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Got into another discussion about science and religion and the meaning of life. This is perhaps silly for an older man of rather limited intellectual facility, but that's how I get my thrills, this and violent pornography. I'll spare you the violent pornography. Anyway, in this discussion, I have come up with the metaphor of a painting, a great work of art. It's awkward, but...
This painting is a metaphor for the physical world. Science, I argue, attempts to understand and explain how this painting has come to be. Scientists will perhaps be able to explain the qualities of the paint as well as the canvas and even infer the brush strokes - all the physical elements that have gone into the painting and how this painting was put together and shaped.
The reason I like this metaphor is for the next part, in which I try to address the conern that science is too reductionist and that it perhaps saps the specialness out of life. I argue that, while science seeks to understand how the physical world works, the meaning is left to you. What is the meaning of the painting? How do you interpret its significations and implications, not about how the painting came together necessarily, but about what the work of art means to you. You see, I argue, that this is what science does not do, and that science proper does not lay out normative judgments. What it means is entirely up to you and everyone else, whatever your philosophy or religion. Indeed, it becomes a matter of poltical negotiation and conflict, maybe even warfare.
For the true believer, I know that the answer remains that God is the master painter, and what science does is afford people the opportunity to study the great work and to perhaps learn how to make derivative masterpieces of their own.
I'm only arguing that even an atheistic conception of science does not sap the meaning out of life. That you still have your philosophy and religion to interpret the significance of the physical world for yourself. This is how this has come to be and how it works, but what it means to you and what you do with it is indeed beyond science proper.
I'll also note that I believe science itself is agnostic. Maybe there is a Master Painter, as science cannot prove there is none, and maybe scientists and philosphers are only trying to fathom a little of the mind of God to realize more of the potential of life and the world. But these more substantive conceptions of God are also outside of science, for science also cannot prove there is a God. This question is, thus far, outside of science and is in that realm of personal and social meaning.
I take it that science is our best, most authoritative arbiter of the physical world - what it is, how it works. What we do about that, and what we do with it, is a question of conscience and politics.
xXx
Got into another discussion about science and religion and the meaning of life. This is perhaps silly for an older man of rather limited intellectual facility, but that's how I get my thrills, this and violent pornography. I'll spare you the violent pornography. Anyway, in this discussion, I have come up with the metaphor of a painting, a great work of art. It's awkward, but...
This painting is a metaphor for the physical world. Science, I argue, attempts to understand and explain how this painting has come to be. Scientists will perhaps be able to explain the qualities of the paint as well as the canvas and even infer the brush strokes - all the physical elements that have gone into the painting and how this painting was put together and shaped.
The reason I like this metaphor is for the next part, in which I try to address the conern that science is too reductionist and that it perhaps saps the specialness out of life. I argue that, while science seeks to understand how the physical world works, the meaning is left to you. What is the meaning of the painting? How do you interpret its significations and implications, not about how the painting came together necessarily, but about what the work of art means to you. You see, I argue, that this is what science does not do, and that science proper does not lay out normative judgments. What it means is entirely up to you and everyone else, whatever your philosophy or religion. Indeed, it becomes a matter of poltical negotiation and conflict, maybe even warfare.
For the true believer, I know that the answer remains that God is the master painter, and what science does is afford people the opportunity to study the great work and to perhaps learn how to make derivative masterpieces of their own.
I'm only arguing that even an atheistic conception of science does not sap the meaning out of life. That you still have your philosophy and religion to interpret the significance of the physical world for yourself. This is how this has come to be and how it works, but what it means to you and what you do with it is indeed beyond science proper.
I'll also note that I believe science itself is agnostic. Maybe there is a Master Painter, as science cannot prove there is none, and maybe scientists and philosphers are only trying to fathom a little of the mind of God to realize more of the potential of life and the world. But these more substantive conceptions of God are also outside of science, for science also cannot prove there is a God. This question is, thus far, outside of science and is in that realm of personal and social meaning.
I take it that science is our best, most authoritative arbiter of the physical world - what it is, how it works. What we do about that, and what we do with it, is a question of conscience and politics.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-02 11:50 pm (UTC)From:My argument would be that a painting (or play, or duck, or anything else) must be discussed mainly as a Gestalt whole.
With a painting, the paint and canvas are fine to talk about. But there is more that is sadly left unsaid unless we go far, far beyond that. Composition? Style? Perspective? Tone? Mood? Color scheme? School? Structure? It all goes beyond paint and canvas but very much is still rooted in the physical world.
A play is just words on a page. But then there are actors, costumes, interpretation, character, plot, setting, blocking, etc.. Science is a bit like playwriting. It's fine to analyze the basic element of the play itself via dialogue, but it misses the deeper layers.
In fact, I'd argue that most people experience these other elements first--as the primary--in seeing a play or painting, etc.. Not the paint and canvas or words on a page. That is why I question science as authoritative arbiter of the physical world.
Some of that is subjective, true, but life as a whole is. But one can leave God out of it even and still be left with a major hole when it comes to understanding the material world.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 01:26 am (UTC)From:http://hardblue.livejournal.com/616759.html
In your discussion with him you say, "Whether it wants to come to terms with it or not, using the scientific method comes with a whole host of implicit decisions about the nature of reality."
I think that goes with your discussion here about "deeper layers" and how there are other factors in our physical reality.
These implicit decisions and layers are your inherited and acquired values, and everyone has these when it comes to dealing with science and its work. This is what I mean about people doing with science what they will in the political arena, so to speak. But your values and interpretions are not more authoritative to others who don't share your culture and your values. Your interpretions are no more authoritation than the Islamists. They are yours and you can act on them. But they are not more authoritative as to what is the physical world and its workings than that which has been represented in the enterprise of science.
But, yes, science as understood here is at the service or the mercy of other values. You can be a Quaker and deny all the technological developments. Rulers can say that the sun and all revolves around the earth and punish you for saying otherwise. Such stances may be more authoritative as a matter of political and military might, but they are not more authoritative in the long run as to our best understanding of the physical world.
Science is more transcendent than particular cultures and religions. If there is intelligent life on another planet, we will share the language of math and science, just as we share the same physical universe.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-03 02:00 am (UTC)From:There's nothing wrong with English as a language/system or science as a language/system. But one can't expect English to have a word for something that doesn't come out of that language system. Just as Spanish or Japanese, etc. comes with an underlying philosophy that confines it. Every language is necessarily limited in scope. Science is no different in that it only does a partial job of explaining the physical world. That's all I'm saying.