Given the poor reception by philosophers of Michael Ruse’s simplistic demarcation criteria in the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education trial,² prosecutors in the 2005 Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District case, under advisement from philosopher Robert T. Pennock, focused on methodological naturalism as a key criterion for scientific practice.³ Pennock’s argument for excluding supernatural explanations from science is compelling. If, he argues, supernatural explanations were permitted within science, we would lose all solid ground for empirical testing. For example, he created a computer simulation of evolution that produced what appear to be “irreducibly complex” features that nevertheless evolved in a gradualistic fashion. This seems to refute the claims of Michael Behe that such a result is impossible without supernatural intervention.⁴ But, Pennock observed, what if a supernatural power had intervened in his computer simulation to produce those results? If Behe can argue this for biological evolution, what is to stop him from arguing this of computer simulated evolution?

This is a powerful argument, but I’m unsure of its scope. Does it disqualify all inferences to the supernatural, or just the use of the supernatural in particular explanatory contexts? Particularly, does it just point to a problem in positive arguments for the supernatural, or does it also prohibit negative inferences of the sort:

1. According to our understanding of natural laws, X is impossible.
2. X occurred.
3. Either our understanding of natural laws is incomplete, or X is due to a supernatural cause.
4. We have good reason to believe that our understanding of natural laws is sufficiently complete to confidently rule out X.
5. There is good reason to believe that X is due to a supernatural cause.

This is the kind of argument offered by Beckwith.⁵ He uses the example of Jesus’s resurrection. Adapting it to the above scheme:

1. As far as we know, the Biblical account of Jesus’s resurrection is impossible according to natural laws.
2. It did occur (according to Beckwith).
3. Either there is a naturalistic method of resurrection that was used by Jesus that we have not discovered, or his resurrection was due to a supernatural cause.
4. It seems unlikely that science will ever produce a naturalistic explanation for the resurrection.
5. There is good reason to believe that the resurrection was due to a supernatural cause.

Forrest rightly takes issue with premise (2), invoking Bart D. Ehrman’s testimony that early Christians constructing the Bible themselves argued over whether the resurrection occurred.⁶ She also attacks (4), noting that science has a long track record of producing explanations for occurrences that previously seemed unexplainable.⁷ This is my first hesitation. It seems to me that, as science is able to explain more and more phenomena, those phenomena that it is unable to explain might actually become more compelling evidence for the supernatural. Forrest uses an inductive argument to claim that, because in the past science has succeeded in producing explanations for phenomena that appeared unexplainable, in the future it will continue to do so. Why cannot I just as convincingly argue that because science has failed to produce an explanation for phenomenon X, it will continue to fail to produce an explanation for it?

Further, it seems that we can make an educated distinction between phenomena that are merely “unsolved problems” for science that will eventually be explained and those for which science will never produce an explanation. For example, it seems scientists don’t know (or at some point didn’t know) how bees gain enough lift from their wings to fly,⁸ but this isn’t taken to be evidence that bees invoke supernatural forces to get off the ground. Rather there is something about, perhaps, aerodynamics at small scales that we haven’t fully understood. However, if I were to instantaneously teleport myself across the country, we might think that science will never produce an explanation for how I did it.

More vexingly, Forrest disputes the validity of the entire argument:

But the only thing to which the believer in miracles can ulti- mately appeal—again—is the supernatural; thus, the theist who invokes miracles also invokes the supernatural being that produced the miracle. This is a factual claim for which evidence is warranted, but the supernatural nature of which makes evidence impossible to obtain.⁹

Forrest is arguing here that, even if we could convincingly argue all of the above factual premises, we could not infer the supernatural without positive evidence. Since the supernatural is de facto beyond observation, there can never be such evidence. So we can never infer the supernatural. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding the argument here, but really? Doesn’t this disqualify claims for all unobservable entities? Forrest might be correct that ID supporters are unjustified in their inference from miracles to a particular God, and Forrest’s paper does a good job of showing that, despite their official claims to the contrary, ID supporters do take their arguments as arguments for the christian God, but it seems to me that you could justifiably infer that there is some supernatural force responsible for an otherwise unexplainable phenomena.

I’d really appreciate any discussion or clarification on these issues. Thanks!

Here is one of her examples:

Suppose a scientist is examining epidemiological records in conjunction with air quality standards and the scientist notices that a particular pollutant is always conjoined with a spike in respiratory deaths. Suppose that this pollutant is cheap to control or eliminate (a new and simple technology has just been developed). Should the scientist make the empirical claim (or, if on a science advisory panel reviewing this evidence, support the claim) that this pollutant is a public health threat? Certainly, there is uncertainty in the empirical evidence here. Epidemiological records are always fraught with problems of reliability, and indeed, we have only a correlation between the pollutant and the health effect. The scientist, in being honest, should undoubtedly acknowledge these uncertainties. To pretend certainty on such evidence would be dishonest and deceptive. But the scientist can also choose whether or not the emphasize the importance of the uncertainties (81).

Douglas presents this as a slam-dunk case, and has constructed the situation, by assuming a cheap and easy fix, to be unproblematic. However, I find the implications of this argument deeply troubling.

At least since Kuhn, philosophers of science have acknowledged that all of us, including scientists, are, to some degree, trapped by our prior values and beliefs. Our observation of the world is “theory laden”: what we see is influenced by what we believe. Two observers with different beliefs may observe the same scene but come to different conclusions about what has been observed. However, Douglas is taking this commonly accepted view one step further: she is advocating that scientists make choices about how to report their results based on their values. The scientist in this situation is not forced by psychology into forming a belief about the threat of this pollutant based on her belief, but is making a conscious, unforced decision about how to report that belief to the public and policymakers. There is even a potential double-whammy here, as the scientist’s values first unconsciously affect her interpretation of the data, and then consciously affect how she reports that data.

It seems worth asking what is at stake in this example. What should the scientist do if she had no idea how difficult or expensive the problem would be to solve? Would the scientist be unable to make an empirical claim in that case? It seems unlikely. If the scientist would be able to function in this alternative situation, then why cannot, or why should not, the scientist make a report that ignores such information and allows the public and policymakers to decide how to act? What authorizes the scientist to make theses decisions on the public’s behalf?

Project SETI for the search of extraterrestrial life is to close down due to financial difficulties. Paul Davies, an astrophysicist at Arizona State University, said “it would be an utter tragedy if a unique research programme is abandoned for the cost of a few miles of motorway … Our society squanders vast sums on trivia and entertainment, yet cannot find some small change to address the burning issue of whether we are alone in the universe,” The Guardian reports.

David Bruggeman discusses whether an alleged “muzzling” of Canadian scientists in the media is an issue for the Canadian elections.

Historians and philosophers of science, for example, give us new perspective on the aims and agendas of our current science by showing how the development of the “new energy physics” was bound up with dreams of global empires; they also work out theories of evidence they hope to be action-guiding for scientists and policy-makers.

But in explicitly asking academics, or even just encouraging such work, is there not also a danger that the craft itself will become tainted with politics? Perhaps they even risk that historians and philosophers of science will be forced to accept governmental condemnation of their disciplines should they fail to demonstrate an “economic impact,” as funding programs in the UK are set to demand in the years to come.  No doubt there are other potential risks. While many of us at The Bubble Chamber believe there to be great promise in seeking a more socially relevant history and philosophy, the merits of that goal are, obviously, debatable.

Is contemporary military science fiction a neoliberal simplification of the complex reality of war?

Is science policy an issue in the Canada 2011 election?

Top 40 science questions for U.S. conservation policy makers. Well, almost.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa P. Jackson says that scientific innovation and policy should work together.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_6uBDrv73c

Scientists from the Weiztman Institute of Science storm the Tel Aviv pub scene to tell its party animals about the wonders of science.

A duet from space.

How did language evolve and how much technology design is constrained on BBC’s Science in Action.

Will the Internet collapse the ivory tower?

Philip Kitcher

Philip Kitcher has a new article calling for philosophy to expand its concern beyond the traditional core of metaphysics and epistemology. The Leiter Report has an extensive discussion of his paper, including responses from Kitcher.

Eric Schliesser responds to an essay by Robert and Virginia Shiller about the overspecialization of economics. Schliesser responds that economists don’t just need to learn more facts about the world, they need to examine the foundational assumptions of their discipline.

Will climate change affect nuclear security?

Somatosphere has audio recordings of a panel from the Society of Psychological Anthropology on “Political Subjectivity”.

Andy Stirling argues that science can give us no simple answers regarding the choice between nuclear and renewable energy.

But how does this landscape represent you — person and patient?

Lets begin with semantics. What’s the difference between patient-centered, person-centered, and personalized medicine?

Patient-centered medicine revitalizes a patient’s values, preferences, and autonomy. It brings respect for patient decisions back into the clinical equation.

Person-centered medicine treats patients as… persons. Persons can suffer, worry, and hope unlike their objectified and medicalized counterparts: diseased patients.

Personalized medicine aims to truly be that science of particulars: customizing diagnoses, treatments, and prognoses based on your unique biological (i.e. genetic) architecture. Your SNPs have so much to say.

Do any of these epistemic stances make medicine more than just personalized, but personalizable? I’m not so sure. Lets leave that up for debate.