Thursday, February 27, 2014

Charles Tart, on "Toward a Post-Materialistic Science"

Charles Tart has a recent post "Toward a Post-Materialistic Science – Materialism and Science", discussing a recent "small, working conference" he went to, and the ideas there for trying to improve science.

He reminds us
that Promissory Materialism is not a scientific theory, because scientific theories are generally required to be capable of falsification, and there is no way you can falsify the belief that anything will be explained in material terms someday.
So, in am important sense, the description in "post-materialist science” is redundant! He thinks science, by its 'true' nature, can deal with the new topics needed. Though, of course, there might still be "denial [that] can reach the level of the unethical and/or pathological". He gives a good example.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Is Naturalism a Conclusion from Science, or was it Presumed at the beginning?

David Tyler has been been commenting on a paper by Massimo Pigliucci about issues in the theory of evolution.

We should pay attention to Tyler's conclusions:
A science that presumes naturalism MUST necessarily end up as an atheistic science. It fails as science because this approach presumes what it then claims science has confirmed. This means that naturalistic science is not objective and is not able to follow the evidence wherever it leads. For example, this is why the advocates of abiogenesis focus their efforts on chemical evolution, as this is the only avenue that naturalistic science permits researchers to follow. Consequently, the information characteristics of life are underplayed and they hope for information to arise by currently unknown emergent processes. The evidence however, points to complex specified information being fundamental to life, which naturalistic science cannot concede. By contrast, theistic science does not prescribe or predetermine outcomes, but it can handle natural processes as well as recognise intelligent agency. We will make progress when multiple working hypotheses can be tested without prescribing philosophical presuppositions for science. This is where education should be heading, not enforcing naturalism as the essence of science.
In particular, we do need 'multiple working hypotheses': some based on naturalism, and some based on theism. This is to include the theistic science I have already suggested.