Making Stuff Up
Posted By Caulimovirus on March 2, 2010
.: Via Jeffrey Shallit I learned of this remarkably fatuous essay in the New English Review called “The Progressive Diminishment of Man”:
The high priests of scientism, from Stephen Hawking to Richard Dawkins, argue that given enough time, science will eventually answer all questions, and implied is the idea that science, and science alone, contains all truth. However, upon examination, we find great areas where science has already abdicated.
.: It’s a cheap trick, but I’m going to employ it anyway. Let us replace all instances of the word “science” with the rather clunky but no less accurate phrase “testing our assumptions, carefully recording observations, and not simply making stuff up”:
The high priests of scientism, from Stephen Hawking to Richard Dawkins, argue that given enough time, testing our assumptions, carefully recording observations, and not simply making stuff up will eventually answer all questions, and implied is the idea that testing our assumptions, carefully recording observations, and not simply making stuff up, and testing our assumptions, carefully recording observations, and not simply making stuff up alone, contains all truth. However, upon examination, we find great areas where testing our assumptions, carefully recording observations, and not simply making stuff up has already abdicated.
.: I do this every time I see someone bemoan the application of science’s methods to a subject they happen to fancy because the subtext seems to always scream, “We used to be able to make stuff up and get away with it, but now those mean old scientists keep asking us for reasons and evidence and unambiguous, coherent definitions to support and justify our positions!”
.: Also, this is just silliness:
Language alone, with its well neigh infinite complexity, were it genetically based, would logically require an immense amount of genetic space. And if language cannot be found in our genes, how could art or culture be found there?
.: We don’t even have to escape the realm of language to reveal how absurd this objection really is. If language is as neigh complex as the author makes it out to be, then how can it possibly be constructed from an alphabet of only twenty six letters? (On second thought, this illustration might not adequately address her objection, if only because I have no idea what the hell she means by “immense amount of genetic space”.)
Seems like you’re not reading her essay very well. If you attribute the statement about “Language alone, with its well neigh infinite complexity…” to her literally, then you seem to miss the point that this is a literalist interpretation of memetics, not a quite fair one, but yet it’s taking out the consequences of it.
The boiled-down philosophical question posed is whether there are topical areas into which science will be unable to expand, or whether such areas are nonexistent. I leave the question open, but my preliminary opinion is that there are such areas for tailbiter relations where measurement and measured objects affect one-another too much to make measurements meaningful (cf. f.ex. Heisenbergs uncertainty principle). Even though social science use methods outside the simplistic measurement/measured value scheme, f.ex. the high criticism and hermeneutics borrowed from Christianity, I believe that ultimately such tailbiter relations makes the size of the science unexpandability areas very large. That in opposition to the pretty obsolete positivism claiming a zero sized one.
There are of course topical areas into which science will be unable to expand, and it is trivial to come up with them: the mating and migratory habits of the Rufingible Bird, for instance. Science can’t say anything about the Rufingible Bird because I just made it up. The point is not where science draws the line — the point is that other methods have no justifiable claim to take over where science has stopped. It’ll do us no good for a theologian to claim that of course the Rufingible Bird migrates to Paraguay every vernal equinox — how do they know that? Why should we believe them? They’re just making stuff up, aren’t they?
This post borders on 100% true, and I enjoyed your cheap trick quite a lot. I only hope that you intended to include economics in your list of sciences.