The so-called "scientific method" is, I think, rather poorly understood. For example, let us consider one of the best-known laws of nature, often simply referred to as the Law of Gravity:
Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation: Every object in the universe attracts every other object toward it with a force proportional to the product of their masses, divided by the square of the distance between their centers of mass.
Now here is a series of questions for you, which I often ask audiences when I give lectures on the philosophy of science:
- Do you believe Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is true?
- If so, how sure are you that it is true?
- Why do you believe it, with that degree of certainty?
The most common answers to these questions are "yes", "very sure", and "because it has been extensively experimentally verified." Those answers sound reasonable to any child of the Enlightenment -- but I submit, on the contrary, that this set of answers has no objective basis whatsoever. To begin with, let us ask, how many confirming experiments do you think would have been done, to qualify as "extensive experimental verification." I would ask that you, the reader, actually pick a number as a rough, round guess.
Whatever number N you picked, I now challenge you state the rule of inference that allows you to conclude, from N uniform observations, that a given effect is always about from a given alleged cause. If you dust off your stats book and thumb through it, you will find no such rule of inference rule there. What you will find are principles that allow you to conclude from a certain number N of observations that with confidence c, the proportion of positive cases is z, where c < 1 and z < 1. But there is no finite number of observations that would justify, with any nonzero confidence, that any law held universally, without exception (that is, z can never be 1 for any finite number of observations, no matter how small the desired confidence c is, unless c = 0). . And isn't that exactly what laws of nature are supposed to do? For Pete's sake it is called the law of universal gravitation, and it begins with the universal quantifier every (both of which may have seemed pretty innocuous up until now).
Let me repeat myself for clarity: I am not saying that there is no statistical law that would allow you to conclude the law with absolute certainty; absolute certainty is not even on the table. I am saying that there is no statistical law that would justify belief in the law of universal gravitation with even one tenth of one percent of one percent confidence, based on any finite number of observations. My point is that the laws of the physical sciences -- laws like the Ideal gas laws, the laws of gravity, Ohm's law, etc. -- are not based on statistical reasoning and could never be based on statistical reasoning, if they are supposed, with any confidence whatsoever, to hold universally.
So, if the scientific method is not based on the laws of statistics, what is it based on? In fact it is based on the
Principle of Abductive Inference: Given general principle as a hypothesis, if we have tried to experimentally disprove the hypothesis, with no disconfirming experiments, then we may infer that it is likely to be true -- with confidence justified by the ingenuity and diligence that has been exercised in attempting to disprove it.
In layman's terms, if we have tried to find and/or manufacture counterexamples to a hypothesis, extensively and cleverly, and found none, then we should be surprised if we then find a counterexample by accident. That is the essence of the scientific method that underpins most of the corpus of the physical sciences. Note that it is not statistical in nature. The methods of statistics are very different, in that they rest on theorems that justify confidence in those methods, under assumptions corresponding to the premises of the theorems. There is no such theorem for the Principle of Abductive Inference -- nor will there ever be, because, in fact, for reasons I will explain below, it is a miracle that the scientific method works (if it works).
Why would it take a miracle for the scientific method to work? Remember that the confidence with which we are entitled to infer a natural law is a function of the capability and diligence we have exercised in trying to disprove it. Thus, to conclude a general law with some moderate degree of confidence (say, 75%), we must have done due diligence in trying to disprove it, to the degree necessary to justify that level confidence, given the complexity of the system under study. But what in the world entitles us to think that the source code of the universe is so neat and simple, and its human denizens so smart, that we are capable of the diligence that is due?
For an illuminating analogy, consider that software testing is a process of experimentation that is closely analogous to scientific experimentation. In the case of software testing, the hypothesis being tested -- the general law that we are attempting to disconfirm -- is that a given program satisfies its specification for all inputs. Now do you suppose that we could effectively debug Microsoft Office, or gain justified confidence in its correctness with respect to on item of its specification, by letting a weasel crawl around on the keyboard while the software is running, and observing the results? Of course not: the program is far too complex, its behavior too nuanced, and the weasel too dimwitted (no offense to weasels) for that. Now, do you expect the source code of the Universe itself to be simpler and friendlier to the human brain than the source code of MS Office is to the brain of a weasel? That would be a miraculous thing to expect, for the following reason: a priori, if the complexity of that source code could be arbitrarily large. It could be a googleplex lines of spaghetti code -- and that would be a infinitesimally small level of complexity, given the realm of possible complexities -- namely the right-hand side of the number line.
In this light, if the human brain is better equipped to discover the laws of nature than a weasel is to confidently establish the correctness an item in the spec of MS Office, it would be a stunning coincidence. That is looking at it from the side of the a priori expected complexity of the problem, compared to any finite being's ability to solve it. But there is another side to look from, which is the side of the distribution of intelligence levels of the potential problem-solvers themselves. Obviously, a paramecium, for example, is not equipped to discover the laws of physics. Nor is an octopus, nor a turtle, nor a panther, nor an orangutan. In the spectrum of natural intelligences we know of, it just so happens that there is exactly one kind of creature that just barely has the capacity to uncover the laws of nature. It is as if some cosmic Dungeon Master was optimizing the problem from both sides, by making the source code of the universe just simple enough that the smartest beings within it (that we know of) were just barely capable of solving the puzzle. That is just the goldilocks situation that good DM's try to achieve with their puzzles: not so hard they can't be solved, not so easy that the players can't take pride in solving them
There is a salient counterargument I must respond to. It might be argued that, while it is a priori unlikely that any finite being would be capable of profitably employing the scientific method in a randomly constructed universe, it might be claimed that in hindsight of the scientific method having worked for us in this particular universe, we are now entitled, a posteriori, to embrace the Principle of Abductive Inference as a reliable method. My response is that we have no objective reason whatsoever to believe the scientific method has worked in hindsight -- at least not for the purpose of discovering universal laws of nature! I will grant that we have had pretty good luck with science-based engineering in the tiny little spec of the universe observable to us. I will even grant that this justifies the continued use of engineering for practical purposes with relative confidence -- under the laws of statistics, so long as, say, one anomaly per hundred thousand hours of use is an acceptable risk. But this gives no objective reason whatsoever (again under the laws of statistics) to believe that any of the alleged "laws of nature" we talk about is actually a universal law. That is to say, if you believe, with even one percent confidence, that we ever have, or ever will, uncover a single line of the source code of the universe -- a single law of Nature that holds without exception -- then you, my friend, believe in miracles. There is no reason to expect the scientific method to work, and good reason to expect it not to work -- unless human mind was designed to be able to uncover and understand the laws of nature, by Someone who knew exactly how complex they are.
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Notes -
This is a reply jointly to several comments so I will put it as a new semi-top level post. Several of the responses, including such as (what I consider) the most thoughtful ones of @sqeecoo and @Gillitrut, point in the direction that the mission of science is not to discover natural laws that are literally true, but to produce useful fictions -- stories about the world that we are better off believing and acting on. That position, if you really believe it, is immune from my argument. But if you take that position, and at the same time embrace the study of science, then you cannot, at the same time, argue against theism on the grounds that it is literally false.
I'd like to hear more about why we can't argue in that direction. Is this like a hypocrisy claim? That since science isn't literally true it would be hypocritical to criticize theism for not being literally true? Or is this more that the acknowledged limits of scientific inquiry do not permit disproving theism?
I am content with believing that the particular empirical claims theists make seem to all have non-theistic explanations. If there is some causally inert god or gods out there, who do not interact with our reality in an empirically testable way, I am not that concerned with their existence.
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
God's pronouns are He/Him. (For the sarcasm-impaired, that's a joke)
Okay well in that case it's also hypocritical to criticize Cthulhu and Star Wars lore for not being literally true. Hooray, solipsism. This entire line of argument advances absolutely nothing.
It essentially amounts to a theist's special request for their beliefs to be treated as intellectually serious even though they can't point to any justification for them that exists outside of their own skull, because hey after all, nothing is really certain, right?
Bluntly, request denied until one of these arguments successfully and meaningfully distinguishes Christianity, theism, whatever, from an infinite number of bullshit things I could make up on the spot.
If someone just jumped into this thread without reading the history, they might gather that I (or someone else) had criticized Cthulhu on the grounds of not being literally true. So for anyone who is jumping in in the middle, nothing of the sort happened.
Moreover, I would never detract from the merit of Shakespeare or Homer on the grounds that there is no evidence for the literal truth of their writings. Nor would I detract from the merit of a physics text on the grounds that there is no objective evidence that its contents are literally true. I do not think I am asking for special status for anything. I am arguing against a special status for the physical sciences, that I believe is widely attributed to them.
I agree that you should deny that request if somebody made it -- but I don't think I did (unless "whatever" casts a very wide net).
My thesis is that (1) if you hold nonzero confidence in the literal truth of a universal physical law, then you should be able to give reasons for your belief, and (2) the only rule of evidence I know of that would justify such a conclusion (abductive inference) -- and the one that is actually used in the physical sciences to establish credibility of physical theories -- rests on premises that are infinitesimally unlikely to hold in the absence of a miracle.
Tagging @marten too so I don't have to post twice.
Look, I'll be honest: If you're not playing some kind of game that amounts to wanting people to stop snorting when someone brings up god in an intellectual context? If this isn't the usual goofy theist sophistry and you're actually just parsing the differences between degrees of philosophical certainty that no one out in the world ever thinks about when making decisions?
Then I'll leave you to your hobby and continue to be puzzled as to the appeal. Back in the world where people make decisions, the fact that science does in fact produce functional results obliterates every other consideration anyway.
I'm glad you mentioned that. I am actually not interested in the reactions of people who scoff (or "snort") when someone brings up God in an intellectual context. The readers that interests me for this argument are people like political scientist Charles Murray and historian Tom Holland, who do not scoff, and who are even sympathetic to the idea, but who are not believers because they cannot find reasons to believe.
My argument isn't about parsing degrees of certainty
I'm glad you are being honest. In that same spirit, I think it is Philistine to separate the effort to reveal the true laws of nature from "the world where people make decisions". Science, conceived as the effort to reveal the laws of nature, involves making many of decisions; I believe it is what many scientists perceive themselves as doing, and I believe it is a worthwhile pursuit for its own sake -- independently from its applications to such things as bread and circuses.
No? Because it sort of sounds like it to my Philistine ears.
Except one of these things can produce consistent on-demand results that wouldn't be possible if its claims were false, while the other cannot. By any standard of truth-seeking that doesn't succumb to solipsism and ludicrously rule out observation of the world as a means of understanding it, the former is obviously much more true than the latter.
Ah but while science may contain observable truth, it doesn't meet Nelson Rushton's standard for being "the source code of the universe" and that's important... why exactly? Telling me you have a standard of truth under which apparently absolutely nothing is "literally true" isn't actually interesting.
The reason I keep thinking this is about getting atheists to stop snorting is because I can't think of any other purposes for this whole argument, charitable or otherwise. Like okay, nothing in the universe meets the Rushton Source Code Standard of Literal Truth. Neat, why should anyone care? What decision should anyone make differently now that they've heard this?
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