Our hope came as we perused the day's offerings on Inside Higher Ed, a web-based news service that most days provides the backdrop to our SWNIDish morning cup of tea. Therein (in Inside Higher Ed, not in our cuppa), a certain Alan Contreras, an academic bureaucrat in Oregon, offered an opinion column advocating the importance of philosophy as the means of breaking the impasse in public and educational discussion between religion and science (note our order in those two items: we deliberately reverse the common order to dethrone science from default preeminence).
Now that's a great idea. Except that, in the reading, we discover that Contreras is not much of a philosopher. Hence, our discouragement.
Here's a line that epitomizes Contreras's problem:
Religion and science are in different families on different tracks: science deals with is vs. isn’t and religion, to the extent that it relates to daily life, deals with should vs. shouldn’t.
Good philosophy would help Contreras understand that that characterization lies at the heart of our failure to communicate on this matter. He needs a good dose of epistemology, the foundational branch of philosophy, to sort out his flawed way of describing what's up here.
Yes, science deals with what is. But the issue here is to understand that by its nature, science can deal only with aspects of what is, essentially the observable or measurable ones.
Yes, religion deals with what ought. But good religion doesn't start there. It starts with what is, in areas that are by definition inaccessible to science, namely, God stuff. It moves from what is--who God is--to what ought--who people ought to be because of who God is.
We'll allow that Contreras's weasel phrase "to the extent that it deals with daily life" qualifies his constriction of religion's arena in a way that might excuse his oversight. However, we would insist that this qualification itself is problematic, as religion is daily life for its practitioners. Contreras seems to view religion as something trotted out on special occasions and kept in storage the rest of the year, but that's another matter.
To be sure, Contreras unconsciously reveals that he had a disadvantage in coming to this understanding: he grew up in a Christian denomination that eschewed is for ought:
I was raised in Quaker meeting, where we had a saying: Be too busy following the good example of Jesus to argue about his metaphysical nature.
So pity the poor, young Quaker who speaks up in the meeting to ask, Why should I follow Jesus' example, and what exactly makes it "good," anyway? The answer he gets from Contreras: answering that question would involve discussing the metaphysical nature of Jesus, and we don't do metaphysics here, just ethics.
The sum of Contreras's problem is this: he doesn't understand epistemology (how we know), so he doesn't want to do metaphysics (describing reality) except through science, the limitations of which he doesn't understand because he lacks epistemology, and so he doesn't have a connection between metaphysics and ethics (what we ought to do), and so he confines religion, which he thinks lacks anything but ethics, to ethics alone.
What, in Contreras's lexicon, is "philosophy," then? Essentially, it is time-honored, secular wisdom that might provide some non-religious grounds for ethics apart from religious belief. Of course, some philosophy is that, but as a whole philosophy aspires to be--and at its best is--a whole lot more: a means of figuring out what is true and having a reasonable assurance that our judgments are warranted.
For good measure, we'll throw in that this is why Contreras thinks it's perfectly possible to teach philosophy to high school students, objecting to those who say philosophy is too hard for teenagers. Certainly, if philosophy is merely the Moral Musings of Great Men, high school seniors can read it and decide whether they like one view or the other, just as they decide whether they like clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch or Hot Topic. But if they have to do actual philosophy, starting with thinking about how we know and how we know that we know, it's the exceptional, precocious thinker who developmentally has raced past his peers to the level of abstract thought necessary to engage these questions. It's usually sometime after the freshman year of college that the brain's epistemology switch gets turned on. And frankly, for some students, even those who do very well academically in other areas, the switch is not connected to the power grid.
Contreras is right, however, that people who will teach public school--high school, really--need to know philosophy, and especially those who teach science. That is, they at least need a shot at understanding that science and religion are dealing with is questions, and that science cannot exclude religious ways of knowing about things that science by nature can't come to know. Like, say, God (whom we like, and we don't mind saying it).
___________
*We're sending the Bat-Signal to Batman, a.k.a. JB in CA: Commissioner Gordon, a.k.a. SWNID, needs you to weigh in on this topic, as extensively as you are willing.
9 comments:
Science is worshipped in our culture. My fear is not the culture though but how we Christians tend to subtlely buy into such. The Creation museum is just one example ("science confirms the bible").
Early higher criticism is another ("there is always a physical explanation for a perceived miracle and those people didn't have science so were easily duped"). Later higher criticsm had no trouble saying, "they made up those stories."
Furthermore, people routinely confuse science and technology because the methods to get at each are so similar. But that's another topic.
Sorry I'm not JB in CA.
Furthermore, science also deals with what should be. Choosing a scientific theory requires the weighing of sometimes conflicting values: simplicity, predictive power, preservation of previous theory, explanatory scope, etc. The methods of science are very much based on a value, the desire to understand repeating natural phenomena. It is as grave a fault to view science as purely positive as to view religion as purely normative.
-Cale
To make the final point explicit:
The reputation of science would not be nearly so high if people understood the difference between science and technology.
Science is progressing over centuries (and I use the word "progress" loosely).
Technology is progessing over weeks and months and years (cell phones, computers, etc.).
About the age/grade of a student whose "switch" is turned on...
Maybe we only see that happen after Freshman year of college because most students do not receive that kind of education until such time.
From my perspective, there are students who begin to understand and connect with such discussion and education whether they are in High School or college and there are others who will never "get it" and probably don't care to.
A child may be a natural piano player (or become a great piano player through hard work) or they may be so bad it hurts (literally). But if you don't let a child begin until they are 10 because you don't think their hands are developed enough, you won't know that they were possibly very good at age 4.
Sounds great! I completely agree! A working knowledge of basic philosophy is critical in parsing culture.
So when is CCU going to start offering a minor in philosophy! Or, for those of us in the grad program, how about a single class?
Wow! So much before the sun is high in the sky in CA!
To Cale: that's a different "ought," isn't it?
To Christian: agreed totally. There are precocious high school philosophers and aged philosophical klutzes. What dooms high school philosophical discussion is the democratic belief that there are more than a few secondary school prodigies able to do philosophy. Take it from one who, as a part-time youth minister, spent more than one youth group meeting trying to get Christian kids to engage the questions of the coherence of Christian theism.
To Micah: the answer is, from my perspective, as soon as we have the dough to hire someone competent to do the thing. But for those who decry such statements, please spare us any diatribe on how less should be spent on [fill the blank] and more on philosophy. Few are more in favor of such outcomes than I, and few more often have had to confront difficult choices related to such matters, either.
Meanwhile, Batman ... that is, JB in CA ... we need you.
It's Friday, and almost quittin' time, and if you haven't seen the inspirational clip that 9.7 million others have -- which regards the quality of education in America (most troubling in South Carolina, I think) -- please check out youtube [search "miss teen usa"].
name of the clip:
Miss Teen USA 2007 - South Carolina answers a question
Well, I just read Alan Contreras's article, and I'm not very impressed. He basically stipulates as an axiom that religion and science are incommensurable and, therefore, when properly understood, ill-equipped to evaluate one another. Oddly enough, however, he doesn't appear to realize that the question of incommensurability is one of the biggest philosophical issues at stake. To put it forward as a simple matter of fact, without argument, isn't what I would refer to as a very philosphical approach. So, yes, I would agree with SWNID that Contreras could use a dose of his own medicine.
More importantly, however, the whole idea of incommensurability is ill-conceived. True enough, it's a very comfortable position for those who prefer not to wander outside their own disciplines and learn a little something about what others are studying, but as a serious proposal, it flies in the face of the facts. One rather obvious (and infamous) example is that both religion and science have something to say about the "is" question of creation. How could that be if their subject matter never overlapped? Moreover, the same is true of the "ought" question of morality. By no means has it been confined exclusively to the realm of religion. Scientific theories of value have been around for a very long time. Perhaps the most well-known of these theories is Aristotle's functionalism (an offshoot of his biology) that equates virtue with a properly functioning organism. A more recent example is Darwin's theory that equates it with certain psychological states that promote human survival. The very existence of such theories as these--quite apart from their truth value--provides strong prima facie evidence against Contreras's view.
Nevertheless, Contreras seems to think that he can evade counterexamples of this sort with one wave of the hand by simply stipulating that religion and science do not overlap. But that is naive, to say the least. Of course he can define the terms "religion" and "science" however he chooses. They are simply words, after all. But he needs to realize that once he does so, he is no longer talking about the same disciplines that the rest of us are talking about. It would be as if I were to redefine myself as a millionaire. It might sound good on paper, and it might make me feel better about my financial situation, but I doubt very much that it would impress my creditors.
Declaration of victory by definition is a fallacy that keeps popping up in the religion and science debate with nauseating frequency (almost as nauseating as the frequency with which arguments that compare the most up-to-date scientific theories with the religious beliefs of the crazy lady down the street.) Perhaps it provides comfort to those who prefer not to wander outside their own disciplines and learn a little something about what others are studying, but as a solution to the religion and science controversy, it's a nonstarter. And we have both distinguished theologians (e.g., Karl Barth) and distinguished scientists (e.g., Stephen J. Gould) to blame for perpetuating the myth.
Anyone at all familiar with the philosophy of science knows that the so-called problem of demarcation has proved to be intractable since it was first posed at the beginning of the modern period. Every proposed line of demarcation that would distinguish science, on the one hand, from any other area of inquiry, on the other, has failed. As a result, many of those who specialize in this field have come to the conclusion that there may well be no set of necessary and sufficient conditions that would distinguish the domain and methods of inquiry associated with science from those of, say, religion. If they are right about this--and the evidence certainly seems to point in that direction--then we have another good reason to suspect that there is indeed overlap between the two. If Contreras really wants to take a philosophical approach to the religion and science controversy, he should consult the demarcation literature.
Well, it's back to the Bat Cave for me. I have to sulk. The Cubs just lost to the Astros. And I still have to finish that paper I'm supposed to be working on.
This sort of wave of the wand and hocus pocus that jb in ca points to is even more ironic than it at first seems. The illusion of separation between religion and science is a conjuration. The two are inexorably linked at this point. However, it is not the event of creation that binds them, but the act.
The continual act of creation undertaken by both scientists and theologians in which new worlds with implicit theological oderings are constructed is the real issue here. There can surely be no more informative work on the subject than Shelley's seminal Frankenstein.
Why should Philosophy mediate between these two bickering twins? What can it say that is not already apparent. The dispute is not even as big as it portends to be, it is the same argument between Colridge/Kant/Hegel and Hume/Mill/Locke. It is associationism against transcendentalism again at its greatest fury.
Why don't we teach philosophy? Alas, we already do, but that quite poorly. For it is as though two separated partents pitting their children against each other that these children must learn the genealogy of their own understanding.
But, with the flick of the wand philosophy is dumped into the boiling cauldron and emerges a bifurcated changechild name Religion-and-Science. What alchemy!
Would that the illusionary ivory towers we bow to today as though they were Babel itself would have their charms broken and be revealed to be the cloud capped towers of Prospero.
Alack, "By thepricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes."
ulntll
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