Humanism, Science and Knowledge

Ollie! I have had an epiphany. I now understand why i am not a humanist - it is the humanist love of LOGIC. I do not love science, I no more believe in an objective world that we can uncover through recourse to logic and scientific investigation than I believe in god. It's all just another way of seeing the world, any of which can be correct for anyone. I believe that we construct meaning about our worlds. I'm surprised its taken me this long to be able to articulate it. The reason i was uncomfortable with humanism is because it required faith in logic. So while I don't believe in god, I can't get overly excited by logic either. Kayte.

Sounds like you've been visited by the Spirit of Thomas Kuhn, Kayte, in paper form (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962) maybe! This isn't the place for a discussion of his ideas. There are plenty of learned critical articles on the web. Suffice it to say that Kuhn himself denounced some of the applications of his ideas that his less level-headed followers espoused, and that non-Western critics accuse him of being taken in by a totally Western paradigm.

Now, I'd better take your main points seriously - Humanism and Logic, and belief in anything.

I don't think it is true that Humanists necessary love Logic. I do think it's true that Humanists say that they are rational, and that they reject the irrational. But that's not the same thing. Formal Logic, it seems to me (and I am not a Logician) holds irrespective of time and culture in the same way that arithmetic and algebra do. Thus 365 and 101101101 are the same thing whether a culture uses decimal or binary numbers. But whether they agree it is the number of days in a year (which also has to do with Solar and Lunar calendars) is another matter.

Rationality is more woolly than Logic, and what appears rational to one person may not appear so to someone from a different thought background.

That leads many Humanists into a problem, because Humanists assert that they are ethical. I don't know if any research has been done about what is meant by this, and how individual Humanists deal with conflicts between the different ethical schools. But because they tend also to be humane, many of the Humanists I know are caught between a respectful approach to cultures that leads to relativism in ethics, and a desire for absolutist ethics, so that some things (at least) can be condemned as unethical and definitely wrong at all times and in all places.

Fortunately most Humanists are tolerant, and as far as I know there are no schisms in Humanism along these lines, just lively and healthy discussions. For me one of the main attractions of Humanism is that this discussion can take place, founded on a general agreement that Humanity is somehow important and that people are valuable in themselves.

So I think there is a link between Humanism and Rationality, but quite where it leads is another matter.

Now about belief - you use the phrase "I believe that we construct meaning..." As you know, I am a Sceptic in the tradition of Pyrrho. Their position was to criticise beliefs without advancing any of their own, because if they claimed to believe anything they were vulnerable to their own criticism. In general Scepticism is not convinced that we know what we think we know. That's a bit of an understatement. Some Sceptics would go much further. I'd be prepared to defend the position that it borders on the ridiculous to advance a belief without any sort of evidence. Is that what you're doing? How do you know we construct meaning, for example? What makes you think that? There are arguments, but is there any evidence?

Beware - I am not claiming that evidence justifies a belief, far less proves it. But it does make one work harder to disprove it. There is a better (more rational) case for accepting a belief that has some supporting evidence than for one that has none, and better still if the evidence against is strong.

For as long as I've been thinking seriously at all I have started from the Sceptical point of view: it has long seemed to me that the general arguments are strong, and for even longer I have been impressed by the ease with which some cherished beliefs turn out to be built on sand. But now - really recently - there are at least 3 types of evidence that make the Sceptical position appear stronger still.

First there is work of the kind done by the biologist Andrew Parker who seems to show that colour is created in our brains and does not exist in the external world, or even in the eye. Second there is the kind of work done in Cosmology which seems to show that we cannot detect at least 75% of the Universe that is actually out there (and all around us). What we can detect is necessarily a selection that proved enough for evolution, and what we make of it is necessarily an interpretation of that selection. Third there is the kind of work done by Psychologists working with Illusion - how we can be quite sure that something is before our very eyes (or another sense) when demonstrably it is not.

So I am leaning towards the view that, at very least, we create a lot more of the world than we think. What we think we know is a lot less certain than we normally assume. I could go further and cite the work done with twins that seems to show that our decisions, interests and habits of thought are much more influenced by our genes than most of us would find comfortable. Certainly we do not choose what we are thinking about, what we like, or to whom we are attracted. Nor do we choose what arguments we find convincing. These things come, somehow, from below.

With this background, belief becomes a far more dangerous and interesting topic! But what has any of that to do with science? I think there are a few things to say.

1. Science uses reason to test knowledge, but reason cannot establish knowledge. Great advances do not come from deduction or induction but imagination. There is first the hypothesis, and then the prediction of what will be the case if the hypothesis is correct, and then the testing regime. But then, you knew I am convinced by Karl Popper.

2. The results of science exhibit certain charactistics:
* they work - we fly the Atlantic and use computers and microwave ovens and go to doctors and undergo cardiac surgery.
* they are repeatable, i.e. they can, in principle, be tested independently by anyone, anywhere, any time.
* they are provisional, always ready to give way to a better explanation of the observed facts.

3. It isn't true, as some people think, that new discoveries overthrow old. At least, not necessarily. The Phlogiston Theory was demonstrably wrong. But Einstein did not disprove Newton. He did show that Newton's assumption of a fixed space and time was inadequate at speeds close to that of light, but Newton's Laws of Motion are incorporated in General Relativity and work perfectly well at normal speeds. And neither General Relativity or Newton's Laws of Motion are susceptible to cultural changes.

And what has that got to do with Humanism? Humanism respects Science in a way it cannot respect religion because the characteristics of Science place it on the side of reason, and religion is on the other side. But it is more concerned with Ethics, and living life well, giving people as good opportunities to live their lives to the maximum of their potential as possible. I find that to be something I am enthusiastic about.