a kind of byproduct that is still an important piece, and is the motivation for Occam's Razor, but it cannot be the sole content. If it is, then you have philosophy not science.

That is silly, Cougar. Science, the definition and such, are subsets of philosophy. The scientific method is a philosophical argument. Objectivity, observation, validity, nullification, induction, deduction, experimentation are all philosophically derived 'tools' used in science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?

I didn't really see much of a "definition of science" from that Feynman presentation, so how can you back up your claim?

Intelligent Design is not a theory and is not science. Again, Wiki has a decent discussion, part of which states:

Intelligent design is the claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a modern form of the traditional teleological argument for the existence of God, modified to avoid specifying the nature or identity of the designer. Its primary proponents, all of whom are associated with the Discovery Institute, believe the designer to be God. Intelligent design's advocates claim it is a scientific theory, and seek to fundamentally redefine science to accept supernatural explanations.

The unequivocal consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own. The National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have termed it pseudoscience. Others have concurred, and some have called it junk science.

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Do you mean, not one that you agree with?

In my view, Feynman's goal in "defining" science as he does is quite similar to his discussion of "energy". He mentions that at some point, you do have to define energy, and use the term in a jargony kind of way among other practitioners who have gone through the same process, but he doesn't feel it should be the first thing you do when you try to explain something. So Feynman is looking for the first thing you should do when you try to understand what science is, and that is not quite the same thing as a "definition", even though he uses that word. In his presentation, he is not interested in the formal definition of science, because it is not his goal to be able to say if ID or anthropic thinking are science, his goal is to try and see what science is at its most fundamental level. That in turn can be used to go on and find a more formal definition, which is useful for treating explicit examples. And by the way, Feynman's characterization of science as a kind of form of constrained skepticism is entirely consistent with my assertions that anthropic thinking is not science, expressly because gaining a warm fuzzy feeling of understanding something without testing is just about the biggest target there is when it comes to the need for skepticism.

Call it what you like, but it is generally true. What's there to ponder and investigate about formal logic? If A implies B and B implies C, then A implies C. This is a tool used by scientists, not a field of investigation.... (well, except in rare cases. See Keith Devlin, and Goodbye, Descartes in particular).

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Like most scientists, and probably most people, Feyman is more interested in showing the wonder of how science works, than on formalising what it is. Personally, I think that both questions are valuable, but the former is often the most illuminating, even as a tentative reply to the latter.

Although the philosophy of science is one of my guilty pleasures, I must observe that it tends to be more reactive than creative.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

No. Of course I agree with most of what Feynman has ever said, and I've read most of what he wrote, which unfortunately isn't that much. I ALWAYS remember and totally agree with his story about the names of birds....

Monday, we were playing in the fields and this boy said to me, "See that bird standing on the stump there? What's the name of it?"

I said, "I haven't got the slightest idea."

He said, "It’s a brown-throated thrush. Your father doesn't teach you much about science."

I smiled to myself, because my father had already taught me that [the name] doesn't tell me anything about the bird. He taught me "See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halsenflugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird--you only know something about people; what they call that bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way," and so forth. There is a difference between the name of the thing and what goes on.

The result of this is that I cannot remember anybody's name, and when people discuss physics with me they often are exasperated when they say "the Fitz-Cronin effect," and I ask "What is the effect?" and I can't remember the name.

Feynman's presentation is a great talk with many good lessons, but essentially, well, it's too long and variously focused to be a "definition of science."

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Scientists ignore philosophy at their own peril; whatever science is, we can be sure that it is a subset of philosophy. After all, if you get a Ph.D. in a science, what does the "Ph" stand for?

From hhEb09'1's post:
Well, it's not very comfortable having to defend ID theory, but after all, they're just doing what Feynman suggests by taking a fresh look at Darwinism and making sure that it can really explain everything previous generations told us it could. Just because ID theory will most likely turn out to be false, at least with respect to biological evolution, that in itself doesn't make ID theory unscientific. If anything, ID has spurred evolutionary research into things like cilia and thus has indirectly contributed to true scientific progress.

As for the wiki article:

Certainly human artifacts are "features" of the universe, and they were clearly intelligently designed. And their (the Ideists') fundamental question: What would be the difference between an intelligently designed organism versus a naturally evolved organism is a worthwhile question. I mean, if you found some Roundup-Ready soy beans, how could you tell they were genetically engineered and not naturally evolved if you did not know for sure ahead of time that Roundup-Ready soy beans were in fact genetically engineered?

Before Darwin, ID theory (e.g., Paley's Natural Theology) was all there was. One could have maintained Hume's skepticism regarding ID, but there was no positive alternative at the time. So if ID theory was scientific back in 1850, then why isn't it now?

Instead of hurling insults, my advice to the opponents of ID is to simply say it's false.

A judge is defining science?

I've read too many stories about how they do not even properly interpret even very clearly written legislation.

Something like an American Science Institute, composed of bona-fide scientists, should have stepped in with a sworn affadavit signed by all the scientists which said, "Science is x..."

Oh, that's right - sworn affadavits are no longer allowed in most courtrooms, so everyone has to appear in person to be "deposed" by both sides in a very lengthy and costly process...

And, uh, well, yeah, the other thing. Judges are lawyers first, the ones who write the laws in the first place.

Uhm, ... yeah.

I think I've pretty much figured out why a judge is spending perhaps several hundred thousand dollars of everyone's time and money deciding on the definition of science instead of simply taking 5 minutes and referring to the dictionary or just looking it up on a reliable encyclopedia, if a more precise definition is needed.

Excellent question, Warren. It's because of the paradigm shifts in science.

Also, excellent advice to just say "no." Sadly, when the local majority wants to change the science textbooks and my son Johnny will get his head crammed with nonsense, sometimes you have to do a bit more, like take things to (ugh) court.

Good point. I agree that philosophy and its methodologies are a crucial part of defining what science is, but at that point you leave philosophy behind and start doing science. If you then begin re-integrating philosophy into the science itself, you are doing what I call natural philosophy, and I would say that the exclusion of natural philosophy from science was its largest step forward over the last 400 years, and is largely responsible for science's great gains in that period.

This point is well taken, and shows that the Wiki article is incomplete. But what completes the picture is what I said before-- to be science, you need more than a hypothesis, you need some evidence that supports the hypothesis and some way to subject the hypothesis to further sincere scientific testing. Those are the areas where ID falls apart, not in the hypothesis itself (indeed it is the form of the hypothesis that separates ID from old creationism, but it still doesn't make it science to be able to formulate a scientific-sounding hypothesis).
Because the separation from natural philosophy was still not complete by that time. It was a long process, and still isn't finished-- indeed, it is lately showing some signs of backsliding. That's my objection with both sides of the most vocal elements of the ID debate.

Science is a collection of many fields of study. What you're talking about is merely one tool, the scientific method, which is use throughout those fields of study.

Intuition is another tool, which is how most of mankind came up with an hypothesis to test in the first place.

Science existed long before the scientific method was added to the toolbox, and I would stipulate that one of, if not the most fundamental tools in that box is observation, not because it's necessarily the first step (we test for things all the time that we can't observe) but because the first scientist observed something the others around him did not, such as, possibly, when he kept his meat next to the fire it tasted better warm than cold.

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Microsoft is over if you want it.

The bar has been lowered for the promotion of ATM ideas; the bar for the acceptance of ATM ideas must remain high.

I don't think too many scientists are shaking in their boots.

Ken said it pretty well, as emphasized by Celestial Mechanic. "Philosophy" is more like ground work. After it's laid down, it's mostly forgotten and the real work on the structure begins.

Oh, that's just a frozen historical accident.

And it shouldn't be!

They are not! It's a directed effort to get the Christian God into the curriculum of U.S. public schools. It's a political movement. Wake up!

It can't even be false because it's not a theory.

Four Things That Do Make Intelligent Design Unscientific.


Wrong. That would imply it is a falsifiable theory, which it is not. Dude, what happened to your strong philosophical foundation?

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Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

If all they did was to taking a "fresh look at Darwinism" I'd be thrilled. What they are actually doing is making invalid arguments against mainstream evolution and declaring that this criticism somehow supports ID.

Further, the motives of major players in the U.S. have been shown over and over again to based on getting religion into public school science classes.

That depends on how the question is asked. If you're asking for evidence of evolution, that's one thing, and is abundent. There is, of course, the fossil record, genetic evidence (which shows a lot of "junk" DNA, not something I'd expect to be designed in), many examples of where there would be a very obvious, much more straightforward "design" than what has evolved, etc.

If you're asking how would I prove, absolutely, that there wasn't design, I'd call it an "invisible elf" question. I'd just ask back how you would prove, absolutely, that we didn't just wink into existence fully formed a second ago, complete with memories?

If your asking how would I detect the very small modification to a naturally occurring species (because we certainly did not design soy beans), I'd look for similar genes in closely related species. I'd also look to see if there was an apparent use for the gene in the natural environment.

What do you think was an insult in that statement? I don't see it.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

But see, that's the thing: fundamentalist Christians (among others) will say that you are cramming their children's heads with nonsense. As Quine pointed out half a century ago, the truth of any sentence can be maintained "come what may" as long as one is willing to alter the truth-values of enough other sentences within one's linguistic framework that constitutes one's theory of life, the universe, and everything. Therefore, even young Earth creationism cannot be logically falsified--just as the idea that I might be a brain in a vat and all of you are mere inputs that some evil demon is sending into my poor brain cannot be logically falsified. Though I am not much of a believer myself, I do not take much pleasure in disenchanting other true believers. I'm like Voltaire: even though I'm not much of a believer, I would maintain a chapel on my estate, play chess with the local priest, and I would wish that all the rest of my neighbors would be true believers because they would be less likely to steal from me or otherwise cause mischief. Plato himself argued for the pedogogic value of teaching "noble lies" to the youth of his time. You've got to ask yourself whether today's youth suffer from too much or too little moral instruction. Me, personally, I never had any instruction regarding evolution until college just because of the controvery. Given the choice, I think it's better to study both evolution and ID theory rather than neither; teach the controversy--that's what I say. If by teaching ID theory a few kids are able to maintain their religious beliefs that they might otherwise lose, well, what's wrong with that? Surely, they'll never grow up to be famous evolutionary biologists or philosophers of biology--but so what? They'll grow up to be great engineers, doctors, and businessmen instead--practical occupations that actually matter in real life! But in any case, given the uncertainty as to what constitutes science itself, dogmatic assertions that ID theory is not science will merely cause people to be skeptical of science.

Based on belief, not evidence.

That's another "invisible elf" argument. You really seem to like them. It isn't up to me to prove YEC wrong. The argument that a creator could have made the universe "just so" to appear as if it is billions of years old isn't falsifiable (as you said) and therefore not science. If they claim there is evidence for a falsifiable argument, then it is up to them to present it.

Even better is to teach evolution. ID isn't science, and it isn't a theory. It flatly does not belong in the science classroom.

If by teaching the flat Earth "theory" a few kids are able to maintain their religious beliefs, what's wrong with that? What's wrong is that (a) it isn't science, and (b) if teaching science in the science classroom is going to interfere with someone's beliefs, that's just too bad. It isn't the science teacher's place to support everyone's (sometimes contradictory) beliefs.


Only if they don't know what constitutes science. ID isn't falsifiable, and it isn't supported by evidence.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Dude, ever heard of the Quine-Duhem thesis? Popper said that the confirmation of a hypothesis did not prove the hypothesis true--that would commit the fallacy of affirming the antecedant:

(p -> q) & q :. p

Because, after all, q could be true, yet have nothing to do with p.

But falsification! Now that's another story! Or so Popper thought:

(p -> q) & -q :. -p

Now that's a logically valid argument--otherwise known as modus tollens. . . . Unfortunately, it neglects certain auxiliary assumptions that are always present (and usually unmentioned if they are even known) in any given empirical, scientific experiment. Thus the logical equation then becomes:

((p & A1 & A2 & A3 & . . . An) -> q) & -q :. -p v (-A1 v -A2 v -A3 v . . . -An)

Therefore, either the main hypothesis is false--or any one of an unknown number of unknown auxiliary hypotheses is or are false. There's no telling which is the case just from the experiment.

So, ID theory can't be falsified, but then neither can Darwinism. . . .

Evolution is based on mutation and natural selection. It could be falsified by showing that these do not occur.

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

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The Leif Ericson Cruiser

Their arguments might be politically invalid, but they are certainly not logically invalid!

OK. So? Even Ken agrees that born-again Baptist fundamentalists can still be great scientists. (I think Richard Smalley himself was a sincere Christian--and don't ever forget that he won that Nobel!)

I agree. . . .

Excellent! And that's exactly what the ID folks are doing!

"Psuedoscience" and "junk science".

Were you ever there when a mutation occurred? Did you see it happen?

There's NO SUCH THING as "ID theory". Saying that there "is" is a misrepresentation designed only to confuse the issue.

Why would you post something so obviously incorrect??

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"The facts gentlemen, and nothing but the facts, for careful eyes are narrowly watching." Isaac Asimov

They are scientifically and logically invalid. Their criticism of evolution has been found wanting and logically the idea that criticism of evolution supports ID is an example of the false dilemma falacy. ID is not the only alternative to mainstream evolution.

I would have thought that was obvious. Their motive is to have religion taught in the science classroom. Do you want religion taught in the science classroom? If so, which religions should be allowed, and which should not? Where should we teach actual science?

OK. So?

Agree with what? You do realize that I was not implying any "intelligent design"? My question was "How would you prove that we didn't just wink into existence?" No creator, no reason, it just happened. It is not a falsifiable argument. It does not have any evidence to support it. How is it different from ID?


Not from what I've seen.

How is that an insult? ID isn't science. It is Creationism with the serial numbers filed off.

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Yes, I've known people with cancer.

Assuming this was a serious question, there is all sorts of evidence of germline mutation. Experiments with radiation and fruit flies or mice are popular. See here for example:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=000...3E2.0.CO%3B2-D

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I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser