Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism

Have these guys read Bacon, or only the selected quotations which suit
their purpose? Bacon looked for the essence of heat and detailed three
tables of heat present, heat absent and differences in heat. Examples of
heat present included fresh excrement and sunlight. Can't get much from
him at the original writing, for he wrote as a bureaucrat functions. He
is less relevant today.

I think the basis of the empirical approach came from a recognition of
the divine order in creation, a deity which was not whimsical and
arbitrary. I note that the Greeks did a pretty good job on astronomy,
which involved perfect motion, and a poor job on the four elements of the
sublunary sphere. The alchemists, including Newton, pursued this approach
with repeated actions on the principle that eventually something new
would come out. But science works on the principle that the same cause
always produces the same effect.
Dave (ASA)

On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 11:51:38 -0400 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
Ted said: I also believe it is much more accurate; the term MN itself
probably arose with Christian philosophical reflection on the limits of
science and the reality of a "supernatural" God, and our definition
reflects
this.

But what Hunter seems to be saying is that what we now call MN is rooted
in the epistemology and method of Bacon and Locke. For the Enlightenment
empiricists, empirical study of the world is an effort to obtain unified
knowledge about reality-as-it-is. If reality-as-it-is includes the
empirically observable hand-of-God, then that observation properly falls
under the umbrella of "science," or, to use an eighteenth century term,
"natural philosophy." The gist of Hunter's argument -- at least what the
book review seems to reflect -- is that "science" should return to this
broader notion of "natural philosophy." The current restrictions of MN
would reflect an improper, a priori skeptical elision of God from nature,
as well as an improper turn away from "empirical," observational,
inductive Baconian science towards more speculative deductive methods ala
Popper.

But my first question about this is how to return to Bacon and Locke
after Darwin, Einstein, and Heisenberg -- in other words, do Bacon and
Locke work after Newton's mechanism has been dethroned? And my second
question is how to return to Bacon and Locke after the collapse -- or at
least undermining -- of foundationalist empistemology's naive view of
culture, history and language.

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Received on Mon Jul 16 18:26:42 2007