Scientism Alert

With Obama making promises to "science" in general, the cult of scientism is surging forth joyously. While it is mostly about the taxpayer money that scientists feel is owed to them, it raises the old specter of the sacrifice of wisdom at the altar of factoids.

To reiterate again (and again and again): empirical science does not produce anything but contingent factoids, refutable and contingent upon subsequent testing. It functions in the past, requiring an hypothesis, severe and rigorous testing, replication and peer review before the (still contingent) factoids are considered possible candidates for an explanation of some sort.

So depending upon empirical science to produce wise decisions for future programs and actions in government is an expectation bound not just for failure, but for disaster. Here's why.

Science is a subset of rationality.

Read that again. Because that is not what science fetishists would have you believe. Rationality did not occur as a result of someones hypothesis-cum-experiment. Rationality is a superset of science. And science is just one of the subsets of rationality. And that's the crux of the fallacy of scientism as the guiding star for anyone, especially government.

Rationality is a superset for other human capacities and endeavors such as behavior and language. Behavior is not determined by empiricism, at least not solely. Perhaps some behavior is determined by personal emotions such as fear and greed. But any rational behavior is necessarily preceded by rationality itself.

And language absolutely fails to work without a prior rationality. Without it we could only babble gibberish, unintelligibly and without consequent comprehension.

Rationality is the superset, there is no (rational) doubt. But beyond rationality is wisdom, which is the accumulation of rational habits and the strength of both discernment and the will to use it. Science feeds rationality; rationality feeds wisdom. Wisdom is the superset that includes rationality. Scientism does not recognize that and in fact will reject the notion when confronted with it.

In discussing wisdom with materialists, I have found it common practice to reject the entire notion of wisdom, because it is uncomfortably close, indiscernably close, to the metaphysical. It exists only in subjective reality, not in objective reality. This, at a minimum, places it outside and beyond material existence. Therefore it must be rejected, if Philosophical Materialism is to be saved. To science fetishists, science IS wisdom, there is no difference. This is logically absurd.

The effects of scientism are easily seen in both the Scientific Socialism of Lenin and in the National Socialism of the Third Reich. So it is important that science fetishists deny this connection as well: it was hugely, genocidally, tortuously disastrous for the entire globe.

Yet the inclination to science fetishism persists. The cry for more money, more money is heard throughout the land, along with a seething resentment of perceived abuse by fiscal strangulation by President Bush. In fact science is one of the few endeavors that promises nothing in return for taxpayer wallet-diving. Science will do what it will do, if it can suck up the bucks to do it. Applied science is not what we are discussing here; we are discussing raw, unfettered science without a purpose. And the apologists who deify it.

Scientism is false for the reasons shown above. Wisdom does exist; it is informed by science, but also by history, as well as the knowledge that there are undeniable truths, that those truths exist outside the material realm yet inform the material realm, and the realization that denial of such truths leads to relativist, will-driven explorations into power and the horrors that such excursions bring.

Such excursions are often driven by "messiahs", drenched in "science". So, beware messiahs bearing scientism.

Show Me The Science

I wanted to respond to a post over at Scott's place, but couldn't get the funky letters to download, so I couldn't get through the security. So I'll post it here. Scott is incensed at an article claiming (apparently) that evolution causes ethical lapses. While I didn't read the article, I do have some comments on Scott's post. And his subsequent post, too.

Scott, as you know I believe that science is empirical in its requirements, generating contingent data thought to be temporarily factual, and contrarily, that speculation is indeed metaphysical. So when when you say things such as, "the fact of evolution", and such as "Evolution in and of itself is not a belief system, and biology texts contain biology, not metaphysics", well, I don't think this is correct.

Evolution is a hypothesis, in my view, and since it is the only materialist hypothesis at the moment, it is the popular opinion of biological enthusiasts. However, until it is empirically proven, it is not scientifically qualified to be "fact", even a contingent fact.

Most biology in the texts I have seen is, in fact, science in the empirical sense, until you get to the section of the book on evolution, where speculation sets in.

Of specific interest to me is the contention that evolution (unproven) proves ethics, altruism and such. That is actually speculation-squared. There is nothing empirical about any of this. Not even close.

Used to be that scientists were folks who did science (adhered rigidly to standards and norms). Now it seems that science is whatever scientists do, and fact is whatever scientists speculate: relativism has taken hold. Relativism is an emergent property of the belief in evolution (don't deny it, you believe it, it shows). Relativism in the pursuit of and even the definition of science is a destructive element that undermines confidence in the minds of non-scientists.

Interestingly scientists in quantum physics claim that anyone who says they understand quantum mechanics - doesn't. That science is experimentally based. The experiments show a ragged concept of reality; the experiments continue and bafflement is an acceptable reaction, given the non-intuitive nature of the outcomes.

Contrast that to evolution, where the attitude is "it happened, get over it"... never mind any experiments. There is no experimental data to back it up. If there were, that news would eclipse the Obama revelations for some time to come. No doubt you will protest this characterization, but it is real.

Your enthusiasm for this hypothesis notwithstanding, it should not be called "fact" until it is empirically proven; it is a thought, and thoughts are metaphysical.

Oh and Scott, your use of the term "stem cell" is prejudicial, as I am sure you know. The conservatives and libertarians are FOR stem cell research; it is EMBRYONIC stem cell research that is ethically flawed and also experimentally negated... and the focus of political angst. I'm sure you knew that so why not admit it? I think it is defamatory to claim otherwise.

And Scott, there are rather more Anthropological Global Warming skeptics in the ranks of PhD's and legitimate scientists now (32,000) plus (650) than there are in the well-purged IPCC. Surely you know that it is ANTHROPOLOGICAL Global Warming that is objected to, so why not say that? I think it is defamatory to say otherwise.

Data is only valid if it is not molested by activists such as Hanson, and if it had been valid experimental, well calibrated, disinterestedly supervised data to start with.

Oh well. It's all really politics, not science. Evolution, embryonic stem cells, and AGW: all politics. That's the real problem. That and an abiding subcutanean distaste for things not liberal.

Truth Times Five

Perusing through some "science blogs" I came across a hierarchy of truth, or at least the usage of the term truth. According to the respondent, truth has different meanings for different categories of users. The list looks like this:

"...an explanation of 5 different domains of usage of "truth" that each have their own paradigms, standards of proof, protocols, and history:
(1) Axiomatic Proof (from Euclid through Godel and beyond);
(2) Empirical Proof (Scientific Method);
(3) PoliticoLegal (O.J. Simpson was "Not Guilty" by Criminal Law; elected politician claims mandate from constituency);
(4) Aesthetic Truth (Symphony, painting, poem is beautiful or ugly to you regardless of critics and other audiences);
(5) Revealed Truth (religious/spiritual/paranormal experience subjectively true to you, incommuncable [sic] to others).

While his point is that the concept of truth is actually misused by groups having different focuses, the list tends to stratify into levels of what is really true, ie. levels of truth. This is a materialist fallacy and leads to relativism, even in the definition of "norms for science" (blog for another day).

The blog in question is a materialist based blog, and so it is understandable that paranormal and revealed truths are considered the same. It is also understandable that there is no concept of truth being not material, and that the list is not a coherent grouping but is mixed.

For example, there is only one material proof on the list - empirical proof. This has been shown repeatedly to be contingent and not truth in any sense. So it should be identified as a false usage of the term, truth.

The other "truth" items are not material, despite some having material input components. Mathematical, "politcolegal", aesthetic and revealed proofs or "truths" all have none of the physical characteristics that make an entity parametrically definable using material measures. They are arrived at subjectively, have no physical qualities, and are non-material.

So the point is that the material world (still) contains no truth. Truth is a feature of reality that is the non-material reality space. This is admitted in item 5, but applies to the other items except item 2 as well.

The author is correct in his evaluation of the incorrect usage of truth, even though the division is not accurate. The author concludes:

"Leaders in each of the 5 domains can be dangerous if they enter another domain with hammer in hand, seking [sic] the familar [sic] nails. It is generally a mistake, albeit often made by media, to assume that a Nobel laureate, film celebrity, sports hero, spiritual leader, or regent is magically qualified to solve probelsm [sic] in another domain. "What is truth"? is not just a line from a Pilate/Christ trial, but a legitimate metaphysical question whenever the term is used without restriction to its domain."

The discussion continued into the realm of educating logic as a solution to this issue. But logic is only a partial solution or maybe just a doorway to a solution. The philosophy of the extension of reality beyond materialism should be a precursor to both logic and empiricism, as well as mathematics and communication using language.

I do agree with the conclusion above, to a certain extent. A triple PhD in genetics doesn't necessarily have a good grip on anything else. But conversely, a triple PhD in genetics might well spend enough contemplation to arrive at unbiased subjective truths - the PhD's are not an indicator one way or another. It is possible to consider a triple PhD to be just as non-contemplative as a dump truck driver, and this is the recommended approach: test everything, including inputs from a triple PhD... and the dump tuck driver: no discrimation on the basis of "authority".

It turns out that truth is not a material component, it is a subjective space discernment, one that can be tested, retested and compared to others discernments. It is not the case that something that is discerned internally is "subjectively true, but incommunicable to others", as is stated in truth item 5, above.

It is the case, however, that such subjective truth cannot be adequately communicated to the

materially bound

, where Philosophical Materialism dogma is considered "truth" and all else is denied as contradictory. Dogmatic denial leads only to cloistered manufactured reality, it cannot lead to any sort of TRUTH; that requires objectivity, not artificial restriction.

Philosophical Materialism is an artificial intellectual restriction to a self-refuting thought space. It is false.

Peer Review per Do-While Jones

Over at "Science Against Evolution", Do-While takes a stab at explaining the slippery slope of peer review. In the process he makes the following comparison of engineers vs. academics:

..."The longer an individual remains in an academic environment, the less capable that individual is of independent thought. The only way to succeed in academia is to be part of the Good Old Boy Network.

Engineers who work in the real world have a different view of truth than professors who live in the ivory tower of academia.

Suppose ten engineers say that a bridge design is sound, but one engineer disagrees. They build the bridge, and it falls down. The one engineer who recognized the design flaw was right. If the bridge stands, then the lone engineer who said it wouldn’t work was wrong. Truth is based on experimental reality.

In the academic world, truth is determined by consensus. If ten professors say one thing, and one professor disagrees, the one who disagrees is wrong by definition. That’s why nobody wants to hold the minority opinion."

Actually in the engineering world the dissenting engineer would hold sway. This is because designs are submitted to design review teams, staffed by old hand, experienced engineers who are challenged with verifying the the design. No design would be built if one of the design team found a design fault. This might sound similar to peer-review, but it is not, for the reasons stated by Do-While Jones above.

In peer review, a dissenting reviewer would not last long because the majority rules; these days science is that which the most scientists believe. Slight paradigm shifts might be OK; Paradigm crashes are not OK, because, as Do-While points out, there are careers at stake. So the currency of science is determined by the power state of the human condition: politics. For one to claim that this is not the case is to show that one is not paying attention.

Moreover, for forensic sciences that remain in a perpetual state of hypothesis, there is no pressure to move into experiments since none are possible. This alleviates any need for tolerating deviant inputs. And when one's personal paradigm (worldview) is entirely dependent upon the stability of the well-invested hypothesis paradigm, intellectual stasis and stagnation are guaranteed.

In engineering, design testing and verification would be done until the truth is determined; one single engineer would bring this investigation about, because it is not about politics, it is about verity. All team members are vested in finding the verifiable material facts and creating a demonstrable congruence between intellect and material reality.

There's a gaping, polar difference.

I Need Real Data.... Please!

My friend Scott has challenged my knowledge of evolution, and I completely agree that I cannot know everything about it. Despite extensive reading, no one including both myself and Scott can be totally informed of all possible findings or even all possible hypotheses concerning this subject. The literature is vast and the new findings are daily.

So I am asking all readers to present here any definitive, conclusive empirical findings that show actual speciation outside the existing genome of a species. Hopefully this would include the mechanism that caused the speciation. Or if somewhere evolution is defined without the use of "speciation", present that too, please.

If you know of a certified, replicated, empirical experiment that produces (or at least is said to "confirm") speciation (or the more ambiguous "evolution"), please! put it here in the comments.

Thanks in advance for your trouble.

PZ Watch 12.15.08

PZ discusses civilized behavior on the same page as he recommends that everyone should throw shoes at George W Bush as a tradition. That's... well, liberal of him.

He congratulates Australia on its decision to teach humanism and humanist ethics in its schools, presumably as a substitute for religion. He doesn't say which humanist ethic he thinks would be the right one though, so they should probably teach them all and let the kids sort them out. Although PZ is generally against the idea of letting students sort anything out for themselves, like arguments for the improbability of evolution, and such. Interesting thing about humanism: it wants humans to be rational and make up their own minds - as long as it's within the bounds set by humanists. Any departure from those bounds constitutes irrationality and hate, and merits derision at the very least, shoes thrown at it preferably.

Agents Under Fire

Over at Post-Darwinist is an article worth looking into. A book, "Agents Under Fire" by Angus Menuge PhD, is reviewed. This book looks at complexity from a computer science viewpoint and compares the evolutionary claims of the philosophical materialists to the reality of truly complex systems. While I haven't read the book, the review cites some things that I have pointed out before, but stated better than I likely said them.

One unexpected concept, yet obvious with sufficient thought, is that when complexity reaches a certain sufficiency, it can no longer be managed bottom-up; it must be managed top-down. An example would be trying to write an application such as Microsoft's windows one line of code at a time. Such complexity must be modularized from the top down. This of course argues for design, but is a different approach than considering the number of elements that constitute "irreducible complexity".

Of course Evolutionists argue for mutation / selection which is equivalent to one line of software at a time. So they are presuming that they started with enough code complexity that it was viable (abiogenesis); plus every line of code added to the starting complexity is a workable change (for the better). Not to mention that the code that is added is generated at random, and that mucho code is discarded rather than added. And they presume that this is somehow parsimonious.

In fact, even if all the elements of an irreducibly complex mechanism come to exist simultaneously, why would we expect them to suddenly unite into a new assembly, fully functional for a new feature? Parsimony works so heavily against such an occurrence that it can well be thought less than trivial: it is actually absurd. Yet it will be defended by materialists because, as they like to say, evolution is the only game in town. Well, materialist town, anyway. If there is only one choice, then parsimony (and absurdity) are meaningless. So improbability loses its rational basis as single-answer dogma holds sway.

We recognize that irreducibly complex features cannot be PROVEN empirically to have occurred due to any top-down co-ordination. But the inverse also cannot be proven, and is so... absurd... as to be seen as a refuge for the materialistically dogmatic, the philosophically unyielding, the irrational improbablists.

The book promises more too. Will it attack the emergent "emergence" issues? I look forward to reading it.

A Shoe for Bush.

The Arab world is rejoicing at the shoe thrown at Bush, while the thrower called Bush a "dog". Both actions are the deepest insults in that part of the world according to the International Herald Tribune which is the international arm of the New York Times.

The reaction I have might surprise the "Arab world". Seeing the hatred of the mob waving shoes seems to reinforce in me the idea that peace, or any rational relationship with the Arab / Muslim world is not possible. They are a hazard to civilization. Period.

When the first nukes go off over there, and they will if Obama follows his pansy PC act, the Arab world will begin its descent back into primitive existence. This will likely drag the civilized world into an unwanted yet unavoidable ethnic cataclysm, attempting to avoid takeover by sharia soldiers, identifiable only by their ethnicity. This might be extrapolated into a global conflict, since Asia has gained a Muslim ethnic presence that is already sharia oriented and violent. The west is not likely to capitulate and will do whatever is required, including revoking politically correct injunctions against ethnic profiling and more. When the conflict is finally joined, it will not go well for the international Muslim community, especially if they do nothing but wave shoes and spew hate.

There is no rational conversation to be had with the dogma-locked, especially those intent on eradicating outsiders. The previous major excursions into dogma-lock were responsible for around 250,000,000 deaths in the 20th century. It could be deja vu, if steps to eliminate Muslim nukes are not taken. In fact, even without the nukes the wealth of the OPEC cash drain from the west could buy considerable armament. Considerable warfare could be purchased, and staffed with suicide warriors while directed by power drunken mullahs. I think, having read the Qur'an, that it will not be possible to be Muslim and also support democracy when crunch time comes.

This, plus the idea of being forced economically into a probable lengthy depression by a US government responsible for it yet incapable of stopping it, plus the idea of being held hostage to OPEC for the energy to keep us alive, give me the idea that I might have to fight, physically, the onslaught of those who hate us. While I am well beyond the rational age to fight physically, I am not incapable of it.

Obama has already rescinded the promises he made during his campaign, and he's not yet in office. So he is a totally unknown quantity, except the knowledge that he lies, and does so quite comfortably. So I have no idea how he will handle the Muslim crisis. We will see.