More science-dissing from two scientists and a philosopher

I was going to write a critique of the article below from Aeon; its authors are Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, Marcelo Gleiser, a professor of natural philosophy and professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, and Evan Thompson, a professor of philosophy and a scholar at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. (Click on the screenshot.)

But as I read it for the second time, and the familiar science-dissing arguments arose before my eyes, I became dispirited. Science can’t give us an objective view of reality, the authors claim, because “reality” is always filtered through our consciousness (and, by the way, good luck, Science, with explaining consciousness!). The view that we perceive an objective reality is, Frank et al. argue, “more theological than scientific.” (But theology can’t make verifiable predictions, and science can!). Science changes, too, as our experience of “how things are” changes (viz., quantum mechanics). Thus we don’t have a handle on Reality.

And as I mentally prepared my arguments, I became almost physically ill. Of course we don’t know for sure if there’s an external reality independent of our experience, but if there isn’t then our predictions are remarkably successful. And animals perceive physical things that comport with what we perceive (i.e., a mallard hen gets alarmed when she sees a Great Blue Heron near her chicks; when water freezes for us, it freezes for ducks; and so on). Doesn’t that mean that there’s something out there that we see and that other species see, all with very different consciousnesses?

If you’re going to diss science because it’s filtered through our consciousness, then every notion of the word “truth” goes out the window. How do I know you ate a cheeseburger today, even though I saw you scarf it down? After all, although what I saw looked like a cheeseburger, it was filtered through my consciousness, so the idea of a Cheeseburger Independently Existing in the Cosmos is garbage.

And then there’s this paragraph, which begins the piece:

The problem of time is one of the greatest puzzles of modern physics. The first bit of the conundrum is cosmological. To understand time, scientists talk about finding a ‘First Cause’ or ‘initial condition’ – a description of the Universe at the very beginning (or at ‘time equals zero’). But to determine a system’s initial condition, we need to know the total system. We need to make measurements of the positions and velocities of its constituent parts, such as particles, atoms, fields and so forth. This problem hits a hard wall when we deal with the origin of the Universe itself, because we have no view from the outside. We can’t step outside the box in order to look within, because the box is all there is. A First Cause is not only unknowable, but also scientifically unintelligible.

First of all, we don’t know if there is a first cause; you can plausibly argue that the Universe in one form or another has proceeded from other universes and that it’s simply universes all the way down.  Physicists tell us that the notion of a time before the present Universe began makes no sense since the beginning of time is coincident with the beginning of space-time. And if a First Cause is scientifically unintelligible, which it appears to be, then why is it a criticism of science to say that we can’t pin down a “First Cause” (which, by the way, is NOT equivalent to an “initial condition”)?

And then I realized that I have remunerative and enjoyable work to do, and why should I waste my time rehashing the same old arguments?

If you want to see how scientists and philosophers combine forces to show that Science Isn’t Everything (something with which we mostly agree), have at it yourself. But it’s one thing to say that science is different from music, and that we’ll never know why some people like Stockhausen while others despise him (actually, some day science might be able to answer that!); but it’s another thing to say that science is fundamentally theological in nature.  Yes, science can be wrong, and all we can do is to make models that conform better and better to how we perceive the universe, and that predict things we can observe. Yet one thing is for sure: it would be remarkable if Einstein’s perception of the Universe corresponded with the bending of light by the sun, but that actually there may not be light or a Sun, and it’s all some kind of Matrix.

Oh, and another thing is for sure: theology isn’t even CLOSE to science in understanding “reality”, whatever that might be, because different theologians—unlike different scientists—have huge differences in what they say reality consists of, and there’s no way to judge who is right. On the other hand, we know there isn’t an ether and that we can test whether matter bends light. When theologians find a way to tell us whether there’s a god, and whether that god is one or many (as Hindus maintain), and what the nature of that god is, and that we can test their claims, then I’ll start saying that theology is scientific in nature.

The only purpose of pieces like this, it seems to me, is to do down science. You tell me why, as I don’t know. Perhaps people are upset that science continues to advance and push woo further into the corners, and that other areas of human endeavor have had no such successes.

At any rate, I’m done for the day. I’m tired of these kinds of arguments. I’ve attacked them before and need not do so again, and I’ll move on to more interesting pursuits. I wonder why Messrs. Frank, Thompson and Gleiser are going after science rather than theology.

________

UPDATE: Over at the site Spirituality is No Excuse, writer Yakaru does a good job deconstructing the Aeon piece in a post called “Three academics launch a vague attack on science and propose a vague solution of some kind.”