[Avodah] No Barrier Between Religion and Science

[Micha Berger]

See this article on Real Clear Science <http://bit.ly/2gxvyvZ> or
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2017/10/16/philosophy_rebuts_key_barrier_between_science_and_religion_110422.htmlh

Here is Mosaic Magazine's snippet:

    Kuhn's [argument] is that students learn first by imitation and
    practice and -- assuming they receive a good education -- once they
    strike out on their own, they will have been successfully inculcated
    into a particular scientific tradition. They will thus be prepared
    to recognize, pose, and solve scientific problems.

    If we take tradition to be antithetical to scientific rationality,
    Kuhn's conclusions will appear disquieting. And, indeed, Kuhn's
    critics rejected his arguments as "irrationalist." But if, on
    the contrary, we take tradition to be essential to rationality,
    then Kuhn's conclusions will be not only acceptable but also
    unsurprising. According to the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre,
    before we can begin to reason at all, we must first acquire the
    habits necessary to recognize and, ultimately, to replicate rational
    behavior. To do so, there must first be exemplars that we take to be
    authoritative -- in the moral domain these will be exceptionally
    virtuous people, in the scientific domain, exceptionally good
    scientists. To become rational, in other words, one must be educated
    within a tradition of inquiry.

    Science, on this view, is not Cartesian -- at least as far as [the
    rejection of received ideas] is concerned -- even if it remains
    eminently rational.

    Where does this leave us?... [T]he fact that religious beliefs are
    not entirely reducible to empirical experience and partly depend upon
    tradition doesn't make them irrational or even anti-scientific. Thus
    a popular way of opposing science and religion starts to look
    untenable. This hardly means the two become indistinguishable. But
    it does suggest that science and religion could be conceived of
    as distinct -- but possibly harmonious, even sometimes mutually
    beneficial -- traditions of rational inquiry.

The truth is that science has little to say about where a hypothesis
come from. It gives little guidance for deciding what features are worth
observing, what we should give our attention to. And once we see a pattern
that needs explanation, it is left to human creativity to come up with a
hypothesis. Science is a means of weeding out subjectivity from possible
answers, but the means of coming up with those answers are very human.

In particular, the entire enteprise of science rests on a tradition of
theism -- whether the personal beliefs of an Aristotle or Newton, or the
culture that produced an Einstein. Without a personal reason for assuming
that the universe opperates reasonably, rather than attributing lightning
to Thor's or Zeus's moods, can that hypothesis invention get started.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Good decisions come from experience;
micha at aishdas.org        Experience comes from bad decisions.
http://www.aishdas.org                - Djoha, from a Sepharadi fable
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