[Buddha-l] it's not about belief -= science & Christian religion

[Erik Hoogcarspel]

Bob Zeuschner schreef:

> I would like to make two observations.
> (1) It is my understanding that modern science is founded upon 
> empiricism, and perhaps the strong empiricism of David Hume; if so, 
> there wasn't anything quite like our idea of science prior to the 
> development of empiricism as a philosophical (not Protestant) 
> methodology in the 1700s (although it has been argued that the 'Axial 
> Age' begins with a turning away from tradition and supernatural 
> explanations to natural explanations).

'Founded upon' is rather vague. It certainly is more then collecting 
empirical data. Maths is also very important. In the standard model only 
one part is about experiments and collecting data,  the others are about 
interpretation, mathematical systematisation and abduction, i.e. 
constructing theories.

>
> (2) Modern science is concerned with finding out what is true and NOT 
> assuming that we already know what is true.
> During the middle ages, what passed for science was studying nature to 
> determine what lesson god was teaching us.
> When one already KNOWS the answer (because it is in god's holy book), 
> then one examines the world for observations which confirm and 
> reinforce one's knowledge (thus some Christians examine the world for 
> evidence that the world is 6,000 years old; scientists examine the 
> world to determine its age WITHOUT thinking that they know the answer 
> in advance -- if the world turns out to be 6,000 years old based on 
> observation, fine; if it turns out to be 4.5 billion years old, fine).
> Ideally, modern science seeks DISsconfirming instances for each 
> theory; Christian "science" looks only for what confirms the answers 
> which are already known in advance of research.

According to Kuhn you're talking about the rare instances of 
revolutionary science, most of the time it's just completing the puzzle 
and keeping creative ideas out.
The above only holds for science in a restricted sense, i.e. physics and 
allies. For linguistics and humanities the situation is quite different 
and in that area we have Asian predecessors.


Erik


www.xs4all.nl/~jehms