From: mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: Science and god:  Are they incompatible?  If so, why?
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 06:44:36 GMT

In article <1992Nov20.180925.14334@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> jwwalden@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (P'relan) writes:
>In article <1992Nov19.045439.4505@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:

>> 	"I guess I'm not sure what you mean by `correct'. 
>> Supernatural intervention might imply that there are cases that _no_
>> theory _can_ cover, but there would still be a wide field of natural
>> law which science would apply to.

>"Correct" is an imprecise term.  The problem I see with supernatural
>intervention is that you lose the reliability and consistency of science -
>you can't list the cases where your laws don't apply because an
>omnipotent being can do anything and thus there are an infinite number
>of cases.  Science would lose its predictive value because you could only
>hope that your prediction would be valid.

	"But that's true _now_.  All of our theories are
approximations of the truth, and we know it.  And every so often we
find out our predictions aren't right.  Repeatable divergences from
theory will form the data from which scientists devise a new theory.
But unrepeatable divergences?  Science generally assumes they're
experimental error or fraud, and no doubt most of them are.  But to
presume that any `irreproduceable result' didn't really happen is an
assumption and nothing more.  Irreproduceable results, if they exist,
don't really affect science significantly at all, precisely because
they're ignored.  (How much have scientists worried about most of the
weird events collected by Charles Fort, for example?)

>> If scientific validity
>> depends on a belief that a Final Theory covering every phenomenon in
>> the universe will be found, then I suspect that it's in danger
>> regardless of the presence of a supernatural."

>Whether I believe a final theory is possible depends on what you mean by
>such a theory.  I've found that other people have odd ideas of what a
>"theory of everything" is compared to what physicists mean when they talk
>about TOE's.

	"That's why I didn't use the technical term TOE.  I'm speaking
of the idea that ultimately we can have an overlapping body of
scientific theories which can reliably predict and explain every event
in the universe which is predictable in principle-- the only way in
which a scientific prediction could be known to always be valid."

>> 	"Statistical laws are, in part, a confession of ignorance.  We
>> can know position and momentum within precisely defined limits-- but
>> further deponent sayeth not.  Scientifically, a difference which is
>> unknowable is no difference at all, and it's meaningless to say that
>> a `real' precise position and momentum exists at all-- but the fact
>> that something is unknowable doesn't necessarily mean that it's
>> nonexistent-- and conversely, what we can't see we can't determine
>> laws for.

>What should you do with things that you can't perceive or know?  I
>assume that they don't exist til I can find a way to perceive/know them.
>Do things that you can't perceive or know exist?  Why does a particle
>have to have a specific position and momentum at the same instant?
>What do you even mean by a specific position?  Since you've never
>known the specific position of anything, why should you assume that
>there is a specific position?  I think the problem is more in humanity
>in thinking that we should be able to know both - the statistical laws
>of quantum mechanics may very well not be a confession of ignorance
>because there may be no more to know.

	"I agree.  There _may_ be no more to know.  There may not.
Neither of us knows, and neither of us can know.  Do things I can't
perceive and know exist?  I assume so.  At least, I can't perceive
_you_ as I write this, but I believe that you exist.  I suppose one
could act along the lines of a Heinleinian Fair Witness, refusing to
believe that the Sun exists on a cloudy day ("Someone could be
supplying artificial light above the cloud layer.") but it's a
relatively difficult mindset to maintain.  I believe in Europe, in the
fact that the stars exist during the day, and that the light goes off
when I close the refrigerator door.  :-)  All of those are in
principle knowable, but by choosing to know it one changes the
circumstances of the experiment.  Maybe falling trees only make
sounds when a person or a recorder is present.

	"Does that mean that there _must_ be a real specific position?
Of course not.  But I think that presuming that the only things that
exist are the things we're capable of observing is a pretty
anthropocentric view of the universe.  Presuming that the only things
that are meaningful to _science_ are those that are observable is only
right-- science is a method by which we learn about the universe
through observation, and if we can't observe it (even at second or
third hand, as we observe ancient organisms through fossil deposits)
then it has no place in science.  But positively asserting
nonexistence for anything that can't be observed seems sort of
presumptuous.  (Assuming it for all practical purposes, on the other
hand, is pretty much necessary.)"

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mschiffer@aal.itd.umich.edu	    Virginia (1784)
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