{"id":430,"date":"2016-01-29T23:30:21","date_gmt":"2016-01-30T04:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aristotle2digital.blogwyrm.com\/?p=430"},"modified":"2016-01-27T21:54:41","modified_gmt":"2016-01-28T02:54:41","slug":"the-faith-premises-of-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aristotle2digital.blogwyrm.com\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"The Faith Premises of Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the curious traits of modern life is the fact that our ever-increasing advancements in technology, brought on by our application of reason, walk hand-in-hand with our ever-increasing disillusionment with faith. \u00a0To understand why this situation should be considered curious, we must first look at what the mainstream attitude is to these trends.<\/p>\n

Common knowledge asserts that there is nothing curious about this at all, that such a progression is as it should be, and that only the most unscientific of us continue to cling to faith.\u00a0 Those of our fellow beings who consider themselves intellectually sophisticated generally liken the poor souls \u2018who still believe\u2019 to our \u2018modern\u2019 conception of \u2018primitive\u2019 man \u2013 a being possessing a feeble mind that is inclined to believe that the world is administered by sylphs, dryads, titans, and gods.<\/p>\n

A classic example of this dismissive thinking about how faith is antithetical to reason is the movie Contact<\/em>. A strawman argument from beginning to end, this \u2018measured\u2019 exploration of why faith and reason are at odds is about as intellectually complex as a 30-second commercial for beer.\u00a0 A thin patina of meaty-sounding, semi-respectable platitudes are trotted out as a way of disguising the vapid content of the arguments.\u00a0 And to top it off, there isn\u2019t even any good eye-candy in the movie.<\/p>\n

So clearly, I think that faith and reason, rather than being at odds, are complementary aspects of human discovery.\u00a0 But how can I possibly hold such a position without being branded as a poor, intellectually bankrupt soul who clings to outmoded ideas through sheer desperation?\u00a0 By using the tools of reason to examine reason \u2013 that\u2019s how.<\/p>\n

There are two, closely-related ways of seeing this point-of-view.\u00a0 The simplest is also, paradoxically, the most controversial and emotionally charged.\u00a0 But since it is straightforward, it is the best place to start. In a nutshell, science is a fundamentally faith-based enterprise that is predicated on two articles that science itself cannot observe, measure, or classify.\u00a0 The first article of faith is that the world is understandable.\u00a0 This is the implicit assumption that went unsaid in the pseudo-intellectual’s critique of primitive man \u2013 that the world is not populated by magical creatures that affect changes on a whim.\u00a0 The second scientific article of faith is even more remarkable.\u00a0 It says that the experiment that one does in the here-and-now is applicable to the there-and-then.\u00a0 In a world largely driven by change, it is something of a philosophical leap to say that the change is changeless.\u00a0 True that the seasons progress but always in the same way.\u00a0 Summer follows spring; never the other way round.\u00a0 The sun rises and sets, but always in the same fashion and within changeless variations associated with season and latitude.\u00a0 Were this not true, science would lack all it predictive power.<\/p>\n

If you aren\u2019t happy with this simpler argument that then note that the scientific enterprise is based mostly on inductive logic.\u00a0 The experimenter conceives and performs an experiment.\u00a0 Data of a limited sort is gathered and subsequently analyzed.\u00a0 The results are generalized to abstract from this particular experiment to all similar situations or even (if one is of the caliber of Newton) to the universal.\u00a0 The generalization works from a preponderance of observations to make a probabilistic syllogism:<\/p>\n

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