lumrant
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Jeanie vs. John on Naturalism
Jeanie and I had an interesting argument the other day. She asked me about the book I was reading (Tower of Babel, by Robert Pennock), and I told her a little about it.
The main idea of the book is to illuminate the rise of the "New Creationism" over the last 15 years or so and to debunk the arguments (both scientific and philosophical) that Creationists pose against evolution. The novel concept that Pennock throws in is a strong analogy between special creation with language (as described in the Biblical Tower of Babel episode) and special creation with Everything Else (the Universe, Adam, Eve, etc.).
Anyway, I hadn't yet gotten too far into the book, but Jeanie's question prompted me to give some stock response about how science can't allow supernatural explanations for things: if it's supernatural, it ain't science. Jeanie almost always takes more of a relativistic standpoint when she and I talk about anything philosophical, and it was no different here. She bristled at my dismissal of the possibility of supernatural causes playing a role in a science-based approach. It went back and forth, with me denying that it was a meaningful idea and her insisting that it was if you managed to strictly define what you meant by supernatural.
In the end, I stuck to my guns, but it nagged at me: what's the best way to defend the "no supernatural things in science" stance? What exactly is the difference between causes that science doesn't yet understand, on the one hand, and "supernatural" causes on the other? Is it just a matter of semantics?
Well, as fate would have it, this very issue formed a core part (and I think the best part) of the Pennock book that Jeanie had asked about. It's a book written by a philosopher of science who is a professor at UT Austin, so my friend Steven might be interested in reading it at some point. Anyway, an interesting distinction Pennock makes is that between "ontological naturalism" (or "metaphysical naturalism") and "methodological naturalism," with science pretty much favoring the latter nowadays. The difference between the two flavors is that the ontological naturalist explicitly defines the space of actors and concepts that are valid in his worldview--with things like the undead or a personal god both frequently being excluded from that space. Meanwhile, the methodological naturalist doesn't explicitly define anything out of his system, but does require that the world behave in a rule-based manner (according to some set of underlying laws) that allows for repeatable empirical results to be obtained.
This makes me breathe easier about my own stance. Though you can't prove the nonexistence of a supernatural god, there is no empirical evidence out there to suggest that such a hypothesis is necessary. Again and again, science has proven its ability to explain mysterious phenomena in terms of naturalistic causes, and until we witness miraculous events in the laboratory, I am content to side with the (methodological) naturalists.
