Criticism of Modern Science

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Moonstruck888 said:
To use Stalin or Mao Tse Tung as examples of socialists is akin to characterizing all religious people as Abu Hamza or Gerry Falwell.
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Reckon you’re in a cross thread situation. Seem to remember someone on Is secular sinister? mentioning those four dudes.
 
Geremia said:
Just browsing those books, they seem more to be popular science. I would like something written by a good philosopher, e.g., but thanks anyways.
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Geremia,
I must have missed something; you’re OP didn’t mention philosophers, merely books. Okay, so if you want a philosopher that critiques science, take a second look at the Horgan book, you will find the names of: Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and Karl Popper, the three most famous philosophers of science of the twentieth century, in the text and the bibliography from which you can get the names of their books. Here is what Horgan has to say about these three on page 33 of his book, “These philosophers realized that in an age when science is ascendent, the highest calling of philosphery should be to serve as the negative capability of science, to infuse scientists with doubt. Only thus can the human quest for knowledge remain open-ended, potentially infinite; only thus can we remain awestruck before the mystery of the cosmos.”

However if you want a quick answer to your OP, it would be a lot easier reading the Horgan book than reading any of the three philosophers.
Yppop
 
Moonstruck888 said:
I’m an unabashed moral relativist. The only people who deal in moral absolutes are the raving despots, fundamentalist bampots and the indoctrinated beyond redemption.
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Moral relativists hold that there are no moral absolutes or authorities, so they would not assign labels to moral viewpoints as you have done.

You are something else.
 
Moonstruck888 said:
I’m an unabashed moral relativist. The only people who deal in moral absolutes are the raving despots, fundamentalist bampots and the indoctrinated beyond redemption.
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Did you forget to include me?:tsktsk:

My objective truth fits somewhere between bampots, despots, and flower pots.
 
Cat_Herder said:
Moral relativists hold that there are no moral absolutes or authorities, so they would not assign labels to moral viewpoints as you have done.

You are something else.
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ROTFL!!!

Yeah, sure. All a moral relativist would hold is that morals are relative to culture and personal outlooks and attitudes. Respecting no ultimate authority on morals does not prevent one from having a personal opinion on the morals of others.
 
yppop said:
Geremia,
I must have missed something; you’re OP didn’t mention philosophers, merely books. Okay, so if you want a philosopher that critiques science, take a second look at the Horgan book, you will find the names of: Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and Karl Popper, the three most famous philosophers of science of the twentieth century, in the text and the bibliography from which you can get the names of their books. Here is what Horgan has to say about these three on page 33 of his book, “These philosophers realized that in an age when science is ascendent, the highest calling of philosphery should be to serve as the negative capability of science, to infuse scientists with doubt. Only thus can the human quest for knowledge remain open-ended, potentially infinite; only thus can we remain awestruck before the mystery of the cosmos.”

However if you want a quick answer to your OP, it would be a lot easier reading the Horgan book than reading any of the three philosophers.
Yppop
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I like this response. Geremia’s goal, ostensibly, since the first post of the thread was to discredit science (“a futile attempt at seeking knowledge”), and here we have Kuhn, Popper, Feyerabend, three thinkers who more than any other in the last century responsible for crediting science as a gainful enterprise toward knowledge. Popper, for example, keeps science honest by stressing the importance of discipline in liability to falsification. This is a serious and substantial challenge for science, but one which has strengthened its epistemology immensely. Popper has done, through skepticism and analysis, what no one has been able to do for theology or non-scientific philosophy, to provide and promote epistemic criteria that qualify scientific knowledge as knowledge.

If Geremia wanted to read the works of thinkers who had propelled science forward as a successful knowledge-building enterprise, these three would be among the first I’d recommend.

-TS
 
Touchstone said:
Popper has done, through skepticism and analysis, what no one has been able to do for theology or non-scientific philosophy, to provide and promote epistemic criteria that qualify scientific knowledge as knowledge.
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It is philosophy that has established the foundations and limitations of scientific knowledge…
 
tonyrey said:
It is philosophy that has established the foundations and limitations of scientific knowledge…
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Yes, and both aspects are to the credit of Popper and science as an enterprise. This is conspicuously what is missing from theology. Fine by me, as I said, but likely not what Geremia was looking for in this thread.

-TS
 
Touchstone said:
Yes, and both aspects are to the credit of Popper and science as an enterprise. This is conspicuously what is missing from theology.
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Like science theology has philosophical foundations but theology is also concerned with such questions as good and evil, free will and the purpose of life whereas science is limited to physical reality.
 
Touchstone said:
Fine by me, as I said, but likely not what Geremia was looking for in this thread.
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It doesn’t matter to me what side of the argument the author wants to take. I have read Popper; he is very good.
 
Geremia said:
Haha… I think you have misunderstood what I mean by “knowledge.” Sorry if I didn’t clarify. By knowledge I mean an understanding of absolute, unchanging truths, an understanding of objective reality.
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Since physical science deals with the world of the senses it cannot transcend the realm of contingency. Physical science can provide merely plausible hypotheses. A “scientific” theory is never proven, it can only be supported or not supported.
 
vmancha said:
Since physical science deals with the world of the senses it cannot transcend the realm of contingency.
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That seems to contradict[BIBLEDRB]Romans 1:20[/BIBLEDRB]
vmancha said:
Physical science can provide merely plausible hypotheses. A “scientific” theory is never proven, it can only be supported or not supported.
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You mean that modern physics is solely suppositional (hypothetical) as opposed to illative?
 
I like this footnote to Romans 1:20 from the Haydock version quoted:

That which is known of God. Or may be easily known of God, is manifest in them. The light of reason demonstrates to them the existence of one God, the maker and preserver of all things. This is made known to them from the creation of the world, or from the creatures in the world: the Creator may be discovered by the creatures, and as S. Chrys. here says, every Scythian, every barbarian, may come to the knowledge of God by the wonderful harmony [3] of all things, which proclaims the existence of God louder than any trumpet: but having known him, they did not glorify him; they acted contrary to their knowledge, abandoning themselves to idolatry, and the vain worship of many gods, and to all manner of vices and abominations against the light of reason.
 
Modern science shouldn’t be criticized. What people THINK is science in the modern world should. Evolution, for example. You’d be surprised how scientifically flawed it is (Answers in Genesis has info on this; it’s not Catholic, but its arguments aren’t theological) even though many people (even Catholics, regrettably) accept it as fact. We shouldn’t measure up God to what scientists say, but rather measure up what scientists say to God. If an atheist can use his own presuppositions to develop skepticism toward something, we should be able to without criticism. But we aren’t. What a double standard.

Jesus never said being His disciple would be easy, though.
 
reggieM said:
I like this footnote to Romans 1:20 from the Haydock version quoted:

That which is known of God. Or may be easily known of God, is manifest in them. The light of reason demonstrates to them the existence of one God, the maker and preserver of all things. This is made known to them from the creation of the world, or from the creatures in the world: the Creator may be discovered by the creatures, and as S. Chrys. here says, every Scythian, every barbarian, may come to the knowledge of God by the wonderful harmony [3] of all things, which proclaims the existence of God louder than any trumpet: but having known him, they did not glorify him; they acted contrary to their knowledge, abandoning themselves to idolatry, and the vain worship of many gods, and to all manner of vices and abominations against the light of reason.
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For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity:
so that they are inexcusable.
Of all the things that can be seen, nothing surpasses the heavens on a cloudless night. Therein all the ancients, St Paul himself, saw the stars, as numerous as the grains of sand on earth, circle the heavens around them. Nothing demonstrated the presence of a God like the doctrine of geocentrism.

But as we all know, in spite of Einstein’s 1905 re-confirmation of the impossibility of denying with science the geocentric phenomenon that man sees, modern science was successful is eliminating this sight as demonstrating the existence of an eternal power and divinity. Thereafter, one by one, every sign of God’s existence was eliminated from the minds of man, consigning all to an act of nature, a Big Bang that created all through natural forces. Today, modern science is the new God. Alas, most Catholics, in order to keep their God and their intellectual pride, share Him with the god of science, a ‘TWOSOME’ as well as a TRINITY.
 
Geremia said:
What is a good book that criticizes modern science and considers it a futile attempt at seeking knowledge?
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Science has led us to technology and effective medicine, how is that futile?
 
Angry

*Science has led us to technology and effective medicine, how is that futile? *

It has also led us to nuclear weapons sufficient to annihilate civilization. How is that helpful? :rolleyes:

Like any human institution, science has its strong and its weak points.

When Einstein saw the devastation of the first atomic weapon, he was sorry he had used his influence to promote it.

hypertextbook.com/eworld/einstein.shtml#first
 
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