I stumbled across this old book review of Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark":

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1297

The author is Richard Lewontin (from wiki):

It's supposed to be a book review, but as you read it you'll find it sort of turns into a social commentary. I find that his social commentary is very honest and revealing about the pursuit of science, and I think it would be of benefit for all to read it. Here is an excerpt:

sounds like it would be a good read ... its too bad it costs money to read ... unless i'm missing the "Read for free" link.

I'm on campus right now, so we might have a subscription that I wasn't aware was necessary. Here's another link to the article:

http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20fil...tin_Review.htm

ah excellent, thanks.

Clearly, this is a non-sequitur. It's like saying that theists shouldn't teach the trinity because most modern theologists concentrate on things that are not about the trinity.

The other points are similarly flawed, I don't think his conclusion will hold. I'll read the whole thing in a bit.

what the hell is this guy talking about?

It's a mix - he has both very good stuff and complete nonsense*. It's mostly a good read though.

*seems like Aaron liked some of the nonsense bits so much as to quote them in bold

Why did you leave out this part of his statement?

(the part you quoted in the OP and then)... The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.

http://www.drjbloom.com/Public%20fil...tin_Review.htm

I've given the link to the entire article.

To reject the concept of a miracle a priori (which is what your bolded statement seems to be implying one should do) is an example of science being predisposed to a materialist philosophy, and says nothing about science.

Science cannot *IN PRINCIPLE* rule out the possibility of miracles using its own methodology. Rather, this is an *ASSUMPTION* that is imposed on the system of scientific thought. This does not make it true or false. It just puts the question outside the range of meaningful questions for the particular approach to knowledge.

I bolded the part you left out.

Do you believe in modern miracles like transubstantiation, or just the old ones? Or perhaps a more refined version like

"the bread and wine remained fully bread and fully wine while also being fully the body and blood of Jesus Christ"

or

"the body and blood of Jesus Christ are objectively present "in, with, and under the forms" of bread and wine"

Miracles are not uninteresting scientifically because one assumes that they can not happen, they are uninteresting for the the same reason that "something which someone thinks is caused by something else and/or that violates a principle we use" is uninteresting.

Thus it isn't a matter of "ruling anything out", it's a matter of demanding that stuff that is "ruled in" should be clearly defined in terms that can be translated into proper rigorous terms as pertaining to observability, precision, consistency and predictability.

"Miracle" doesn't really mean anything. Is it sunset? Act of god? Something inexplicable? Meeting the right girl? Showing that a Creator/Creation might not be necessary (leading scientific chain of thought up untill the early 1900s)?

I don't believe in transubstantiation.

Edit: For the sake of the discussion of "miracle" that follows, I would qualify this event (if it happened) to be a miracle. It's an event of a supernatural being superseding on the natural universe, changing one object into another in a way that is not consistent with a purely naturalistic understanding.

It depends on how you're characterizing the term. Eddi (for example) characterizes it as (something like) an event that violates our current understanding of the natural universe. In this understanding, something that was a miracle in the past can turn into not-a-miracle in the future. This causes a lot of confusion because it creates a time-dependent understanding of the term. There are other definitions and characterizations (like what you have presented) which are similarly flawed.

For this discussion, I would take the much more plain definition, which is a supernatural being (God) superseding upon the natural world. Under this definition, there is a role of agency that is not present in the preceding definitions, and requires the intervention of something from outside the natural world (ie, the physical universe is not a closed system).

It may deserve its own thread.

Do you believe that putting these pictures into your posts make them more interesting, more believable, or more anything? While I cannot prevent you from doing this, I personally find that it adds no substance and actually gets distracting because you're putting in stuff that is empty filler into your posts.

So as a matter of substance, I would ask that you stop doing this.

Edit: You might also want to consider not doing it because hotlinking is generally discouraged, and it looks like you're doing it a lot.

I like your bolded definition, since it's nicely measurable.

It is usually to make it more interesting.

I just noticed that you have been a member since 2002, but you don't have an avatar. Is it one of those "graven image" or "veneration of icon" prohibitions?

I strongly disagree, but whatever. As I said, I'm not trying to force you to change your posting habits.

Nah. I've just never cared enough to have one.

Thank you for sharing Aaron, this was an awesome read. I am actually going to pull a quote from this and start an off shoot thread on something that we have talked about before that I feel is not stressed enough around here.

Eh. It's true that some scientists take things too far, but these criticisms don't even apply to anyone with any basis in philosophy of science.

Regardless, what a scientist informally expresses as personal opinion has no bearing on science. This distinction isn't made as clearly as I'd like it to be, but it's still important.

Only if you have a way to measure the amount of stuff that you've measured to know that you've measured all of it.

More simply stated, how will you know when you've measured everything? Or if you don't posit that it's necessary to have measured everything, how will you know when you've measured 'enough' and measured it 'accurately enough' to know that you have accounted for all physical phenomena?

I suggest you re-think this a bit.

If you don't believe that personal philosophy is a major component of one's quest for knowledge (not just in science, but in almost every aspect of this pursuit), then I think you're wrong.

I don't care about "quest for knowledge." The conclusions that can be legitimately derived from research are extremely limited. What someone presents as the results of science and what someone presents as his or her opinion about the results of science are (or at least should be) very different things.

You should care because science is a game of people. Without people, it's not at all clear what it even means to "legitimately derive" anything from research (since people stand at the gate to determine what is and what is not legitimate). Somewhere along the line, people are involved, so what people think and believe matters.

It matters, but what people bring to the table and what they actually determine on the basis of the data are not the same. Or, shouldn't be.