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Summary

The article discusses the limitations of the scientific method, questioning its ability to answer fundamental philosophical questions about truth and reality.

Abstract

The article titled "The Basic Flaw in the Scientific Method" explores the historical evolution of science and its current role as the primary means of discerning truth. It argues that while science is effective in creating testable hypotheses and organizing knowledge, it falls short in addressing questions of meaning, existence, and consciousness. The text suggests that science, which is often conflated with rationalism, operates on the assumption that the brain is not inherently equipped to understand reality, and thus requires an external method to discern truth. This leads to a materialistic worldview that dismisses subjective experiences and philosophical inquiries as meaningless. The author contends that this approach has caused a decline in philosophy and a misunderstanding of consciousness, reducing it to an illusion or a byproduct of material processes. The article calls for a broader contextualization of science with philosophy to address questions of purpose and substance, which are currently undervalued in modern scientific discourse.

Opinions

  • The author posits that science has become an overly trusted method for discerning truth, often at the expense of philosophical inquiry.
  • It is suggested that the brain's primary function may not be to pursue truth but to operate on software designed for survival, which aligns with the empirical approach of science.
  • The article criticizes the modern materialistic worldview that stems from a narrow empirical approach, which fails to acknowledge the value of subjective experiences and consciousness.
  • The author argues that science, as it is currently practiced, is incapable of answering fundamental philosophical questions such as "What is a tree?" or "What is consciousness?"
  • The text implies that the empirical method of science forces a dichotomy between true and false, which is insufficient for understanding the complexity of reality.
  • Richard Dawkins is cited as an example of a scientist who engages in rationalism under the guise of empiricism, highlighting the confusion between the two approaches.
  • The author claims that the language of modern science often describes reality and consciousness as illusions, which undermines the significance of these phenomena.
  • The article concludes that science must be integrated with philosophy to properly address questions of meaning, existence, and purpose, which are essential to human understanding.

The Basic Flaw in the Scientific Method

How too great a belief in the method of science leads to delusion

Pixabay

Science has a long history. What we call “science” today did not coalesce into its present definition until the end of the nineteenth century in which what was previously known as natural philosophy took on the word Scientia, “knowledge” as what we now come to use as a catch all word for a method, discipline, set of institutions and a storehouse of discoveries or conclusions.

We have then largely come to believe that science is the best way by which we can know if things are true. This has some reason behind it, knowing truth is a highly fraught endeavour, and as any naturalist would eagerly point out, evolution has not seemingly equipped us with epistemological apparatus as much as heuristic apparatus.

A naturalist would point to an example such as religion, or even the belief in one’s own free will. These are, to be generous, metaphors, to be cynical, heuristics. In other words, things that aren’t necessarily true but that provide us some benefit by believing them. Indeed one could argue (some do) that the brain is essentially creating reality as much as seeing it, thus making pretty much everything heuristics. Neuroscientist Anil Seth, for example, gave a Ted Talk entitled “Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality”.

In a simplistic sense what science attempts to do is narrow the field of knowledge into an outcome based discipline. This means it transfers truth claims into testable hypotheses that have a self-proving conclusion. If I believe I can run through a wall it is not my belief that decides its truth but the outcome that decides when I bang my head.

In theory, science systemetises said head banging. Wikipedia tell you therefore that science is “rigorous, systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the world”.

In reality however things are far more complicated. In fact one could argue that such an approach is still not an epistemology any more than it is a heuristic. After all, if what we want is substantial truth we seek answers about what things actually are, questions of reason and substance, why and what. But empiricism simply gathers together predictable chains of causation and names them. British philosopher Karl Popper essentially argued therefore that while science in theory includes verifiability or falsification there is essentially only one universal method, that of trial and error.

But alongside science, and often conflated with it, comes rationalism. During the enlightenment this was seen as in conflict with empiricism as a debate between whether the mind is an instrument for reasoning truth or whether the method for truth must be entirely externalised. However in the modern period these ideas have largely blended into a slightly more vague umbrella belief in “science” that tends to assume both.

In principle we seem to favour the empirical side of science in our modern approach, however much of our actual practice is far nearer to rationalism. Much of our current worldview is based on reasoning that uses empirical methods as tools when required but is not itself a direct empirical process. Richard Dawkins is a prime example, a scientist by training he argues about subjects that are deeply philosophical under the belief that he is engaging in empiricism, when what he is engaging in is rationalism, an approach that contains in it a fundamentally different set of assumptions that enlightenment thinkers recognised as in conflict with a pure empiricism.

Dawkins for example uses the term “memes” to describe the perpetuation of beliefs that to his mind are false, but that might have some evolutionary benefit and are thus transmitted in para-genetic form. The assumption being that the brain is not pursuing truth as much as it is simply operating on software designed for other purposes. Empiricism believes this, and therefore science must be an external discipline, you must bang your head against a wall to know if you can run through walls, this is the only way objective knowledge can be assured to a mind that is not fundamentally epistemological. In other words you must force the mind into a contained, closed system, zero-sum distinction between true and false.

Yet this makes many questions simply beyond the scope of such a method. Whether there is a God, what meaning is or beauty, why things are, why being is at any given moment, why there is anything at all, and almost every question that we would value as worth asking cannot be reduced to a contained empiricism.

Indeed the basic philosophical question, quid est, “What is it?” can’t be answered by this approach. How do we empirically answer the question “what is a tree?” or “what is consciousness?” Any such question asks all questions in a single question, “what really is anything?”

Science or empiricism must simply change the question to one either of observation or of testable theory. We can describe attributes of a tree, and tools such as microscopes can allow us to observe the cells of a leaf in great detail, thus naming phenomena on a smaller level. Or we can engage in experiment, such as cutting a branch and seeing if it grows back, putting a tree in the dark and seeing if it grows without light and so on.

Yet these approaches by definition make the question dissipate. What is a tree is still unanswered because the approach itself cannot answer it. What then? For some scientists the answer is to deny such questions have any meaning, that scientific answers are the only answers there are and that all questions of what and why are essentially attempts at vitalism or essentialism. Nothing is anything except its components. This is the source of much modern materialism, an obsession with a particular approach to truth expanded into a worldview that ironically eclipses the questions that we set out to ask.

Hence modern science is beset with the language of illusion. As I mentioned, Neuroscientist Anil Seth suggests the brain “hallucinates” reality, Cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has called consciousness itself “the mind’s user illusion” denying phenomenology and suggesting the hard problem of consciousness is “renewed vitalism”. Subjectivity is seen as meaningless and epiphenomenal, reality as material reducible to matter and operation.

Philosophy then in the modern world is in a lifeless state. In his final book “The Grand Design” Professor Stephen Hawking begun by saying that philosophy was dead because it had failed to keep up with the developments in modern science. Perhaps a better way of putting it is that science has killed philosophy because it doesn’t fit into its scheme.

Where do we go from here? Perhaps that is the subject of another essay. But we must start by recognising that most of our reasoning involves beliefs about the mind that stand above the method of science. Within consciousness is a sense of thought and agency that we value more than we are allowed to admit in a world in which we must pretend we are biological machines without purpose beyond survival. Science must be contextualised with other questions, with philosophy and forms by which we approach questions of meaning and substance. Yet in our present moment we dismiss such questions as intrinsically meaningless, a mistake that is undoing our world.

See also:

Philosophy
Science
Knowledge
Rationality
Faith
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