… Philosophy v science: which can answer the big questions of life? | Science | The Observer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What Krauss seems not to understand is that science deals with facts, and philosophy with meaning, and the two — facts and meaning — are not the same.
That article is a good article to read. The error in scientism looks to be a mental disorder to me at times.
ReplyDeleteIn order to do science, we have to take morality and God out of the equation. I've said this before in this blog. Scientists, in order to do science, need to work with what is physically observable. In the equation, God is held to zero, as is any morality.
So, we can say that if we apply a certain amount of heat to liquid water, we will create the gas called steam. A scientist may believe in God, but there is no place for God in such equations. God plus heat applied to water brings steam, or steam plus God, or whatever. God does not apply to such a project.
The mental disorder comes in as a form of perseveration, a scientist applying his or her trade to everything in the world, not knowing when or where to stop, knee-jerking to the point of losing the ability to make distinctions, never leaving science-land, like a rain man. They say that if something cannot be brought into a workable scientific formula, something for scientists to observe and replicate at will, then it does not exist.
Faculties have been lost. And it seems that this will these scientism followers have is to be able to be sure about matters in life, to be in control, to be within a safety net they see science creating. We've lost so many of them it seems to a type of circular thinking.
"When Philosophical Questions Grow Up Do They Leave Home? Some Bad Arguments of Lawrence Krauss Exposed":
ReplyDeletehttp://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2012/09/a-tip-of-the-hat-to-professor-joel-hunter-for-referring-me-to-a-recent-discussion-between-philosopher-julian-baggini-and-phys.html
'We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.' Wittgenstein.
ReplyDeleteOh, Nige. What a wonderful quote!
ReplyDelete