Why do some people think that Science is the only source of knowledge?

[Charlemagne_II]

** Originally Posted by VeritasLuxMea View Post
Hello again, has anyone pointed out an alternative epistemology yet? Waiting on that.**

History is your answer. Since the dawn of history, have we never had epistemologies to find truth other than science? Of course we have. Logic, common sense, intuition, desire, love, courage, and wisdom, to name just a few.

 

[tonyrey]

Sorry but I can’t face getting into another round of long multi-quote posts, so leaving out the questions that have nothing to do with my post, i.e. with validation of the scientific method, my answers are: 4. Far more important than any school of philosophy, yes. 5. More so than any philosophical system such as utilitarianism. 6. Better than any philosophical argument. 7. More so than any philosophical argument.

My response is still there in post #66, just like it was yesterday and the day before.

Please can you name some philosophers in this branch who have provided rational foundations for science?

If they disagree which rationale provides the foundation of science, is there an objective means to choose, or do we flip a coin?

And why should we care what they say? “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds” - attrib.Richard Feynman.

I’d say professional philosophy (as opposed to café) is the skeptical, critical, systematic use of rational argument, which suffers from it’s emphasis on logic alone.

This seems confused between the philosophical (terms such as free will and qualia) and a specific theology (consciousness as spirit).

Do you think Catholic scientists trying to cure diseases are attempting to turn us into “biological machines”, or is it just non-Catholic scientists, or just those interested in knowledge for it’s own sake, or who? Do you think theism, Christianity and other religions require us to remain in ignorance about our biology?

 

[Tyrion]

Hello again, has anyone pointed out an alternative epistemology yet? Waiting on that.

Of course not. It would be very interesting, however… oh well. sigh.

Epistemology is supposed to separate true propositions from false ones. There are two kinds of realms about which one can make propositions: one is the external reality, the other one is the abstract sciences.

The abstract sciences are simple. There are axioms, and if a proposition is the logically valid corollary of the axioms, then it is “true”.

The external reality is more complicated. In that case one needs to compare the proposition to the external reality, and if the proposition correctly reflects the reality, then it is “true”, otherwise it is “false”. As such it is mandatory that the external reality can be observed, either directly or indirectly. Otherwise there is no way to compare the proposition to its referents. Important notice: whatever that “objective, external reality” might be, if it cannot be observed (either directly of indirectly) there is no way to separate the true and false propositions about it, so talking about it is futile.

Furthermore, there are subjective propositions, like “chocolate flavored ice-cream is better than vanilla-flavored one”. These propositions do not have an objective true/false value attributed to them, so we can simply disregard them.

 

[tonyrey]

Sorry but I can’t face getting into another round of long multi-quote posts…

There is no need to answer my questions because your reluctance to do so and your other answers on this thread have clearly demonstrated why some people do believe science is the only source of knowledge. For them Revelation is less credible than sense data…

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Hello again, has anyone pointed out an alternative epistemology yet? Waiting on that.

Afraid not. Going back further than this thread there have been other threads that have asked the same thing. Of the older threads that I have looked through I am afraid that I have not seen some other epistemology proposed.

 

[JMJ_coder]

Modern science used to be called natural philosophy then it divided off. The part left behind and still called philosophy is fine as a method of thought but the only answers it can produce are the thousands of disagreeing schools of thought.

There can be just as much contention and division in science as well. For example, whether or not certain things should be classified as mental illnesses or not. And there is a lot of politics in the area of peer review, which is why some advocate different methods of scientific dissemination (e.g. conferences).

 

[JMJ_coder]

Development of the atom bomb was ordered by President Roosevelt, a Dutch Reformed non-scientist, to protect the US from a first strike by Hitler, a non-scientist birth-Catholic who made Nazism his religion. The bomb’s use was ordered by President Truman, a non-scientist Southern Baptist, to end the war and save lives.

Which is to say that blame games don’t get us anywhere.

Philosophers have helped define warfare (such as Machiavelli and von Clausewitz), along with alternatives to war (such as Gandhi), but of course are useless when it comes to defending us in wartime, you can’t stop a bullet with a rebuttal no matter how well aimed.

Philosophers are masters at one of the causes of conflict - disagreeing with each other.

Should I invoke Godwin’s law and claim victory.

Seriously, the fact that Hitler was born into a Catholic family is meaningless. He abandoned any adherence to the Catholic faith long before his rise to power. Should we impeach all Germans based on the fact that he was German? Should we condemn all the French because of Napoleon?

But, please tell me - using a purely scientific argument, why should we not use atomic weapons or practice eugenics (among other questionable scientific developments)?

 

[Phil_Marinus]

If it were not for science there would be no Electricity,or any modern things like Cordless tools, Toasters, car tyres, we would have no idea of how stars and the universe works…
if we lived only by the teachings of the bible and refused the existence of science…
then we would still be just simple tribal groups wandering around…
then we would only believe what our tribal elders would teach you…
they could blame earthquakes and disasters on peoples lack of faith and education., and everyone would believe that to be true… when that is false…
science gives us an understanding of how and why things work.
the bible teaches us morals … give us lessons on how to behave… and teaches us if we live a good life we shall be rewarded with eternal glory…
one can live without the other, but only if you lock yourself away in a cave.

 

[JMJ_coder]

If it were not for science there would be no Electricity,or any modern things like Cordless tools, Toasters, car tyres, we would have no idea of how stars and the universe works…
if we lived only by the teachings of the bible and refused the existence of science…
then we would still be just simple tribal groups wandering around…
then we would only believe what our tribal elders would teach you…
they could blame earthquakes and disasters on peoples lack of faith and education., and everyone would believe that to be true… when that is false…
science gives us an understanding of how and why things work.
the bible teaches us morals … give us lessons on how to behave… and teaches us if we live a good life we shall be rewarded with eternal glory…
one can live without the other, but only if you lock yourself away in a cave.

I don’t think anyone here is advocating that. What is being argued against is the idea that the only real, tangible, meaningful knowledge is obtained solely by modern scientific inquiry.

 

[polytropos]

Should I invoke Godwin’s law and claim victory.

Seriously, the fact that Hitler was born into a Catholic family is meaningless. He abandoned any adherence to the Catholic faith long before his rise to power. Should we impeach all Germans based on the fact that he was German? Should we condemn all the French because of Napoleon?

But, please tell me - using a purely scientific argument, why should we not use atomic weapons or practice eugenics (among other questionable scientific developments)?

I brought up Naziism. Inocente said it wasn’t a matter of science being applied in a good or bad way (although he began by unilaterally citing science’s positive achievements) and he asked me if any philosophy had an impact in the 20th century comparable to that of any of the major scientific achievements.

I cited communism, Naziism, and liberalism as examples of philosophies that had a large impact - whether good or bad - on the last 100 years. The issues that these philosophies attempted to answer were non-scientific. It doesn’t matter if science has been really effective; it can’t “knock aside” or “replace” philosophy because science does not do anything other than inquire methodologically.

 

[Phil_Marinus]

I don’t think anyone here is advocating that. What is being argued against is the idea that the only real, tangible, meaningful knowledge is obtained solely by modern scientific inquiry.

What other ways are there ?

 

[JMJ_coder]

What other ways are there ?

Well, philosophy, theology, and logic can bring us to a knowledge of God - and there is nothing more real than God.

Here are some questions that scientific inquiry cannot answer satisfactorily, but other methods can:

• What is beauty?
• What is love?
• Is x a moral choice or not?
• Why is x music so striking?
• Why does working in the garden relax me?
• Why is it that the hate of a man—even of a man like Franco—dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence—for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?* (from Monsignor Quixote)*

 

[polytropos]

Here are some questions that scientific inquiry cannot answer satisfactorily, but other methods can:

What are the methods?

 

[Phil_Marinus]

Well, philosophy, theology, and logic can bring us to a knowledge of God - and there is nothing more real than God.

Here are some questions that scientific inquiry cannot answer satisfactorily, but other methods can:

• What is beauty?
• What is love?
• Is x a moral choice or not?
• Why is x music so striking?
• Why does working in the garden relax me?
• Why is it that the hate of a man—even of a man like Franco—dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence—for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?* (from Monsignor Quixote)*

much of what you quote is mostly in the eye of the beholder…
What is love,Beauty,music even Gardening… You don’t need God or Science to see the good in these things…
I thought my Ex mother in law was a rather unattractive looking lady…
But had a Heart of Gold… her Husband thought she was attractive but a heart of stone.
who is right or wrong ?
God gave us an open mind to create and wonder… I think maybe you look to deeply
into separating God from Science…

 

[Portofino]

Well, philosophy, theology, and logic can bring us to a knowledge of God - and there is nothing more real than God.

Here are some questions that scientific inquiry cannot answer satisfactorily, but other methods can:

• What is beauty?
• What is love?
• Is x a moral choice or not?
• Why is x music so striking?
• Why does working in the garden relax me?
• Why is it that the hate of a man—even of a man like Franco—dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence—for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?* (from Monsignor Quixote)*

I think we can all agree that scientific inquiry does not exhaust all of life, as it is experienced.
We humans experience beauty. We feel love. We taste the food that we eat (Einstein once acknowledged that “science cannot give us the taste of the soup”). We create and enjoy art, including music. We find it inevitable to live according to certain values, certain guidelines for behavior.

I’m more epistemologically conservative, on these issues, insofar as I believe that aesthetics (for example) can tell us what human beings tend to find beautiful, but that we cannot know whether beauty exists independently of the human observer. We experience love, but we cannot know whether love exists independently of our human experience of it. We live according to certain values, and it can be known objectively which values tend to promote life and human flourishing, which tend to promote misery and self-destruction (anti-humanistic, totalitarian Nazism or communism did not give people what they hoped and expected it to give them, so many human societies have learned to “think twice” before subscribing to such values again), but we cannot know whether our values exist independently of our collective lives as human beings.

So I’m conservative in that respect – I can’t say whether beauty truly exists “out there”, of if it exists because of the collision between what’s “out there” (in the world) and what’s “in here” (in the human breast).

But apart from questions of knowledge, I don’t think anyone would disagree that there is more to the experience of life than scientific inquiry, and that neither science – nor knowledge – is capable of exhausting the experience of life.

 

[tdgesq]

Afraid not. Going back further than this thread there have been other threads that have asked the same thing. Of the older threads that I have looked through I am afraid that I have not seen some other epistemology proposed.

Epistemology is a much more fundamental category than “science.” I take it that the OP is defining “science” as the study of empiriometric observation, the results of which can be verified by repeated experimentation and capable of being falsified. On the other hand, “epistemology” is “the study of knowledge and justified belief.” Science isn’t properly an epistemology or epistemic system, even though it does lead to knowledge.

I’m a little bit puzzled by the OP, because I don’t know anybody who claims that science is the only source of knowledge. We would know very little if that were true: and since science is totally dependent upon empiricism, it looks like empiricism is the most likely epistemic candidate.

 

[tonyrey]

I brought up Naziism. Inocente said it wasn’t a matter of science being applied in a good or bad way (although he began by unilaterally citing science’s positive achievements) and he asked me if any philosophy had an impact in the 20th century comparable to that of any of the major scientific achievements.

I cited communism, Naziism, and liberalism as examples of philosophies that had a large impact - whether good or bad - on the last 100 years. The issues that these philosophies attempted to answer were non-scientific. It doesn’t matter if science has been really effective; it can’t “knock aside” or “replace” philosophy because science does not do anything other than inquire methodologically.

Into the very limited world of sense data!

 

[tonyrey]

…I’m a little bit puzzled by the OP, because I don’t know anybody who claims that science is the only source of knowledge…

There seem to be some individuals in that category on this very thread!

 

[Semangelof]

Black and white science is just plots on a graph. You can’t know anything from it until it gets interpreted. That interpretation not only varies between scientists, but it is interpreted through rational thought. On the other hand rational thought is irrational in a perfect vacuum of observational data.

They both kind of need each other to work.

The steps of the scientific method are to:

Ask a Question
Do Background Research
Construct a Hypothesis
Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
Communicate Your Results

So you see here “knowledge” is a cooperation between empiricism and rationalism.

 

[Tyrion]

Black and white science is just plots on a graph. You can’t know anything from it until it gets interpreted. That interpretation not only varies between scientists, but it is interpreted through rational thought. On the other hand rational thought is irrational in a perfect vacuum of observational data.

They both kind of need each other to work.

The steps of the scientific method are to:

Ask a Question
Do Background Research
Construct a Hypothesis
Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
Communicate Your Results

So you see here “knowledge” is a cooperation between empiricism and rationalism.

Very well said. I only wish to add one more observation. What you described is not really the “scientific method”. It had been co-opted by science, since it is the only method which gives consistently good, reliable and verifiable results. (Caveat: it is only used for propositions about the objective, external reality, not the subjective assessments, or axiomatic systems.)