Monday, September 30, 2013

 

Failing to COPE


I noted before the suit that has been brought in Kansas by Citizens For Objective Public Education, Inc. (COPE) to prevent the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards. You can see the complaint here.

Just nine paragraphs in they dredge up the infamous quote from Richard Lewontin from his review of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:
The Orthodoxy is an atheistic faith-based doctrine that has been candidly explained by Richard Lewontin, a prominent geneticist and evolutionary biologist, as follows: "Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." [Richard Lewontin, Billions and Billions of Demons 44 N.Y. REV. OF BOOKS 31 (Jan. 9, 1997) (emphasis added)]
I was unaware before that Lewontin was a prophet or that the New York Review of Books was scripture that could establish "Orthodoxy."

Anyway, here is the quote in context:
With great perception, Sagan sees that there is an impediment to the popular credibility of scientific claims about the world, an impediment that is almost invisible to most scientists. Many of the most fundamental claims of science are against common sense and seem absurd on their face. Do physicists really expect me to accept without serious qualms that the pungent cheese that I had for lunch is really made up of tiny, tasteless, odorless, colorless packets of energy with nothing but empty space between them? Astronomers tell us without apparent embarrassment that they can see stellar events that occurred millions of years ago, whereas we all know that we see things as they happen. When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn't even get Dallas. What seems absurd depends on one's prejudice. Carl Sagan accepts, as I do, the duality of light, which is at the same time wave and particle, but he thinks that the consubstantiality of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost puts the mystery of the Holy Trinity "in deep trouble." Two's company, but three's a crowd.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.
While I think that Lewontin was not terribly clear in this review, the closing paragraph of the review helps:
Conscientious and wholly admirable popularizers of science like Carl Sagan use both rhetoric and expertise to form the mind of masses because they believe, like the Evangelist John, that the truth shall make you free. But they are wrong. It is not the truth that makes you free. It is your possession of the power to discover the truth. Our dilemma is that we do not know how to provide that power.
Contrary to the plaintiff's claim that Lewontin was establishing or expressing an "Orthodoxy" of atheistic science, he is actually arguing against such certainty and against what he sees as the rhetoric of Sagan and the other "proselytizers" "populizers" of science.

It's not exactly a quote mine ... it's a failure of reading comprehension, whether inadvertent or intentional.

Comments:
RE: "...that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
For someone that is "arguing against such certainty" this seems like a pretty absolutist statement. Just because we have never seen a result that is not explainable without Divine cause, does not mean that such a result is precluded by science. For example if the junction between the two ape chromosomes that have joined to form our chromosome 2 was found to have an invariant sequence of 12 million bases that are never different in any human beings anywhere and someone shows that a triplet sequence code can be interpreted as English with correct punctuation, and is in one to one correspondence with the King James Bible, and if the same sequence was found in ancient Egyptian mummies thousands of years older than the King James Bible, and ...

I think you get my point, clearly there is some level of observation that would invoke a reasonable supernatural explanation. Probably it wouldn't even need to be this extreme. However, this has never been seen. If the data can be explained by some a natural process and addition of the supernatural provides no additional explanatory power, then of course by Occam's razor it won't survive.

 
there is some level of observation that would invoke a reasonable supernatural explanation.

Sorry, I can't agree. The most you wind up with something that is unexplained by the science/empiricism of the day. We've had lots of observations in the past that seemed to call for a supernatural explanation that were later explained by science. We have things today that are unexplained (dark energy and the 300+ year mystery about how gravity acts at a distance, for example) but no scientists worth their salt would throw up their hands and say 'it must be god'

Moreover, as Arthur C. Clarke said, advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. No matter what "miracles" you "observe," there is no way to determine if it is divine in origin or some advance technology at work. Your "example," if ever found, might just be some advanced civilization of evolved finite beings fucking with us.

I'm not a big fan of Occam's razor either. It is not a rule of logic. It is, at best, a rule of thumb ... an organized way to make a good first approximation ... otherwise known as a "guess." And it is hard to to apply consistently. In Darwin's time, which was the "simpler" explanation, invoking the fewest assumptions, for the development of life? A single creator or uncalculable numbers of eviromental forces acting on untold numbers of variations in millions of organisms? Occam's razor is helpful, to be sure, but it far from a panacea for all doubts we may have about how the cosmos works.
 
John,

Thanks for your thoughtful response, but I am going to have to disagree on several points. I am hoping this is not just some silly semantic disagreement, but then I am a scientist and not a philosopher or lawyer, so I typically take a very practical view of such matters rather than a lofty philosophical one.

Basically, my complaint is that I don’t think your response is properly taking into account the modern scientific use up Bayesian updating for evaluating the likelihood of a particular hypothesis out of a set of all possible hypotheses being an explanation for any observed phenomena. In this approach one can hold multiple hypotheses and weight them against the evidence to determine how well they are supported. I see no reason under this paradigm why all possible hypotheses can’t be examined for their ability to produce predictable results from measurements.

To be specific for this particular case, my reasons to be skeptical of your response are:
1) In effect, you have rejected the Creationist hypothesis out of hand, even though the hypothetical result I have described would clearly be a good reason for performing a Bayesian update of your low probability for the Creationist hypothesis. Unless of course the prior probability was axiomatically defined as zero.
2) Your approach seems to imply that Creationist hypothesis is somehow outside the bounds of Bayesian logic. If you reject the possibility of giving Bayesian support for the probability of Creationism even if the data supports their hypothesis then you must at the same time reject the use of such approaches when the data rejects their hypothesis. Why give up that ground since that is clearly the way all the data is going.
3) Natural Philosophy developed out of a desire to examine nature for evidence of God and his works and to find the data that showed that the Judeo-Christian bible was an accurate historical document. Are you saying that this effort was doomed to fail even if they had observed evidence of a great flood, an ark on a mountain side, animal dispersal patterns, consistent with the Noah story, 6000 year old earth, etc. I am not sure how that rejection would work from a Bayesian logic perspective since Biblical literalism provides many clearly testable hypotheses. Unfortunately for that perspective the answers are consistently against that particular viewpoint.
4) Finally, why artificially create such walled off “non-overlapping Magisteria” when the same logical approach can be applied to weigh the support that we might give to all these hypotheses.
5) Your space alien hypothesis would have to compete for Bayesian support like any other hypothesis. In this case, it would be weakened by not providing an explanation for why this culture was giving a clearly Christian message to all mankind, something the Christian Creationist hypothesis would “naturally” explain.

Finally, on a technical point. Like most scientists I know, Occam’s razor is a last step in the logical flow in formulating a hypothesis not the first step. I first construct a hypothesis and then remove parts that are superfluous. Those rejections can be added back in later updates if the evidence requires their addition.

 
my complaint is that I don't think your response is properly taking into account the modern scientific use up Bayesian updating

I would not, in any way, claim to be an expert in Bayesian probabilities but Elliott Sober, the renowned philosopher of science is, I think, sufficiently an expert that I accept his analysis that I have discussed before.

Unfortunately, given the pressure of work, I can only point you there for the time being, with a few comments:

you have rejected the Creationist hypothesis out of hand

No, I've rejected the notion that it or its "opposite" (much more could be said about that) atheism are or could be scientific result.

Why give up that ground since that is clearly the way all the data is going.

Is that a scientific reason or a rhetorical one? If the "ground" is not really appropriate to the question, why shouldn't any honest person give it up?

Natural Philosophy developed out of a desire to examine nature for evidence of God and his works and to find the data that showed that the Judeo-Christian bible was an accurate historical document. Are you saying that this effort was doomed to fail even if they had observed evidence of a great flood, an ark on a mountain side, animal dispersal patterns, consistent with the Noah story, 6000 year old earth, etc.

Yes, I am. Not that I necessarily agree with your characterization of "Natural Philosophy" but, yes, they were doomed to fail as scientific hypotheses. We can show that the universe is, scientifically, older than 6,000 years old but we can't scientifically disprove Omphalos.

why artificially create such walled off "non-overlapping Magisteria" when the same logical approach can be applied to weigh the support that we might give to all these hypotheses.

I'm not invoking NOM (which I think has been unfairly characterized), I am talking about the limits of science.

Your space alien hypothesis would have to compete for Bayesian support like any other hypothesis. In this case, it would be weakened by not providing an explanation for why this culture was giving a clearly Christian message to all mankind, something the Christian Creationist hypothesis would "naturally" explain.

Hee. Exactly how would you determine the probability of an alien race's motives? ... Much less those of a god's?

Like most scientists I know, Occam's razor is a last step in the logical flow in formulating a hypothesis not the first step. I first construct a hypothesis and then remove parts that are superfluous. Those rejections can be added back in later updates if the evidence requires their addition.

Sorry, I don't buy it and neither did Duhem–Quine. Sure, good scientists will go back and refine their original hypotheses in the face of contrary evidence but it isn't Occam's razor that makes them do it, it's the observations. And, truth be told, more often than not, they go back and add more parts to explain the discrepancies (often justifiably so) rather than stripping them out. One word: NeoDarwinism.
 
I have before me a cute little article* by George Bernard Shaw, the Socialist, who like Lewontin and Gould does everything in his power to deny biological determinism, i.e., adaptation by natural selection. Shaw is honest, probably because in 1949 he wouldn´t look like an idiot, and traces his arguments from Samuel Butler, through Henri Bergson and Lysenko, who, Shaw concludes, like himself, prefer Lamarckism, for its magic, over materialism. As Shaw puts it, “Creative Evolution is basically Vitalist, and, as such, mystical, intuitive, irrational, poetic, passionate, religious, and catholic; for neither Lamarck nor Butler nor I nor Bergson nor Lysenko nor anyone can account rationally for the Life Force [OMG], the Evolutionary Appetite, the Elan Vital, the Divine Providence (alias Will of God), or the martyrdoms that are the seed of Communism. It has just to be accepted as so far inexplicable natural fact.”

I think that Richard Lewontin and Stephen Gould belong to the same ilk. And I say ilk, because it is evangelical anti-science. Shaw fumes, the determinism of Darwin and Weismann “‘banishes mind from the universe.’ Call it Fatalism and it becomes plain at once that it is a doctrine that no State can tolerate [Shaw, the professional humanitarian, seems to be justifying Lysenko-Stalin eradication of geneticists], least of all a Socialist State, in which every citizen shall aim at altering circumstances . . . and no criminal nor militant reactionary can be excused on the ground that his actions are . . . predetermined . . . and entirely beyond his control or prevention.” [Shaw seems imbued with the Naturalistic Fallacy and a deep conviction of the righteousness of punishment.]

The best comes later when Shaw treats “Lysenko’s question: ‘Can the State tolerate a doctrine that makes every citizen the irresponsible agent of inevitable Natural Selecton?’” The reply, says Shaw, “is a short No.” So, how does Lysenko, or Stalin for that matter, profess materialism yet persecute it. Shaw’s answer is that, to be socialists, they had to lie. I ask you if this is not the case with Lewontin and Gould?

*G. B. Shaw. 1949. The Lysenko Muddle. Labour Montly (January)
 
With reference to the much-misunderstood Lewontin quote, this exchange from a subsequent issue of the NYRB is illuminating.

 
I ask you if this is not the case with Lewontin and Gould?

That is so bizarre a comparison that I don't know if I need to answer it. Whatever you may think of Lewontin's or Gould's politics or their scientific positions, to compare them to a mass murderer or to someone who used the power of the state to suppress his scientific opponents demonstrates your own lack of objectivity far beyond any need for me to comment. Please crawl back into your ideological hole and forget this blog, and the rational people I encourage here, exists.
 
I was struck by how close the wording and tone of the COPE lawsuit resembles what I see all the time on Uncommon Descent, right down to the quote-mining.

That exchange with Lewontin is indeed illuminating.

Lately I've been very interested in the epistemology of C. I. Lewis (1883-1964), who developed a theory of what he called "the pragmatic a priori". He takes the a priori to be what we assume to be the case in order for there to be a certain line of thought or intelligible social practice. It is a free exercise of thought in advance of inquiry. (What constrain inquiry lies elsewhere in his system, and I won't get into it.)

I mention this for the curious fact that one of Lewis' most important students was Lewis White Beck, the Kant scholar alluded to in Lewontin's review. So I think there is some basis for saying that when Lewontin says,

"we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door",

what he means is,

"in order for us to build more or less reliable and provisional models of causal regularities that account for available data, we must assume that the causal regularities are not alterable by divine whim. For if we could not determine whether any particular event was in accord with or in violation of the laws of nature, the very notion of "a law of nature" would loose all sense."
 
Carlos, thanks. That was my sense of it but I could not explain the strange language.

Of course, I could just have attributed it, one way or another, to Kant.

;-)

Sorry I didn't repond sooner. I was working 14+ hour days the last week and spent the weekend recovering.
 
No worries -- I wasn't expecting a response, but it's always nice to see one!
 
I just learned that I was misinformed when I claimed that Beck was one of Lewis' students. Beck did know Lewis -- they were contemporaries -- and Beck contributed to the volume The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis, but there isn't the direct connection I'd claimed there was.
 
... but there isn't the direct connection I'd claimed there was.

Thanks for coming back and making the correction.

I guess I'll just have to go back to attributing it to Kant.


 
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