C.S. Lewis on Science/Cosmology

[Micawber]

Hey all, here’s a rough transcription from Lewis’ essay Is Theology Poetry?

Popular cosmology contains a fatal flaw…

The whole picture professes to depend upon inferences from observed fact. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula obeys the thought laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory - unless reason is absolute - all is in ruins.

Yet, those who ask me to believe this worldview also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming.

Here’s flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based. The difficulty is a fatal one; and the fact that when you put it to many scientists, far from having an answer, they seem not even to understand what the difficulty is, assures me that I have found a mare’s nest, a radical disease in their whole mode of thought from the very beginning. We are compelled to regard scientific cosmology as a myth.

Now, what is he saying here exactly? That if reason evolved “blindly” out of matter, then it cannot be absolute (all places, all times); and if reason isn’t absolute, then how can we apply it everywhere/time? If we cannot, then how can our inferences about the observed universe be tenable?

Am I understanding this ^^ correctly?

If so, do you find this convincing?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Hey all, here’s a rough transcription from Lewis’ essay Is Theology Poetry?

Popular cosmology contains a fatal flaw…

Now, what is he saying here exactly? That if reason evolved “blindly” out of matter, then it cannot be absolute (all places, all times); and if reason isn’t absolute, then how can we apply it everywhere/time? If we cannot, then how can our inferences about the observed universe be tenable?

Am I understanding this ^^ correctly?

If so, do you find this convincing?

This is a reductio ad absurdum. Lewis says, let us assume that the assumptions of atheistic science are correct. If this is so, then my mind is simply an extension of matter, not an extension of mind. But we have no way of knowing if matter, qua matter, is capable of knowing anything. Therefore, if the assumptions of atheistic science are correct, we cannot know that the assumptions of atheistic science are correct. We are just playing, not learning anything.

The argument is used to argue *for *God, not to argue against science.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

This is a reductio ad absurdum. Lewis says, let us assume that the assumptions of atheistic science are correct. If this is so, then my mind is simply an extension of matter, not an extension of mind. But we have no way of knowing if matter, qua matter, is capable of knowing anything. Therefore, if the assumptions of atheistic science are correct, we cannot know that the assumptions of atheistic science are correct. We are just playing, not learning anything.

The argument is used to argue *for *God, not to argue against science.

could we just say reason is unflsifiable?

 

[survive]

could we just say reason is unflsifiable?

If reason is the basis of reason, it is at least circular. If not, reason is unreasonable. Either way, we’re just talking in order to increase our odds of producing many young who will outlive us and breed. After all, that’s all our brains can do. And our brains are just the end result of eons of accidents rewarded by existence or let go. Just because it is natural to us to draw a conclusion because of our brains’ survival-encouraging structure, that doesn’t make the conclusion true. So there is no way we can know whether anything is true. Only whether believing it has caused us to exist so far.
So, yes, reason is unfalsifiable.

 

[Bluegoat]

It’s a well known “fact” that reason itself cannot be proven - it is believed as a matter of faith. Philosophy has known this for a long time, and of course it also applies to the sciences which depend on reason.

That isn’t to say there is no reason to believe in reason () but that there is no way to prove it. The possibility of true knowledge is ultimately a matter for faith and hope, even for non-Christians.

Lewis was not really arguing that modern cosmology was bad - simply that a certain type of argument based (supposedly) on it was incoherent. Really, that argument falls well outside of the bounds of cosmology.