| DEFENDING SCIENCE —within reason BETWEEN SCIENTISM AND CYNICISM SUSAN HAACK ® Escuie Books 59 John rive Amherst) New York 14225-2197Published 2003 by Prometheus Books Defending Science—within Reason: Between Scienism and Cynicism. Copyright © 2003 bby Susan Haack. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in @ retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic ‘mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed vi the Internet or a Web without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brie quote tions embodied in ertical articles and reviews. Inquities should be addressed to Promethous Books 59 John Glenn Drive Amherst, New York 142 VOICE: 716-691-0133, ext. 207 FAX: 716-864-2711 WWW PROMETHEUSBOOKS.COM 07 06 05 0403-54321 Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data Haack, Susan Defending seience—within reason : between scientism and c Haack p. em. ISBN 1-$9102-117-0 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Creative ance. 2. Science—Methodology. 3. Scienee—Phil 1. Tie Q1725.C74H133 2003 01 —de21 2003012541 Every ltempt has heen made to trace accurate ownership of copyrighted material with ‘espoet tothe illustrations inthis book. Errors and omissions will be corrected in subse: ‘quent editions, provided that notification is sent to the publisher. Printed in Canada on acid-free paper When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and sees how it was reared: what thousands of dis- interested moral ives of men lie buried in its mere founda- tons; what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar; how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness—then how besotted and contemptible seems every sentimentalist who comes blowing his smoke-wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream! Willa james, "The Wit to Beeve ‘There are no scientific methods which alone lead to know!- edge! We have to tackle things experimentally, now angry with them and now kind, and be successively just, passionate and cold with them. One person addresses things as a policeman, a second as a father confessor, a third as an inquisitive wanderer. Something can be wrung from them ‘now with sympathy, now with force; reverence for their secrets will take one person forward, indiscretion and rogu- ishness in revealing their secrets will do the same for another. We investigators are, like all conquerors, seafarers, adventurers, of an audacious morality and must reconcile ‘ourselves to being considered on the whole evil. Friedrich Nietsche, Daybreak Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult... [E]ven when you have no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth... George lotAdam BedeCONTENTS Preface Acknowledgments (Chapter 1: Neither Sacred nor a Confidence Trick: ‘The Critical Common-Sensist Manifesto Chapter 2: Nail Soup: A Brief, Opinionated History of the Old Def Chapter 3: Clues to the Puzzle of Scientific Evidence: A More-So Story Chapter 4: The Long Arm of Common Sense: Instead of a Theory of Scientific Method ice Fumbles, (Chapter 5: Realistically Speaking: How Sci ‘and Sometimes Forges, Ahead Chapter 6: The Same, Only Different: Imeegrating the Intentional 31 7 93 123 SI& CONTENTS Chapter 7: A Modest Proposal: The Sensible Program in Sociology of Science (Chapter 8: Stronger Than Fiction: Science, Literature, and the “Literature of Sciene Chapter 9; Entangled in the Bramble Bush: Science in the Law Chapter 10: Point of Honor: On Science and Religion Chapter 11: What Man Can Achieve When He Really Puts His Mind to It: ‘The Value, and the Values, of Science (Chapter 12: Not Till It's Over: Reflections on the End of Science Bibliography Index 179 207 233 265 329 355 389 PREFACE title speaks of “Defending Science”; but, though every now and then errs asin mst itr powder, this book is not intended as another salvo in the so-called ‘Science Wars.” Rather, its purpose is to articulate a new, and hopefully a true, understanding of what science is and does. Discussions of the Old Deferen- tialism, with its focus on the “logic of science,” on structure, rationality, and ‘objectivity, and of the New Cynicism, with its focus on power, politics, and rhet- corie—and of the deep cultural currents of admiration for and uneasiness about science of which they are manifestations—serve only as background to this con- structive project. My title speaks of defending science “Within Reason,” and the play on the ‘wo meanings is intentional, 1 shall defend the pretensions of science to tell us how the world is, but in only quite a modest, qualified way (“within reason” in its colloquial sense), and from the perspective of a more general understanding oof human cognitive eapacities and limitations, and our place as inguirers in the ‘world (“within reason” in a more philosophical sense). Science has managed to discover a great deal about the world and how it works, but itis « thoroughly human enterprise, messy, faible, and fumbling; and rather than using a uniquely rational method unavailable to other inguirers, itis continuous with the most ordinary of empirical inquiry, “nothing more than a refinement of our everyday264 DEFENDING SCIENCE-WITHIN REASON ‘womnlth home. mindspring.conv706/ranscript of rule_706_panel_hea htm) (February 4, 1999}, "75. Lnote, however, the discussion ofthis question in Gottesman, “From Barefoot to Daubert to Joiner”. 39. 176, See Jonakait, “Forensic Science: The Need for Regulation.” ‘77. See Schwartz, “A Dogma of Empiricism’ Revisited,” pp. 206ff. for suggestions along these lines ‘78. Gen, Elec. Co, v. Joiner, $22.U.S. 148; 118 Sup. Ct. $20 79. In the Symposium on Science and Rules of Evidence, Federal Rules Decisions, 1984, p. 206. See also Schwartz, “A ‘Dogma of Empiricism’ Revisited,” pp. 2291f. 80. The scemingly relatively flexible standards of admissibility of sciemific testi ‘mony adopted by the Canadian Supreme Court in R. v. Mohan (1994) were replaced in R, ¥.JeLJ. (2000) by criteria closely akin to Daubert L POINT OF HONOR On Science and Religion Modern science kills God and takes his place on the vacant throne ...as... the sole arbiter of all relevant truths. Vaca Havel In the same way that each of us has had to grow up to resist the temptation of wishful thinking...,.80 our species has had to learn in growing up that we are not playing the star- ring role in any sort of grand cosmic drama. —Steven Weinberg, Orem of Fino Theor science, I believe they are right, Havel, however, thinks that science, pretending to be the sole source of truth, has blinded us to truths of spiritual kind; while Weinberg thinks that intellectual maturity demands that we give up such wishful thinking about ourselves and our place in the universe, and kes it as a “point of honor” not to seek consolation by adjustment of our beliefs,’ And here, believe, Weinberg is right, and Havel wrong. Tsay this more than a ite diffidentl, for the whole topic makes me somewhat ‘queasy—I have, I realize, less the temperament of those village-pump atheists who relish speaking out against religion, than of those more retiring types for whom reli- H= ‘and Weinberg agree that there is areal tension between religion and 265266 DEFENDING SCIENCE-WITHIN REASON stious belief just isn'ta live option, I have never felt moved to write'a manifesto ‘explaining “why I am not a Christian”; but now I can neither avoid the question of the relation of science to religion, nor duck the obligation to answer it honestly. (Of course, “the” question ofthe relation of religion and science isn’t really ‘one question, but a whole tangle. An initial complication is that religion may be ‘construed quite narrowly, as « commitment to the existence of a personal god or gods interested in human beings’ behavior, in our prayers and rituals, or very broadly, as with Einstein's Spinovistic conception of religious feeling as “rap- ‘turous amazement atthe harmony of natural law." Even with religion narrowly ‘construed, there is the problem of the many competing religions. But I shall cut ‘through these complications by focusing primarily (though not quite exclusively) ‘on Christianity. The most important complication for present purposes is that religion and science differ from each other in & number of interrelated ways: in their conception of the essential character of the universe and our place i the kinds of account they regard as genuinely explanatory: and not only in what they believe, but in how they believe it. This doesn’t mean that science and reli- gion are incommensurable, but it does mean that the most illuminating compar- isons are neither so easy oF so one-dimensional as is sometimes supposed. Science is not primarily a body of beef, but a federation of kinds of inquiry. Scientific inqu ‘oped many ways to extend the senses and enhance our powers of reasoning, but they require no additional kinds of evidential resource beyond these, which are also the resources on which everyday empirical inquiry depends. Among other things, while in even the most ordinary of everyday inquiry we often depend on ‘what others tell us, scientific inquiry has become the joint, ongoing effort of a ‘vas inter-generational community. ‘The natural sciences seek explanations of natural, and the social sciences of social, phenomena and events. In the natural sciences, the explanations sought are in terms of physical forces and events, In intentional social seience, asin his- tory and detective work, the explanations sought are in terms of human beings’ beliefs, gous, ete., and the aetions they prompt. But both natural-scientific and social-scientific explanations are “natural” in the sense that they eschew appeal to any supernatural, other-worldly, spiritual force. Imaginative specul essential, but i ive hypotheses have (0 stand up to evidence. Inthe scientific enterprise, respect for evidence, intellec- tual honesty, are prime epistemological (and ethical) virtues. At any time, there are new speculations as yet untied, and many contested issues, controversial claims, and competing theories or theory-fragments; the body of accepted claims and theories is far from complete, and itis fallible. Though much of itis by now relies on experience and reasoning: the sciences have devele Pour or Honon 267 firmly established, none is in principle beyond the possibilty of revision in the light of new evidence. Parts of the presently accepted scientific account of the origin of the universe and of our place init are well warranted, other parts less so; and many, many questions are as yet unresolved. But the main outlines, and many ofthe details are pretty well warranted. ‘According tothe best-warranted theories of modern science, the earth is just ‘one small comer of a vast universe, a small corner which happened to be hos- pitable to life, and in which human beings evolved from earlier life-forms. Religion, unlike science, is not primarily a kind of inquiry, but a body of belief—‘ereed” is the word that comes to mind. At the core ofa religious world- View, as I shall understand it, is the idea that a purposeful spiritual being brought the universe imto existence, and gave human beings a very special place. This spiritual being is concerned about how we humans behave and what we believe, and can be influenced by our prayers and rtuals.* Religious belief is supposed to be, not tentative or hedged, but a profound, and profoundly personal, commitment. To disbelieve, or to believe wrongly, is sinful, and fait, ie, commitment in the absence of compelling evidence, often conceived as a virtue, (This is why we sometimes refer to religious people as “believers.") By contrast, although in their professional capacity scientists accept ‘many propositions as true—some of them very confidently and firmly, and not a few pretty dogmatically —faith, in the religious sense, is alien to the scientific ‘enterprise. (This is why itis sometimes said that belief has no place in science.) Not so incidentally, the different religions do not stand to each other as the di ferent sciences do, but are rivals rather than complementary and interlocking parts of one enterprise. Unlike religion, theology is form of inquiry. Unlike scientific inquiry, how- ver, theology welcomes—indeed, it secks—supernatural explanations, explana- tions in terms of God's making things so, Usually, furthermore, it calls on evi- ‘dential resources beyond sensory experience and reasoning, most importantly on religious experience and the authority of revealed texts. So, unlike scientific inquiry, theological inquiry is discontinuous with everyday empirical inquiry, both in the kinds of explanations in which it traffics and in the kinds of eviden- tial resource on which it calls. ‘As I see it, religion and science really are profoundly at odds on all the dimensions I have distinguished: and science really is, on all those dimensions, farand away the more admirable enterprise. (I say “at odd,” rather than “incom- patible.” because the vaguer term is appropriate to all three dimensions of com- parison: and for the same reason I say ‘etter-warranted.”)268 DEFENDING SCIENCE-WITHIN REASON Poser or Hono 269 Complicated as itis, however, this tll abstracts from the even ce: privileged persons’ interactions with God, and the words of sacred plicated diachronic story of humankind as it has worked for millennia ve although to be sue, there were always difficulties, puzzles, and lacunae sigantic crossword puzzle. But only by looking at things historically can, ph theologians debated, sometimes giving rise to heresies and schism). how the religious world-picture and the theological way of inquiring a Probly there had always been those who had their doubts about the hocus~ carly attempts to explain natural phenomena were prematurely inked i. peus of shamans and priests, and surely there were always the curious and ‘one and then another aspect ofthe religious picture of the universe and. ious ready to try this and test that. As soon as there were theological argu in it has gradually been displaced as science advanced; and how the se joules there were some who suspected thatthe Problem of Evil might hhave not only gradually arrived, entry by painstakingly worked-out ‘nvoluble, or that the Fist Cause Argument might generate a regress. Well entry, ata far better-warranted account of the world and of ourselves, Fore Darwin, shrewd old David Hume had suggested that if the world is the also come to terms with the inevitability of ignorance and uncertainty, ay itis by design, it looks very much as if it must have been the design of a ‘oped modest and practicable ways, amplifying the resources of everyday Jpy gox! just starting out as a creator, or perhaps of a whole squabbling com- ical inquiry, of finding out how things are. Gintce of gods. And s0 on. | And as soon as science got into the business of explaining natural phe- mena, there was potential for conflict with religion. Gradually— intially very A BRIEF HISTORICAL EXCURSUS vully, but then faster and faster—evidence eame in that seemed to threaten key religious entries. Naturally and reasonably enough, at first people thought Very early in the life of humankind, no doubt, people told stories about atthe new evidence could be accommodated or explained away. But as more of the world and the creatures init: and, facing dangerous and pd nore evidence came in, the long-standing, much-intersected old entries, and phenomena—fire, flood, disease—hypothesized spirits or gods controll clfors to keep them, looked more and more strained. tural events, gods who could be displeased by violations of theie Ar least since Galileo's run-in with the Church, there has heen felt to be a might be appeased by rituals or sacifices. No better explanations were ion between science and religious belief-systems qua bodies of presumed tnd these religious explanations met an emotional as wellas an tnsslloctil jowledge; for the core idea of the religious conception has come increasingly suggesting that we are far from insignificant crestures, that owisiatl le threat from what Weinberg aptly describes as @ gradual but inexorable behave is of concem to something superhuman, ocessof“demystification” frst of the heavens and then of life. Copernicus sug- Primitive religions shifted and changed, sometimes metgedi Nadi sted thatthe earth was not the center of the solar system: Galileo showed that Most religions, and many religious ideas, were lost with the cultures that hi It was not until 1822, however, nearly three hundred years after them, but others took hold and spread, eventually becoming the central Dpemicus” De revolutionibus orbium caelestium was published, that the ‘what we now think of asthe great World Religions, Some religious ideas aoc Church formally acknowledged the “new” astronomy.’ And then, with {icmly entrenched; soma exis (ook on # special cease © theory of evolution and Darwin's reply to William Paley's influential version and institutions such as priesthoods and temples grew up, and eame t0b ‘he Argument from Design’—the pidve de résistance of natural theology—the interwoven into the fabric of society: in ceremonies to mark birth, marr Stsntial for conflict once again became acute. death, inthe education of children, in government, in war, and in moral ven before the publication of The Origin of Species, in response to the tions and proscriptions—sometimes sanctioned by the promise Of «volutionism of Robert Chamber's Vestiges of the Natural History of Cre: the threnttipuniahameki fa an shai Ho. Adam Sedgwick, the Anglican clergyman who had been Darwin's geology AAs the Catholic Church, and later the Protestant churches, eame er, had protested that if evolution is true, “religion isa li, human law is so did a new form of inquiry: theology, to which some quite re "folly... and morality is moonshine."* And in Omphalos: An Attempt were attracted. Certain entries in the crossword were by now indelibly Unvie the Geological Knot, published in 1857, Philip Gosse had tried to and seemed to justify the presumption that, over and above the sensory "modate a strictly literal imerpretation of the Genesis story tothe evidence and reasoning on which everyday empirical inquiry reties there are odie t mich older earth and. succession of foesl orpaniams: 28 God crested270 _DEFENOING SCIENCE-WITHIN REASON ‘Adam with a belly-button—omphalos in Greek—so He made all creatures, and the earth itself, appear older than they actually are: tres with rings, animals with signs of earlier growth and wear and tear, even the skeleton of a Siberian mam- ‘moth at St. Petersburg “with lumps of flesh bearing the marks of wolves’ teeth,”!? However, far from being the triumph for which he hoped, Gosse’s book had proven an embarrassing failure, criticized not only as bad science, but also on the theological grounds that it postulated a deceiving God. Darwin himself, as a young man, believed in the Bible as the word of God, and spent three years preparing for ordination in the Church of England—though rather half-heartedly; he was more interested in collecting beetles. Even before they were married, his Emma was “believing nothing until itis proved.""" He wrestled not only from Design, but also withthe Problem of Evil and the First Cause Argument. In 1837, he had written in his notebook: “how much grander {evolution is} than idea from cramped imagination that God created (warring against those very laws he established in all organi nature) the Rhinoceros of Java and Sumatra, that since the time of the Silurian, he has made a long succession of vile Molluscous ani- ‘mals—How beneath the dignity of him, who said le there be light and there was light.”!? But by 1860, the year after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin wrote: “I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But 1 own that I eannot see as plainly as others do ... evidence of design and benef cence on all sides of us....1 cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the ‘express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars”! although, the same year, apparently in hopes of conciliating angry clerics, in the second edition of Origin, Darwin modified its concluding sentence: “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into few forms or into one,” to... having been breathed by the Cre= ‘ator into a few forms or one." By the time of the candid autobiography he wrote for his family in 1876, Darwin suggested that the human mind may be incapable of answering religious questions, and described himself frankly as an agnostic. The word had only recently been coined—by Thomas Huxley (known as “Darwin's bulldog” for his tenacious defense of evolution), who had written in 1869 that whereas religious believers “were quite sure they had attained a certain “gnosis,” he was quite sure he had not!S When the Origin was published, the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, hhad protested that Darwin was guilty of “a tendency to limit God’s glory in ere- ation,” and thatthe theory of evolution “contradicts the revealed relations of ere= Pont of Hoon 271 ation to its Creator”; William Whewell, author of the History of the Inductive Sci- ences, had refused to allow Darwin's book in the library at Trinity College, Cam- bridge.!® Huxley, however, wondered how he could have failed to see the extraordinary explanatory power of evolution for himself: and by 1863 Charles Kingsley could write that “Darwin is conquering like a flood, by the mere force of truth and Fact. Nevertheless, when Darwin published Descent of Man in 1871, Pope Pius 1X denounced it as “a system ... repugnant at once to history, tothe tradition of all peoples, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to Reason hersef."!* ‘And Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer, with Darwin, of the theory of evo- lution by natural selection, eventually came to believe that man could not have cevolved naturally; the human soul must haye come from God. Well aware ofthe difficulty of believing that the Creator “should have any special interest in so Pitiful a creature as man, an imperfectly developed inhabitant of one of the smaller planets attached to a second or third rate sun,” in Man's Place inthe Uni- verse Wallace argued thatthe fact thatthe earth is uniquely suited for the ex tence of life shows that the universe was designed for man, that we humans really are the pinnacle of ital.” Gertrude Himmelfarb writes that, as science advanced, so did theology; but ‘one might better say that, as science advanced, theology retreated to higher ground. A reformed natural theology, rather than contesting the new biology, ‘adapted to accommodate it. Kingsley wrote to Darwin that he had "gradually Jearnt to see that it i just as noble a conception of Deity to believe that Hee cre- ated primal forms capable of self-development into all forms needful... 88 10 believe that He required a fresh act of intervention to supply the lacunae which hie himself had made” (the view Darwin himself had taken much eater, before further reflection caused him such bewilderment and eventually foreed him tothe agnostic position of his autobiography). Henry Ward Beecher pronounced “design by wholesale” nobler than “design by retail.” Baden Powell suggested that the uniformity, immutability, and sufficiency of the natural laws on which science depended was evidence of a higher purpose. Frederick Temple, ‘observing that the author of the book of revelation is also the author of the book of seience, argued that “the fixed laws of science can supply natural religion with numberless illustrations of the wisdom, the beneficence, the order, the beauty that characterize the workmanship of God.” Henry Drummond derided those who “ceaselessly sean the fields of Nature and the book of Science in search of ‘gaps—gaps which they will fill up with God”; God is to be found, not in gaps that science cannot fill, but in the entirety of nature" In his History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom,