Abstract

Sunday, 19 June 2005

Karl: I think that you need to get beyond dualisms such as:

“Kant´s philosophy might have been idealist but all idealism reflects reality or it is purely fiction or rather fantasy. Ideals are idealised real objects. As you said, a Euclidean straight line does not exist in reality but lines do. So I do not have to accept Kant in toto to use his notion that the mind has structures to enable us to think.”

because it is not the case that idealism reflects reality OR it is purely fiction/fantasy. It is far more complicated than that. Our ideals are hybrids between reality and imagination and it may well be impossible to distinguish which parts of our ideals reflect reality and which parts of are fantasy. A Euclidean straight line is such a hybrid entity. I agree that you don’t have to accept Kant, but, it was you who brought him into the fray in support of your argument—which he doesn’t if you look at him in toto—so it is a little unfair for you to introduce the parts of his arguments that seem to support your case but then you discard the parts that contradict as irrelevant. However, even if we accept that the mind requires structures in order to think, it does not follow from this that these structures came from Nature. And, even if these structures did come from Nature, they still could well have been radically transformed through creative activity and cultural influences. Thus one cannot deduce natural structures from mental structures because it is not clear how and from whence ideals come to be.

Mike: Perhaps too boldly, I said Darwin explains Kant, but I then explained what of Kant Darwin explained, the notion that the brain is structured into categories to allow us to think of things. Such structures seem necessary if our brains are to be of any value in dealing with the environments we evolve in and into. However reality is idealized to be handled by our brains, the idealization cannot be purely imaginative and so independent of reality otherwise we should be walking into doors and in front of trams. Hitler put the German people back to work by launching government projects such as autobahns and militarization. Rooseveldt did the same in the US with the New Deal. Because Rooseveldt agreed with Hitler on how to get the country out of depression into work did not mean he had to agree with him on his Nazi principles. We are allowed to be eclectic when the rest of a program or philosophy is irrelevant.

“The essential distinction between philosophy and theology is that philosophy speculates about the real world and not about the supernatural. It means that philosophy becomes a form of theology unless it roots itself from time to time back in reality to find out whether its speculations are fantastic or not. Philosophy therefore ultimately has to be empirical just as science is or be hapless conjecture. Most philosophy therefore ‘is only an interpretation and, at best, only provides an intelligible account of the possibility of experience’.”

I don’t agree with you about your definition of theology here—but l’m going to put that aside, at least until you say what you mean by “supernatural”. For me, the problem in what you are saying is in how one roots anything from time to time back in reality. What is involved in the rooting? It is quite evident that philosophy can be empirical (take Aristotle and Hume for example) but it does so in a way that is very different from the way that experimental science is empirical. In fact, as I argue in my book, it is questionable whether experimental physics is an empirical science.

Well let us not question it for the minute, so as not to have too many balls in the air at the same time—a basis of experimental science, but perhaps not philosophy. I rather thought we were speaking of the human experience of the real world as being empirical. So long therefore as the philosopher is speaking of speculations about the real world that can be compared with our experience of it from time to time to see whether it makes sense to us in terms of our experience then we are rooting it in reality. Philosophers can no doubt speculate about idealities in some heavenly world of forms or whatever, but that is theology not philosophy, as the theologians of the Church knew and eagerly grasped hold of. Unless these idealizations have some necessary consequences for the real world they are purely abstract. They are supernatural because they are considered to be above Nature in some way or other, but there is no way of knowing. They are Puss in Boots or Harvey the Rabbit but made respectable because clever men say they are important. As soon as we relate it to some great Harvey, then it is Christian theology. Otherwise it is abstract theology, the Harveys and Pusses being hypothetical beings—potentially gods for someone.

Anyway, the purpose of my critique of science is not to advocate religion, but it is to advocate a more balanced view by attempting to raise reasonable doubt about the impartiality and objectivity of science. If that makes me a crank then I’m happy to be one. I do accept that religions authorities have more authority and power than scientists, but that is merely a consequent that there are more religiously persuaded human beings than scientifically persuaded ones, and so the problem is one of social justice rather than the truth-status of science or religion. Even if we accept that religion makes people do evil acts because they are told that it is good to do them by authorities that use religious doctrine to support their right to power, this does not explain how that elite gained their authority in the first instance or how it is possible that people so readily accept these lies. It seems to me that the problem of religious intolerance and fanaticism is a deeper problem than the existence of religion itself. Religious intolerance and fanaticism is a symptom of a deeper evil and is not the cause. You need to address that cause or all of your criticisms of religion will fall on deaf ears. If, as you point out, people are willing to murder others over undecidable and trivial matters of faith, then it is the cause of the willingness to murder that is the problem rather than the pretexts for the murder. Otherwise, you are merely wanting to ban hammers because people use them to smash other peoples’ skulls.

Another crude distraction. I have nothing against hammers. The misnamed Yorkshire Ripper was not driven to bash in the heads of unsuspecting women by his hammer but by the voice of authority in his head that he took to be God. It is that readiness to believe that a superbeing, given unquestionably good credentials by society, is authorizing you to do monstrous deeds that is the central problem with the Christian religion, if no other. We might say that Sutcliffe was different because he was obviously deluded. My point is that belief in a superbeing called God is itself a dangerous delusion, and it is necessary only so that people can be manipulated—the sheep manipulated by the shepherds normally, or individuals carried off into their own insane variations. Sometimes both. The Jonestown massacre, and many other ones even in the last few decades are examples. As for the objectivity and so on of science, I also have no objection to it being raised, but, in fairness, it wants to be put into context. What is objective about any other system of thought or belief? What are the criteria you are using to judge systems, or is this an exclusive critique? If the metaphysical basis of science is faulty, how should it be corrected, and what effect can you foresee if it is? How do I know the critique is not itself based on faulty premises? You have succeeded in alerting me, if no others, about the history and practice of science in that it is conceived of in mechanistic ways, but perhaps that is because, pace the Christians, Nature is mechanistic, or describable in terms of machines, and not merely because we are imposing mechanisms on to it.

I seems to me that the point that we can come to some agreement is that we both seem to agree that human beings should be rational. However, the problem is in establishing criteria for knowledge and reason in order to found an account of what is rational. It might seem reasonable to define rationality as:

“simply having reasons, causes or explanations for a belief. Merely to assert something with no reason or with no discernable reason is to be irrational, even if the thing asserted happens to be true.”

but it is hardly rational to base one’s actions on false beliefs—even if one did not know that they were false. One needs to base one’s actions on knowledge if an action is to be considered rational—because it is not rational to act with certainty when one is not certain.

Yes. You can hardly say you have a reason for doing or asserting something if the reason has not convinced you. It brings us back again to the conviction that Christians have, and called that literally. They are certain they are right, and with such a conviction can behave monstrously.

Anyway, on your definition it would be rational to sacrifice prisoners of war to the sun god because one believes that the sun god will preserve the world if one does so. But, I agree with you that a lucky guess is not a rational foundation for action, but that is why I said that it is important that one should base one’s action on knowledge. The question is thereby what is knowledge and how do we achieve it? For you that is answered by science, but for me science is itself an experiment. Moreover, if one has a personal revelation from a divine being then one would be irrational to ignore or dismiss it, even if one could not prove it to others.

One would want to know how the divine person could prove first that he was divine and second that he was good, so criteria are still needed. Since the appearance of divinities seems to be confined to lunatics, it is best to dismiss the apparition and seek psychiatric treatment. My point was that it is indeed rational for people to make sacrifices to the sun god on the basis of what they have been taught to be true, but they had no criteria by which it could be tested. By stopping the sacrifices, they thought they would all die themselves, but they were too scared to try it, in case it was true. My point about Christianity and its promise of life after death is precisely the same, and Pascal’s wager plays on the same fear. Christians are persuaded it is safer to believe than not to, and, since only Jesus has returned from the dead, Christians say they have the evidence. Their reward of life after death depends on them believing and practising their belief, so the scam obliges people to believe and reward the Church for its consideration, or lose the chance of eternal bliss. It does not occur to them that a good God could not use such low bribery, or have such a wicked punishment as perpetual hell fire for those who actually chose to use the free will He said we had. Inasmuch as no system can be self-contained, all of them must be experiments. Ultimately, they must work. The knowledge they give must help us deal with reality. They cannot certainly help us to deal with unreality.

Incidetally, I don’t know where you get the idea that Hinduism is not patriarchal. It is based on a caste system that cosmologically justifies the domination of a society of nearly a billion people by a small group of men. All the major (and beneficent) Hindu gods are male figures—the female gods are often representations of a overarching male form—and it is considered to be better to be reincarnated as a man than as a women. Have you ever been to India? It is a profoundly sexist country and Hinduism reflects that. Also in its original form, Buddhism was theistic in the sense that it acknowledge the existence of the gods, but it rejected the idea of worshipping them because the worst thing for a human being was to be reincarnated as a god because the pleasures and powers of godhood would distract one from enlightenment. Tibetan Buddhism is one of the oldest forms of Buddhism and it is a deeply theistic religion. Except for Zen Buddhism, which is the only atheistic form of Buddhism that I know of, all forms of Buddhism recognise traditional gods and spirits—they simply do not worship them—and most Buddhists except that magic is possible and has a divine source. But, it was only in its latest stages that orthodox Indian and Chinese Buddhism worships the Buddha as a divine being. Anyway, this is getting off point.

We are using the word “patriarchal” differently. In the context of religion, it means derived from the mythical patriarch, Abraham, not that it is male dominated, though patriarchal religions are that too. I’ll settle for what you say about Buddhism. Gods who make no demands on us are fine by me. As we have agreed, they can “exist” for those who want them so long as they have no effect in the world!

It seems to me that the most fruitful connection between your views and those of some religious people is when you say:

“Again, when I speak of exemplary Christians, I can make my own judgement from the principles expounded by Christ about how Christians ought to behave without endorsing Christianity. That is what I judge exemplary Christian to be. Quakers follow more of them than most other so-called Christian sects. As a matter of fact, inasmuch as Christianity prescribes a set of principles to live by, there is much in it that I can admire and accept. There are even liberal Christians who have rejected all the supernaturalism, simply taking the principles of life Christ recommended and lived by. They too are exemplary Christians if they stick to these principles. Unfortunately, there are only too few of them, most Christians preferring to believe the supernatural superstructure—meant as a coercive psychology to impress obedience—is somehow real and more important than the living rules it offers.”

because I think that it is more fruitful to attack “Christians” on the basis of just how unChristian their actions and beliefs are—as hypocrites—using the Bible as the one source they must acknowledge, than it is to try to convince them the Jesus was not the son of God or that they should embrace science. This involves being quite explicit and open about the aspects of the teachings of Jesus that one finds to be acceptable and important. It does not follow from this that one has to accept anything supernatural. This is a question of ethics and wisdom, but it seems to me that you might gain quite a bit of rhetorical leaverage from backing off from the “all religious people are fools or bastards” stance and on to the more challenging “So how Christian are you?” approach. It seems to me that the neocon right in the US need to be shown to be the unChristian evildoers and blasphemers that they are, in order to separate them from their moral highground on the basis of speaking for Christian America. Take your fun Christian test on your webpages (thankfully, I did not score very highly as a Christian). It seems to me you would be better off showing the average Christian that they are actually not very good Christians, rather than showing Christians that they are not very good people. But, at the end of the day, it is matter of style. So, whatever works for you…

Nothing restricts Christian critics to one of your two approaches or the other, and I do both. On my page called The Poor Men, Jesus and Christianity, for example, I point out the contradictions in Jesus’s attitude to poverty and the modern Christian attitude. But I have explained already that modern Protestants will not read their bible for themselves. They will only read it through the eyes of their pastors, Protestant shepherds who delight in the sophistry I have already mentioned that enables them to say black is white. Gullible Christians tell me that I am no Christian exegete, and, of course, I am not. I am a non-Christian exegete, the point being that no one has to be an exegete to read the bible. Modern Christians think you have to be because they have been so well indoctrinated by their shepherds they are now worse off than medieval peasants were. Medieval peasants had no way of knowing what their bibles said except what their Catholic priests told them. Modern Protestants can read the bible for themselves, but refuse to believe their eyes until they have had an explanation from a crooked evangelist. I am glad you liked the Christianity test, but you are the first correspondent that has mentioned it. I was beginning to think it did not work for some subtle reason. I have been intending to add a graphical analysis to it for years now, but never get round to it, there are so many interesting emails to reply to, and endless books I keep promising myself to read.

…but I object to the accusation that

“Not being willing to suggest any improvements means you are being carpingly critical of science, while being apologetically uncritical of religion, just as most of the media hacks in society are, the people who write propaganda for the ruling elites of neocons, Straussists, greedy corporate bosses and corrupt governments.”

because in a debate with you of course I am going to defend religion because you are so biased against it. But I am not defending religion, I am defending reasoned argument rather than prejudice! You might have good reasons for being prejudiced against ALL RELIGIONS (even the ones you know nothing about), and in your terms that makes your prejudice rational, but the war of propaganda caused by prejudice from both sides is the enemy of reasoned thought and rationality. If as a matter of principle you are not prepared to reason with your opposition, the religious man, whilst being genuinely open to the possibility that they might have some profound insight that you do not and they might be able to convince you of some truth, whilst you expect then to completely disregard all their beliefs and become a scientifically persuaded atheist, or they are a fool, then you are not engaged in reasoned debate at all. You are engaged in fundamentalism, unless you are open to the possibility that the religious man might, just might, be right.

You keep surprising me with these poor arguments. You seem not to recognize that anyone can come to a conclusion, and I have explained to you that I have looked carefully at Christianity for many years and have actually come to a conclusion about it. Are you saying that coming to a conclusion is being prejudiced? Accepting your argument about the nature of science would make me as prejudiced as holding the view I presently hold about it, wouldn’t it? It is the sociological nonsense I have already mentioned, but perhaps it is also a philosophical nonsense. There is nothing I am aware of that stops anyone from being rational because they are willing to come to a conclusion. It is quite plain that anyone can come to a conclusion on anything based on the evidence presented and the case argued. Admittedly, it is foolish and prejudiced to stick to the original conclusion in the face of fresh evidence refuting it. I read what people say to me but no one has persuaded me yet that my original conclusion was wrong. No one has shown me a profound insight to change my mind, and absurd arguments that I am prejudiced for holding a view at all is not likely to impress me with the power of persuasion of their author. I can only imagine you are getting carried away in your own rhetoric. Suffice it to say that my Christian opponents hope to persuade me of their beliefs, and I offer mine for their consideration, but with little hope it will persuade them! And nor do I categorize them as fools, when I have done, because they oppose what I say, but because they oppose it, as you say, with no good cause. Frankly, I do not think the religious man, the Christian one, at any rate, will be right, but I expect to be persuaded by evidence not wish fulfilment. I would have thought you would have been the same. Finally, my arguments are with Christians firstly, and with patriarchal religions by extension, and lastly with religions generally. I have said before I am more sympathetic with natural religions simply because they have some regard for the real world. The patriarchal religions are made up religions, and made up for power purposes. I have described their history and how I see them connected, skimping only on Islam but simply because I have neither time nor incentive to study it. On the face of it, it is as bad as its father and brother.

“You offer criticisms of science but will not suggest how it can be improved to avoid the criticisms you make. That is what cranks and New Agers do all they time. They spread the idea that science is like religion, a type of magic that just has to be practised to make it true, and leads to beliefs in crystals, perfumes, astrology, Tarot and goodness knows what other scams, as well as the great scams of out society, established religions.”

And another characteristic of the fundamentalist is to be outraged about criticism. How dare I criticise science!!!! Well, it is actually quite easy, because all the ammo came from science and scientists. If you can calm your outrage for a second, I did not say that I was not willing to suggest improvements—in fact I have suggested them several times to you during our email exchange—but I just am not prepared to put forth an all encompassing truth for all humanity for all time to replace science. So basically I have to do something quite impossible before being allowed to criticise the Holy Science! Well, I can’t, you got me there. Whilst I did not quite imply that science was just another religion—a type of magic that just has to be practicised to make it true—there is nothing like a conversation with a scientific realist to convince me that it is exactly that. But that is just a knee-jerk reaction, and I am not convinced it is the case, even though there are obvious similarities. Even though, as one of the faithful, you just cannot see them.

You really are getting into the bad habit that Christians have of setting up straw dolls to knock over. If I am outraged, as you say, then it is not over the fact that you criticize science, but precisely what you have omitted—that you criticism is purely carping until you say what science could do to improve. Maybe you have spent too much time with Derrida rampaging around with a sledge hammer in the hope of deconstructing things. Demolition is fine providing the site is not to be left unreconstructed. Your deconstruction is nihilism until you have something better to offer. Incidentally, speaking of a change of priesthood and rituals seems to be a clear enough statement that you do regard science as just another religion.

But the point that which we could fruitfully debate the nature of science is

“Science could be much more valuable in such a society than it is today.”

especially in the context in the philosophical question of what kind of society we wish to live in. And in that debate I am more than willing to suggest improvements to the way that science is done. So how about this? As an olive branch, why don’t we stop talking about religion and just talk about science?

I try not to be without my olive branch, though most people, even supposed Christians, prefer their war horses. The trouble though with your suggestion is that we would be arguing about political economy rather than science. What would be useful would be to discuss how science presented properly and consistently could be used to help bring about beneficial changes in social organisation. But since science seems to have no redeeming features to you, presumably it could have nothing beneficial to offer.

I am in the fifth chapter of your book. I appreciate what you said at the outset about pissing off academics certain about their assumptions, that perhaps we are no different from a potter shaping his clay or a painter daubing a surface until an approximation to something in life appears, to be declared what it seems to be. Like the image—if we step back, we can see it—I can see what you mean about the machines. To think it might be true is humbling, but I doubt that many will be convinced. It is more satisfying to think you are uncovering fundamental laws than that you are merely daubing the metaphorical surface with illusions of reality. The immediate counter I would persist with is the seamless shading of manufactured devices with purely natural ones. You can see that Nature has untapped energy in it when the wind blows a branch from one of my trees on to the garage roof and damages it, as it recently did. The tree and the roof are damaged by the force of the wind. So far I am only describing the phenomenon, but though I can use the force of, and the energy in, the wind with a device such as a windmill, do you say I am still not demonstrating anything about Nature, but am simply making an image of it? If I am using one or more of the six simple machines then I am still showing that natural things use them also, surely.

You often use the Easter Bunny and Harvey the Rabbit analogy with God and the Holy Spirit, especially in the e-pistles. It’s a fairly good analogy, at least for making your point succinctly, but the main difference is that no-one really believes in the existence of the Easter Bunny, not even most children, but the majority of the world’s population believes in some kind of god or divine spirit. I’m not saying that truth is decided by a popular vote, but I am saying that there is something in the idea of a god or divine spirit which inspires people, en mass and for thousands of years before Christianity and for two thousand years since, and there is nothing in the idea that you really believe in the Easter Bunny which is remotely believable. Religious sensibilities often defy secular explanation is a way that shoddy rhetorical tricks do not.

If it is a trick, it is no worse than those used by Christians. I cannot see the subtle difference that you can. The delusion of God is accepted in the way you describe because it is approved by society, whereas Harvey is not. Both are equally figmentary but one is an accepted figment and the other is not. Or rather both are exemplary myths, but one is taken to be actual and the other is accepted as merely mythical, a character in a film. In a parallel world, Harvey could have the role of God in ours and God the role of Harvey. The question is why people began to believe in God and not Harvey.

Your claim that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence is logically false. It remains logically possible that there could be no evidence for or against the existence of something that does in fact exist. Take extraterrestrial life, for example, we can speculate on the existence of intelligent life on other worlds and use radio equipment to search for messages and signals, but there is not a single shred of evidence for the existence of such messages and signals, but this absence does not prove that SETI is pointless. There is no unambiguous evidence for the existence of the Yeti, but does that prove that it does not exist? Of course not. There is no unambiguous evidence for extrasensory abilities, but does that prove that they do not exist? There is no scientific evidence for the existence of free-quarks, but that does not stop credible scientists from searching for them. There are many speculative and theoretical entities that may or may not exist, for which there is a complete absence of evidence, and yet scientists spend a great deal of their lives searching for them. It seems to me that the question of the existence or inexistence of God may well be something for which there will never be any evidence one way or the other (among the mortal anyway). If there is no clear cut empirical condition under which the question could be answered, as you claim, then it is not a scientific question and even though you are at complete liberty to be an atheist you should not claim any scientific basis for that opinion. On the basis of an absence of scientifically credible evidence for the existence or inexistence of God one should be agnostic.

Thank goodness we have criteria other than logic, for otherwise we should hardly have tried to do anything at all. We are not seeking to prove the things you mention. Absolute proof is generally restricted to logic and its symbolic equivalent, mathematics. In real life, we should not confuse proof with evidence, or the balance of evidence with proof. Absence of evidence, contrary to what Christians always claim, is evidence of absence, as I said. I agree it is not proof of it, but it seems that theologians and philosophers merge together in their demand of atheists for proof that God does not exist, but need no proof that He does exist to continue to justify the belief he does—or might! The basis of science is skepticism. The scientific skeptic will not accept anything without evidence. Descartes began by refusing to accept anything, and that has become the standard of science, as opposed to religions which require belief in everything impossible, and therefore requires an utterly gullible following. If scientists hunt quarks, it is because the presence or absence of them will distinguish between alternative hypotheses about the structure of matter. It might indeed be logically possible for things to exist and yet generate no evidence that they do, but then they can have no consequences for us. They might be able to exist but so far as we are concerned, there is no reason to think they do. That is the scientific approach. The atheist and the scientific agnostic are practically the same. To be agnostic is not to know, and one does not know because there is no reason to know. If there is no reason to know then there is no reason to believe. The atheist has no reason to believe in God, and so does not. What is perverse is to have no reason to believe, and yet to believe nevertheless. Worse still is to persuade simple unanalytical people that believing without reason is a virtue called Faith. Talk about rhetorical tricks! This is disgusting, but it is the basis of the Christian scam. Now while you are convincing me that there are metaphysical assumptions behind science, I am not convinced that any other form of enquiry has no similar assumptions, or less significant ones.

As I elaborated at length in my last email, personally, I think that Jesus died on the cross. He was murdered and that was the end of him. I believe that all the talk of his resurrection and the whole of Christianity was based on a lie. As I said, I was already pretty convinced of this before I read your books and I found your books to be persuasive and very interesting. Also, they are an informative read that said many things that I had not read before. You don’t need to convince me any further on that account. I agree with you (in general, if not in the details). The only difference between you and me is that I accept that I may well be absolutely wrong—whilst I believe that Christians have the wrong end of the stick, I accept that I might have the wrong end of the wrong stick. I have made my own conclusions—and I am quite open and frank about them—but I accept that I might be wrong. You will not make such a concession. On that we shall have to agree to differ.

You are not quite right. Again I repeat it, that I am persuaded by the evidence I have seen that Christianity is monstrous as well as being unbelievable, but I allow that fresh evidence I have not hitherto seen might persuade me differently. No one has yet offered it to me, and so I remain unpersuaded that Christianity is historically wonderful, morally desirable and entirely right, and I do not expect to be persuaded of it.

“That God created the world is an explanation that a believer and even a theologian will accept, but it is not one that a scientist would accept, and not one that I can imagine a philosopher would accept either, not least because such questions assume there is an answer. You will tell me whether my assumption is correct. It is not obvious to me that the world had a beginning, and if God can be eternal, then I want to know from believers why the world cannot itself be the same. I would have thought that you would too.”

Indeed it is possible that the world has no beginning. I accept that possibility. My only point is that I do not know.

But the Christians that you defend do know.

“In other words religious explanations are not explanations, except, as we have noted already when they happen to be in some sense true by accident.”

On this point I disagree with you. For me it also remains possible that some people MIGHT have knowledge and insights that I do not have—nor understand how they could possess such knowledge and insight—and this is true of religious people too. For reasons given above, the divine might exist and interact with the world and some religious people may well know something about it and how it interacts. In such cases, their explanations would be objectively true and correspond to reality. I just do not know of any such cases.

Pigs might fly! I too recognize that they might, but the chances are against it. In the case of the Christian religion, we are speaking of an almighty being, perfectly good who wants to save people, yet cannot find a way to show unequivocally that all of this is true. If what you say is true, and this is too, then there should be no doubt involved. God can make it so, and we would know about it. Now you will tell me that you "just do not know" how God might think, but again your unwillingness to reach any conclusions seem to me to be perverse. I recognize that there is some chance however minute it might be that among the confidence tricksters and madmen are some genuine prophets and angels. But I judge the likelihood as being negligible in practice. You refuse to do this on the grounds of some form of philosophical purity. Let us take all of your philosophical caveats for granted. Will you then offer an opinion based on the best evidence there is?

“You keep surprising me with these poor arguments. You seem not to recognize that anyone can come to a conclusion, and I have explained to you that I have looked carefully at Christianity for many years and have actually come to a conclusion about it. Are you saying that coming to a conclusion is being prejudiced?”

No. I am saying that coming to a conclusion and not being able to accept that one might be mistaken is prejudiced (at least in favour of one’s own infallibility). My conclusion is quite simple. Human beings are fallible and even the most closely argued conclusion based on credible evidence can be false. I have noticed for your e-pistles that you often avoid this very question raised by agnostics by putting poor arguments in their mouth. I did not say that you should not come to a conclusion—I simply said that you could be mistaken in your conclusion and that it was an act of prejudice not to recognise this possibility.

You are pushing on an open door here. Of course I recognise the possibility, but I do not think the possibility is likely enough to be worth postponing a conclusion. That is the point. It is a question of the balance of the evidence, and is corrigible, as I have always maintained, because that is the scientific view

‘…the fact remains that science does something in the real world, and ultimately that is its justification.’

Agreed.

“If no system can be complete in itself, then there will be some gap in any system, even the science based on a better metaphysical basis you imagine. If any theoretical system must be logically incomplete, then the criterion remaining is whether it continues to work or not.”

Depends on what you mean by work. The concept work requires purpose and whether or not something works is a question of whether is satisfies purposes. This requires demonstrations that are situated in the social realm—requiring persuasion, agreements about assumptions, acceptance about the validity of techniques, etc. Once again, I am not saying that science needs to be based on a better metaphysical basis—I am saying that modern experimental physics is based on a metaphysical foundation and, hence, is not as straightforwardly empirical as empiricists and positivists would have us believe. I am saying that physics needs to be situated as a human pursuit within a philosophical discourse about the directions and purposes of our society.

The work of science is what it does in the real world. It allows us, or scientists believe it allows us, to learn about it and, all right, it allows us to make machines that demonstrate what we have learnt, that do what we wanted them to do, and so we can then use these "machines" to explain how Nature does this or that—osmosis for example explains many things in living systems, and tests show it obeys the same rules as osmosis and reverse osmosis used in devices. I agree that it would be desirable to change the aims that science is predominantly used for in society, and it would be great if more scientists decided to play a part in deciding what they are being used for. If they are to do so, though, they need to be won over, not derided as sickening.

When I said:

“To try to force religious societies to become modern secular scientitifc societies is also a mistake because they are not ready.”

You replied:

“Perhaps so, but how do you know they are not ready unless people are given the option, and science is explained fairly to them?”

Quite simple. They do not want to have science fairly explained to them and they are content to follow their religions. It is a matter of self-determination. If they are simple minded peasants, or fools that believe things because they are told to believe them, as you often hold about religious people, then they just aren’t going to really be all that scientific, or persuaded by science, are they? People need to come to science for themselves.

Well, we were just the same here in the UK until not so many years ago. Without having the figures to hand, it seems that the Education Act of 1870 had a profound effect on the religious beliefs of the Brits because they had things, not just science, explained to them in the primary schools after that. We were not plagued, as the USA is, by a lot of fundamentalists determined to turn the clock back, and the result is that only one in twenty, if that, attend church these days. The USA would have gone the same way quite probably if it had not been for the fundies reorganising after the Scopes trial to re-impose Christian mythology. When science is fairly explained, it is undoubtedly compelling because it seems to be excellent at explaining what we observe around us, machines certainly but natural things too. People are gullible and even foolish for accepting unquestioningly what their priests and pastors tell them, but an aim of a liberal education is to improve people’s critical faculties. Religiously indoctrinated people can benefit more than others from it. A liberal thinker like you must favour that, surely.

I’m a little puzzled about why you said:

“You are not being too consistent here. We are not ready for a scientific society but we are ready for a philosophical one?”

in response to my paragraph which started with…

“However, we live in a technological society in which science is an intrinsic foundation and, hence, we cannot reject science without destroying our society…”

So, given that I have also been stating this several times in our email exchange and my book, that our modern society is a society already based on science and technology, then I think that you need to read what I have said a little more attentively before you leap to criticise it as being inconsistent. I said, quite explicitly, that it would be disastrous for our society to retrograde into a religious society. In our modern society, throughout the late C19th, up to the mid C20th, philosophy has been assaulted by positivists and empiricists on the basis that it is unscientific. Philosophy is treated as if it is a luxury and an indulgence for the rich and tax payers coin should not be wasted on teaching it in schools. Academic philosophy was pretty much reduced to a branch of linguistics by the mid C20th. This has very much helped the powers that be maintain the divisions of labour that support the status quo by having scientists turned into positivistic workers. Of course, this changed during the sixties when philosophy started becoming a critical force again, largely on the basis of a disenchantment with science on this basis of what had been done in the name of science by some scientists. The widespread cultural disenchantment with science has gained force on the basis of things such as the atomic bomb and biotechnology. These products of science that have caused a reaction against science far more than any philosophical critique (or religious reaction for that matter).

OK. I stand corrected. I was thinking of the USA as the leading western society when you said “we” live in a technological society, because it is the most advanced of our societies, but is hardly post-Christian without needing any retrogression, and so hardly ready for a higher level of maturity. I agree that we have a poor basis of philosophy in out educational system, but my guess is that it has never been any good in the state schools, and only had any basis in the public schools. It faded then perhaps because of the loss of emphasis on classics. I would have benefitted from a philosophical introduction to science but had to grope around to try to get it by reading Russell’s History of Western Philosophy that, no doubt will have added to my positivist indoctrination, and some individual books that seemed relevant like Descartes’ Discourse on Method. I did not get much out of them, and that is not a criticism of philosophy, but because I had fat tomes on maths, physics, and physical, organic and inorganic chemistry to read, and could never therefore concentrate adequately on such peripheral books without feeling that my time would be better used reading the books I would be examined on. I suppose the truth is that not everyone can be taught philosophy in any depth, but at the least each of us should get a philosophical introduction to our own chosen subject.

My point is that we now need to place science within a more encompassing philosophical discourse in order to give it meaning and reflect upon its direction. Of course, people take advantage of fear and attack science for self-serving reasons, but this is not the only reason why people criticise science. It is not just the case that criticisms of science distract people from social problems (governments have far more effective ways of doing that), but it is the case that science is criticised as a social problem. The integration of science and its direction within society is a social problem. Science has also caused serious social problems. And it too (as well as religion) has vast amounts of money spent on it. We do have a right to wonder whether that money is being spent wisely—especially our taxes.

I agree about the expenditure of money on science, but that is not a criticism of science. Vast amounts seem to be spent on prestigious mega-projects or feeding failed approaches whose exponents keep pleading that the breakthrough is imminent, but it turns out to be like the Parousia. Redirecting tranches of this money would be helpful for the face of science, but scientists have little say in it. If they sought funds for less fashionable but practical approaches, they would probably fail, and the money would go to a present rival. Rich men’s dolars and our taxes are directed where the rich men think they will make more money, and where governments think they can buy financial leverage. Technicians at their benches have no say in it, and that is what I think ought to be changed, among other things. Scientists should have a say, but first they have got to want it.

When I said that I wish to promote a balanced view, I meant that I wished to promote a more balanced view in our—ie. me and you—converstation about science and religion. In my book I think that I dismissively mentioned religion in about twenty words and spent one hundred thousand words discussing science in as much detail as I could. Moreover, if you had not put our emails on your web page then only you and I would have read them. It seems a little unfair of you to repeatedly express such reservation about the uses my words could be put to, when it is you that is making them public and allowing others to misuse them. Not that I believe anyone will. The religious reaction against science is based on a greater rift than my carping complaints.

Well, even in our own discussions I was surprised how readily you took to defending religion when it was not necessary, and I did not expect it. Because I see religion as almost a diametric opposite to science in its basic approaches and attitudes, it was inevitable that I would continue to feature these contrasts in my discussions with you, but I rather expected you to brush me off mainly with a cursory or conditional agreement, or disagreement perhaps, and stick to the science. But I have enjoyed what you are saying. As for putting it all on the web, it is because it seemed so useful in the context of my pages from both vantage points—science and Christianity—that I suggested putting them on line, but it is not mainly what you are saying here that I am speaking of. I have already said that the fundies will use what you say wherever it is because they will see you as an ally in their fight against science. They do not have to understand you, or fully agree with you, because these people are unscrupulous. They will just use your unqualified conclusions because they suit their argument. If there was something beneficial at the end of it then they could be refuted. That is why I say you seem to have nothing constructive to offer. But then I have not yet finished what you do have to say.

When you say “…what one of your heroes calls asymptotic realism” not only do I think that you have missed the critical point about the impossibility of objective knowledge that David Gooding was making, but it is quite amusing that you would call him one of my heroes. Ha ha. I’ll tell him that you said that when I see him next. He was my PhD supervisor and I disagreed with him on fundamental issues regarding philosophy. I’m sure that your comment will appeal to his dry sense of humour. Personally, I quite like him, but I think that calling him a hero is going a bit far. I am more a fan of Robin Hood, Christopher Marlowe, and Emma Goldman.

Good for you, but I only had your citations to go from, and Gooding appeared often. A hero is a chief character in a story, and it seems fair to me to say that Gooding is in your book, though it is not something worth disagreeing about.

“As for your distinction between alethic and epistemic knowledge, I still have not got it, perhaps because I cannot avoid thinking that ‘alethic’ pertains to truth and ‘epistemic’ pertains to knowledge and so you are talking about a distinction between true knowledge and knowable knowledge or knowing knowledge. It highlights a problem with philosophy for we unphilosophical mortals, and that it that much of it ends up, as I said before, as hapless conjecture in which words are invented or redefined to suit the arguments of the philosopher.”

There are a number of free philosophical dictionaries online. Check them out. Alethic pertains to truth (after the Greek Goddess Aletheia) but as truth that is bound [to] the being for which it is a truth—I define it the first chapter and discuss its significance in chapters five and six—and is concerned with alethic modalities (as defined in an ordinary dictionary too) of what is possible, probable, impossible, etc., and contrast this with epistemic knowledge which (again as any philosophical dictionary will tell you), since Aristotle, has been taken to refer to the knowledge of causes. I thought that I had been quite careful and explicit in defining those terms—but then again, perhaps I didn’t make them clear enough—but if you didn’t get those definitions then you won’t have got the distinction between the two and, hence, you won’t have got what it is that I’m talking about or why. Sorry, I should have made it clearer. But I think that I can see why you are missing the point about my criticisms of scientific objectivity, given that you seem to think that my argument is based on a distinction between true knowledge and knowable knowledge (I really don’t know what knowing knowledge or unknowable knowledge could be). My argument is not based on such nonsense and you have misunderstood it.

I missed out known knowledge, but your not knowing what it could be is the point. It sounds like nonsense. “Epistemic” sounds redundant, and, though I realise it is not, I did not know what to make of it, until you just explained it referred to causes. You sound indignant that I did not, but my first resource when I thought it necessary to check what I understood of these things was your own book. You do indeed have an explanatory section in which a selection of words in Greek and a few in other languages are raised, but I could not find these among them because they are not there. Contrary to what you say, “alethic” does not appear until page 140 where it is used in the expression “alethic modalities”, while “epistemic” does appear on page 42 but simply used in the Bhaskar quotation “an epistemic fallacy”. “Epistemic knowledge” is used on page 72 again in connexion with Bhaskar but its use is assumed not explained. You do mention “aletheia” as meaning “truth” specifically as a mode of disclosure for Heidegger on page 24, distinguishing it from truth as “correctness” for which “veritas” was apparently the preferred word. None of this matters in a book meant for people who already know what all these foreign words used as technical jargon actually mean, namely your fellow philosophers, but in a book meant also for general readers, including me, it matters.

“Quite how that differs in principle from what you are criticizing about science, namely forcing it into a square shaped box then declaring it to be square, I cannot see.”

I really do not know what you are suggesting that I am doing. But, for the reasons given above, I think that you have misunderstood my argument.

Maybe, but argument in philosophy often seems to be to define the meaning of words in such a way that the subject appears to be square, then saying it is (QED).

“You tell me to examine the metaphysical basis of science, but what is the metaphysical basis of philosophy?”

It depends on the philosophy in question.

But if metaphysics determines what is necessary for something to be so, then I can have no confidence in any philosophy unless what is necessary for it actually obtains. How do I know it does?

“Without any arguments, however, I shall continue to believe that even though human devices are not natural, they must be based on natural principles, for no one has shown me any way that unnatural principles can be of consistent value over a broad spectrum of interwoven phenomena, including natural ones such as the principles of animal motion.”

Firstly, given that you have misunderstood key terminology and a basic distinction upon which my argument is based (of which I thought chapters two and three at least constituted an argument—although, it remains questionable whether it is a good one), then you have not understood my account (as presented in chapters three and four) about how modern physics was founded on dissolving the distinction between mechanics and natural philosophy. Secondly, my book is about experimental physics, and not about animal physiology. I did not say that animal motions did not have natural principles, nor did I say that natural principles could not be discovered. My criticisms were specifically directed to the question of whether experimental physics was a natural and empricial science as empiricists and positivists have assumed. I was specifically questioning whether natural principles could be discovered by modern experimental physics. Having said that, I did acknowledge that it is possible that my argument could be extended to other experimental sciences, such as chemistry, biochemistry, and genetics, but I explicitly stated that this required further argument.

OK, I’ll leave this until we come to discussing your book explicitly. So far I am mainly confining myself to the points you raise here.

“…you have persuaded yourself of something that is unremittingly critical of science, and, even if there is something in what you say, nothing emerges from it that could improve what people are currently doing. The reason is, I suspect, that you are just looking at it from a different perspective, and so are doing no more than changing from orthogonal co-ordinates to polar ones.”

Again, I think that you have misunderstood my argument. I think that you need to read it a little more carefully before dismissing it so out of hand. The understanding of Nature and natural principles is constrained and transformed when we understand both in technological terms. Thus physics is itself a product of particular modes of human interaction with things and each other and thus we cannot separate the being (namely the scientifically persuaded human being) for which such knowledge is intelligible from the way that such knowledge is produced, without making that knowledge completely unintelligible as knowledge. In my book I discuss the distinction between alethic knowledge and epistemic knowledge and argue that science produces knowledge of the former kind and not the later. This is important because it shows such knowledge to be bound up with how it is produced and thus shows how experimental physics is itself bound up with technology and the experimental creation of modern technological society. Thus, once we realise the alethic character of such knowledge then we can see how physics is only a way of understanding that is dependent on the presumption that it is good for us to understand the world in this way. Again this shows how physics is implicated in the postulation of the goodness of the technological society and, given that this society is in a perpetual state of innovation, that alethic knowledge is perpetually innovated and its truth-status is perpetually deferred to some future state of completion and perfection. The technological society is directed towards creating paradise on earth, so to speak, and equates truth with technological power. In my book, I argue that this equation requires a metaphysical foundation (mechanical realism) that cannot be itself tested on the basis of experience because it transforms experience in such a way that only refinements of the technological framework can be tested but the framework itself remains unavailable for scientific scrutiny. Thus arguments about the truth of science are, in fact, arguments about the naturalness of technology and the value of the technological society. Which is why I argue that science needs to be placed under the critical gaze of philosophy.

I am not dismissing it out of hand. I am trying to understand not just what you are saying about physics but what it implies for science as a whole. You conclude that science needs to be scrutinized by philosophers, and there can be nothing wrong with that in any tolerant liberal society, bearing in mind that we ought to know ourselves before we can know others. Regrettably, even though our society is more tolerant than most known in history, it has huge hosts of intolerant and illiberal people who think they know other people better than they know themselves. Moreover, “we cannot separate the being for which knowledge is intelligible from the way that knowledge is produced, without making that knowledge completely unintelligible as knowledge”, seems to be perfectly general, and so is a criticism of all knowledge. The same with anything that is “a way of understanding that is dependent on the presumption that it is good for us to understand the world in this way”. And again until we have absolute knowledge ourselves and become gods, what we have is “perpetually innovated and its truth-status is perpetually deferred to some future state of completion and perfection”. So, while you have a point about the mechanical nature of experimental physics, much of your criticism is general. It is a critique of getting knowledge at all. If these are characteristics of alethic knowledge then human knowledge is necessarily alethic, in your sense of it. The scientists hope their alethic knowledge will converge on to epistemic knowledge, even if it is only at the asymptote, and, since physical theories perfected from studies of machines often explain perfectly well the working of Nature, it is subject to testing in that some fracture between the mechanical device-based theories and Nature will become apparent.

Your definition of “the scientific method” as “trial and error” is not good enough because it covers all practical activity (most of which we would not consider to be scientific) and is not really a method (except in a loose and vague sense). It seems that cooking, fly fishing, seduction, warfare, carpetry, chicken plucking, etc, etc, have always been based on the scientific method. On such an account, “the scientifc method” would be nothing more than a history of techniques and their resultants, which was something that you did not seem all that happy with the sociology of science because it represented the scientific method as being exactly this.

Quite so. That is the point. Scientific method is a systemization of common sense and general practice. It is the realization of how we do things and the refinement of it into a method. All of the things you cite have been examined in the unrefined way based on trial and error, and the best solutions written down to become manuals of cookery, fly fishing, seduction, and so on. The manuals are catalogues of results yielded by unsystematized common sense applied to these various crafts. The appreciation that problems in these fields can be approached systematically to yield results more quickly than random guesses and trials leads to the scientific method. Though you are pooh-poohing it here, this seems to me to be what you have been saying. The history of the scientific method would involve what you say about the techniques, because when it is used in different situations different techniques are used to get the result. What I said was that the techniques are not the method, or different methods, and that is because the method is, in each case, whatever technique is used, sytematically trying solutions and systematically recording what the outcome is until some guess (hypothesis) is verified. That is trial and error.

However, I can see why the last sixty years of the philosophy of science has passed you by. The concerns about the scientific method, since Popper’s conception of it in terms of his famous hypothesis-test-falsification method was in the details about how this worked as a logical method—with all the problems about ancillary assumptions required for the formulation of the hypothesis and tests, whether falsification is really a principle in science, and where hypotheses come from in the first instances. There have been all sorts of alternative methods, ranging the Baysean statistics to Peirce’s abductive method, and, case after case, there have always been important exceptions. The whole purpose of this endeavour was to see whether science could be demarked as a special rational activity—or whether it was the same as any practical activity.

Regarding my being asleep for the whole of my life, I read nothing in what you wrote in support of this idea that refutes what Popper proposed. None of the examinations of details, assumptions or alternatives have shown that the hypothetico-deductive method is itself false. Whether abductive reasoning is used in forming hypotheses, or Baysean statistics ought to be used in refining them, or exceptions are found, the central activity in science remains the same. The things that make it special are that it is methodical hypothesising, and that there is a large body of hypotheses—science—that already form the ground for new solutions.

In my view, modern physics is practically useful, but it aspires to being much, much more than this. It aims at achieving objective knowledge about Nature—epistemic knowledge—rather than merely providing pragmatic and instrumental technical knowledge—alethic knowledge—in order to provide a techne of Nature. My argument in the book is that, once we realise the mechanical realist metaphysical foundation of experimental physics, then we can see how it has blurred the distinction between these two types of knowledge in such a way as to represent alethic knowledge as being epistemic knowledge. Thus the practical value of such knowledge is taken to indicate its objectivity. It is this equation that I criticise because I argue that whether physics achieves knowledge about Nature is very much open to question, even if we accept its practical value. But, if the scientific method is simply trial and error then physics is as successful as any other practical pursuit (including pottery, cheese making, masonry, etc.) However most physicists are scientific realists and would disagree with your characterisation of the scientific method as being simply trial and error. It is important, but is not the end of the story. Personally, I agree with you, but I don’t think that you can base scientific realism on this kind of pragmatism without assuming mechanical realism.

Despite your disparaging manner, we agree on more than you will admit, the differences being that I am more positive about the ultimate value of science in discovering truth than you are, because you have a jaundiced attitude about it. I have accepted what you have said about the mechanistic nature of physics, and think is is a useful caution, to me if no one else, but do not share your pessimism about its significance for science. It might be that there is no distinction to blur between the two forms of knowledge you describe. If your distinction between alethic and epistemic knowledge is the basis of your case, any critic will want to be sure that the distinction is a real one and not merely a contrived one, or, if the distinction is real, why alethic knowledge cannot also be, or by dint of hard work evolve into, epistemic knowledge. When we study a machine for splitting white light into its component colours, perhaps our knowledge is alethic, but when we find that alethic knowledge also explains the angles subtended at the observer by rainbows, surely that suggests it is nevertheless a knowledge of causes since it would be a strange coincidence if our pottering with prisms turns out to offer causal correspondences with Nature that no one could have anticipated. If imposing the mechanics of the prism on to Nature is the fault that mechanical realism inevitably brings but yet it still explains the position of rainbows in the skies, then how is it faulty? That is what I mean when I say it works. It has explanatory value beyond the machine, implying that Nature can be represented as machines to explain aspects of it.

“Scientists generally seem aware that they are model building, and you perhaps achieve your objective in forcibly reminding them that their models are mechanical, but having said it, the models have explanatory value, and seem to transfer seamlessly into the natural world.”

My whole book is about HOW mechanical models have explanatory value and allow the ariticifial apparatus in the laboratory to seemlessly represent processes in the natural world. It is an explanation of how scientic realism about machines is conceptually possible.

It is conceptually possible and can represent processes in the natural world but is still untrue because it is not epistemic enough. I would begin to worry that I have indeed made a false distinction between humanly determined knowledge and actual knowledge. A more useful direction for your talents, rather than tossing philosophical nourishment to the money grubbing hacks who mud-wrestle for mogul-gelt, would be to try to solve the problem you pose of how alethic kbowledge can, if it can, equate with epistemic knowledge. Or to cut out your jargon, which I am no doubt misunderstanding, to show what science must do to have a chance of getting at knowledge of reality since it is not doing it at present.

“If we have criteria that allow us to pick machines that work, and can then show that machines merge seamlessly with natural motions, then there are still criteria of truth.”

The point of my book is to examine HOW machines are shown to be based on natural motions.

“I am in the fifth chapter of your book. I appreciate what you said at the outset about pissing off academics certain about their assumptions, that perhaps we are no different from a potter shaping his clay or a painter daubing a surface until an approximation to something in life appears, to be declared what it seems to be. Like the image—if we step back, we can see it—I can see what you mean about the machines. To think it might be true is humbling, but I doubt that many will be convinced.”

Agreed.

“It is more satisfying to think you are uncovering fundamental laws than that you are merely daubing the metaphorical surface with illusions of reality.”

Agreed.

“The immediate counter I would persist with is the seamless shading of manufactured devices with purely natural ones. You can see that Nature has untapped energy in it when the wind blows a branch from one of my trees on to the garage roof and damages it, as it recently did. The tree and the roof are damaged by the force of the wind. So far I am only describing the phenomenon, but though I can use the force of and the energy in the wind with a device such as a windmill, do you say I am still not demonstrating anything about Nature, but am simply making an image of it?”

When you use terms such as “energy” and “force” to describe the phenomenon, and then understand those terms by using an analogy with a windmill, then you are representing Nature in technological terms—as if it were something technological—and the meaning of the terms “energy” and “force” become associated by increasingly abstract, technical representations that are quite distinct from your phenomenological experience of the wind tearing the branch of the tree and hurling it on to your roof. It is not that you are simply making an image of Nature but you are transforming and shaping representations of Nature in such a way as to understand them in technological terms.

I made a point of describing the force of the wind in terms of the damage it did and not in any mechanical way before I introduced the windmill. Seeing what force the wind can produce and the damage its energy can do suggests the windmill, not the other way around. I agree that once the windmill is constructed, it can tell us more about the force and energy of the wind, but the notions of force and energy, whatever you care to call them, were already there before the mechanics allowed them to be refined. I am also ready to agree that thinking of Nature purely as an elaborate machine, perhaps ought to be resisted, especially since it was originally meant to pander to the Christians and their Creator God, but at the same time you need to say how we could think of it instead such as to yield sound knowledge.

“If I am using one or more of the six simple machines then I am still showing that natural things use them also, surely.”

Everything depends on how you show it.

“You illustrate the point I just made immediately by extending the meaning of “scientific method’ to cover the whole of the social organization of science because it suits your argument.”

No, I do it in this way because part of the definition of what a method is requires paying attention to how it is done in practice. Rather than how it is done in the abstract.

What to do, quite possibly, but how to do it, quite rarely. How to do it is likely to be much more determined by the scientist than society. But I doubt that we can traverse this impasse because you need it to be so.

“No doubt we shall have to disagree about what the scientific method is, though it would only be because you must have your wider definition of it, for you admit in your book that science is a trial and error method, just as I explained it,”

I agree with you that science is based on trial and error—I diasgree with you that this is really a method at all. I go into considerable detail about the methodology of experimental physics in chapters four and five.

“…even though you say it is a trial and error way of constructing new machines, and not determining anything about Nature. Of course, if Nature can be constructed from six machine elements, then it is just an alternative way of analysing the same thing.”

I did not say that it did not determine anything about Nature. I said that it did not necessarily determine anything about Nature. My point was to draw attention to how Nature is represented and which parts of the world are taken to disclose the elements of Nature through experimental physics. By doing this I argued that the Nature explored [by] experimental physics is essentially technological because it is circumscribed by the machines used to explore it.

It sounds as if it has more constructive possibilities than giving the impression that science is a sinister conspiracy of malicious goons.

“I am glad to see you putting in the qualifying adjectives before “scientists’, even if grudgingly. Once it is done, I agree with what you say, and have said earlier that I would like to see some union or community of scientists willing to stand up for scientific ethics and have a proselytizing spirit. I have a feeling there might have been attempts to do this but so far they have not impacted on me. And, inasmuch as philosophers are a type of scientist, so long as they are interested in seeking answers to real questions and not theological ones, they ought to be members of it too.”

Providing the real questions are practical questions, eh? Personally, I’m with Groucho Marx. I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member. And I certainly would not join any "thought police" institution—the Ministry of Truth and Knowledge—that defined in advance what was a legitimate question. No thanks.

Just as you wish, though it seems a little extreme to reject a hypothetical institution as being one of thought policemen before it has even been constituted. If excluding theologians makes it into the thought police for you, then that is fine too, but nothing in the suggestion stops theologians wasting their own time. It simply stops them wasting other people’s.

“It is not a criterion of religious belief that it must be empirical. Of science it is. Plainly then, when medicine, whatever guise it has or name it adopts, uses experience of traction, pressures, stones and herbs to cure symptoms then it is being scientific. I am not the one who decides what religious principles are or even what scientific principles are. All I can do is observe them. Having done so, I can distinguish between them. Since these things are observable, they are falsifiable and are not circular or dogmatic. Dogmatic is a word properly applied to Christianity, from which it has its modern meaning of unarguable. For a man who is often keen on citing the derivation of the meaning of words as part of your arguments, you seem strangely blind over words like these.”

On the basis of your definition of the scientific method, as trial and error, faith healing can be scientific, if it works, raike can be scientific, if it works, and chinese medicine can be scientific if it works. At base, your distinction between “scientific” and “unscientific” as actually a distinction between “practical” and “useless”. Now I understand what you mean by the scientific method, this is clear, but, for me and many physicists, none of these practices can be scientific because the explanation of why they work are not scientific explanations because they cannot be reproduced as models of machine performances. They are outside mechanistic science. I was going with this mechanistic definition of scienfic—it allows something to be unscientific and also to work. An example is homeopathy. Having read some papers written by vets, published in respected journals, which reported on the use of homoepathic remedies to cure farm animals, under quite fair testing conditions in which half the herd were given the remedy and the other half tap water as a control, which discredits the idea that they are just placebos, it seemed to me that homeopathy can work. Yet there is no scientific explanation for it. It is impossible according to mechanistic science (there have been some efforts to explain it in terms of “chemical memory” on the basis of quantum mechanics—but there are very unsatisfactory and quite untestable). On my account homeopathy could be practical and unscientific. It is useful but we cannot explain why in mechanistic terms, at least not yet.

Well, again I agree with you in being skeptical about the disdainful rejection of these treatments merely because there is no mechanistic explanation of them, if you are right that they do work. Testing whether some supposed treatment works or not is not intrinsically difficult, even though it might require some sophisticated organisation to avoid bias, and so on. It does not need any explanation, just suitable criteria and methods of analysis. That a treatment is found to work is the reason why further work should be done—to find the reason why! They are, though, all in biological treatments that you say you have not yet thought through. Your criticism seems limited to physics where it might be justified, but here we are out of the realm of physics where mechanistic explanations might not be expected to be as appropriate, even if you are right about what you have claimed so far in the field of physics. It shows, if you are right about physics, you might still be wrong to tar the whole of science with the same brush.

And by the way, I am not blind to the etymology of the word “dogmatic”—I am aware of its Catholic origins—but I am happy to use it in the modern sense, I do not see why I should limit my meaning to those decided by the Catholic Church, and, I knew the connotation would wind you up a bit. After all, you use the word “thing” without limiting its meaning to being a large rock upon which the members of a nordic community would meet to discuss problems, disputes, and matters of law. You also use the word propaganda in the modern sense, rather than meaning the correct teaching of the Catholic Church. Language moves on—that is the nature of a living language.

I agree wholeheartedly, but I pointed out that you are keen to go back to original meanings of words with quite different modern meaning when it suits you. I generally prefer to use modern meanings because more people know what they are. Philosophers like to say that the meanings of words in translation or over time lose their nuances, or whatever, which they plainly do and gain new ones, and so have to be revived in their old form, whence aletheia and veritas, both meaning truth to anyone who knows them at all, but having different meanings for a philosopher. In using the word thing, I am not aiming to offend some Viking Berserker that I am in discussion with—since I think I am fairly sane, I would be careful not to—but, in a discussion about Christianity and science, to use the word dogmatic of science is careless or petty. You admit to pettiness.

Incidently, I have read The Art of Scientific Investigation by W I B Beveridge, 1951. It found it in the library at Lancaster University after I had finished my thesis. Yes, I enjoyed it very much and found much that I agreed with. Of couse, it is more evident that medicine is an art than physics, which is supposed to be the exemplar of an exact science, but, I think that physics is much more of an art than people widely realise.

We agree on this too, then. Curiously, the method of science at the personal level is itself still largely a craft. science is the body of knowledge that practising the craft yields. Sometimes it can be used for ill, but practising the craft is generally innocent, and the practitioner rarely owns what his craft produces.

“If the metaphysical basis of science is faulty, how should it be corrected, and what effect can you foresee if it is? How do I know the critique is not itself based on faulty premises? You have succeeded in alerting me, if no others, about the history and practice of science in that it is conceived of in mechanistic ways, but perhaps that is because, pace the Christians, Nature is mechanistic, or describable in terms of machines, and not merely because we are imposing mechanisms on to it.”

My point about metaphysical foundations is that we can not know on the basis of experience whether they are faulty or not. The question is how does our metaphysical preconception about the nature of Nature, or about which aspects of Nature are relevant for knowledge, is a crucial important for how we go about investigating and representing Nature. My point was not that physics is faulty, but that it is bound up with a technological society and a technological understanding of Nature. This is important for how we understand the role of physics within society and the importance of physics for society.

In your further expansions of the linkage of physics to the technological society, you imply we are mistaken to do it, and so it is a metaphysical preconception that we should not entertain. What then should replace it? What preconception can we adopt instead of the technological one? Or is physics only possible with this assumption behind it? If we wanted to construct a science with no technological preconceptions, where can we start, and what would we do? If we were to find it is not possible, would that confirm that Nature is mechanical?

“What would be useful would be to discuss how science presented properly and consistently could be used to help bring about beneficial changes in social organisation. But since science seems to have no redeeming features to you, presumably it could have nothing beneficial to offer.”

Again, this is just rhetoric based on a misunderstanding of my position. For me, the question depends on what you mean by beneficial. This involves a statement of human goods and purpose, and how science relates to that, which is exactly the sort of debate that I have been calling for.

All right, we agree on this, but it is a debate that has been going on for some time, certainly among many Pagans for whom Nature is the Goddess, but also among the general public including some liberal Christians, many scientists and, I do not doubt, many philosophers, the ones who are concerned with the real world and not abstractions. You recognize that science cannot be deinvented, so the debate is about what we need to do in society to direct it towards pure good rather than partial evil.

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