The most enduring challenge to science has come not from religion, but philosophy. David Hume, an 18th-century Scottish philosopher, articulated what we now call “the problem of induction,” and it has wreaked epistemological havoc on the foundation of science for centuries.
Induction, for the purposes of this post, is a form of reasoning that makes inferences about what will happen from what has happened. Science relies heavily on induction in making generalizations and predictions. But Hume believes that we can reason absolutely nothing about the future from the past. To do so presupposes the uniformity of nature—that the future will resemble the past.
There is a temptation to respond that we know that the future will resemble the past, because past futures have resembled past pasts. This begs the question, however. It assumes the very thing it attempts to prove, and is thus circular.
Atheists need to understand the implications of Hume’s argument. Hume is not saying that we cannot know with a certainty that, for example, the sun will rise tomorrow. He instead says something far more radical: that we have no reason whatsoever to believe that the sun will rise tomorrow. The fact that the sun has risen every day of recorded human history is immaterial; again, the future need not resemble the past.
So are we atheists who trust science guilty of the same faith that we accuse religious people of having? In a later post, I’ll introduce a few possible solutions to the problem of induction. But I’d first like to hear your thoughts.
Knowledge is amoral but humans are immoral so the consequences of humans having more knowledge are catastrophic. But when I said it’s a “stain on the soul of science” I didn’t mean science was immoral. Science has no soul. We are the soul of science and that’s the problem.
Understanding religion to me is most about having a robust understanding of human psychology. Read Paul Tillich and study Zen. When you’re done let me know if you still feel like religion is evidence free conjecture.
I agree that religion is often harmful and disgusting. I’m not sure the cure for that is no religion though. The cure for it might be Bokononism or Church of Mike.
Realizing that Science requires a metaphysics does not say that there is a particular metaphysics. All the statement really says is that humanity should try to live humbly before a mystery.
… but humility is not a good quality in the court of Nietzsche .
If you get “humanity should try to live humbly before a mystery” from “science requires a metaphysics” then i’m all for it. Unfortunately I get foundational rationalism from it and the supposition that humans are rational and they hold beliefs in their heads when they do other things. Without any wiggle room for how humans really are (i.e. reducing humans to rationalistic machines). It also strikes me as the origin of some sort of dunderheaded apologetics.
On the metaphysics thing Nz is probably more humble than Hume (or at least clear that he values the realm of non-science):
vs Hume:
great post mike. i feel un-reason gets brushed off too easily on this blog.
He confuses possibility with probability. All we are saying with induction, is that when we repeatedly see something occur, we should take that as evidence, and weigh it appropriately when trying to determine the probability that it will happen again. It is entirely possible that the Sun will go supernova, extinguish itself, gravity will suddenly become weak and the earth will hurtle away, or a giant curtain will descend from the far reaches of outer space and block our view tomorrow of the sun. However, these things are increasingly less and less probable, and the evidence provided by induction is weighed rationally to help us determine that probability.
If he doesn’t think we should weigh it as evidence just because exceptions are “Possible”, and he wants to give that the same weight as that which is more “Probable”, I humbly suggest that he stop eating and breathing, since just because up to now those things have kept him alive there is no guarantee they will keep working that way…
It would appear the David has taken me up on my posthumous challenge to him, and it doesn’t appear to have worked out so well for him. My humble apologies to his heirs and descendants if my challenge from the future has caused him any ill effect or other inconvenience. I am of course entirely surprised that his family chose to bury him, instead of leaving him in the family home, in the event that his philosophizing about the unpredictability of the future based on the repeated observations of past events should have turned out to be correct, and he might even now be turning over in his grave. In any event, I wish to thank him for being a good sport about the entire affair, not holding a grudge, and being an all around great philosopher otherwise…
Purely as a matter of superstitious faith, seeing how terribly things went awry with David after my challenge, I have decided to continue eating and breathing myself as much as possible, not wishing to have a similar fate befall me. Of course I fully concede that there is no good reason for me to do this, and it’s probably just coincidence. Merely the human mind seeing a pattern where none is present, and as such it is nothing more than foolish superstition on my part, but just to be extra cautious and safe, I’ll turn the doorknob 3 times before leaving the room, not walk under any ladders, and continue to enjoy my dinner…
But whatever you do, don’t make the effort to actually go and read Hume. It would complicate things greatly!