Is science faith-based?

[kowalskil]

Science is not a doctrine, but a means of obtaining confirmatory or falsifying evidence to confirm or contra-indicate a hypothesis. The body of scientific knowledge morphs and alters over time as this evidence is amassed and analysed.

Religion is a one-size-fits-all ready-made set of beliefs that remains unaltered over centuries in the face of growing contra-evidence and must be accepted by its adherents wholesale. It cannot ever be confirmed or falsified because of this total disregard for evidence.

No, I don't read every scientific paper that comes out, and I wouldn't understand a lot of them if I did. Nonetheless, I am satisfied that the peer-review process means that somebody with a suitable educational background has read and understood how the evidence presented bears upon the hypothesis under consideration. I am therefore happy that a scientific theory (a hypothesis that has had confirmatory evidence accepted by peer-review) has been vetted and reviewed by a sensible process that I do understand.

This can in no wise be considered faith. If it is, it is the faith you have that the pilot of the aircraft in which you are flying has been through some kind of approved training. (I wouldn't board any plane if I thought that wasn't the case). But the pilot training programme is not pilotage.

Flying is to a pilot training programme what the body of scientifically-derived knowledge is to the scientific method. Science is not a set of beliefs at all, but a method for gathering knowledge. I am confident that that knowledge will change as new evidence is gathered, and the desire for discovering something new and previously unimagined is what gets many scientists up in the morning.

Religion says all the knowledge you need is already right here and no proof is necessary or indeed desirable. That's faith, and it's definitely not for me.

Yes, the term "faith" has more than only one meaning, at least in some languages.

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[Mijin]

For my mind, people concede too much in this kind of discussion.
They'll say that the only axioms that science relies on are that the universe is the product of simple mathematical laws, that complex phenomena can be described in terms of these simple laws, uniformitarianism etc.

But none of these things are strictly necessary for science to be useful. Arguably they are "nice to have" -- we can form useful models and conclusions more easily in our universe than otherwise would be the case, because so far our universe has conformed to all these statements. But you can take any one of them away and still do science.

So what does science actually rely on? I think the same thing as all other reasoning; deductive and inductive logic.

 

[kowalskil]

For my mind, people concede too much in this kind of discussion.
They'll say that the only axioms that science relies on are that the universe is the product of simple mathematical laws, that complex phenomena can be described in terms of these simple laws, uniformitarianism etc.

But none of these things are strictly necessary for science to be useful. Arguably they are "nice to have" -- we can form useful models and conclusions more easily in our universe than otherwise would be the case, because so far our universe has conformed to all these statements. But you can take any one of them away and still do science.

So what does science actually rely on? I think the same thing as all other reasoning; deductive and inductive logic.

Science, in the final analysis, relies on verifiable facts. Mathematics, on the other hand relies, in the final analysis, on axioms.
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[SkeptimusPrime]

The argument used by the religious (at least the ones who make a cogent argument) is to say that one has to accept that empirical thinking is valid without any proof, since proof would necessarily rely on empirical thinking and would therefore be circular.

The argument is therefore that we accept methodological naturalism in a sort of faith based way.

I think the primary failure here is a sort of confusion about degrees of certainty, as if because we cannot be 100% sure of empiricism means that believing in it puts you on equal footing with people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old because a book said so.

Just because neither claim can be demonstrated as true with 100% certainty doesn't mean it is equally reasonable to believe either one.

 

[Bill Thompson 75]

Science, in the final analysis, relies on verifiable facts. Mathematics, on the other hand relies, in the final analysis, on axioms.
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Facts don't need to be verified, if they are facts.
Science relies on a method of observation.

 

[Bill Thompson 75]

The argument used by the religious (at least the ones who make a cogent argument) is to say that one has to accept that empirical thinking is valid without any proof, since proof would necessarily rely on empirical thinking and would therefore be circular.

The argument is therefore that we accept methodological naturalism in a sort of faith based way.

I think the primary failure here is a sort of confusion about degrees of certainty, as if because we cannot be 100% sure of empiricism means that believing in it puts you on equal footing with people who believe the earth is 6,000 years old because a book said so.

Just because neither claim can be demonstrated as true with 100% certainty doesn't mean it is equally reasonable to believe either one.

This is the crux of the issue, that one requires more faith than the other.

 

[farnarkle]

Some arguments also state that "science is just a theory". But, if you look into it, a serious amount of work and effort goes into something before it becomes a theory. You can't just make something up and say it is your theory. Theories have to be proven. You can have a hypothesis, but if your research and experimentation prove your hypothesis wrong, then the theory disappears with it.

I get really steamed up when I hear the "science is just a theory" line. I usually go into a rant and people stop talking to me.

 

[Kumar]

Faith/Placebo effect should also be sciene based bringing reward expectation effect. Moreover because science is still not yet absolute and final, who know what is truth on ultimate.

 

[eerok]

Faith/Placebo effect should also be sciene based bringing reward expectation effect. Moreover because science is still not yet absolute and final, who know what is truth on ultimate.

Absolute, final, truth, and ultimate describe things that are antithetical to science. If you want all that stuff, you have to follow tradition and invent it yourself.

 

[QuestioningAnswers]

Science is based on the hypothesis that the universe is orderly. That hypothesis is confirmed by the success of well-ordered scientific models. So it is an experimentally confirmed confidence, or "faith", distinct from and much stronger than the unquestioning faith in the authority of the Bible which Einstein abandoned as a child.

No kidding. It's still faith. Any scientist worth his salt should recognize this. The quality of the faith compared to others, however, isn't something that can be determined at this time considering the universe is possibly subjective.

Einstein's sayings, strewn haphazard about the net, are playfully terse and poetic, and without context easily misconstrued. I'm not sure the source of this quote (I have seen it attributed to the 18th century British chemist Humphry Davy, though as far as I can tell, this is erroneous), but assuming it is his, in the full context of his writings, he's clearly not saying that Science is based in the same sort of faith in authority that Religion is, and which Einstein explicitly rejected. It is based in careful observation, speculation refined by experiment, which inspired in Einstein a lifelong awe at the grand order it reveals. If one goal of religion is to reveal the universe and our place in it, then, in this poetic sense, science is true "religion", and scientists are truly "religious", because their understanding of and respect for the universe surpasses traditional, authority-based religion, would seem to have been Einstein's intent. However, I would be interested to see the quote in full context.

All Einstein was saying is that scientists are truly religious because they must have faith in the orderliness of the universe. If the universe isn't orderly, if the universe is actually subjective, his scientific faith would be misplaced.

Planck said something similar:

"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with."
- Max Planck

 

[blobru]

Holy expiry date, Batman! (meh, less than two years...)

No kidding. It's still faith.

Well... but just saying it pointblank like that confuses the issue. This thread has been about trying to clear up the confusion by separating the different meanings “faith” has.

As we've seen, “faith” can mean belief supported by evidence. Pertaining to science, there is massive evidential support for the claim that the universe is orderly enough that it can be usefully analyzed and many of its phenomena predicted. So it makes sense to have faith (so defined) in the claim on which the scientific method is based.

However, “faith” can also mean belief without evidence, or even contrary to evidence. That's how it's often used in religion. A religion may teach followers to have faith in the existence of karma, or an eternal soul, or a Day of Judgment, etc., for which there is no rigorous evidence at all, based simply on a pronouncement by a religious authority. Obviously, this is a very different sort of “faith” from the one in the previous paragraph: in fact, in terms of how they're supported, they're completely opposite.

So it's important we keep the two sorts of faith separate. Does science necessitate “faith” in the first sense: belief supported by evidence? Of course; that's the whole point of evidence and doing science. Does science necessitate “faith” in the second sense: belief without or contrary to evidence? No – that's religious faith.

Any scientist worth his salt should recognize this. The quality of the faith compared to others, however, isn't something that can be determined at this time considering the universe is possibly subjective.

(Not quite sure what's meant by “subjective”: in what follows, it's a synonym for “isn't orderly”, instead of the usual “existing in the mind”; subject to some mind's whim and therefore not orderly seems the likeliest connection, so I'll go with that.) In any event, the universe's being possibly “subjective” doesn't negate our experience that the universe until now has been sufficiently well-ordered to be profitably analyzed, and is no reason not to continue with the analysis (which is science). It's enough that it might continue (hypothetically); one need not have complete confidence (unattainably absolute faith) that it will.

All Einstein was saying is that scientists are truly religious because they must have faith in the orderliness of the universe. If the universe isn't orderly, if the universe is actually subjective, his scientific faith would be misplaced.

Planck said something similar:

"Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with."
- Max Planck

Thanks for the quotes; in the matter of faith and science, Einstein and Planck are really interesting cases. Because throughout their careers, both would profess an a priori (prior to observation) faith in a rationally-ordered universe: revealing the “mind of God”, as it used to be called. Thus both remained deeply opposed to what seemed to them the unthinkably irrational – statistical, entangled, uncertain, non-local, non-determinist, acausal, &c – order suggested by quantum mechanics: “that God plays dice with the universe” as Einstein famously objected (or “spooky action at a distance”, in reference to entanglement and non-locality). This becomes one of the great ironies in science history: on account of their faith in a more 'rational' physics, the two scientists whose discoveries most inspired quantum mechanics were unable to bring themselves to accept its implications. Well, as history has shown, so much the worse for their faith; and for faith in general, when it clashes with scientific observation. (Of course any scientist is free to believe whatever she wants to based on intuition or what have you; the point is that faith of this sort isn't essential to science; what's more, as in the case of Planck's and Einstein's difficulties with quantum mechanics, it's often an obstacle.)*

*To be fair, especially in Einstein's case, faith in a more rational order did generate some marvelous discussion - the Schrodinger's cat paradox an offshoot - and it's still possible that a version of quantum mechanics more in keeping with Einstein's and Planck's conservative view of physics may turn out to be true; however, there's no reason to assume it must be true, as their faith seemed to imply. Quantum mechanics is so weird that many scientists nowadays eschew any interpretation of it, preferring to just “shut up and calculate”.

 

[kowalskil]

Yes, both Einstein nor Plank had in mind "faith in general." The phrase "faith in God," does not appear in these two quotations.

 

[Eski]

There is, in a sense, another twist to this. If one accepts the idea that "Existence" is probably something which will never be understood, and somehow, match that to some sort of "Primary Intelligence," one can, sort of, link a faith to science.

The following may be somewhat pertinent to the above idea. In the last eight years, there has arisen on the Internet, a "Framework for the Physical Sciences," which has, in its development gone through a couple of stages, first coming to light on Helium.com as "Motion in a matrix..." and then, later as a Google Group, "Oscillator/Substance Theory."
in that last incarnation, the approach summarzes something like this:" If we accept the primise of all of existence being within a substrate of unknown extent and undefined basic unit, which has the characteristics of a substance at its triple point, acting as a liquid which can act as a gas or solid with slight changes of pressure, and which is organized into/and-or organized by oscillators, it appears that virtually all of chemistry and physics can be explained in terms of motions and pressure differentials within this 'substance.'"

The developers of this approach are asking us to essentially take on faith, the fact of existence and, apparently also, a couple of other factors. The idea that "the only thing constant is change;" and, also, the idea that that change will be toward a balance. The "substance of existence," will always be clinging near to its "triple point." The implications, also, are that even our Universe, as vast as it seems to us, must be a rather trivial "bubble," in comparison to "all of the rest."


Of course, the theory runs to many pages, but does an interesting coverage in such a way as much of the "incomprehensibility" disappears. Einstein's Space-Time work can be seen to correspond quite closely with the ideas of a Substance, but without the oscillators. Quantum Mechanics, at the other extreme, seems to somewhat describe the "outer workings" of an oscillator, based on the Hydrogen atom; but. without the "inner half" and without the "substance."

That is, the O/S approach suggests that the reason that the two well-known models are somewhat incompatible is that both are partials.


However, this has strayed away from the "Faith" based approach question. Science has to be based, at least to some degree in faith in something. The above apprach is based in faith in some sort of basic underlying unity.

However, there is always a caveat about "Faith. Complete faith in the correctness of ones ideas or results is contrary to a true scietific attitude. Any scientist should always have at least a tiny bit of doubt about her/his own work and the pronouncements of others in order to be open to change.

In my own opinion, a person who holds to
"Fundamentalist" beliefs, in any Religion, and, at the same time claims to be a "True Scietist" is kidding themselves.

 

[inflector]

A corrollary question is:

Does Science as practiced by those who deny the possibility of a scientific basis for religious beliefs meet the standards of Science?

 

[inflector]

And a second corrollary:

Does Science as a discipline tolerate Dogma? If so, why? Does it further the objective filtration of hypothesis and the development of novel alternate hypotheses?

 

[Musibrique]

Some arguments also state that "science is just a theory". But, if you look into it, a serious amount of work and effort goes into something before it becomes a theory. You can't just make something up and say it is your theory. Theories have to be proven. You can have a hypothesis, but if your research and experimentation prove your hypothesis wrong, then the theory disappears with it.

I get really steamed up when I hear the "science is just a theory" line. I usually go into a rant and people stop talking to me.

I beg to differ, farnarke. Basically, a scientific theory is a hypothesis that has been well-established and widely supported by many independent, scientific experiments. A scientific theory never gets to be proven for a number of reasons: 1) there is always the possibility (regardless how well it is supported) of the theory being either rejected or modified based on new empirical observations/evidence. 2) science is completely tentative, meaning that what science knows today might be either rejected or modified tomorrow. This is clearly self-evident if you look at the history of science.

There are two elements that make up science: testability and falsifiability. If a hypothesis is not testable nor falsifiable, it's not science.

 

[smartcooky]

Science is not based on faith, at the highest level, but it does require a certain amount of faith when it comes to the "end user".

Let me explain

Being a person who is fundamentally interested in space science, astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology, I am an avid watcher of science documentaries, for example, "Stephen Hawking's Universe".

This program tries to describe such things as string theory, membranes, multiverses, supergravity, dark matter and dark energy. The number of people, who truly, fully understand these theories would be very few. The mathematics required to prove the existence of an eleventh dimension would probably fill several chalkboards. I can barely comprehend the existence of a fourth dimension much less visualise where or what it might be, and as for the eleventh dimension and its chalkboards of mathematics, I would struggle to follow much beyond the top left corner of the first board.

I have no way to "prove" whether what they say is true or not. I trust their reputations sufficiently to believe that they are not trying to deceive me...

I take what these scientists say, on faith.

 

[kowalskil]

Science is not based on faith, at the highest level, but it does require a certain amount of faith when it comes to the "end user".

Not only the end user. Having a PhD in nuclear physics does not help me to understand topics like string theory. I have no choice but to believe (or not) the recognized authorities.

 

[smartcooky]

Not only the end user. Having a PhD in nuclear physics does not help me to understand topics like string theory. I have no choice but to believe (or not) the recognized authorities.

Yep. I think the eminent Austrian biochemist Erwin Chargaff said it best....

"Outside his own ever-narrowing field of specialization, a scientist is a layman!"

 

[eerok]

In the case where the layman defers to the expert, why can't we just call that deference instead of faith?

In the case where we don't bother to add up the receipt at the grocery check-out for ourselves, should we conclude that math is faith-based?

I keep saying that science is antithetical to faith, and all I see in contradiction to this fact is sloppy terminology.