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

George said: *Let's cut to the chase: Is it legitimate to invoke God as an
explanatory factor in sociology? *

Anyone interested in the methods of sociology as they relate to broader
ideas about knowledge and theology needs to read John Milbank's *Theology
and Social Theory (*http://tinyurl.com/2p2w7m) and to consider the vast,
dense, and growing literature of the Radical Orthodoxy movement (
http://www.calvin.edu/~jks4/ro/). There are quite a few very serious
theologians, political scientists, and social theorists in the RO vein who
will say that it is illegitimate *not* to start with God when doing social
theory.

In my discipline, law, it could well be "legitimate" to invoke God. There's
a long tradition of natural law jurisprudence, and that tradition is rooted
in a belief that God is the ultimate author of law. But curiously, that
tradition evaporated largely because of developments in the history and
philosophy of science, particularly after Darwin, Einstein and Heisenberg,
that spilled over into arguments about epistemology.

Law was in fact considered a "scientific" discipline in the heyday of
natural law "formalism" in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries. William
Blackstone's famous "Commentaries on the Laws of England" was an effort to
demonstrate how the common law tradition derives from first princples of
natural law, cast in the vein of a scientific enterprise. American lawyer
Christopher Langdell, who was Dean of Harvard Law School in the late 1800's,
pioneered the case method of legal study, which was an effort to create a
"scientific" method of deriving universal, natural law principles from the
opinions of the common law courts. Blackstone and Langdell were very much
men of the English-Scottish Enlightenment, who thought science was an effort
to examine the entire universe God had created, including the moral law.

This "formalist" notion of law as a scientific effort to discern the natural
law came under attack in the early 20th Century by jurisprudes such as
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who had been deeply influenced by Darwin and
Spencer. Formalism eventually was overthrown and replaced by what was seen
as a more realist view of law: law was not scientifically derived from
first principles, but arose organically from social experience. As Holmes
famously put it, "The life of the law has not been logic[;] it has been
experience" and "[Law] corresponds at any given time with what is understood
to be convenient. That involves continual change, and there can be no
eternal order."

One version of this realist view of law, called legal positivism, was a sort
of nihlistic view that the law is whatever a person in power says it is.
After the two world wars, that view came to be seen as inadequate, and was
largely replaced with a more moderate realism which fit closely with the
pragmatist turn in American epistemology represented by John Dewey. The
more nihlistic view, however, arguably reasserted itself in the 1960's and
70's under the banner of "critical legal studies," which understands law as
rival assertions of power, usually involving race and class.

Today, I would say that some sort of pragmatist paradigm still governs the
landscape, but an increasing number of legal scholars have grown
dissatisfied with the merely pragmatic vs. merely nihlistic paradigm. There
is an ongoing effort in some circles to rehabilitate and update natural law
jurisprudence. Others are looking to earlier notions of the virtues as a
broader ground for law.
Two excellent recent books on these subjects are Brian Z. Tamanaha, Law as a
Means to an End: Threat to the Rule of Law (http://tinyurl.com/3xcw92) and
James Hackney, Under Cover of Science: American Legal-Economic Theory and
the Quest for Objectivity (http://tinyurl.com/2qyeb4)

All of this is to say that it does seem difficult to consider how a notion
of "methodological naturalism" can apply outside the natural sciences. In
fact, it's arguable that extending the MN concept to fields such as law and
sociology inevitably results in an impoverished understanding of human
nature and bad, or at least less good, public policy.

On 7/20/07, George Murphy <gmurphy@raex.com> wrote:
>
>
> Gregory -
>
> Let's cut to the chase: Is it legitimate to invoke God as an explanatory
factor in sociology? If a sociologist, as sociologist, explains the rise of
some popular movement (e.g.) by saying, at greater or lesser length, "God
did it," will such an explanation be considered appropriate by the community
of sociologists as a whole?
>
> Shalom
> George
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Gregory Arago
> To: George Murphy ; Vernon Jenkins ; David Opderbeck ; Ted Davis
> Cc: PvM ; asa@calvin.edu ; (Matthew) Yew Hock Tan
> Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 7:57 PM
> Subject: Re: [asa] Science's Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific
Naturalism
>
>
> George -
>
> Good. Then you are willing to acknowledge that there is more than ONE
scientific method and by that you acknowledge that MN is not the ONLY way
for doing science. This is all I ask.
>
> You say 'It works' and I say 'It is limited.' That's the difference.
Sociology and anthropology and other not-natural academic fields are thus
free to use something other than MN...AND actually still qualify as
'science,' as loose or tight as that now-fuzzy term may be. The question is
not about whether theology justifies MN or not - theology could just as
easily justify methods used in cultural studies or anthropology as it could
studies in natural sciences.
>
> Natura naturans, as used by one of its main proponents B. Spinoza,
actually supports my view that TE's, in potentially confronting 'theological
naturalism' (TN), will be expected to clarify their allegiances and
distinguish scientism from responsible science. 'Nature in the active
sense' is what intelligent design would mean if it got around to proposing
what 'designing' is. Only Ian S. in this thread got around to addressing
'information,'which is not merely 'natural' as NS's study things.
>
> Natura naturata refers to 'already created' nature (and other things),
which is well suited (via front-loading) to a deist position whereby a
continuing creation is misplaced. I see no help in your appeal to Ted's
position in that the only thing he was willing to admit a few months ago
that doesn't evolve is God. That's not very risky and certainly not full of
potential according to Lakatos, Popper or Feyerabend. Such a position (TE)
gives far too much credit to (neo-)Darwinism and leaves little room for
flexibility, curiousity and novelty about where science may still make
discoveries. We are highly likely to become post-Darwinists someday, despite
the coming protests of TE's who are too close to Darwin's agnostic
(scientific) method!
>
> "far from being an invention of the scientific revolution or the
Enlightenment, it is an old scholastic distinction." - George
>
> Then welcome to the 21st century! :-) There is little place for old
scholasticism in light of our new paradigms. Please don't foist obsolete
views on me as if they are current - they are not. Natural/Supernatural is
passe - it's time you deal with this! What is called into question in this
thread is whether scientific naturalism is a religion. By leaning on a
convenient dichotomy, nothing new is offered. MN is still just a crutch. The
definition Janice provided seems to suit your (physics/theology) approach to
a T (i.e. justifying naturalism for religious reasons).
>
> "Theological naturalism has no way to distinguish a paradigm problem from
a research problem." - C. Hunter (theist)
>
> I don't disagree with George's theology of the cross (how could a
Christian do such a thing?). What I do disagree with is the smuggling in of
physicalism and naturalism into one's definition of 'science' and then
suggesting that it is somehow a kind of 'universal' expectation for all
scientists to adhere to just because it (sometimes) works! Such a position
is over-reaching and an attempt to force natural science upon all other
spheres (in a Kuyperian sense) of knowledge in the academy which should
rather be left free to investigate phenomena as they see fit. In other
words, don't try to tie knots around anthropology, sociology, culturology,
economics and other social-humanitarian fields (i.e. as if they are merely
'natural,' end of story) just because you presume a kind of
'naturalism' that tentatively holds for your own specialized field(s) of
knowledge. Rather leave them free (by openly expressing their freedom) than
attempting to passively constrain them with methods that do not properly
fit.
>
> The idea of 'MN works - end of discussion' is a kind of intolerant bias
that damages rather than encourages interdisciplinary dialogue. After Pope
Benedict's recent statement challenging Christian unity, what an ecumenical
view might hope for (which Lutherans sometimes support) is a salutary
approach rather than a hierarchical negative privileging of natural sciences
in the name of theological naturalism.
>
> The supposed fact that more social-humanitarian thinkers are agnostics or
atheists than natural scientists indicates that the dominance of natural
scientific approaches to philosophy and sociology is already overrun and due
for change. It is time that natural scientists step outside of their
comfortable box of discourse to recognize that this era demands more than
they have thus far given. By acknowleging the limits of 'theological
naturalism,' adequate space can be provided for non-naturalistic thinkers
who are still methodologically inclined.
>
> After all, when speaking theologically one could call upon the Methodists
(i.e. a branch of Protestants) for their contribution, which would
thoroughly undermine George's claim that MN is the only way (eh?). Instead,
by admitting that MN is one way among other ways, a more equitable playing
field can be prepared for discourse where natural sciences are not
privileged, yet still respected for their contextual contribution to
knowledge and understanding of human life, meaning, purpose and values. This
is, after all, what natural science should supplement, rather than stifling.

>
> Or so it seemeth to me,
> G.
>
>

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Received on Sat Jul 21 13:46:03 2007