Science is not the only form of knowledge

Higgs boson particle trace

must get taht extra g in there. that proves I know who he was, that proves I'm a science guy so I'm smart. only scinece makes you smart now. the computer god will be angry if I screw up on some unimportant little meaningless detail of science.


One comment before I present this exchange. Someone always has to pedantically insist that scinece isn't knowledge, "it's a method." Anything that you learn and know is knowledge. The method of scinece produces data and data is knowledge. There's no reson to go to the trouble of not saying "scinece is the only form of knowledge" and "scinece is the only method that produces knowledge as a product of its workings." It's obvious what is meant.

Science was once called "natural philosophy." Science evolute out of philosophy the fact that they diverged does not mean that philosophy ceased to be important. Just as scinece requires logic to make sense it also requires philosophy to keep it in line.

If we an prove that philosophy underlines scinece, and undermines it omniscient claims this is more than enough to prove that philosophy is valid and needed.

I have three arguments to prove that philosophy trumps scinece.

caveat: you can't use scientific precision as the limits test of utility becuase that would be circular. We can't say "nothing else is scientific like science, therefore, that proves only scinece is valid." that's like saying the bible says it's the word of God.

Unless you can get outside of scinece and validate form some more basic perspective you can never prove that it's the only form of knowledge.

that idea itself could be no one. but I have others:


(1) The empiricists dilemma.

Descartes worked the basis of modern epistemology based upon the cogito. The conclusion to which is that one cannot get outside of one's own perceptions to check them. Any scientific data provided to prove that life is real or other minds exists, or what have you, will be useless because it is part of the illusion.

that is to say if we assume per perceptions are an illusion no amount of scientific data an help us get out of it because it can't free us form our own perceptions. If our perceptions are illusory then scinece is merely an illusion.

The only way out is philosophy. Now most of you will probably say "I don't worry about it." Of cousre, I don't either. that's the point. We take it for granted that life is real and we do not worry about it, not becasue science proves it, but because philosophical thinking shows us we don't have to worry about it.

Philosophy tells us we can take reality for granted as real becuase doing so works, since it allows us to navigate freely, and it is the success of our navigation in the world that enables to take reality for granted.

that's a philosophical solution not a scientific one! that means all the people squawking about "philosophical arguments are not good" just don't know what they are talking about. Because we have to have philosophical arguments to make scinece work.



(2) Science is a social construct.

Science is not cumulative progress its the turning over a ground due to the paradigm shift. Paradigms are models that we use to test reality. When there are anomalies we defend the model and absorb the anomalies into the paradigm. It' only when the paradigm absorbs more than it can that it breaks and shifts. A new paradigm means the fact of the old paradigm now become new anomalies under the new paradigm. This the work of Kuhn.

here's my page on Kuhn to explain it in greater detail.

http://www.doxa.ws/science/science2_kuhn.html


(3) The atheist fortress of fact is a philosophical position

The fortress of facts is the atheist ideology that many have been touting these past few days. It is the idea that "we have all these facts that scinece gives us and not one single fact supports God."

This position would be impossible without resorting to metaphysical argument.. In fact the position itself is not scinece it's philosophy.

Belief in God or disbelief is a question beyond the domain of scinece. it's not a scientific questing it's not science's business to tell us yea or nay on God.

For anyone to turn scinece into a weapon for atheism they have to put it into a philosophical framework. In fact the argument itself "philosophical arguments are no good" is a philosophical argument. To say "there is such thing as metaphysics" is an argument evoking metaphysical thinking.

Science is not about answering questions from beyond its domain, which is the physical world and nothing more.

This is indicative of a larger issue. One must go beyond science to do scinece. You can't fit data into an interpretive context without a philosophical view point. Just like any data will be part of the illusion if we make the assumption that reality might be an illusion, the only way to make an inebriation that rules out the possibility is make a philosophical interpretation.

Here's what I mean when I criticize the fortress of facts as "selective." They will only accept as scinece the things that rule out God belief. they will not accept anything that supports it. So that is a philosophical decision. You can't use science beyond science without placing it into a philosophical framework that augments it through philosophical understanding.

Philosophical is the language of belief. If talk about belief, that's the language you must speak.


I made this as a post on CARM here are just a few exchanges.

Originally Posted by David Johnson

If I want to understand anything about the Universe, planet or life there on I can only gain that knowledge by means of science.

Meta:

existentialism and phenomenology are much important means of understanding life. Science is the epitome of Metaphysics in the Heideggerian sense and thus it's a truncated view of reality.


Originally Posted by Electric Skeptic

Science is not any form of knowledge. It is a methodology. And it has repeatedly proven to be the best methodology for finding out about the universe.

Meta:

That's it. No "science is the only form of knowledge" - that's a strawman thrown out by theists.

no it hasn't scinece has never proven to be anything more than a way to understand one thing the Physical workings of the universe. There's more to the universe than the surface level of how the physical aspect function.

Science is not equipped to handle any of that, becuase it requires a philosophical framework.

the atheist fortress of fact is a philosophical framework and your argument that make here is a philosophical argument (it's a bad one but is one).