philosophy, evidence“Argument from authority” is a common fallacy, however, ultimately my understanding of science is entirely founded in authority.
The authority’s source is not a single person but a community, whom I’ve grown to trust for providing a large quantity of consistent theories that yield testable novel predictions and applicable technologies, and it’s those latter things that support my faith in their authority on the question of how the universe works.
However, it’s not too hard to imagine a world in which this exact process would lead me to believe the theists and their theories. Following this process in the medieval times would certainly get me calling Galileo or Kepler a lunatic.
By “this process” I mean: collect all the available information, see if it’s consistent with the proposed theories and the (extremely limited!) observations I made myself, apply some “probabilistic logic”, and decide which one I find the most likely.
Clearly, this process is not perfect. Among other things, one failure mode would be if all the media were censored in a huge conspiracy, and all the experiments and results I read about were just made-up stories designed to make me believe in quantum physics or relativity.
And yet, short of performing all the experiments for myself, I cannot think of a better approach. Is heavy reliance on media an acceptable process for selecting one’s set of world theories? How do I know where to draw the line?
Part of the reason you can take them on authority is that the results of scientific inquiry are published for everyone to read and test. The source is cited. Stephen Hawking doesn’t say “Stars collapse into black holes because I said so!” He says “here’s what I’ve seen, here’s what I predicted I would see, here’s how it did and didn’t match, here are my conclusions.”
He also doesn’t say “Anyone who disagrees with me will be stripped of their accreditation!” He says “Go nuts. Prove me wrong.” And potentially, with the right data, someone could. Hawking even changed his mind about his own theory given new data.
So the “authority” is really a meritocracy. Other people are testing the assumptions and theories all the time, even if you personally aren’t. I think that’s sufficient vetting to allow an “appeal to authority” not to be misguided.
“If you thought that science was certain - well, that is just an error on your part.” –Feynman
Science isn’t founded on authority. Science is founded on repeatable testing. In many cases you can do the experiments yourself, and confirm their results. Even if you can’t, they usually make their data and their methods known, so that they can be tested by other people with the skills/equipment.
There are certainly valid concerns with knowledge dissemination. I read an article earlier this year dealing with bias in scientific publications against experiments with negative results. That sort of thing is a real problem.
And there is always the problem of incorrect numbers being taken at face value. Scientists get lazy just like everyone else, and don’t always check other people’s results before using their published numbers.
But science isn’t an answer, it’s a way to find answers. It’s like deductive logic: if you do it right, it’s not going to lead you from true premises to a false conclusion. Sure people make mistakes, but other people are there to check your results.
There are some things I can check out for myself, and many others I can’t - I lack the knowledge and/or the equipment, and I certainly don’t have the time to follow up every scientific question out there. So I am obliged to take some things on trust, or “authority,” to varying degrees.
For example, I don’t understand all the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change. But I can understand the basic principle that if you release all the sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere, you are likely to get the sort of climatic conditions you had when that carbon was last in the atmosphere. If the people who are telling me it ain’t so turn out to have financial ties to the sort of corporations which wouldn’t want us to cut back on our carbon usage, I think I can begin to figure out what’s going on.
On the other hand, when they start talking about quantum physics and string theory and branes, I haven’t a clue what they’re on about. But it doesn’t particularly matter, I don’t have to make any lifestyle decisions based on whether there are really eleven dimensions (all curled up small…? WTF…?)
I do not agree. Your understanding of science is a mixture of authority and experiments you did yourself to verify the authority independently. Experiments include things like “wow, this cell phone actually works!” or “yay, I’m getting satellite internet!”
With religion, there is only authority.
Consider what happens to “this process” in both cases (science and religion) when you hit the limits of current knowledge.
In a scientific context, the reply would probably be: “we don’t know, but that’s a good question” or “why don’t you do some research, maybe you can figure that out.”
A religious response would more likely be: “you need to have faith” or “you shouldn’t ask such questions.”
Could you really take the theists “theories” seriously?
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