I spotted this small book during my last visit to CBGP in Montpellier, and borrowed it from the local librarian. It is written (in French) by Guillaume Lecointre, who is professor of Biology at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, specialised in population evolution and philogenies. The book is published by Editions Quae, a scientific editor supported by four founding French institutes (CIRAD, IFREMER, INRA and IRSTEA), hence no wonder I would spot it in an INRA lab. The theme of the book is not to argue against creationism and intelligent design theories, but rather to analyse how the debates between scientists—interestingly this term scientist sounds much more like a cult in English than the French noun scientifique— and creationists are conducted and to suggest how they should be conducted. While there are redundancies in the text, I found the overall argumentation quite convincing, with the driving lines that creationists are bypassing the rules of scientific investigation and exchange to bring the debate at a philosophical or ideological level foreign to science definition. Lecointre deconstructs the elements put forward in such debates, from replacing the incompleteness of the scientific knowledge and the temporary nature of scientific theories with a total relativism, to engaging scientific supporters from scientific fields not directly related with the theory of evolution, to confusing methodological materialism with philosophical materialism and more fundamentally to imply that science and scientific theories must have a moral or ideological content, and to posturing as anti-establishment and anti-dogmatic free minds… I also liked the points that (a) what really drives the proponents of intelligent design is a refusal of randomness in the evolution, without any global or cosmic purpose; (b) scientists are very ill-prepared to debate with creationists, because the later do not follow a scientific reasoning; (c) journalists are most often contributing to the confusion by picking out-of-their-field “experts” and encouraging the relativity argument. Hence a reasonable recommendation to abstain from oral debates and to stick to pointing out the complete absence of scientific methodology in creationists’ arguments. (Obviously, readers of Alan Sokal’s Beyond the Hoax will be familiar most of the arguments produced in les sciences face aux créationnismes.)
Archive for Philosophy of Science
les sciences face aux créationnismes [book review]
Posted in Books with tags "intelligent" design, Alan Sokal, creationism, evolution, materialism, Philosophy of Science, Science on March 9, 2014 by xi'anis atheism irrational?
Posted in Books, Kids with tags atheism, decision theory, New York Times, Pascal's wager, Philosophy of Science, Rationality, religions, The Stone on March 2, 2014 by xi'an“If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004. So if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to believe that your belief-producing faculties are not reliable.”
On the (New York Times) philosophy blog The Stone, I spotted this entry and first wondered if I had misread the title, as atheism sounds (to me) as a most rational position. I then read the piece and found it mostly missing, even though a few points rang true(r). First, theism is never properly defined. (Even though the author Alvin Plantinga seems to stick to monotheist religions.) This is a not-so-subtle trick as it makes atheism appear as the extreme position, since it is rejecting any form of theism! Then, the interviewee is mostly using a sequence of sophisms as arguments that atheists are irrational, see e.g. the even-star-ism and a-moonism and a-teapotism entries. Further, some of his entries very strongly resemble intelligent design arguments, e.g. the “fine-tuning” line that the universe is too perfectly suited to human life to be due to randomness. Even though Plantinga also resorts to evolution when needed, as in the above quote. (The interviewer is not doing a great job either, by referring to evil, or the need (or lack thereof) of God versus science to explain the world. Rather than resorting to rational arguments. And without mentioning the fundamental point in favour of atheism that the existence of a sentient being driving the whole universe while remaining hidden to us humans requires an infinitely stronger step than arguing this is impossibly incompatible with the laws of Physics and the accumulated corpus of experience since the dawn of humanity.) The whole strategy of Plantinga is actually to turn atheism into another kind of belief “that materialism and evolution are true” and then to rank it equal with the theisms. A very poor philosophical performance. As also (and better) pointed out in this other post. (And as my daughter remarked, fresh from writing a philosophy essay, Plantinga is missing the best argument of all, namely Pascal’s wager, an early instance of decision theory applied to religion.)
“an outstanding paper that covers the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox”…
Posted in Statistics, University life with tags Aris Spanos, Bayesian model choice, Deborah Mayo, Error-Statistical philosophy, Harold Jeffreys, Jeffreys-Lindley paradox, Philosophy of Science, referee, severity on December 4, 2013 by xi'an“This is, in this revised version, an outstanding paper that covers the Jeffreys-Lindley paradox (JLP) in exceptional depth and that unravels the philosophical differences between different schools of inference with the help of the JLP. From the analysis of this paradox, the author convincingly elaborates the principles of Bayesian and severity-based inferences, and engages in a thorough review of the latter’s account of the JLP in Spanos (2013).” Anonymous
I have now received a second round of reviews of my paper, “On the Jeffreys-Lindleys paradox” (submitted to Philosophy of Science) and the reports are quite positive (or even extremely positive as in the above quote!). The requests for changes are directed to clarify points, improve the background coverage, and simplify my heavy style (e.g., cutting Proustian sentences). These requests were easily addressed (hopefully to the satisfaction of the reviewers) and, thanks to the week in Warwick, I have already sent the paper back to the journal, with high hopes for acceptance. The new version has also been arXived. I must add that some parts of the reviews sounded much better than my original prose and I was almost tempted to include them in the final version. Take for instance
“As a result, the reader obtains not only a better insight into what is at stake in the JLP, going beyond the results of Spanos (2013) and Sprenger (2013), but also a much better understanding of the epistemic function and mechanics of statistical tests. This is a major achievement given the philosophical controversies that have haunted the topic for decades. Recent insights from Bayesian statistics are integrated into the article and make sure that it is mathematically up to date, but the technical and foundational aspects of the paper are well-balanced.” Anonymous
Philosophy of Science, a very short introduction (and review)
Posted in Books, Kids, Statistics, Travel with tags book review, Charles Darwin, creationism, David Hume, Evidence and Evolution, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophy of Science, pseudo-science, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn on November 3, 2013 by xi'anWhen visiting the bookstore on the campus of the University of Warwick two weeks ago, I spotted this book, Philosophy of Science, a very short introduction, by Samir Okasha, and the “bargain” offer of getting two books for £10 enticed me to buy it along with a Friedrich Nietzsche, a very short introduction… (Maybe with the irrational hope that my daughter would take a look at those for her philosophy course this year!)
“Popper’s attempt to show that science can get by without induction does not succeed.” (p.23)
Since this is [unsusrprisingly!] a very short introduction, I did not get much added value from the book. Nonetheless, it was an easy read for short trips in the metro and short waits here and there. And would be a good [very short] introduction to any one newly interested in the philosophy of sciences. The first chapter tries to define what science is, with reference to the authority of Popper (and a mere mention of Wittgenstein), and concludes that there is no clear-cut demarcation between science and pseudo-science. (Mathematics apparently does not constitute a science: “Physics is the most fundamental science of all”, p.55) I would have liked to see the quote from Friedrich Nietzsche
“It is perhaps just dawning on five or six minds that physics, too, is only an interpretation and exegesis of the world (to suit us, if I may say so!) and not a world-explanation.”
in Beyond Good and Evil. as it illustrates the main point of the chapter and maybe the book that scientific theories can never be proven true, Plus, it is often misinterpreted as a anti-science statement by Nietzsche. (Plus, it links both books I bought!) Continue reading
the dangers of pseudo-science
Posted in Books, University life with tags falsification, Philosophy of Science, pseudo-science, The New York Times on October 26, 2013 by xi'an“The borderlines between genuine science and pseudoscience may be fuzzy, but this should be even more of a call for careful distinctions, based on systematic facts and sound reasoning. To try a modicum of turtle blood here and a little aspirin there is not the hallmark of wisdom and even-mindedness. It is a dangerous gateway to superstition and irrationality.”
“This is a standard modus operandi of pseudoscience: it adopts the external trappings of science, but without the substance.”
Interestingly enough, the New York Times paper on Traditional Chinese medicine that I discussed in a previous post induced a new (reply) column in the New York Times by Massimo Pigliucci and Maarten Boudry. It is called the dangers of pseudo-science and it rightly separates empirical hypothetico-deductive reasoning (like bark helping with headaches) from irrational beliefs like qi, which cannot be tested or falsified. The authors echo (much more eloquently) my surprise at Asma’s discourse as being opposed to the fundamentals of the philosophy of science and as using particularly weak philosophical arguments… Of course, the difference between science and pseudo-science has always been a fuzzy one, dixit the above quote, as illustrated for instance in the first issues of the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which mixed articles introducing calculus with articles attempting to prove the existence of God and articles about witchcraft experiments. But there are cases like astrology (and qi) that are demonstrably pseudo-science, for being both non-falsifiable and inoperative at explaining (and predicting) phenomenons and effects. (As a coincidence (?), I bought a very short introduction to Philosophy of Science while in Warwick. And may even post about this book! I think I will abstain from Pigliucci’s and Boudry’s, Philosophy of Pseudoscience, though, as it would take me a bit far from home.)
