Philosophical justification and critique of science.
I have written about uniformity before, such as here and here. This post looks at the need for a principle of uniformity. David Hume’s principle of the uniformity of nature (PUN) asserts that unobserved cases closely resemble previously observed cases. This principle concerns the character of natural populations based on a sample as well as […]
The week before Christmas is a good time of year to write about miracles because it’s a time to be reminded of the meaningfulness of miracles. But what about their truth? Doesn’t the uniformity of nature make miracles impossible? Thomas Aquinas said a miracle is ‘beyond the order commonly observed in nature’ (Summa Contra Gentiles
Science studies uniformities. There is uniformity in the physical universe and science is the study of that. In addition to uniformity there is uniqueness in the universe. One can study that, and apply science to understand it better but science does not study uniqueness per se. Other disciplines deal with aspects of uniqueness – history,
In his 1869 Presidential Address to the Geological Society of London on the subject of Geological Reform TH Huxley said: Catastrophism has insisted upon the existence of a practically unlimited bank of force, on which the theorist might draw; and it has cherished the idea of the development of the earth from a state in
If we accept that the actual infinite does not exist except as an attribute of God, then the universe is finite. And if the universe is finite, then any use of the infinite or infinitesimal in physical science is a reference to an indefinite unknown or a manner of speaking, which at a greater level
My previous posts on this topic are here, here, and here. I am indebted to John P. McCaskey’s writings on the subject of induction (see here). In this post I want to make the connection between the principle of the uniformity of nature with naturalism. In the 18th century there was a decline in understanding
I’ve written about history and science before (here, here, here, and here) because I think it’s important to understand their differences and relationship. History and science are complementary, which means they are in some way opposite but they fit together to make a whole. It also means they cannot be merged into one another, but
An inference of intelligent design (ID), or any version of creationism, or whatever might hint at the supernatural is often considered a science stopper. See, for example, this and the final chapter of Stanley’s book reviewed earlier. Look at two key examples from the ID literature: Dembski’s design inference and Behe’s irreducible complexity inference. Do
It is common to read statements like this: “For the vast majority of biologists, the debate over whether evolution occurs took place in the 19th century and has long been settled — evolution won.” (1) The problem with this statement is that it was not a scientific position that won but a philosophical and political
Aristotle described the four “causes” (really “becauses” or explanatory factors) that are required for a full explanation. These are called the material cause, the efficient cause (or mechanism), the formal cause (or design), and the final cause (or purpose). It seems as though trying to cover all four causes at once is either too much
