A letter to a non-science major, or member of the general public, on science: its power and limitations, its place in the general scheme of intellectual cultivation

Table of Contents

The essence of science

Science forms an important part of any adequate conception of the world, and each of you will be confronted by the claims of science and scientists, if not as a student, then later as a consumer, patient, parent, or citizen.

Science is not primarily a body of knowledge, but a way of thinking and a way of investigating the world. The only way to properly appreciate it is to do it—to make predictions, gather data, analyze it, assess uncertainties, formulate provisional conclusions. Is this difficult? Certainly, but this is what it takes to be able to think profitably on scientific matters.

The method of science is designed to address a particular type of question about the natural world. To take a simple example from astronomy, it is found that all planets are roughly spherical in shape. This truth is not a matter of logical necessity—one could certainly imagine planets with different shapes. Nor is it an isolated fact, like the number of blades of grass in my backyard, which we would rightly dismiss as meaningless. It is a pattern encompassing many facts, a contingent pattern which could not be inferred by pure thought but must be found by observation. Contingent patterns like this, once we notice them, cry out for some sort of explanation in terms of broader and more fundamental patterns, which we call the “laws of nature” and which themselves must be inferred from observation and controlled experiment.

What can I hope to impart to my non-science major students in a single semester? First, you should get a taste of the methods of scientific inference by actually gathering and analyzing data, although naturally you will get only a taste of what science majors spend years learning. You will learn some interesting facts about the universe, but while facts are the outcome of scientific thinking, they are not its living heart. Above all, I want to instill a certain sensibility, a distinctly scientific way of seeing the world, one that notices contingent patterns in the world and says to itself “There must be an explanation for that.” Just to recognize and question in this way is to be alive to a distinct and beautiful aspect of the world.

The supposed authority of science

The first rule for thinking about the authority of science, is that, as far as authority goes, there is no such thing as “science”. That is, there is no unitary entity called “science” that can bring the plenitude of its authority to bear on any one question. The reasons for accepting any assertion of a group of scientists, or even the consensus of an entire discipline, are nothing but the theoretical and experimental evidence for that assertion in particular. Each claim stands on its own. As a basic principle of the scientific method, it is impermissible to insist that scientists be trusted because science has had so many successes in the past. The very reason science has accumulated such a store of reliable facts is that each has had to withstand this same vetting process. Imagine one were instead to say, “scientists have been right so often; isn’t it reasonable just to trust them?” This is equivalent to the more obviously fallacious “The scientific method has been working so well for us up till now that we should ditch it and replace it with the appeal to authority.”

I have spoken emphatically in order to counter two popular misconceptions about the proper attitude toward science. One is summarized by the widespread but stupid entreaty to “trust science”, that to doubt the pronouncements of scientific bodies is to be “anti-science” as if all scientific claims were equally well-established or were so logically interconnected that to doubt one is to doubt them all. As I have said, there is no authority called “science” to command your faith, and as a method of pursuing truth, science does not want your faith but if anything would prefer your skepticism. Even within physics and its daughter fields of chemistry and astronomy, some facts are better established, others more speculative. The existence of dark matter is less certain than the laws of thermodynamics. And physics is the gold standard of scientific certainty and precision. Among the biological sciences too, some things are confidently known, others less so. As for what are shamelessly called the “social sciences”, these are for the most part nothing but politically-motivated charlatanry.

There is a related but opposing misunderstanding of science, that of postmodernism, which asserts that all putative structures of knowledge (“metanarratives”) are in fact fabrications of sinister ruling powers designed to keep oppressed masses or minorities in subjugation. Science, or perhaps more vaguely the scientific worldview, is thus a conspiracy of capitalism, white patriarchy, or some other bogeyman. Given what I have said before, I shall not be rushing to the defense of the “authority” of “science”. The mistake of postmodernism to to speak in meaningless abstractions. There is no scientific worldview. Take a specific claim—Faraday’s law (electromagnetic induction), Bernouili’s principle (fluid dynamics), Kirchhoff’s radiation laws, whatever. Do you claim that these are social constructs? Then I would say to that with cheap equipment you should perform the relevant simple experiments and see for yourself. Having satisfied yourself on the empirical matter, you may with the full blessing of the scientific method incorporate these facts into any metanarrative of your choosing.

Having said all of this, I realize that the free time and expertise of each of us are limited, and practical considerations often force us to simply take the word of what we take to be relevant experts. This can be perfectly rational. However, remember that your access to these experts is often mediated. Journalists are given to misunderstanding and sensationalism, so exercise due care. Agnosticism, a simple decision that one does not know whether or not to believe, is often also rational. Finally, any trust in scientists should be contingent on their adhering to the scientific method; if on any subject dissent from a party line subjects one to funding or career censure, or if potential hires are required to take ideological loyalty oaths (e.g. “diversity statements”), one can be sure that the scientific method is not operative on matters related to this subject, and the statements on it of compromised scientists and organizations should be evaluated as one would any other admitted partisan. Naturally, it is also true that when a scientist gives an opinion outside his or her field of expertise, this opinion should be weighted no more heavily than that of anyone else. This of course applies to the essay you are reading.

Science and other disciplines in the cultivation of the intellect

Wiser men than I have contemplated the proper nature and goals of a university and a liberal education. Rather than burden my text with quotes and citations, I here acknowledge my debt to Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, Joseph Pieper’s Liesure: The Basis of Culture, and above all to John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University.

Like other disciplines, science is both expansive and limited in scope: expansive because it takes all observable creation as its object of study, limited because it considers only one aspect or mode of things. Its power comes from its limitation, because a particular mode of knowing suggests a particular mode of reasoning, a particular methodology. Intellectual enterprises of this sort are called “disciplines” because those who participate in them must learn to conform their minds to the appropriate standards of understanding, argumentation, and evaluation.

If done properly, the benefit—aside from the knowledge gained in that particular discipline—is to foster certain intellectual virtues. One learns to think systematically; facts are not left isolated from each other, but must always be related to each other in some coherent whole. If there are tensions or seeming contradictions, these should at least be recognized and treated as problems to inspire deeper investigation. One learns the graciousness of intellectual argumentation, of cordial disagreement,how not to take one arguing the opposite side as a personal enemy but as a friend and fellow seeker after the truth. True intellectual discourse is at once impersonal and also the bond of a community of surprising depth. One learns receptiveness, a determination to let one’s conclusions be dictated not by prior prejudice or personal desire, but only by the object of study itself and the disciplinary strictures on the way of knowing it. True intellectual work thus has a fundamentally contemplative, leisurely aspect (these words ultimately denoting intellectual receptivity). Above all, one learns patience and intellectual humility. The problems of a discipline are hard; one should not expect any easy victories, and it is seldom the case that any position is obviously right. One should expect that deeper investigation will reveal one’s current understanding to be fundamentally incomplete, and this prospect should fill one with excitement.

The things themselves are more than any partial way of knowing reveals them to be; if we forget that, then we know them only as abstractions. The university itself is the institutional embodiment of a commitment to recognize all aspects of the intelligibility of the world, each in its place. We as individuals must also take care that in mastering a discipline we are not in turn mastered by it, forgetting its limits and carrying them beyond their reach. For example, a scientist who tried to extract ethical or aesthetic judgments from scientific data would be doing not only poor ethics or aesthetics, but also poor science. Philosophy is the subject charged with understanding the relationship between disciplines. Because of this unique role, philosophy is privileged or cursed never to be able to become a settled discipline with fixed methodology like others, despite the efforts of Descartes, Kant, Husserl, and others who lacked their genuis to find a way to make it such. (One might ask, doesn’t philosophy have its own distinct fields of inquiry, such as metaphysics, ethics, etc? Yes, but they all have the quality that no methodology can be agreed upon ahead of time–especially any which dictates what counts as relevant facts–without in some sense begging the questions these fields are meant to answer.) While there are professional scientists, professional philosophers, professional historians, and professional literary critics, we are all amateur scientists when we notice and investigate contingent patterns in the world, amateur philosophers when we consider how our discipline relates to the larger truth, amateur historians when we relate the present to the past, and amateur critics when we reflect on the stories we imbibe. We benefit from the professionals but also actively participate in our own amateurish ways.

The spirit of intellectual investigation differs profoundly from another spirit now widely promoted on campuses—the spirit of activism, of “changing the world” to “make it a better place”. It is nowadays considered normal, even laudable, for students to engage in various forms of protesting on behalf of approved causes from the moment they arrive as freshmen. The assumption is that the student already knows how the world needs to be changed without need of prior careful study, contemplation, and growth of wisdom. Ironically, the activist mentality embraced by the intellectual class has little use for intellectual virtues, as in this Manichaean vision the world is divided cleanly and simply into utterly illegitimate oppressors and their completely innocent victims, and there is no need to give the oppressive order a careful hearing before pronouncing judgment. Those who disagree are not seen as colleagues but as enemies motivated by irrational hatred.

The activist presumes to know two things. First, there are matters of fact, e.g. that they have assigned blame and calculated consequences accurately. Second, there are the moral principles invoked. That the latter are taken for granted is particularly troublesome, because while students’ beliefs may seem self-evident because of their hegemony in the contemporary urban West, historically and cross-culturally they are quite anomalous. For example, in most times and places, cosmopolitan detachment was considered less befitting a great soul than piety toward ancestors and attachment to one’s land and culture; sex roles were considered not oppressive but ennobling, as finding a calling within one’s very body to love, self-sacrifice, and the bond between generations; human flourishing was thought to be found not in self-expression but in conformity to traditional, natural, and divine orders. You may say that the contemporary consensus is right and all others are wrong. Perhaps you are correct, but what right do you have to this certainty? Have you given the alternatives their due hearing, seeking out their strongest defenders? Is not the unexamined conformism of today’s students the mark of just another form of provincialism? When I read proclamations from university leadership that WSU “stands in solidarity with” X, “condemns” Y, and “has no place for” (a tendentious description of) Z, I do wonder what has happened to the spirit of open-ended, dispassionate inquiry.

All of this takes us rather far from the discipline of science, but that is the point. The “hard” sciences are the last bastion largely uncontaminated by the spirit of activism. Scientists have opinions on the matters that agitate the rest of society—and by and large the opinions of scientists on these matters are as rash and conformist as most others’—but when practicing science we try to hold ourselves to the standard of the old intellectual virtues. In my classes, this is how it will remain. I am a genuinely inclusive fellow—I welcome democrats, monarchists, fascists, communists, anarchists, atheists, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and anyone else who wants to engage in scientific investigation.