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

What I hear you saying is that there are fads in legal theory. Seems to
me that the matter of fads applies to all human activities, including
intellectual ones as much as fashions. I recall that the dominant school
in philosophy for several decades was logical positivism. It held that
the only meaningful concepts had to be observational, or constructed from
observationally based concepts. It fell apart when one of their number
(don't think of his name) wrote /The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism/,
which showed that their dogma was nonsensical by their own dogmatic
standard. Earlier fads had been Absolute Idealism and Pragmatism. Those
familiar with the history of other disciplines will be able to name the
fads there over time.

I don't see that MN is a fad. Newton went outside of natural
relationships when he had to devise a way to keep the solar system from
collapsing. But generally his approach involved "hypothesis non fingo."
Later, the need for explanation depended on physical entities, which may
have been fictitious. Carnot developed his theory on the basis of
caloric; Cavendish, phlogiston; Maxwell, ether. While there are
religiously committed sociologists who will invoke supernatural input,
most of what I've encountered simply describes the phenomena. There is a
difference, for example, in ascribing the Salem witch trials to
supernatural activity rather than to belief in supernatural evil.
Dave (ASA)

On Sat, 21 Jul 2007 13:45:24 -0400 "David Opderbeck"
<dopderbeck@gmail.com> writes:
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 15:35:04 2007