You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'knowledge' category.
At long last my philosophical novel is complete! A journey through space, time, and dreams, Planetary Messenger explores the social, scientific, and spiritual consequences of discovering another planet in the galaxy just like our Earth. I began this project as a NaNoWriMo entry in 2007 and continued editing and revising for a year and a half.
From the back cover:
Since the dawn of humanity we have gazed at the stars to ponder our existence. To the naked eye the skies are dark and lifeless, but what if, through a glass, we looked to the heavens and saw our mirror image, a twin Earth from afar? If we found our uniqueness shattered in the vast cosmic arena, then what, if anything, could we still hold sacred?
Planetary Messenger is now available either directly from Createspace or through Amazon. Thanks to all of you who have been part of my life so far and helped make this possible. Happy reading!
From this week’s Postsecret
(A) Karl Popper argues that all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is negative. That is, we never know anything to be true, and the aggregation of knowledge proceeds through falsification.
(B) The study of the physical world through science, then, is an endless quest. Science will never reach a conclusion because positive knowledge is unattainable, and though theories may provide better explanations of observed phenomenon they will never be comprehensive across all domains.
(C) In a tautological worldview, an endless quest for knowledge is unnecessary. Tautologies can expand and be revised when new observations disrupt the former order, but in a steady state a tautology need not challenge itself. A comprehensive mythological interpretation of the physical world, for example, can posit satisfactory explanations for all facets of daily life and requires little to no regular modification of the framework.
If a tautological framework is simpler and more satisfying than the endless quest of empirical knowledge through falsification, then why do science at all?
(D) If we consider a dichotomy between “pure science” (gaining knowledge for its own sake) and “technology” (application of knowledge to solve a problem), then it is the latter that is typically used in justification of scientific research–especially in today’s funding environment. From (B), the pursuit of pure science is an endless quest (an asymptotic search for truth at best). A worldview based entirely upon pure science will always be less complete than a tautological worldview because the theories of pure science are always conjectural. The justification of science as “knowledge for its own sake”, then, is perhaps no more than a quixotic delusion.
(E) The success or value of a scientific theory often seems related to its consequences. Part of the success of Newtonian mechanics was its wide reaching explanatory powers and technological applications. On the other hand, a brilliant theory that arrives fifty years too soon may lay forgotten in wait until the idea eventually becomes pragmatic. Science, it seems, is fundamentally consequentialist.
(F) If science is consequentialist, then it is primarily technologically driven. Pure science, or the quest for knowledge, is not the driving force of science but instead is a tool for technological development. The quest for knowledge, too, is directed by the consequences: not all knowledge is considered equally valuable, and knowledge that produces results will direct future lines of investigation.
If science is technological consequentialism, then is there any reason to be a “pure scientist”, aside from love of the endless quest?
If religious knowledge, like any other form of knowledge, develops through a process of falsification, then an immutable religious tradition is unattainable. Cultural continuity, on the other hand, allows a given religion to develop with time–and even acknowledge past mistakes–without forsaking the tradition at hand.
To put it bluntly, classical Christianity is itself now our Old Testament… We have to use traditional Christianity in the same way as Christianity itself has always used the Old Testament. In both cases there is a great gulf but there is also continuity of spirit and religious values… When a Christian sings a psalm he knows there is a religion-gap and a culture-gap, but it does not worry him because he believes his faith to be the legitimate successor of the faith of the psalmist. Similarly, since the Enlightenment there has developed a religion-gap and a culture-gap between us and traditional Christianity, but we may still be justified in using the old words if we can plausibly argue that our present faith and spiritual values are the legitimate heirs of the old.
–Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God (HT: Exploring Our Matrix)
Present-day fundamentalist theology makes a position of cultural continuity nearly impossible, though strangely enough almost no fundamentalist position (perhaps none at all) has remained constant with time.
Truth is not manifest. Positive empirical knowledge is impossible, learning proceeds through a process of falsification, and knowledge by induction is illogical.
Revealed religion maintains that Truth is knowable. As knowledge of this Truth cannot be obtained empirically, faith is required to identify ultimate sources of Truth. Revealed religion may persist, but it can never assert itself as logically valid because Truth is still logically unattainable.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1)
If all knowledge is negative–that is, we can never arrive at a proven fact–then revealed religion cannot make demands of the so-called secular world to demonstrate knowledge of physical Truth. Logic, it seems, lends itself to negative knowledge (i.e., the best idea so far) while faith generates positive knowledge (i.e., we know this to be True).
Faith cannot be systematically taught, though, requiring evangelists instead of teachers–persuasion over information. This seems to me sufficient reason for the exclusion of dogma from science curricula (read: ID/creationism), for though we cannot fault those who choose faith, the insistence on positive accumulation of knowledge ultimately stems from a faith-based worldview for which no logical justification exists.
Recent Comments