The "Stage Theory of Theories" - Cause for Concern?

[axocanth]

Why this tenacious fastening onto "following"? It is possible to use a method poorly. To make poor models which presume facts not in evidence and paper over gaps in understanding with baseless metaphysical conjecture. Just as a composer can write a symphony that sounds like a bunch of cats caught in a windchime because she didn't follow fundamental principles of pitch, voicing, rhythm and harmony too well. Most method is really a collection of guidelines, not rules.

Points given for that Bob Dylan snippet (get born get warm short pants romance), however.

An argument could be made -- and has been made (Quine, Kuhn, etc.) -- that while there is no definite scientific Method, there are, however, certain values shared by all (good) scientists, or that they all cherish the same virtues in a good theory. These virtues (e.g. empirical adequacy, fruitfulness, simplicity, etc.), though, are given different weightings by different scientists, thus the common result that different scientists examining precisely the same data or evidence come to wildly divergent conclusions.

It all sounds perfectly sensible to me. But it's far from obvious that the possession of shared virtues or values constitutes a Method.

 

[axocanth]

Why this tenacious fastening onto "following"? It is possible to use a method poorly.

Continuing to focus for now exclusively on the discovery of scientific hypotheses/theories, the advice standardly given for formulating a hypothesis (cf. James above) cannot be followed at all. The prescription for forming a hypothesis (after the short pants and romance) is "form a hypothesis". In the absence of any instructions on how to do so, it is no advice at all.

As Stuart Firestein says (quoted earlier), it's like handing a paintbrush to to an art student and telling him "Paint!" It's like telling a depressed person to "cheer up".

And you know why you're not a millionaire or a real estate tycoon yet, Mr Vat? You didn't follow my advice to buy low and sell high.


Now, the aforementioned inductivists did try to codify all this, adding some substance to vacuity like "form a hypothesis". Their attempts -- as Einstein testifies -- are now widely regarded as being misguided.

 

[axocanth]

P.S. Two things to note on the failings of inductivism, the view that scientific theories can be derived methodically from data/evidence . . .

1. Ask anyone around here and you'll no doubt be told that testing is an integral part of The Scientific Method. Now if, as the inductivists claim, a theory is somehow already there in the data, just waiting to be discovered as it were, and can be methodically derived from that data, insofar as the data entails the theory, testing is redundant.

2. You cannot get from a body of observable data or evidence to unobservable entities through a process of induction. Induction can take you from "All ravens observed so far are black" to "All ravens are black" (Note: nothing new has entered our ontology). It cannot, however, take you from observable patterns on a screen, say, to quarks. Inductivism, then, as an account of The Scientific Method, is at a loss to account for the myriad unobservables postulated in scientific theories. As Einstein wisely notes, they have to be "freely invented".

 

[axocanth]

To all (both) readers . . .

On a site such as this one, ostensibly devoted mainly to science, and presumably with many members actively involved in science themselves, a great many of the discussions are actually more philosophical than scientific in nature, perhaps without (some of) the participants even being aware of it. All the threads criticizing Intelligent Design for being supposedly unscientific or pseudoscientific, for example, are addressing one of the core questions in the philosophy of science: the so-called demarcation problem.

Likewise, when someone like myself suggests there is no such thing as The Scientific Method, the general reaction is one of incredulity: "What kind of madman would say such a thing?!!"

In response, I'd suggest that this sense of incredulity arises only in people whose reading on science is limited to textbooks written by scientists for budding scientists and other interested readers. Typically, in introductory textbooks, The Scientific Method is simply stated, questioned neither by the writer himself nor his readers, no hint of controversy ever suggested. By contrast, no one whose reading extends to the fields of philosophy, history, and sociology of science is likely to raise an eyebrow at the suggestion that there is no such thing. It might be contested, but it won't be regarded as loony tunes lol.



Just for general interest, I'm going to quote briefly from chapter six of Keith Parson's 2014 "It Started With Copernicus". Pages 247-8 first . . .

Science textbooks frequently begin with a statement (often over-simplified or misleading) of the author's understanding of the scientific method. This seems right since everybody knows that what makes science special is that scientists follow something called "the scientific method," right? Actually, whether there is such a thing as THE scientific method is highly questionable. Science clearly has methods. Different sciences employ different procedures, techniques, and practices, often with little apparent overlap. Astrophysicists and archaeology, for instance, are done in very different ways. Astrophysicists check their theories by the analysis of the tenuous traces of electromagnetic radiation collected from distant quasars, supernovae, pulsars, and so forth. Archaeologists meticulously recover and reconstruct artifacts from which they read the records of ancient lives. Each science does things its own way, and the methods used in one would often be impossible to apply in another.

However, does this apparent diversity of techniques and practices really rest on a deeper methodological unity? Are these various methods just different ways of realizing the same epistemological goals and logical processes? Can we offer a generalized description of scientific method that is broad enough to apply to all of the natural sciences yet not so vague as to be uninformative? Can we, in fact, develop demarcation criteria that permit us to distinguish genuinely scientific enterprises from those that, though they might present themselves as scientific, fail to meet the standard? That is, can we make a clear distinction between science and pseudoscience?

Debates over such questions is practically as old as science is. It would be impossible in this chapter to summarize the history of debates about scientific method. Whole books can and have been devoted to that . . .

Parsons then goes on to examine various candidates for The Scientific Method, turning his attention on page 272 to the hypothetico-deductive (H-D) method. This is particularly relevant to recent discussions here since James has been arguing not only that hypothetico-deductivism just is The Scientific Method (e.g. post #255), but also that it is a method for both discovering = formulating = constructing = framing theories and testing = confirming = justifying theories.

Note also Parsons' worrying use of the past tense!

A survey of modern confirmation theory is impossible in a short space. Here I can present only what for a long time was the received or canonical account, the hypothetico-deductive (HD) theory of confirmation. (p272)

[ . . . ]

Clearly, the HD method is much more sophisticated than anything explicitly developed by Bacon. Further, the role that induction plays in the HD method is different from its role for either Aristotle or Bacon. Proponents of the HD method do not regard induction as encompassing a sort of intuitive intellectual vision as Aristotle did. Neither, unlike Bacon, did they hold that induction is useful both for framing and testing hypotheses. For HD theorists, there is no "logic of discovery"; the formulation of theories is a mysterious process involving imagination and creativity, and perhaps even hunches or flights of fancy. In HD theory, induction is used strictly in the confirmation of theories. (pp276-7)

 

[TheVat]

Note further, if what our members here (and elsewhere) tell us about ID having been debunked (= falsified) is true -- indeed debunked by good science itself -- and if the criterion for scientific status is falsifiability, then the obvious conclusion to draw is that ID is scientific but false: It has been falsified in the same way that phlogiston theory, and a hundred others, were. It's business as usual in the scientific factory. Whether its unobservable posits are supernatural or not, science is perfectly capable of making an appraisal thereof, and indeed concluding that the theory is false.

If it were the case, as we are often told, that science simply cannot deal with any claims that make appeal to the supernatural, then the correct response from the scientific community to ID is complete silence. Clearly, the last thing they have been is silent.

Mayhap we are confusing popular press takes on the debate and the response of most scientists (which is indeed mostly silence). ID is not falsified, and that is its whole Popperian problem - it lacks those scientific values you were mentioning, including empirical adequacy. We don't need to reject ID because it posits any supernatural agency, we only need to point out the inherent empirical and explanatory weaknesses of "Jehovah or some other universe builder did that!" A Quinean values test makes short work of it. Even if we imperfectly define bullshit, we know it when we smell it.

Contrast with SETI. The hypothesis there is that other sentient beings might have evolved as we did, and developed technology as we did, and might have a go at beaming signals outward that would make clear an intelligent sender, e.g. ascending prime numbers etc. It's not making any claims because it's still waiting for the first Quinean bus to pull in. It's not asserting there IS such life, only that it is in principle possible so why not look around. It doesn't seek to paper over some complex mystery, any more than a family of squirrels in a tree does that takes a few minutes to quietly listen to forest sounds on the possibility there are squirrels inhabiting other trees. Perhaps coded chatter could contain exciting new nut recipes or useful predator warnings. And the SETI folk are not stupid - they know there are natural objects that can emit radio signals with regular patterns which could fool them. There are logical standards which can he applied to a signal such that we could determine an intelligent source. There are workable filters for empirical adequacy. ID, otoh, seems to have no such path to an empirical grounding as noted in the first paragraph.

 

[axocanth]

Mayhap we are confusing popular press takes on the debate and the response of most scientists (which is indeed mostly silence). ID is not falsified, and that is its whole Popperian problem - it lacks those scientific values you were mentioning, including empirical adequacy. We don't need to reject ID because it posits any supernatural agency, we only need to point out the inherent empirical and explanatory weaknesses of "Jehovah or some other universe builder did that!" A Quinean values test makes short work of it. Even if we imperfectly define bullshit, we know it when we smell it.

Is it not the case that when a theory is found to be empirically inadequate (e.g. Newtonian mechanics) -- when it doesn't fit the facts -- it is regarded as being false? It has been falsified.

If ID is likewise not empirically adequate, as you assert above, if it doesn't fit the facts, why do you not draw the same conclusion?

 

[axocanth]

Call me cynical if you will, but I get the distinct impression ID is rejected just because you don't like it.

 

[axocanth]

I've always found Richard Lewontin to be an uncommonly sensible fella . . .


"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

- Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons" (New York Review of Books)

 

[TheVat]

Is it not the case that when a theory is found to be empirically inadequate (e.g. Newtonian mechanics) -- when it doesn't fit the facts -- it is regarded as being false? It has been falsified.

If ID is likewise not empirically adequate, as you assert above, if it doesn't fit the facts, why do you not draw the same conclusion?

Perhaps the distinction lies in having facts at all. When Newtonian mechanics meets up with the precession of Mercury, there are facts which reveal its limited scope of use. There is no empirical path on which ID can either fit or not fit an observed state of affairs. Even if some vast being appeared in the sky and claimed to be the creator of everything, there is no scientific test with which we can rule out the possibility it is just an alien race using sophisticated technology to establish hegemony over the Sol system. Think of all those Europeans who would manipulate stone age tribes by letting themselves be viewed as gods. ID is nothing but a conjecture in search of a testable hypothesis. Only if an empirical Designer Test comes along will that status change.

 

[TheVat]

I've always found Richard Lewontin to be an uncommonly sensible fella . . .


"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

- Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons" (New York Review of Books)

I don't think science really is doing the struggling there, since it is open to continual revision and committed to keeping that door open. It is the supernatural conjectures that appear to be struggling, sometimes to the point of gnawing their own feet off. No one is "adhering" stubbornly to materialism...it seems rather that non material entities seem to be staying off the stage, so far as any empirical tests are concerned. I couldn't possibly assert they don't exist, only that science as an empirical quest has no applications there - the supernatural thingies lie in a different domain.

 

[axocanth]

Perhaps the distinction lies in having facts at all. When Newtonian mechanics meets up with the precession of Mercury, there are facts which reveal its limited scope of use. There is no empirical path on which ID can either fit or not fit an observed state of affairs. Even if some vast being appeared in the sky and claimed to be the creator of everything, there is no scientific test with which we can rule out the possibility it is just an alien race using sophisticated technology to establish hegemony over the Sol system. Think of all those Europeans who would manipulate stone age tribes by letting themselves be viewed as gods. ID is nothing but a conjecture in search of a testable hypothesis. Only if an empirical Designer Test comes along will that status change.

Of course there is, even from my minimal understanding of the project. If some phenomenon is observed, and its complexity cannot be plausibly explained by natural processes -- even if this has not happened yet -- then a reasonable inference is that it did not come about through natural processes at all.

I submit it's an inference that you simply refuse to entertain, as Richard Lewontin testifies above.

 

[axocanth]

I don't think science really is doing the struggling there, since it is open to continual revision and committed to keeping that door open. It is the supernatural conjectures that appear to be struggling, sometimes to the point of gnawing their own feet off. No one is "adhering" stubbornly to materialism...it seems rather that non material entities seem to be staying off the stage, so far as any empirical tests are concerned. I couldn't possibly assert they don't exist, only that science as an empirical quest has no applications there - the supernatural thingies lie in a different domain.

Yes, but you're still mixing up (IMHO) the inaccessibility to us of the unobservable posit itself with the observable consequences of the theory containing that unobservable posit.

Quarks are not directly accessible to us. Right? But if a theory containing such an unobservable inaccessible posit has observable consequences, the theory can be tested.

An intelligent designer is likewise not directly accessible to us. It may even lie in "another domain", as you put it. But insofar as that theory has observable consequences in this domain, it can be tested.

 

[axocanth]

An intelligent designer is likewise not directly accessible to us. It may even lie in "another domain", as you put it. But insofar as that theory has observable consequences in this domain, it can be tested.

And already has been tested (flagella and whatnot).

 

[TheVat]

Of course there is, even from my minimal understanding of the project. If some phenomenon is observed, and its complexity cannot be plausibly explained by natural processes -- even if this has not happened yet -- then a reasonable inference is that it did not come about through natural processes at all.

You have a certain burden here though, Axe, to show how that inference is reasonable. I can't yet explain development of the retina ergo it did not develop through natural processes. You can see how weak that sauce is, right? There being a vast multiplicity of complex processes that are handily explained by nature, where is there a complexity that would clearly signal we can stop looking to nature? This really seems to be an ad hoc borderline the ID crowd has, cough, created from whole cloth.

 

[axocanth]

You have a certain burden here though, Axe, to show how that inference is reasonable. I can't yet explain development of the retina ergo it did not develop through natural processes. You can see how weak that sauce is, right? There being a vast multiplicity of complex processes that are handily explained by nature, where is there a complexity that would clearly signal we can stop looking to nature? This really seems to be an ad hoc borderline the ID crowd has, cough, created from whole cloth.

Well, if we come across a phenomenon, perhaps in the future, whose complexity defies explanation in terms of known natural processes, we can infer either:

1. It came about through natural processes not yet known to us, or

2. It did not come about through natural processes at all


Again, the latter is something you will simply not entertain. A "Divine Foot" simply will not be admitted to this party! - as Lewontin puts it, due to your a priori metaphysical commitments.

 

[exchemist]

You have a certain burden here though, Axe, to show how that inference is reasonable. I can't yet explain development of the retina ergo it did not develop through natural processes. You can see how weak that sauce is, right? There being a vast multiplicity of complex processes that are handily explained by nature, where is there a complexity that would clearly signal we can stop looking to nature? This really seems to be an ad hoc borderline the ID crowd has, cough, created from whole cloth.

Quite. In medieval times we could not explain earthquakes, or diseases.

 

[axocanth]

Quite. In medieval times we could not explain earthquakes, or diseases.

And we still can't explain consciousness.

The dogmatic materialist simply assumes there must be a natural explanation. No other possibility will even be entertained on a priori grounds alone.

 

[TheVat]

An intelligent designer is likewise not directly accessible to us. It may even lie in "another domain", as you put it. But insofar as that theory has observable consequences in this domain, it can be tested.

This runs into the weeds of dualistic incoherence. How can anything with observable consequences (i.e. effects) in this domain we call "the physical" be in another domain which is not physical? If things which affect the physical are by definition thenselves physical, then the designer is physical and therefore subject to the empirical weaknesses I noted before, i.e. no test can establish it is not just a clever alien or a sentient galaxy or something else which arose by natural processes of a great complexity allowed by huge stretches of time. There is simply no inference of the sort that quantum tunneling and quarks and scalar fields offer, where a creator can step forward in the lineup as the abductive best explanation.

 

[axocanth]

And already has been tested (flagella and whatnot).

Just for the record, are you guys asserting that scientists have been completely silent on the flagella stuff?

Or have they scientifically appraised a consequence of ID theory and found it wanting?

 

[axocanth]

In other words, is the following true or not:

ID theorists asserted that flagella (or whatever) cannot be explained by natural selection or any other natural process. Scientists appraised the assertion and concluded it was false.