Science as Philosophy or Scientism.
Science as Philosophy or Scientism.
Part One: A summary of the problem. Part Two will look at our friend Copernicus, the confused plagiariser.
C. S. Lewis, ‘the ultimate effect of scientism is to dissolve the absolute qualitative distinction between persons and things’, leading to ‘the abolition of man’.
[A Time-Line:
->Copernicus -> Kepler -> Descartes ->Galileo -> ‘Philosophes’ -> Darwin ->Nietzsche and Einstein]
Introduction
In the next post we will discuss Copernicus and his underlying philosophy, including his use of ancient Greek ideas, to propose a counter theory to the Ptolemaic geo-centric model of cosmology. It is a very important topic when we look at ‘Scientism’. Many posts on this substack outline issues with the Copernican model, problems which still need remediation. None of these are well known because ‘The Science’ declines to discuss them.
“…nor has any physical experiment ever proved that the Earth actually is in motion.” Lincoln Barnett (in, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, 2nd rev. edition, 1957, p. 73)
What is rarely discussed is the philosophy which informed Copernicus’ largely purloined model. This philosophical foundation is one of the most important yet rarely discussed metaphysics in Western history. The Copernican model cannot be disengaged from its philosophical imperative.
“The result has been a popular culture littered with ideological detritus: atheism, of course, or naturalism, or materialism, or physicalism, or scientism, or even, God help us, trans-humanism. These are not very precise terms, nor do they denote very precise ideas. Naturalists can rarely say of naturalism anything beyond that it is natural.” (Berlinski, 2023, a secular Jew, Maths-Physics scholar and irreligious)
To set the stage for the Copernican discussion, we want to summarise the key points from the last post. We discussed the philosophical underpinning of ‘Science’ and the claim that Science is an output from epistemological philosophy, or the philosophy concerned with observing, acquiring and interpreting knowledge (Feyerabend, 1995).
This is a valid point of view and rarely if ever taught. We should never forget that the tragedy of the 20th century, the 100 million dead, the endless wars, the general chaos, was based and founded on ‘Scientism’ or ‘The Science’.
The False Marketing
‘Science’ is marketed as some sort of independent framework of ‘reason’, delinked from the world around us, from personal ambition and hubris, from the zeitgeist and culture and from the corruption of money and power. This is frankly absurd. The root and core of ‘Science’, or most endeavours which seek to explain anything, whether through words, mathematics or symbols, must be philosophical metaphysics. In support of this observation, five further claims were made in the last post (Kekes, 1980):
One: As a philosophy, ‘Science’ cannot satisfy its own requirements for truth, given much of what is offered as ‘Science’ is not based on scientific evidence or aposteriori proofs.
Two: Modern ‘Science’ is premised on the philosophies of Materialism and ‘Relativity’. ‘Materialism’ as a theology is derived from medieval Naturalism and Rationalism and ancient Greco-Roman philosophies. Relativity also has a long history, stretching back to at least the schoolmen, with echoes in various Greek philosophers. In the modern era Relativity has been driven by a philosophical need to prove Copernicanism (many posts on here describe the religious-philosophical attributes of Copernicanism).
Scientism supporter Patricia Churchland (in Moreland, 2018) confirms this statement: “Naturalism follows hard upon the heels of the understanding that there is no first philosophy.” (meaning that only materialist-naturalist views of ‘Science’ are allowed).
Three: We have gone full circle back to ancient-pagan Materialism. The impetus of ‘modern science’ since the time of Copernicus is to remove the super-natural or God, from our existence and explain everything – absolutely everything – as mechanical Materialism or Naturalism. This is no different than the pagan Greco-Romano philosophies of evolution, atoms and materiality. Regression cannot be ‘progressive’.
Four: ‘Science’ cannot explain the most fundamental and obvious aspects of our existence, from the macro to the micro. From cosmology to the arrangement of H2O, to innate morality and our consciousness, thinking, memory, emotions, to name but a few examples, ‘Science’ has no evidential explanation. ‘Science’ cannot therefore be elevated as the arbiter of truth with a divine right to rule. It explains very little and almost always, ex-post or after the fact.
Fifth: The blind belief that ‘technology’ is ‘Science’ and the comforts of modern applications are based solely on ‘Science’. This is a destructive fallacy and an unsupportable belief. (See Harré, Kekes, Sorrell, Nagel)
We will see the first 4 ‘postulates’ when we analyse the work of that famed philosopher Copernicus. They also apply to Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein.
‘Science’ is not Wisdom
Let’s pause and state the obvious. In aggregate ‘Science knows very little. The absolute fine-tuning of gravity, electromagnetism, microbiology, cosmology, electron and proton mass, mitosis and meiosis, and other observations ad infinitum, confirm this. If ‘fine-tuning’ offends ‘The Science’ we can use some of their favourite nouns such as chance, probability, or luck (Scientism, Williams et al, 2015). I fail to see how ‘luck’ or ‘stuff happens’ is ‘The Science’.
Change a variable by a fraction of a fraction within any of the many numerous systems and forces and there is no Earth, no life, and probably no universe. No one can explain such complex perfection nor the innumerable set of variables and interdependent relationships which allow life to exist. Climate for example, cannot be modelled as anyone who works in IT knows. The many: many relationships preclude any form of data accuracy and relevancy. How much more complex than our climate is the universe of the macro and micro?
The immaterial, the non-physical is more apparent, obvious and important than the physical. It is a crippled and neutered personality who prays at the altar of Materialism and ignores the rest of what makes life real and poignant. The ‘modern’ man has eschewed wisdom and a wise real metaphysical philosophy which is always the basis for ‘Science’.
Absent real knowledge and wisdom, ‘The Science’ promotes the materiality of uber-Rationalism where reality is now jettisoned for fantasy worlds. ‘Climate Change’, the Corona Coup of 2020, ‘Vaccines’, ‘Viruses’, ‘Evolution’, ‘Relativity’, ‘DNA is everything’, Gender nonsense, Psychology, and many other domains are expressions of the worship of mechanical Materialism and the utter irrationality of ‘Rationalism’ and the banality of ‘Materialism’. These are incoherent ‘Reductionisms’ not ‘Science.
Irrationalism
Much of what is declared as ‘reason’ is simply unreasonable. Take the ‘axiom’ (or starting position) of the Rationalists-Materialists that there exists a ‘principle’ of the ‘uniformity of nature’. This means pace Charles Lyell, that the future of anything be it climate, geology, cosmology, how an electron behaves, embryology, or the attributes of a flower, will resemble its past (Nagel, 2012).
This unscientific. No evidence supports this principle. There is, moreover, overwhelming evidence of ‘catastrophism’ and ‘exceptionalism’, exposed by every single cultural story in human history, extant geology, not to mention daily experience. The ‘uniformity’ viewpoint can never be a ‘principle’, or an axiomatic ‘law’ of nature, used as a basis or departure point for science. It is simply unprovable and demonstrably falsified, which means the claim is unscientific. Yet the entire corpus of geology, evolution and other domain sciences is built upon this philosophy and ‘principle’ (Williams 2015, Nagel, 2012, Berlinski 2023).
Renowned historian of science John Hedley Brooke described this issue:
“The very possibility of a rational science of nature is usually considered to depend on a uniformity [i.e., order] in the relations between cause and effect. In the past, religious beliefs have served as a presupposition of the scientific enterprise insofar as they have underwritten that uniformity. Natural philosophers of the seventeenth century would present their work as the search for order in a universe regulated by an intelligent Creator.” (Brooke, 1991, p. 19)
Brooke is wrong that uniformity is evidenced but put that to one side. Brooke is stating that religious frameworks explain the purported natural phenomena of ‘uniformity’ as well as ‘naturalism’. Tychonic geo-helio-centricity explains the phenomenon of our solar system as well if not better than Copernicanism. By itself a model or a theory is not necessarily right, just because it invokes a ‘principle’ which itself might be wrong.
Or view it another way. If, due to ‘my science’ based on my preferred philosophy, I preclude other ‘models’, I quickly find myself going down a certain path. I close off other inquiries. I don’t disprove them. I simply ignore or calumniate them (Natoli, 1997).
As many medieval and early modern critics of ‘Rationalism’ understood, once you open the pandora’s box of ‘reason’ being ‘uber-alles’ and exclude all other philosophies, it will lead to elaborations which will only advocate and only tolerate the complete natural mechanisation of all processes. These outcomes might be unscientific, unsupported and without merit, but once other philosophies are dispensed there are no other choices.
Maths and ‘Modelism’
‘Rationalism’ is never properly defined and much observational evidence once filtered by humans is subject to the irrational or the bias of the interpreter. By models I mean the creation of elaborate, programmatic and mathematically based models that are opaque and not even properly documented or explained by their progenitors.
I have seen far too many systems, code bases and database schemas to be optimistic about explanatory material, designs, or even reasonable documentation clearly explaining logic and relationships. These models are often built to awe and shock and may or may not have anything to do with reality. They are Victorian in their ancestry based as they are on logical wizardry (Ratzsch 2000). Thus in many ‘Sciences’ complex mathematics are used in lieu of mechanical proof.
We can blame Maxwell. Maxwell and his elucidation of electromagnetic fields in the mid-19th century was a seminal event, putting the wizardry of mathematics firmly in control of ‘Science’. From Maxwell it is a direct and short march to Einstein and modern Rational-Positivists and theologians of Materialism. Logic and complex equations could now be used to develop ‘scientific’ theories which would later be validated by experimentation. Einstein often wrote and spoke that his goal was to create maths to explain physics and the universe without having recourse to physical proof.
This Einsteinian attitude prevails in every domain. Hence the quotidian cry by ‘Science’ that even if their ontological theory lacks proof, one day that proof will be found! How wonderful. “My theory is always right and even if proven wrong today, the proof will arrive at some point in the future to prove that I was indeed right all along."
We see this with ‘Evolution’ and ‘Climate Change’, theories looking for validation. If the Arctic does not melt by 2007, 2014, 2017, 2024, it will surely melt by 2450. Ignore our claims in the 1970s that we must melt the Arctic to save Gaia from the coming Ice Age. Or, even though there are no missing links or transition fossils in sedimentary rock, surely at some point say by 3000, there will be. Don’t fuss about the Piltdown man fraud. TV say. Teacher say.
Or, if you are heretical enough to find a mechanical disproof, of say Relativity or E=MC2, ‘The Science’ will expostulate that the disproof itself is wrong, given that other mathematical models disprove the disproof ! You are too dumb to understand our maths, so just be patient ‘The Science’ will intone. The mechanical verification of the new mathematics will inevitably appear. Fear not ‘Science denier’, all is in hand (Sorrell, 1991).
Fraud
The reality is that mathematics can never be ‘Science’. Abtract modelling using whatever logic or maths is unscientific for many reasons. Surely this fraud must come to an eventual demise.
“The great era of mathematical physics is now over. The three-hundred-year effort to represent the material world in mathematical terms has exhausted itself. The understanding that it was to provide is infinitely closer than it was when Isaac Newton wrote in the late seventeenth century, but it is still infinitely far away.” (Berlinski, 2023)
Logic and mathematics are a priori fields and investigations. This means that the application of mathematical models is only offered by a direct rational justification without any appeal to sense experience. ‘Science’ however, is an a posteriori discipline, and must justify its ‘laws’ and theories with empirical observations. Maths is not ‘Science’ (‘Relativity’ is an example of the above) and theory is not ‘Science’.
Nor can the ‘rationalists’ appeal to ‘reason’ without experimental proof. ‘Reason’ or ‘Rationality’ is undefined and is difficult to independently verify in cases of complex investigation and interpretation. What is rational to you based on your worldview, might be denounced by another using entirely ‘rational’ arguments (Moreland, 2018).
Puddings and proofs
Some examples of ‘rational materialism’ in crisis are given below.
Take the ‘Laws of Nature’ and ‘Rationality’.
‘Science’ cannot ‘rationally’ explain how these ‘laws’ operate or their origination. These laws were first elaborated upon by the medieval Scholastics who understood that not all laws of nature are equally fundamental. Some can be derived from others for instance. Further, they fully comprehended that most of these ‘laws’ such as force, motion, energy, waves and particle movements were inscrutable as to creation, action and variation.
Take Newton’s first law of motion.
This ‘law’ was developed by Newton based on some 400 years of work and experimentation. It states that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. This concept was built on Galileo’s ‘law’ of inertia, or the tendency of matter to resist a change in velocity. Objects do not spontaneously change their velocities or their position of rest unless acted upon by friction or another force.
So far so good. The schoolmen knew however, that derivations related to the law of inertia, cannot continue indefinitely. Newton and Galileo also comprehended the fact that there must be fundamental or foundational laws of nature around energy, force and matter. They could not however, explain them. Foundational natural ‘laws’, forces and processes in the world around us, how they work, what comprises them, where they come from, cannot be explicated by Rational-Materialist philosophy.
Gravity is an example of the above statement.
If gravity’s force was infinitesimally stronger, all stars would burn too quickly to sustain life. If gravity, which is a weak force, was just slightly weaker, all stars would be too cold to support life-bearing planets. No one knows what gravity actually is, or how it works. How to explain this ‘rationally’?
Take the microscopic world.
If the ratio of the electron to proton mass were slightly larger or smaller, the chemical bonding required to produce self-replicating molecules could not be manufactured. If the charges and attractions between electrons and protons are even fractionally different no cellular structure could be built. How to explain this ‘rationally’?
The same is true for the electromagnetic force in the universe.
If this force or wave was infinitesimally different, the energy flows in the cosmos would preclude life forming. How to explain this ‘rationally’?
Take our solar system.
If we were to move the moon or the Sun a fraction, there is no life on this planet. If we removed the gas planets or changed their location, there is no life on this planet. If we enlarged the Earth, shrank it, changed its shape, corrected its axial tilt, or pace Copernicanism, speeded up or slowed down its orbit and diurnal rotation, there is no life on this planet. How to explain this ‘rationally’?
Take your DNA.
Why and how did 67 billion feet of DNA end up in you? ‘Science’ has no clue. How to explain this ‘rationally’?
Take your behaviour.
DNA supposedly controls your health, behaviour and all your characteristics. Except it doesn’t. It is a known 20 year gaping black hole in DNA understanding, called the ‘hereditary problem’.
‘Science’ has known for a long time that ‘genetic diseases’ attributed to DNA are false, and your behaviour cannot be traced back to DNA. This is also true for heart disease, lymphoma and a myriad of other diseases that Dr Pharma will ascribe to ‘genetics’ and happily fill you up with poisons, stabs and chemicals to ‘fight’. For a large profit of course (Christopher, 2020).
Magical words.
The magical word of ‘DNA’ to explain everything and its relationship to ‘mindless materialism’, reminds one of Dingle’s complaints against ‘Relativity’ that the magical words ‘Time Dilation’ were trotted out as overwhelming proof against a ‘Relativity denier’. These magical words were wielded as weapons as if they explained anything and used by an interlocutor as if he knew anything. Time dilation for example is likely wrong, but even if it is correct it is still a lose for ‘The Science’ since it would mean a far younger universe than they are willing to accept. DNA is more mystery than revelation, and is another disproof of ‘Materialism’ than proof of course.
Bottom Line
No one has a ‘problem’ per-se with ‘Science’. No one who is normal, has a problem with babies, small pets, bird song, clean air and water, and a brilliant summer’s day. What people should have a problem with is ‘Scientism’, or the claim that only the uber-rationality of ‘Materialism’ and ‘Relativity’ can explain our cosmos and our world. This is the declaration of the insane whose greatest exponent Nietzsche, will be discussed in a future post.
As we progress through Copernicus and others, the underlying Naturalist-Materialist theology becomes obvious and apparent. This philosophy is the animating feature of much of what is called ‘Science’. It does not make it ‘rational’, nor correct. It is just a reigning paradigm (Kuhn, 1962). It also does not mean that anyone believes in a flat Earth, or that Thor still reigns. Magellan did exist. Thor did not.
What we are beset with is the problem of irrationality and mathematics pretending to be ‘Science’. It corrodes every aspect of our existence, every part of our culture and society. Wisdom is gone, abstract models which explain nothing, now reign in ‘Science’. All based on the philosophies of Rationalism, Materialism and Relativity. We live in an age of Scientism; not real science and we need to go back to Copernicus to explain how this happened.
Sources
Some sources related to Scientism.
Tom Sorrell, Scientism: Philosophy and the Infatuation with Science. London, 1991
David Berlinski, Science after Babel, 2023
John Kekes, The Nature of Philosophy, 1980
Del Ratzsch, Science and Its Limits, 2nd ed. 2000
Rom Harré, The Philosophies of Science, 2nd ed., 1985
John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, 199)
JP Moreland, Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology, 2018
Joseph Natoli, A Primer to Postmodernity, 1997
Paul Feyerabend, P., History of the philosophy of Science, 1995
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962
Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, 2012
Scientism: The New Orthodoxy, ed. Richard M. Williams and Daniel N. Robinson, 2015, see for example Bastiaan C. van Fraassen, “Naturalism in Epistemology,” 63–95
James Watson, DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution, 2017
Ted Christopher, Why Science Is Wrong About Life and Evolution: “The Invisible Gene” and Other Essays on Scientism, 2020