Man, the comments on my guest editorial at the Raw Story are nuts. I don’t know if the word “secular” brought out a flock of trolls, or if that place is always infested with these uncomprehending goons. There are a couple of people who seem baffled by the fact that I wrote a positive piece on the virtues of secularism, yet my prior comment on Melinda Barton was a negative work that concentrated on criticizing her sloppy logic and sneaky redefinitions. It’s bad enough that they are surprised that one person can use two different tactics, but they’re also suggesting that the fact that I didn’t beat up Barton some more means I’m backing away from my earlier statements.
I didn’t say more about Barton because I already wrote that argument. I thought I was thorough and didn’t need to rehash it—the fact that I included a link to it should have clued in people that I wasn’t repudiating it. I don’t know why this should be so difficult to grasp. I suspect it’s that people sympathetic to Barton’s view share her bigotry, and think that atheists are all planning to line the Christians up against the wall as soon as we’ve finished subverting society, right before the looting and orgies start. Atheists must be tied to extremism, or poor Ms. Barton’s argument falls apart.
Or maybe it’s the fact that the essay was a thousand words long, and overwhelmed their capacity (people who are bewildered at the idea of simultaneously supporting X while criticizing opponents of X don’t have much capacity to spare!)…so here, let me help by digesting the essay down.
Shorter intolerant rant by PZ Myers:
I’m willing to get along with and even support the religious, as long as they don’t threaten to suborn secular institutions to privilege religious belief.
Better?
There’s nothing wrong with being intolerant. It seems that people have hijacked the word to refer to mindless tolerance, refusing to justify one’s principles by accepting anything without thought.
You shouldn’t need to label your lecture as intolerant, even in jest.
I’m an idiot. My above post first discussed intolerance, then I switched to tolerance without mentioning it. Apologies for any confusion. I will now sit in the corner of the Net until I’m better.
Do you really think people displaying the sort of mass/volume ratio evident in those comments will understand a word like “suborn”?
Wow. The constant back and forth of trying to out “logical-fallacy” each other in the comments was prety amusing. Too bad the utter lack of reading comprehension and substance by a few of the commentors outshined the great examples of non-sequiturs being ping-ponged off each others virtual forheads.
PZ, take a bit of advice from Kevin Drum, who has been there and is still doing that – don’t worry overmuch about what other people think. That way lies madness. The fact that you’re drawing pests is to be expected when you’re being outspoken and, need I say it – right.
Anyway, here’s my own shorter David Wilford:
There are more kinds of idiots than creationists out on the internets. They’re mostly hapless.
No amount of reason is going to sway any of these people. It’s pretty clear that there are factions within progressive circles that want nothing to do with atheists. It is bigotry pure and simple. Reasoning with a bigot is a waste of time. Between the raw story ad hominem and the Newsweek Rabbi who thinks those of us who voice are opinion are angry, it’s become quite apparant that we are not welcome. Fine, maybe we should stop being taken for granted and begin withholding our support.
Paul wrote:
“What is their problem?”
Your guest editorial was well written, well reasoned and fair. I agreed with it in its entirety. It is a fine piece of writing and you should be proud of it.
You have no apologies to make.
“Let no one anywhere despise another,
Let no one out of anger or resentment
Wish suffering on anyone at all.”
Maybe it’s the just the fact that the non-religious aren’t much better represented on the left than in the population at large (although I like to think that isn’t so). Or it could be that Raw Story’s commenters are just idiots.
Never mind, mate. The sensible folks appreciated both columns.
I highly suspect that it is due to the fact that the audience for the site caters mostly to vegan anarchists. Not that I’m saying that everyone with a protien deficiency is completely incapable of practical reasoning, but I think that it probably explains most of it.
Eukarya “site caters mostly to vegan anarchists”
Don’t know about vegans, but anarchists are by and large atheists. After all, the anarchist motto is, “No Gods, No Masters.”
Amen to that.
“‘I’m willing to get along with and even support the religious, as long as they don’t threaten to suborn secular institutions to privilege religious belief.’ Better?”
PZ, you ought to know that isn’t good enough.
Too many of them won’t be satisfied until they believe– in their own minds– that atheists aren’t threatening to suborn civil religion to advance the cause of godless anarchism.
I’m a vegetarian atheist, but I’m not an anarchist, I’m a Democrat. Assuming they’ll let me in, that is, considering my abject godless state.
‘”No Gods, No Masters.”‘
Not to mention atheist masters. The insipid article that PZ critiqued-very well, I might add-catered to the concerns of the possibility of militant secularists dictating to others what to believe. The people reading that site don’t have to necessarily be religious in order to worry about that kind of thing.
Religious people, in my estimation, pray for they same reason they proselytize: it strengthens their own faith. It has nothing to do with other people and they do NOT wish understanding or compassion for others.
PZ, I applaud you for being a beacon of sanity for both sides of the issue. It’s a narrow road.
Mike Fox
PZ, don’t sweat it. It was a good essay.
They’re not surprised. They’re using a calculated rhetorical tactic. Insinuating that someone is a “flip flopper” is raw meat to a dogmatist as we’ve all observed.
I sometimes think that at the heart of your curmudgeonly atheism lies a sincerely crazy belief that people will become rational if you could just find the right words to say to them. Anyone who cannot see the two pieces as complementing each other in different context is not going to be persuaded by any further discussion.
Wow Eukarya,
“I highly suspect that it is due to the fact that the audience for the site caters mostly to vegan anarchists. Not that I’m saying that everyone with a protien deficiency is completely incapable of practical reasoning, but I think that it probably explains most of it.”
Do you really believe this about vegans? Or just people with protein deficiencies? I mean, we know that vegetarian diets aren’t necessarily protein deficient. (google “vegan protein deficiency”)
I don’t know if these comments are appropriate for this forum (I’m not a scientist by any means, nor a theologian or philosopher), but I’ll post them here anyway for whatever it’s worth.
There was a time not too long ago when I believed that there was nothing wrong with believing in a Divine Creator of some sort. I was a nominal Christian laboring under the delusion that there was room in churches for everyone. This is embarassing to admit, but it’s nevertheless true. The 2000 election, and the pompous rhetoric from the pulpit concerning various issues of “morality,” opened my eyes to that particular bit of nonsense. Nothing had changed, no matter what I wanted to believe.
Nevertheless, I still took comfort in vague “spiritual beliefs” that would be at least cosmetically acceptable to the fire and brimstone crowd. I wasn’t comfortable with the image of the white-bearded and wizened old man looking down in judgement, but surely there couldn’t be anything wrong with believing in a kindly old gran’pa figure more like Gandalf from “The Fellowship of the Ring.”
And then I ran across this book called “Why People Believe Strange Things” (this is not a plug, just part of the story). What a sense of discomfiture that caused as I read Shermer’s dissection of “Intelligent Design.” There were all my assumptions and beliefs, laid bare and patently false. That began a rather troubling two years for me as I started reading more about evolution from the perspective of science (Ernst Myer’s book “What Evolution Is” was particularly helpful). It was not an easy or comfortable thing to admit that many of the underlying assumptions I’d made about the nature of the world were completely wrong, and that I would have to abandon them with no clear idea of where I was going next. Nevertheless, it was the only logical next step. I haven’t been back to church since.
The investigation continued at TalkOrigins.Org, which I’m still wading through, and another writer named Jared Diamond, and somewhere along the way I came across this PZ Meyers guy; people who wrote about science and scientists clearly, and eloquently, without resorting to the “dumb it down” approach. Over time, understanding natural laws and the physical universe as it actually IS, not what I want it to be, has become far more interesting and applicable to my life on a philosophical, moral, and ethical level than any prognostication or revelation by an idiot on a box with a “sacred text” in one hand and a collection plate in the other.
I don’t pretend to understand all of the nuances of evolutionary mechanisms or theory, and I wouldn’t even try to debate the creationist zealots like Hovind. One, I lack the credentials and credibility to do so. Two, there’s no point in debating the insane. It just reinforces their belief that it’s the rest of the universe that’s wrong. But I do have a better understanding now of evolution than when I started, and I have a deeper comprehension of the value of beginning every day with an admission of “I don’t know.”
Anyway, the point of all this is to ask that Dr. Myers and others like him to please keep writing and publishing. It may seem pointless or fruitless at times, but I can’t believe I’m the only one out there who’s listening and who has a mind that is willing to be opened. Thank you.
Good for you, Persistence. Well done.
athiests all planning to line the Christians up against the wall as soon as we’ve finished subverting society, right before the looting and orgies start
How’s next Tuesday for everyone? We’ll line them up and… conga! Everybody cha-cha! Nothing like a good spot of dancing before an orgy I say.
PersistenceofMemory:
Woah. Dude. Um…(hugs).
Compassionate Keanu impressions aside, that was beautiful and thank you so very much for sharing it.
Technically (and note philosophy is not my bag) I don’t think you have to abandon spiritual faith in the light of the debunking of Intelligent Design, but it seems to me that in your case the heart of your (epiphany?) was that by this time, ID was the only thing keeping you attached to religion anyway. I also think (?) that in a broader sense what you’re dealing with is the realization that there is in fact no material evidence for the supernatural, despite what you had been led to believe.
I wish you luck in further exploration. The resources you mentioned are excellent, and you’ll find many willing to answer questions here. :)
OK, what’s all this about atheist orgies? I’m an atheist and I’ve ceertainly never been invited to one. Did I miss a memo?
-quork
Considering that it was new to *me* (though the meaning is fairly clear from the context), he’s got a point…
-Todd
Reasoning with a bigot is indeed a waste, but considering the opposition, witholding our support for progressive causes because they mewl and obsess about our nonbelief would be a classic case of cutting off one’s face to spite one’s nose…
-Janne
Don’t tell me you’ve never stumbled across a large group of sweaty people with blazing red eyes and 666 tattoos grinding against each other screaming “Oh reason! Oh reason! Oh reason!” ^.^
Their problem may be with this concept:
“This world around us, the material, measurable, physical universe, is shared between us. The supernatural sphere, which we atheists deny, is not, and is peculiar to each religious group and even to each individual.”
At least some of the religious folks would say that the supernatural world is more real than the material world, and God exists whether or not you believe in him. And if you don’t do what (they claim) he says, then when you die he’s going to HURT YOU and HURT YOU and HURT YOU FOREVER, BWA-HA-HA! (OK, I get a bit cranky about this sometimes… ;-) )
(yeah, I finally got TypeKey happening)
It was a fine essay PZ. I think the religious readers were upset that you were so reasonable. Like Melinda Barton, many religious people have this image in their heads that atheists are as unreasonable as fundamentalists.
As I said in the comments to Melinda’s post, just because atheists take an extreme position does not mean it is wrong. There seems to be this “moderate” view out there that the only reasonable position is one in the middle of two extremes. So if religious fundamentalists who reject science (when it disagrees with their religious beliefs) are one extreme and atheists are the other then being a religious person who also believes in science is the most “reasonable” position becuase it is in the middle.
For some time there was disagreement about the shape of the Earth. Some thought it was round and some thought it was flat. These were the two extremes. The moderate positon might have been that the Earth is kind of hamburger-shaped – that is both flat and round. As it turns out of course, one of the “extreme” points of view was correct and the other was incorrect. Just as importantly, the “moderate” round and flat view was also incorrect.
I think this is an important point. Fundamentalists are actually more internally consistent than “moderate” relgious people who profess to both believe in God and some of their religious dogma as well as accepting science and all its implications. Of course the fundamentalists are completely wrong, but they try to be consistent. Its really not possible to accept all the implications of science and be a religious person and be consistent. There is always a point where one is choosing faith over reason. Anyone who would say that the Earth was hamburger-shaped would be just as wrong as those who said it was flat.
There really is no middle ground. Once you accept reason over faith, atheism is the only intellectually honest position. If you are going to go with faith, you might as well go all the way. If you are in the middle, you are just providing comfort to fundamentalists by saying that there is something worthwhile in their beliefs. There isn’t.
Let’s not forget the scientists. Science, and the logic that underlies it, denies the very concept of the supernatural. (Anyone performing science who claims otherwise has massive consistency problems.)
Seems someone beat me to it but; no good PZ. Your abbreviated version contains far too many polysyllabic words – and one of them is obscure. ;)
Let’s not forget the scientists. Science, and the logic that underlies it, denies the very concept of the supernatural. (Anyone performing science who claims otherwise has massive consistency problems.)
I dunno…it depends on how you apply “denial.” Philosophers of Science correct me if needed, but I would agree with the denial within science. Science assumes, and constantly demonstrates, that the supernatural isn’t observable in the natural, material world.
It doesn’t say in any absolute sense the supernatural doesn’t exist. Now (again, this is my perhaps mistaken understanding) most people do use the scientific method or its principles to define what is “knowable” and “real” in their daily lives, including most of the strongly religious. I think that’s a large part of the friction between science and religion.
PersistenceofMemory et al: I’ve long (half-jokingly) said that fundamentalists of all stripes are proof of the falsity of their respective creeds. If I were even moderately concerned about human welfare and moderately more powerful (as their gods ex hypothesi are) I’d be damned irate about what was being done “in my name” and at least attempt to stop it, due to the abject horror that results from it. Since this does not occur, there are no such gods … (This is actually similar to Michael Scriven’s argument for strong atheism.)
rrt: It is my view (as a philosopher of science, since you asked) that the denial has to apply globally or not at all for the simple reason that once you rule in unlawful influence in one domain one has no reason to rule it out in others. (As, by definition, you have allowed in patternless facts.) As for any particular individual, of course, they may believe in god and practice science. But this is, in my view, like a physician who smokes.
I suspect it’s that people sympathetic to Barton’s view share her bigotry, and think that atheists are all planning to line the Christians up against the wall as soon as we’ve finished subverting society, right before the looting and orgies start.
Orgies and looting? I might just have to become an atheist.
Pretty much by definition it’s natural when science explains it. I would suggest that the supernatural is the sum of all non-scientific guesses at phenomena that science may not yet have gotten around to. The supernatural is steadily unraveled into the natural by science whether through explanation (demonstrating a natural cause) or discreditation (demonstrating the phenomenon does not exist).
Raindog: Amusingly enough, the Earth actually IS slightly flattened. Very slightly. Its rotation causes it to bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles; I think the maximum deviation is a few km (out of the 6400 or so km radius).
Caledonian: “Supernatural” is meaningless. If you disagree, try rigorously defining it: you will soon see that it can’t be done. I’m sure a device that can sense invisible energy waves and convert them into voices or music would once have been regarded as supernatural, but there’s one in my bedroom right now; it’s called a radio.
Thanks, Keith/others! Interesting points on the role and definition of supernatural. :)
I know what they’re problem is. You shattered their dearly held delusion that they are in fact progressive and liberal.
Now we all know they’re not and they *angry*
PersistenceofMemory, that was a great comment on a great thread. Your comment “many of the underlying assumptions I’d made about the nature of the world were completely wrong, and that I would have to abandon them with no clear idea of where I was going next.”, is what scares the heck out of many that are trying to free themselves from the bondage of religion. The cool thing is that once you give up the idea of the universe having a purpose for humans you can begin to self-actualize and let your purpose drive your behaviours. I think it was Mencken that said “I am here on this planet to help others. Why the others are here I have no idea” Thanks for sharing.
rrt,
I’m not a historian or philosopher of science, but I think the concept of what natural are has become defined during history. Scienec relies on observations, and it wasn’t a priori that such dualisms as spirited mechanisms or souls where found to be without predictive power. This has later become embodied in principles such as methodological naturalism (the working methods of science) and metaphysical naturalism.
Chris,
My attempt of definition would be the dual of natural phenomena, the nonnatural phenomena, ie such phenomena that we could observe breaks natural conservation laws, for example energy or probability. That is the one way that something that we know doesn’t follow our current understanding of what natural phenomena is could exist and act onto this world. Any supernatural phenomena or causes would be included in this set.
I guess one could say that if we observe such phenomena, we would have to adjust our theories of nature and that it would merely redefine what natural is. But I think that we will likely never observe such phenomena so they are a good place to cut off remaining dualistic ideas, while still keeping the definition falsifiable.
Why do you say it can’t be done?
Err, “while still keeping the hypotheses that follows from the definition falsifiable” is better.
It’s the Wiccans who get orgies. Atheists get Scrabble, I think.
I highly suspect that it is due to the fact that the audience for the site caters mostly to vegan anarchists.
Doing a site-specific search of Raw Story failed to turn up any discussion of high-profile anarchists like Murray Bookchin, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Pyotr Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, Mikhail Bakunin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, etc. Can you link me to the places where Raw Story caters to anarchists? As one myself I would find it interesting.
Oh, not to mention:
“Your search – site:www.rawstory.com anarchism – did not match any documents.”
Raindog: Amusingly enough, the Earth actually IS slightly flattened. Very slightly. Its rotation causes it to bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles; I think the maximum deviation is a few km (out of the 6400 or so km radius).
I guess I had that coming. Perhaps that was not the best analogy. You know what I mean though. A near sphere such as the rotating earth would make a terrible hamburger!
As I see it, science doesn’t deny the existence of the supernatural, per se; it just deems it irrelevant. It simply doesn’t concern itself with it, limiting itself as it does to studying the natural, observable, world. Science doesn’t make a statement one way or another regarding its existence; it simply doesn’t care, as it is beyond its juridiction.
Note that if you wanted to read some of that comment thread while ignoring those readers who had already proven themselves worthless, you could just use my greasemonkey killfile script which handles, in addition to Pharyngula, comments hosted on haloscan (such as is the case with the raw story).
(My script also handles the Panda’s Thumb and livejournal. See the script itself for more details)
Science, and the logic that underlies it, denies the very concept of the supernatural.
No, it doesn’t deny it. It completely ignores it.
Ther are a lot of endeavors that ignore the supernatural. Math, photography, computer programming, grocery shopping. Even the highly religious live the majority of their lives “denying” the supernatural the same way that science does.
Atheists get Scrabble, I think.
Kitten barbeques, actually.
This distinction is wrong. A thing which is totally irrelevant cannot exist.
Incorrect. Science rejects the concept itself — if supernatural things existed, they would be able to affect the things science DOES study, and would therefore need to be taken into account for hypothesis testing. Science does not ignore any real phenomenon on principle.
Torbjörn raises an interesting point which I should clarify in my post. In general when I am asked or answer questions about the nature or practice of science I am speaking about the present. (Which is not to say my philosophy is completely ahistorical either.) For example, Aristotle’s metaphysics was respectable scientifically at the time; so was Democritus’. We know now that Democritus’ was, in certain ways, more correct. Hence being an Aristotlian today is (in those ways) pseudo or non-scientific but not 2300 years ago.
Everyone might also notice that I have provided an implicit criterion of the nonmaterial- the energyless. (Which, IMO, works better as a hypothesis than the positivist alternatives or the ones that make it connected to humans like observational criteria.)
That’s interesting, Keith. My friend the philosopher of science says he gets upset when people talk about energy as being some sort of stuff, where actually it’s a state of a material system.
I don’t think that’s the best way to define supernatural. I think there’s a more basic sense of the word in which it is not the dual of “natural” in the sense we use in philosophy of science discussions.
Consider the word “artificial,” and the artificial/natural distinction: what’s artificial is not natural, and vice versa. What makes something artificial is not that it’s not natural; that’s backwards. What makes something artificial is that it’s intentionally constructed, and what makes something natural is that it’s not artificial. That is just a different sense of “natural” than the sense we use in defining the scope of science.
Likewise, I think there’s a common and important sense of “supernatural” in which the complement is “natural,” but also not in the same sense we use in defining the scope of science.
The underlying folk theory of the supernatural does not assume that “supernatural” things aren’t natural our that broader sense. In fact, it generally assumes pretty much the opposite:
(1) “supernatural” things generally can have observable effects in the natural world, e.g., ghosts, various miracles, spiritual “gifts,” and intelligent design in nature, and
(2) there are important causal regularities in supernatural phenomena. (E.g., some people are better at sensing or influencing the supernatural than others, either because of their occult knowledge of “how to work it” or some other causally important fact about them that enable different interactions.)
I think this shows that there are very substantially different senses of the word “supernatural,” and that this sense is more important than the sense in which the supernatural is simply the complement of the “natural,” broadly construed. The supposed supernatural wouldn’t be interesting if it wasn’t supposed to be observable, causal, and at least somewhat regular—it’s a folk theory intended to explain stuff in this world. (Pascal Boyer talks about this stuff in Religion Explained.)
People who believe in the supernatural often commit fallacies of four terms by equivocating between these two senses. On one hand, they argue that the supernatural is important and interesting and detectable because of its effects, but on the other hand they argue that it’s outside the reach of science and beyond scientific debunking. Given what the scope of science actually is, those things can’t both be true.
Caledonian: I really don’t see how that follows. The supernatural is irrelevant as far as science is concerned. Does the fact that quantum theory (or the French Revolution, or Uranus, or whatever non-geographical concept you wish) is irrelevant as far the field of geography is concerned mean that geography somehow denies that it exists?
Science only gives a damn about the natural. It is a method of study of the natural world. The supernatural is neither here nor there as far as science goes. That’s all.
That is NOT all. Science rejects the concept of supernatural as unreal — of course that means that it regards it as irrelevant, but the position goes far beyond that.
PaulW: Historically, the concept of the supernatural has been logically incoherent.
Interesting that we can discuss around the meaning of supernatural even though some denies it is defineable.
Thanks for the inputs! My ideas after reading the replies is that supernatural can be defineable from expected effects which of course mean they are not irrelevant for science.
But those effects are either dismissable as anecdotal or natural effects. If we find these specific theories answered and yet not accept falsification of the general idea we end up with a deistic supernatural dualism. Something exists but interacts very weakly (universal origin) or undefineably or not at all with nature.
This is perhaps the large dualism that remains. Earlier dualisms (like christian or jainistic souls) have been found without explanatory power and done away with. To do this if it is possible can’t be irrelevant for science. Especially seen as a means to gather as much information as possible about how nature is constructed and behaves.
The deistic origin theory is of course unsatisfactory already. We have theories like endless inflation that implies an infinitely old universe which in turn implies that the fact of our existence is observer bias.
How to make the definition and the cut satisfactory is a question. To use the somewhat tautological nature of natural as everything observable, and either use Ockham’z razor or a consistency hypotheses that unobservable isolated universal causes doesn’t exist, or a nonmaterial definition, is perhaps doable. The possibly added hypothesis isn’t falsifiable as such but the remaining theory is, so it should be compatible with todays science.
To make the definition and cut observable and falsifiable could be easier to accept. It would be an ordinary theory in itself. It is terribly naive and weak, yet it seems to be enough in the absence of evidence against. It is easy to propose ways of gathering usable experimental evidence.
Finally, the general idea that this could be about observational evidence seems to give stronger results than to see it as a solely philosophical or religious question.
We have theories like endless inflation that implies an infinitely old *multi*universe, less I get bigbang deniers trolling here.
If you want to see one of the most bizarre stereotypes of “secularists” ever constructed, check out Tom Wanchick’s The Good Fight.
http://christianfighter.blogspot.com/2006/04/secular-totalitarianism.html
Apparently the non-religious–all of them–are bar-hopping conformists that viciously pressure everyone else to get drunk with them.
Oh, and just in case you doubt Mr. Wanchick’s powers of observation, Ann Coulter is “brilliant, insightful and hilarious,” so there.
Dave M: Your friend is correct – energy is a property, not a stuff. (Which makes all talk of “the equivalence of matter and energy” to be wrong, of course. Better: mass and energy are exchangable under certain circumstances.)
Paul W: The problem with calling artificial “what is intentionally created” is the danger of explaining the obscure by the more obscure, since “intention” is very fuzzy. Of course, if you had a theory in which the term appeared and intention might be defined implictly there, maybe then …
Torbjorn writes:
That reminds me that I never followed up to a comment in a different thread a few weeks ago…
I’d said that in certain areas of physics, “simply reductionistic” explanations “seem to have a hit sort of a wall.”
You took exception to that, saying that reductionism is doing just fine in physics.
I basically agree, if you use the term “reductionism” broadly. (That’s why I said simply reductionist, and threw in a few other qualifiers. Unfortunately, I agree with Dennett that “reductionist” is a hopelessly ambiguous word, especially in the hands of many “anti-reductionists.”)
It seems to me that theories like inflation and Smolin’s natural selection of universes are not “reductionist” in the same simple sense as most classic physical theories. The constants at one level of theory are not reducible to constants at another in a direct, timeless way.
For example, in Smolin’s theory, what seem to be fixed, low-level constants of physics in our universe are actually the result of a historical process, and are presumably affected by higher-level facts in the parent universe that spawned it—anything that affects black hole formation may affect seemingly “basic” physics in the resulting universe inside that black hole. There’s something like a feedback loop where “high-level” phenomena in one universe affect “low-level” parameters of the next. You don’t get the classic Russian-doll nesting of timeless theories.
I think that’s true of inflation as well, in some sense; the flatness of space is an emergent property of a “historical” process—competing forces in the early universe—not simply a timeless fact about different levels of description.
It seems to me that physics has been going more and more that way since roughly the 1970’s, when it became necessary to talk about how many seemingly fixed “low-level” facts emerged from the dynamics of the early universe.
Biologists, on the other hand, have been talking about that sort of thing since before Darwin, and Darwin is the best example. He showed that what constitutes a species is not simply reducible to some lower-level fact about a species—an essence or ideal form or distinctive internal teleological principle. It’s an ineliminably historical statement about a larger pattern of relations—which relatives died out, leaving an isolated cluster of closely-related organisms.
This is not “reductionist” in the simple, obvious sense. (And that’s fine with me.) And it is “reductionist” in the broad sense that almost any actual explanation can be called “reductionist.” (That’s fine with me, too.)
Physics had tremendous success with simpler, more direct and timeless “reductions” for hundreds of years, and that’s nice work if you can get it. If things can be reduced straightforwardly that way, that’s the kind of theory you should have; it would be crazy not to. (And I don’t mean to downplay the incredible difficulty of finding those simple reductions, or the brilliance of the physicists who did it.) But it does tend to make classic physics a poor exemplar for other sciences, and even some areas of modern physics. (Which is one reason fundamental physics and cosmology are so tightly linked now.) Most interesting phenomena in most fields aren’t amenable to strictly-nested, timeless Russian-doll theory structures, because there are important level-crossings and feedbacks. That makes biology a better exemplar science for many philosophical and educational purposes, because it’s always had to deal with sorting out that kind of complexity.
I meant to post this yesterday but TypeKey was down…
My attempt of definition would be the dual of natural phenomena, the nonnatural phenomena, ie such phenomena that we could observe breaks natural conservation laws, for example energy or probability. That is the one way that something that we know doesn’t follow our current understanding of what natural phenomena is could exist and act onto this world. Any supernatural phenomena or causes would be included in this set.
I guess one could say that if we observe such phenomena, we would have to adjust our theories of nature and that it would merely redefine what natural is. But I think that we will likely never observe such phenomena so they are a good place to cut off remaining dualistic ideas, while still keeping the definition falsifiable.
Why do you say it can’t be done?
Nuclear reactions. The law of conservation of energy was one of the most well-established laws of physics – until suddenly it was discovered to be incomplete. Does that make nuclear reactions supernatural? I don’t think so, but your definition would seem to say yes.
In short, any “supernatural” phenomenon that is discovered to actually exist and be real is, ipso facto, natural. The supernatural is the set of all things that simultaneously exist and don’t exist. Strangely, it seems like you’re agreeing with this point but still consider “supernatural” meaningful.
BTW, “artificial” is largely meaningless too. When a group of beavers build a dam to benefit themselves, and a group of humans build a dam to benefit themselves, where’s the difference between those actions? Building things is just as natural for humans as it is for beavers. The concept of “artificial” is a relic of an obsolete worldview that held that humans were fundamentally different from other species, therefore things done by humans were different than similar things done by other species.
Are chimpanzee-made termite fishing sticks “natural” or “artificial”? What about beaver dams? Bird nests? Beehives?
Chris,
I think you’re missing a deeper sense of the word “natural,” which is relative, and generates specific senses depending on what you’re talking about. That’s dangerously ambiguous, but it is not meaningless or obsolete.
This deep, core sense of “natural” is basically “operating according to the relevant set of mostly-autonomous principles,” as opposed to “caused by outside or higher-level interference, where that autonomy breaks down.”
For example, people often say that market forces solve certain problems “naturally,” without the need for regulation. (Whether or not you agree with those claims, or think they’re clear enough in other respects, you can still understand that sense of “natural.”)
Similarly, I’ve talked in scientific papers about adaptive algorithms that use deeper-than-usual principles so that they don’t need ad hoc code for “special cases”; they handle those cases “naturally.” (Special cases often go away, or cease to be special, if your algorithm does the right thing in general, according to a deeper principle that’s right.) Nobody has ever objected to that use of “natural,” even though everything I was talking about was obviously artifical in the broader sense; If it’s clear what the relevant set of mostly-autonomous principles is, and why they’re sufficient without a higher-level override, there is no confusion.
The common fairly broad sense of natural-vs-artifical is useful and meaningful, too. I agree that there can be fuzzy and problematic cases, like the actions of beavers. But usually they’re not a problem.
For example, if archaeologists or geologists are trying to decide whether a terraced landscape is “natural” or “artificial,” there are at least some useful clear cases. If the terraces were constructed by humans for farming, they’re clearly artificial. If they were constructed by typical geological forces—stratification, erosion, etc., they’re clearly natural. If becomes clear that one is true, or the other, you’re done. But if it’s not clear, and beavers or chimps may have been involved, you’d better stop and think about the relevant distinctions.
I should have answered this earlier but I was too busy. I do appreciate all answers because they deepen my understanding of what the supernatural dualism means.
Keith,
“Your friend is correct – energy is a property, not a stuff. (Which makes all talk of “the equivalence of matter and energy” to be wrong, of course. Better: mass and energy are exchangable under certain circumstances.)”
In this sense also mass is a property. All energy has mass, some mass are intrinsic rest mass. Perhaps a quantum gravity theory helps us to a better understanding, but I think currently all we say is that mass and energy are properties of systems.
Paul,
“I basically agree, if you use the term “reductionism” broadly. (That’s why I said simply reductionist, and threw in a few other qualifiers. Unfortunately, I agree with Dennett that “reductionist” is a hopelessly ambiguous word, especially in the hands of many “anti-reductionists.”)”
I agree.
“For example, in Smolin’s theory, what seem to be fixed, low-level constants of physics in our universe are actually the result of a historical process, and are presumably affected by higher-level facts in the parent universe that spawned it—anything that affects black hole formation may affect seemingly “basic” physics in the resulting universe inside that black hole.”
That was an interesting observation. I have heard of Smolins black hole cosmology but I haven’t thought of its consequences.
“I think that’s true of inflation as well, in some sense; the flatness of space is an emergent property of a “historical” process—competing forces in the early universe—not simply a timeless fact about different levels of description.”
In endless inflation each universe has an inflationary phase early on. If that entails flat universes in all cases I don’t know, but I think a universe must be very particular (small) to not be flattened. What inflation did to earlier bigbang theories was that it answered flattening and small radius problems.
“That makes biology a better exemplar science for many philosophical and educational purposes, because it’s always had to deal with sorting out that kind of complexity.”
Yes, evolution is a principle that originated in biology but has applications in other disciplines too. Another argument against naive reduction is emergent properties that distinguishes chemistry somewhat from physics and biology decidedly from chemistry.
Chris,
“Nuclear reactions. The law of conservation of energy was one of the most well-established laws of physics – until suddenly it was discovered to be incomplete.”
The energy from nuclear reactions is (somewhat) different from chemical energy, but it can be accounted for and the total energy is preserved.
Conservation laws issues from different sources but have both classical and quantum examples. Unitarity and probability distribution conservation is one type. The correspondence between symmetry and conservation laws is another. The later gives energy conservation, the classical case given by Noether’s theorem and the quantum case by Ward-Takahashi identities.
“In short, any “supernatural” phenomenon that is discovered to actually exist and be real is, ipso facto, natural.”
Yes, this comes from the implicit redefinition that comes from saying that all we currently observe has natural causes.
“The supernatural is the set of all things that simultaneously exist and don’t exist.”
This definition is meaningless.
“Strangely, it seems like you’re agreeing with this point but still consider “supernatural” meaningful.”
I say that we can draw a meaningful line between natural and nonnatural systems based on what we today know is basic properties of natural systems. It is however the nature of science that statements are provisional and observable. Thus, such a theory can be researched and perhaps falsified. (And then the redefinition could perhaps play out. However, the conservation theorems are so basic that it is hard to conceive of this happening.)
This is not a contradiction. It is only problematic if one believes science deals with philosophical truths instead of scientific facts. (But since your definition of supernatural, which you earlier denied to be realisable, seems to be denying philosophical truth I don’t know if you even believe in dealing with philosophy.)