Often they don’t

Once upon a time “science” meant knowledge—

And it still does , well, depending on the dictionary you use anyway.

I think the definition based on methodology, however, has become the commonly understood one, and I think the evolution to it was natural as opposed to guided.

Here’s the etymology of the word if you’re interested. (A neat link, btw).

You can see that for the past 300 years “regular or methodical observations or propositions” has been involved in the meaning.

The point is the prestige of the word and the battles waged over what gets to be called “science” and what gets excluded.

Ahhh, but don’t forget that ID can be accurately and fairly described as science even under the most materialist definition. In fact, the only way they can keep ID from being called a science — under their definitions — is by lying.

That will bite them in the tail in the not-so-distant future.

The sticking point for me would be the definition of “natural,” which in my way of reasoning differs from “material.” I consider that which is natural to be a superset of that which is material and that which is metaphysical. By metaphysical I don’t mean to suggest supernatural. The metaphysical subset of what is natural can be thought of as things that are considered objectively real, but immaterial, such as information, ideas, concepts, and agency. (An idea is arguably immaterial, and the expression of an idea in various forms would qualify as information.)

Science does a good job finding “how” answers such as how things work. However “why” answers, such as why are we here? are not directly answerable by observation. Science solves problems, but does nothing to advance knowledge of human purpose, at least in my estimation, and so it can’t deny purpose either, which is what materialist methods of science seek to do–it’s an inappropriate alchemy of science and a-theology. This constrains not only what can be explored, but what can be discovered, and thus is parasitic to science.

The supernatural differs from the metaphysical in that it requires intervention from outside time and space; metaphysical events do not. I may be stretching the definition of metaphysical, but I can find no better word to represent that which is real but immaterial. Atheists tend to write these things off as illusory, and ideas arguably could be, but information cannot.

IMO, science itself should not presuppose the supernatural, nor deny it. It should be agnostic, taking note when extra-natural events are suggested by the evidence, but not abandoning the pursuit of naturalistic explanations even when supernatural influence is strongly suggested. Whatever limits to quantitative knowledge exist will eventually become undeniable, and such has occurred with physics and black holes.

Since the supernatural is not directly observable in nature (under normal circumstances) it probably shouldn’t be explored by science itself, whether in support or denial of. It might be suggested that this is a sort of NoMa philosophy, but I don’t think that it is. In my estimation, it is completely appropriate for science to produce evidence in favor of supernatural events (the big bang, special creation) just not to provide any sort of philosophical gloss to its findings.

Well … words mean what people think they mean. Once upon a time “science” meant knowledge—not just obvious, frivolous facts, not hopes and dreams, not wishful thinking, but knowledge. Theology was the “queen of the sciences”—so in those days philosophy and science were not sharply distinguished. The point is not that science has some logically obvious, exclusionary meaning. The point is the prestige of the word and the battles waged over what gets to be called “science” and what gets excluded. Letting the materialists arbitrarily define such an emotive, high prestige word is not a good thing.

OK, here’s the problem I see with that definition. If you define science simply as the pursuit of knowledge you’d have to include activities like praying for guidance or indulging random curiosity (I think I’ll see what Murphy’s doing at the garage) which would generally be considered the opposite of science.

And there is nothing wrong with praying for guidance (which I often find effective) or indulging curiosity (Moses investigated the burning bush, after all)

Demarcation is not automatically a bad thing either. If a particular word is assigned a particular definition, I’ll go along. The important thing is to make sure the other side plays by the same rules and to not let them change the rules if they should find themselves losing.

What is science? It is just a methodology for understanding the rules of nature (i.e. the material).

I would disagree—science is not so much a methodology as it is (or should be) an honest pursuit of knowledge by people truly wanting to know (and humble enough to admit it when they don’t). The methology is the same for everyone—observation, reason, authority—this whether you’re a farmer, a hunter gatherer, or a top scientist. Science didn’t arise because Europeans discovered some magic new methodology. Rather it was a climate of wanting to know and a belief that we can know—it was Judeo-Christian monotheism: belief in a unified, stable world, that we are created with the mind to comprehend that world, the belief in progress and high standards of ethics, etc.

The materialists have been trying very hard for a long time to demarcate a boundary between science and religion—why? Because science has achieved prestige through technology and, as Phillip Johnson and Nancy Pearcey have pointed out, whatever is called “science” will therefore define public knowledge. Thus our public knowledge has been constrained by materialism with the disastrous effect that now “who’s to know” whether anything is right or wrong “… and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”

What a wonderful post. You are our resident philosopher.

As far as I can see I agree with you 100 percent.

Which gets us to the limit of science and its inability to be a definitive authority. What is science? It is just a methodology for understanding the rules of nature (i.e. the material).

What about powers not bound by the rules of nature? Science can’t address them and it is silly to attempt to do so.

And there clearly are things not bound by the laws of nature. Energy — which can’t be created according to thermodynamics — comes from somewhere.

So there has to be something beyond science that is the authority, and since science can’t deal with it that leaves it to other fields.

A very handy way to resolve all the implications of ‘information’ in biology. Just deny there is such a thing.

Have you noticed a tendency on the part of philosophers to deny what they are trying to explain? When a philosopher explores the often absurd consequences of his conceptions, he may run into some horrible empirical fact which totally refutes them. At this point, if he is sensible, he will abandon some of his preconceptions. But if he is not sensible, he will view the empirical fact as a ‘problem’, to be explained by his ‘system’. A ‘problem’ that can be solved by denying its existence. For some, the preservation of the logical splendor of philosophic delusion is always preferable to empiricism, as we shall see.

This has been the case with many philosophers – Hobbes, Hume, Berkeley, Marx, etc., and recently Popper, Kuhn, and others. Hume faced an obvious problem: that science really does work, and so inductive skepticism must be nonsense. Instead of accepting this, Hume argued that empiricism proves nothing, generates no knowledge, etc, and the upshot of that is, science is basically an illusion. Berkeley’s odd manner of thinking ran up against an annoying empirical refutation: there really is such a thing as matter, but his philosophical system said otherwise. But far be it from a monkey-wrench cast into the philosophical machine – Berkeley merely concluded that matter does not exist. The same for Popper, etc., who, because of their absurd deductivist preconceptions, had to view empirical science as an insoluble ‘problem’, and hence, empirical science had to go.

The same can be said of those who, because of philosophic considerations, insist that we have no free will. Dawkins assures us we have none whatsoever – that we are blind automata enslaved by genes. Now, free will is an empirical fact – all the experiences of all the humans that ever lived testify to this fact. But what of it? If it stands in the way of some philosophic ism, it has to go.

Remember Huxley’s silly essay about the ‘protoplasm’? Where he hammers away on the point that there is no difference between dead matter and living matter? That’s a convenient way for a materialist to approach the problem of life. Simply deny there is such a thing. But we must admit it is an odd position for a biologist to take.

Consciousness has been finally explained! Consciousness, we are told by some Darwinian philosophers (like Dennett) is an illusion. I bet you saw that coming. Well it has to be, for if it were not an illusion, it would refute their a priori biology. What of the empirical fact of altruism? That too, is a troublesome thorn in the side for the philosophy of a priori biology. And how do the a priori biologists explain it? By saying it does not exist, that it’s an illusion, a case of selfishness disguising itself for clever strategic reasons, etc.

And the Marxists have had ample empirical refutation. Has that any effect on them? No. They merely deny the existence of marxist regimes.

There were other theories out there that fit the data better than Galileo hypothesis. Tycho Brahe’s theory fit all the data better even though it was eventually Galileo’s ideas which were accepted and Brahe’s ideas which were discarded. Actually Kepler had a better handle than did Galileo since Galileo believed in circular orbits while Kepler believed in elliptical orbits.

Galileo could not solve the parallax problem nor could he explain why there was no wind as the earth spinned on an axis. If it was rotating at a 1000 miles per hour at the equator, any sensible person realized that something going that fast would create massive winds. We now know better but then they didn’t. Galileo also said the tides were due to the earth moving on its axis which was wrong.

He was a bright but arrogant fellow who got mixed up in a plague, the 30 years War, supposed conspiracies between two arch enemies, The Holy Roman Empire and France and the literal translation of the bible.

It would make a great movie if anyone would be interested. But no one would tell it truthfully.

tribune7: But how is teleological being defined? Is it simply an attempt to determine design? I’d agree completely that would fall under the definition of science.

Or is it an argument for the existence of God? I’d say that doesn’t fall under the defintion of science.

The determining issue is whether a proposition can be supported by evidence that is accessible to science.

There is a saying that if you see a turtle stranded on top of a fence post, you can know that someone put it there. How can we make that inference? Because as we learn about turtles, we begin to understand that turtles cannot climb up fence posts. If a turtle could climb the post, you couldn’t make that inference.

For ID, the key fact is that intelligent agents can be observed to create effects that cannot be created by unguided, natural processes. If some effect could also be caused by natural processes, then we would not be justified in making an inference to intelligent agency for that effect. We are only justified in supporting an ID inference when we observe that natural processes by their nature do not behave in a way that leads to those effects.

The reason this process does not support drawing the conclusion that God created life is because science does not have access to evidence concerning life that would distinguish “God did this” from “Some intelligent agent did this”. We have excellent reasons to infer that natural processes will not invent language, which is needed by life. Language needs intelligence. But that doesn’t tell us whether it was a natural or supernatural intelligence.