> [Krimel] > Ah, back to flatland. This is patently absurd. If I were to grant that > science is ultimately and finally reductionistic, this charge still would > not stick. If it where true, we would have biologist explaining biology in > terms of protons and leptons. Hell, historians would describe the Battle > of Waterloo in terms of quantum mechanics. Nothing in science says or > suggests that the world is flat. In fact as I remember history they were > the first to claim it isn't. Butchering of Abbott aside this claim is > just offensively inaccurate. It is a ludicrous statement made by > pretentious romantics.
[David M] This is the sad thing, as you say there is little reduction in the sciences (the full suite, John Dupre carefully argues this in his Disorder of Things). Yet some still talk as if achieving a flat theory of everything is possible. Also, secularism is still pushed as a faith, as if there is some way to rule out a discussion of values including religious ones, from research and education. Which is why religion gets dumbly pulled in to trying to argue with science as if it needs to justify its scientific credentials. We need a non scientistic science so that we can get on and debate what our values and goods truly are. Of course, where secularism is the idea that religion has no special pleading or authority, and that all religions and non-religious values/ideas have a legitimate voice in the democratic debate, it is entirely to be supported as a way to manage social conflict. [Krimel] Just a point of clarification: I am not saying for example that one could not explain the events at Waterloo purely in terms of physics; only that such an explanation would be cumbersome and not particularly meaningful. Science in general recognizes that new orders of relationship emerge from the background of stability at lower orders. Various branches of science study these different orders of relationships. Psychology, sociology, anthropology and especially economics are branches of science that directly study emotions, belief systems and the apportionment of value. Religion only gets in trouble when it attempts to make scientific pronouncements, like the universe was created 10,000 years ago or that illness can be treated through faith. In cases like that science should be hostile to religion. In the arena of ethics, morality and promoting social cohesion religion has much to offer at least through example. Even in these areas religion is problematic when it does seek to assert "authority". moq_discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
