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Practical Objectivity: Keeping Natural ScienceNaturalAlan G. PadgettLuther Seminary, apadgett@luthersem.edu

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Recommended CitationPadgett, Alan G., "Practical Objectivity: Keeping Natural Science Natural" (2012). Faculty Publications. 309.https://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/faculty_articles/309Published CitationPadgett, Alan G. “Practical Objectivity: Keeping Natural Science Natural.” In The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity,edited by J. B. Stump, 93–102. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

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9

Practical Objectivity Keeping Natural Science Natural

ALAN G. PADGETT

Should natural science go natural (so to speak) or is there room in a properly natural science

for kinds of explanation other than natural ones? Is there room in a properly natural science for appeal to intelligent agency, for example?' This is the key question of our chapter,

and it will take us some way into the philosophy of science and the relationship between science and Christian faith. I will argue that the natural sciences should stay natural, but this

is a contingent and practical conclusion. We are neither putting forward some kind of essen­tial and necessary definition, nor creating a clear and distinct "line of demarcation" that sepa­rates science from all other kinds of human knowing. Rather, I will argue that like all academic disciplines, the natural sciences embody a human, traditional, and communal form of inquiry. Because of the importance of their traditional values, practices, methods, and explanatory focus - which have pushed back the darkness for centuries and illuminated pow­erfully the nature of nature - the natural sciences should keep to their proven methods unless

and until a very significant and powerful combination of evidence and reason forces a major change. We might say that by long practice and tradition, the natural sciences have a "nature­

bias" which has proved highly successful in yielding objective knowledge about natural things. In this chapter I will introduce the notion of "practical objectivity" and a natural explanatory focus, setting these practical, traditional, and contingent concerns between advocates of

methodological naturalism in natural science, and those who press for microdesign theory

in biology ("intelligent design"). As we examine this intersection of ideas, other topics will have to be briefly introduced,

but the focus of our chapter will remain upon the question we opened with: should natural science stay natural?

Science and Rationality as Human Practices

Philosophy of science in the twenty-first century has been deeply influenced by moves in the mid-twentieth century which connected the logic of science more closely to the actual

Tl,e Blackwell Companion to Scieiicf and Christianity, First Edition. Edited by J. B. Stump and Alan G. Padgett.

© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

94 ALAN G. PADGETT

practices of science: to its history, community, and humanity. Pierre Duhem (1954 [1906)) and the later Wittgenstein (1955) were particularly influential in this move, especially as Wittgen­stein's insights were adapted and developed by N. R. Hanson (1958), and most famously by Thomas Kuhn (1962). A key element of this perspective in the history and philosophy of science is that sciences are seen as practical, human activities with an associated rationality or methodology which is grounded in a particular research program (Lakatos) or paradigm (Kuhn). Such a philosophy of science moves beyond a purely logical analysis of language, a la Wittgenstein in the Tractatus (Wittgenstein 1922), to seeing science and its rationality as embedded in a human community with a specific, traditional methodology and set of epis­temic values which guide its quest for objective knowledge (i.e., knowledge of the object it studies). For example, in developing his own form of "post-critical philosophy" the scientist­philosopher Michael Polanyi argued that scientific knowledge is "personal knowledge" but with a universal, objective intent (Polanyi 1958, 396).

But since a science is a human practice, with its own epistemological values and methods which are contingently constructed, what about objectivity? Given this view of science as a fully human activity, can science be truly objective? There has been a massive debate on this topic by many important philosophers in the last century. Any attempt to summarize this debate would take us far off our current course and purpose. While no consensus has emerged in the history and philosophy of science concerning these important questions, a few broadly received principles will be all we need for our purposes here (see further Padgett 2003).

The notion of a value-free science has largely been replaced by a greater appreciation for the fact that all the academic disciplines or sciences are in fact human practices which take place within established traditions of inquiry (Lakatos and Musgrave 1978; MacIntyre 2006, 1.3-23). To learn a natural or human science is not simply to be trained in pure a priori logical reasoning or in universal axiomatic systems of deductive truth, but is closer to being appren­ticed into a valuable skill which requires mentoring into a community of experts, a way of thinking, an angle of vision, and a specific labor. A student of any specialized science is thus inducted into a community of truth-seeking fellow scientists, whose reasoning is shaped by that tradition of inquiry. No science is without presuppositions and important values that shape its methodology, or if you like, its rationality (McMullin 1982). The epistemological values which are embedded in the contingent, historical, and humanly constructed sciences (academic disciplines) are not pure noetic truths - at least, most of them are not - yet with successful and fruitful sciences they should be given prima facie epistemic warrant unless there is some reason to doubt them. So the specific sciences are best understood as using both formal and informal logics.

It was in proposing a solution to Hume's famous skeptical argument against induction that the following principles came to be important in thinking about the rationality of science, and especially informal reasoning. Following Thomas Reid's response to Hume, I conclude that the principles of informal logic are fallible and open to revision; based upon a tradition of reasoning; multiform and diverse, and applied somewhat differently in different sciences and other academic disciplines (Padgett 2003, 167-194). What counts as a beautiful solution in mathematics is one guide to a good answer to a problem, yet what counts as a beautiful solution in chemistry is quite different. In both a kind of rational elegance is seen as a kind of guide to a good answer, but what counts as elegant in these disciplines is distinct. The importance of these broad conclusions about informal reasoning will soon become apparent as we continue our discussion of natural science.

It turns out, therefore, that the nineteenth-century dream of a pure logical rationality, a scientific thinking that was value-free and based upon reason and evidence alone, has been

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PRACTICAL OBJECTIVITY 95

overturned. There is no "view from nowhere" for a genuinely human epistemology (Nagel 1986). While there is thus no perfectly neutral and value-free rationality, the alternative is not the oft-feared relativism of "anything goes." Rather, a modest objectivity which sees objective truth of a certain kind as a communal goal and a practice within a tradition of inquiry, and thus engages in careful and rigorous attention to the object of study, is a reasonable and appro­priate expectation in the natural sciences. Let us call this a "practical objectivity." As opposed to the dream of a value-free and purely logical science, this kind of objectivity is a normal part of the sciences, and does not fall into the troubles that the earlier Enlightenment exag­geration of rationality in science did (and still does). Even though the sciences represent value-laden methodologies, because of the long history of success in gaining truth about their objects of study, the values, methods, and practices embedded in scientific communities nevertheless warrant our epistemological respect.

Epistemological respect is a form of rational trust. While the principles of reason used in a particular and mature science are not absolute, a priori truths, we make a mistake in doubt­ing them unless there are good reasons to do so. What is more, the smart thing to do is adopt them when investigating their area of expertise, unless significant reasons cause us to doubt one specific principle or its proper application. This general principle applies to the case at hand: should we doubt the nature-bias of the natural sciences today?

Practical Objectivity and Explanatory Focus

So what is practical about objectivity, and what does that have to do with scientific reasoning? What I am calling practical objectivity is one of those contingent values found in the tradition of any robust natural science. The sciences arose historically as ways of seeking knowledge about the world, and specialized as their range of interest grew more focused (among many sources, see Lindberg 1992; Butterfield 1953). Objectivity in science is "practical" in that it seeks objective knowledge of the things being studied. One of the goals of a science is to discover truth about some object, some element of the world. For example, economics studies monetary systems, while chemistry studies molecules (among other things). The practical objectivity of chemistry, therefore, just is the set of values, practices, and beliefs which the scientists learn in order to be good chemists, and thus to discover new things or criticize received theories about the structure and makeup of physical elements and their reactions.

In his In Defense of Objectivity, the philosopher Andrew Collier sets forth three definitions of objectivity. The first sense is "what is true independently of any subject judging it to be true" (Collier 2003, 134). The second sense is that in which human judgments are said to be objective, that is, the knowing subject is causally open to the influence of the object in making a truth claim or judgment (135). But the third sense is that of a "human attitude," in which one is trying to make one's beliefs and values objectively true in the second sense of the word. It is this third sense, objectivity as a human attitude or goal, which we can expand into the idea of a practical objectivity (137). And for the sciences, what we need to notice is that we are not talking about the practical objectivity of a single knower, but of a truth­seeking community and tradition.

The first aspect of keeping natural sciences natural, then, is not very controversial. In its practices and values, a natural science seeks objective knowledge about natural objects, their structure, powers, and interactions. While economics is a science, therefore, it is not a natural

96 ALAN G. PADGETT

science, because financial systems are human creations and involve the study of human socie­ties - thus economics is a social or human science. Geology, on the other hand, is a natural science which studies the earth.

Somewhat more controversial is the claim that a natural science should explain things and events using natural explanations. Let us call the type of explanations used in any academic discipline its "explanatory focus." Mature and successful sciences (and similar academic, explanatory disciplines) explain things and events using standard, accepted models and pat­terns of explanation which have proved successful in the past. In mathematics, for example, the truth of a formula can be proved using the explanatory focus of that discipline, namely, mathematical proof. If I want to know not only if but why a right triangle can never be equi­lateral, a geometrical proof of this can be given. This truth about the right triangle can be explained using the explanatory focus of geometry, as this has developed in the history of mathematics. When we turn to natural sciences, there exists a long tradition in which the explanatory focus of a natural science like astronomy limits itself to natural explanations. In other words, the explanatory focus of the natural sciences upon natural explanations is also part of their practical objectivity. Human purposeful activity, of course, can and does affect the outcome of an experiment in astronomy or any natural science - but this invalidates the results. The data are then considered "corrupt." The idea in the natural sciences seems to be to understand how things work in the natural world by themselves, so to speak, without human interference. This second part of keeping natural science natural is a bit more con­troversial. To see why we need to briefly discuss "methodological naturalism" and "intelligent design."

Methodological Naturalism and Informal Reasoning

What we have been calling the nature-bias and practical objectivity of the natural sciences is generally called today "methodological naturalism." The ideas are somewhat similar, but the terminology is quite different. I find that both defenders and critics of so-called "methodologi­cal naturalism" are often led astray by their terminology. The debate all too easily switches from philosophy of science to full-blown philosophical naturalism. The term itself is objec­tionable. The nature-bias of the natural sciences is best left completely separate from any notion of "naturalism." It seems that the first published use of this phrase in the sense we are discussing was by the philosopher Paul de Vries, in an article entitled "Naturalism in the Natural Sciences" (deVries 1986). Even though deVries does distinguish between two types of naturalism (methodological and full-blown philosophical), the main problem is with calling the nature-bias of natural science an "ism" as if it were some version of naturalism - which it is not. The practical nature-bias of the natural sciences which we have been discuss­ing in this chapter has nothing in fact to do with a full-blown ontology as a philosophicalworldview. The discussion of this term since then shows that it is all too easy to turn "meth­odological naturalism" into some kind of worldview, or to think that it is a strict and delimit­ing methodology of some kind (Plantinga 1996). Both of these misunderstand what is nomore than a contingent tradition and rational bias, rather than a "methodology" in any propersense of the word. It is just too easy to think of methodological naturalism as simply actingin the practice of science as if naturalism (full-blown) were true: a highly dubious way ofdescribing the practical objectivity of the natural sciences. Because of the serious confusions

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and problems with this proposed terminology from deVries in 1986, I suggest we eliminate the term, while keeping the practical observation of how natural sciences are in fact practiced, including the tradition of nature-bias. Like any tradition, it is in fact open to revision in the light of new evidence. And this point leads to a consideration of the so-called "intelligent design" proposal.

What we have called an explanatory focus and a practical objectivity are key elements in the traditions of inquiry that we call "scientific," or indeed in any of the academic disciplines. What is more, as we argued previously the natural sciences use a great deal of informal logic

in going about the testing of theories and models, and in coming up with new ones. Both of these points will be important in considering the recent debate about intelligent design.

Despite the attempt of Karl Popper to develop a logic of scientific discovery that avoided informal reasoning (he accepted Hume's skepticism regarding the problem of induction), I find the best way forward is simply to reject Hume's rejection. Popper's philosophy of science, based upon deductive logic, is not so much false as it is limited or incomplete, just because informal thinking is so much a part of scientific reasoning from the evidence. As noted above, in defending the rationality of informal reasoning, I concluded that the principles of informal logic are fallible and open to revision, based upon a tradition of reasoning, multiform and diverse, and applied differently in different sciences and other academic disciplines. Thus this set of diverse principles must be rigorously distinguished from the system of formal and symbolic logic which has been so brilliantly developed since the nineteenth century. Once we make clear such a distinction, the so-called "problem" of induction dissipates, since the con­clusion of an informal argument simply cannot be logically certain or necessary (and this conclusion is logically necessary!). Informal reasoning is more open than formal logic, and involves personal judgment, as well as commonly accepted principles, procedures, and evi­dence. Thus room exists for the deepest values and commitments of an individual researcher to shape and be shaped by the more focused and narrow discoveries and values of her par­ticular expertise. This final point cannot be emphasized enough in the context of our present question, where issues of faith, reason, values, and rationality loom large. Sure, no discipline as a whole will share all the values of a particular scholar, but there is room for the larger worldview of a particular scholar to influence the way those methods and rationalities are used in the service of science. There is room in the open practice of scientific reasoning for our personal perspectives and presuppositions to rationally influence informal scientific think­ingfor the individual scientist. This is what Robert J. Russell and I mean, in part, by the "mutu­ality" of theology and science (Padgett 2003; Russell 2008). Larger commitments and accepted truths are bound to influence the rational investigator at the boundaries and edges of their scientific pursuits, just because a rational person will allow other truths to influence things like theory choice among otherwise equally good theories (equally good on the evidence at hand, that is).

This does not mean that our worldviews should overwhelm the evidence. Of course more basic and central epistemological values (like fit with data or coherence) can and should over­rule such background commitments when there is a clearly demonstrable truth or best theory to be had - but at the growing edges of a science (among other places) such demonstrable truth is usually not available. Indeed, the very fact that the scientific discipline is "growing" in that area just means that new theories are open for consideration. The scientist is, in such situations, perfectly rational in allowing her worldview to influence areas where one looks for new discoveries, or one's best hunch as to which theory among currently disputed ones may win out over the long run.

98 ALAN G. PADGETT

To see this clearly it is important to make two distinctions. First we have to distinguish between the rational commitments and methods of a whole tradition and community, and the necessarily larger set of beliefs, values, and knowledge of individual experts in that science. This is simply the difference between a science and a scientist. In other words, we have to distin­guish between the individual scientist and the larger community of scholars, classic texts, accepted paradigms, and practices which make up the specific science as a whole. Second, we have to distinguish between two ways in which larger truths and values from the indi­vidual's worldview may influence their scientific activity: implicitly as a background to the informal logic of their specific science; or explicitly, when researchers add their own personal commitments to the content of their scientific arguments, explanations, and publications. The importance of keeping these distinctions clear will soon become apparent in our discus­sion of intelligent design.

Microdesign and Macrodesign in Science

In the light of the perspective on natural scientific reasoning we have been tracing in brief compass, we are now ready to consider the case of the intelligent design debates. Since the early 1990s a small band of scholars has been seeking to insert the hypothesis of "intelligent design" into the natural sciences, especially biology (Forrest and Gross 2004). Now there is nothing unscientific in principle about appeal to the action of intelligent agents as an explana­tion of phenomena. Perfectly scientific disciplines like economics and linguistics do so all the time, and what counts as good evidence for design or purpose can be rationally delineated within specific sciences (Dembski 1998). Yet these are human or social sciences where appeal to intelligent agency is at the center of their tradition of inquiry and practical objectivity. The same could be said for the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence like the SETI project: the activities of intelligent beings are a core part of the explanatory focus and tradition of inquiry. What has been controversial is the insertion of intelligent design explanations in the natural

sciences, and especially biology. Here proponents of intelligent design have run up against the tradition of nature-bias in what we label natural science, a tradition with a long history of success.

It is important at this point to distinguish between two notions of "design" when it comes to the universe. I have called these "macrodesign" and "microdesign" (Padgett 2008). For millennia in Western culture, going back to Plato and Aristotle, natural philosophers and scientists have simply assumed as obvious the notion that the whole universe was designed by an intelligent God. The scientific assumption that nature has an order or structure which is rational, mathematical, and can be discovered by empirical inquiry was a key element in the development of natural philosophy and early modern science. I call this scientific presup­position "macrodesign." Yet the natural philosophers did not appeal to God's action in explaining events and things within the created world - such an appeal would have been in effect to move from natural philosophy to theology. Instead, natural philosophers like Roger Bacon studied what was called "secondary causes" within the created world, while accepting all the time the theological presupposition that God created and sustained all things, and acts in the world. Thus macrodesign was an assumption which stimulated scientific research without prejudice as to which events were caused by God: all things and events owed their ultimate existence and powers to God, yet this theological fact was not accepted as a natural philosophical explanation of specific things and events within creation. The point here

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PRACTICAL OBJECTIVITY 99

is not whether God does in fact act in new and surprising ways in history and nature: God's action was accepted. The point was whether appeal to God's intelligent agency was proper in natural philosophy.

The new innovation of intelligent design arose in the late 1980s and 1990s as a response to what its proposers thought was the inherent philosophical naturalism of Darwinian expla­nations. In effect, they were calling into question the late medieval division of labor in uni­versities between natural philosophy and theology. They wanted to appeal to an unnamed "intelligent designer" to explain within the natural sciences the design-like character of biologi­cal phenomena, especially cellular biology. This move I label "microdesign" to distinguish it from the traditional macrodesign assumption in the history of natural science in the West. Could an explanation be natural-scientific if it appealed to the actions of an intelligent being? The being in question would not have to be God (but it is hard to imagine just who else would fit the bill here), the question was simply one of what "counts" as genuine natural scientific explanation.

In answering this question, we should first recall the difference between an assumption acting upon the individual scientist, and an assumption, method, or epistemic values being common to a community of inquiry that makes up a specific scientific tradition. Second, recall the difference between an idea being part of the implicit background of the thinking of an individual and that idea being cited explicitly in the proposed scientific explanation itself. On the basis of scientific practice and reasoning, there should be no objection to the individual scientist making use of her larger worldview (Christian or otherwise) in thinking hard about scientific issues, or in explaining the meaning of scientific discoveries to a larger audience. Of course in the end new theories and discoveries will have to be justified according to the accepted standards of the mature science concerned, but the point remains that worldviews influence questions, hunches, areas of research, scientific practice, and informal reasoning in science. To take one of many examples from the history of science, Geoffrey Cantor has shown that not only were Quakers, because of their distinctive theology and spirituality, more likely to be involved in science than other religious groups, they were attracted particularly to the empirical, observational sciences (Cantor 2005). Turning to matters of interpretation of scientific discoveries, it is quite obvious that larger values, assumptions, and insights well beyond science are used to illustrate and explain science to a larger intellectual audience. So in both the rational assumptions used by the sciences and in the principles of meaning and interpretation used in hermeneutics, reason must go beyond the natural sciences themselves. Put another way, this is the simple point that thinking about science requires us to go beyond science. Informal reasoning draws upon more than rational principles and evidence alone, as does the process of interpretation. There is nothing wrong with a religiously serious scientist thinking hard about her science in ways that draw upon her religious faith. The community of scientists is another thing. The principles, texts, discoveries, evidence, and procedures of any specific science (say, geology) do not draw upon any particular religious perspective. Individuals may, and groups within geology may - but not the whole community. So now we have to say two things that are in tension with each other, and both sides of this tension are equally important. First, from the perspective of the individual person of faith, no human activity or set of ideas is religiously neutral. This includes the practice and discoveries of science. The serious spiritual intellectual will want to see all of life, all human and created things (including science!), from the point of view of faith. This is of course as it should be. Second, the whole community of geologists (for example) is not committed to any one reli­gious or non-religious worldview. The practical objectivity and explanatory focus of geology can proceed with quality scientific reasoning and results without necessarily embracing any

100 ALAN G. PADGETT

larger religious or non-religious perspective. One way of making this second point would be to say that the assumptions, evidence, procedures, and epistemological values of geology ( or any specific science) are too small to count as "religious." Of course the rational person will

want to "follow the evidence wherever it leads" and this raises an important question: can the discoveries of science raise questions which science cannot answer? On the face of it, the

answer would seem to be "yes." Much larger questions of truth, beauty, meaning, logic, and language can be raise by scientific discoveries without any science being able to find the answer. The question of why the universe or even the multiverse (if there be such) exists at

all is one such question. But if this is so, could the evidence of geology itself not point to a designer of some type? Certainly that is possible, but the argument would no longer be strictly

geological - it would move into an interdisciplinary conversation, where theology and philoso­

phy would have an important place at the table. Thus questions of intelligent design go beyond geology, even if the evidence is discovered by geology. We might discover a particu­

larly interesting layer of black rock on a geological dig, only to later discover that it is the ancient remains of a burned city, not a naturally occurring geological feature. Questions

about this city and its inhabitants would necessarily take us outside geology, but not com­

pletely - geological evidence is an important part of archeology. The discussion would go interdisciplinary in a quite natural way.

But why would such an argument no longer be natural science itself ? Could not a natural science like biology eventually come to embrace microdesign arguments as a normal part of

the paradigm of biological science? What is wrong with making appeal to an intelligent designer as an explicit part of a scientific explanation? The philosophy of science we have been tracing in this chapter would suggest that no strict, logically necessary reason can be given to exclude microdesign arguments from natural-scientific explanations. This is just because the nature-bias of the natural sciences is a tradition rather than an essence, and as

such is open to revision. At the same time, a very powerful burden of proof lies on those who would buck the strong currents of scientific practice and history. The practical objectivity

and natural explanatory focus of biology would demand solid and convincing evidence before we set them aside, and a careful exploration of alternative natural explanations would first

be called for. So far the intelligent design proponents have failed this test (see among many

sources Miller 1999;Johnson, Lamoureux et al. 1999). In the world of scholarship and science, in the groves of academe, intelligent design has failed to be a fruitful paradigm. The promis­

sory notes made in the 1990s of new breakthroughs in biology have simply not been paid. It would seem that microdesign is not a fruitful mode of explanation in biology.

Does such a conclusion undermine the rationality of Christian faith, or any religious faith? Of course not. The sciences as they developed over time have a specific domain of study and a narrow focus on the particular objects they seek to know, and a standard explanatory focus that excludes many things which would otherwise be important. Chemistry does not explain

molecular attraction on the basis of love - does that mean love is unimportant or does not exist? Arguments for or against the existence of God are part of philosophy and theology. Such arguments can be rigorous, rational, and logical; they may draw upon the discoveries

of science and history; but that does not make the arguments themselves scientific or histori­cal. Such arguments are about the findings of history, or science, or religious studies - they

do not take place within those disciplines. The natural sciences should stay natural not because they have to, but because it is wise given their purpose and the lessons to be learned from the history of science. Only someone naive enough to believe that natural science can answer all our questions would assume that the nature-bias of natural science undermines religion. Such an assumption is not science, but scientism.

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Notes

My thanks to Alan Love, Philip Rolnick, and of course my excellent co-editor,Jim Stump, for comments and suggestions on earlier versions on this chapter.

The term "natural" has many meanings. In this chapter it will be contrasted with the human and

social.

References

Butterfield, Herbert. 1953. The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800. New York: Macmillan.

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102 ALAN G. PADGETT

Further Reading

Dembski, William and Ruse, Michael, eds. 2000. Debating Design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A fine introduction to and anthology of various views on the intelligent design debate.

Marsden, George. 2001. The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A top historian introduces the perspective of faith-based rationality in academic srudy in general, including sciences.

Padgett, Alan G. 2003. Science and the Study of God: A Mutuality Model for Theology and Science. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Develops some of the points made in this chapter more fully

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