Naturalism (philosophy)

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This article is about methodological naturalism. For metaphysical naturalism, see Metaphysical naturalism.

Naturalism is the view that the scientific method (hypothesize, predict, test, repeat) is the only effective way to investigate reality. Naturalism does not necessarily claim that phenomena or hypotheses commonly labeled as supernatural do not exist or are wrong, but insists that all phenomena and hypotheses can be studied by the same methods and therefore anything considered supernatural is either nonexistent or not inherently different from natural phenomena or hypotheses. Some naturalists also insist that a legitimate distinction between supernatural entities and natural entities cannot be properly made (focusing on the conceptual distinction itself), and that when someone is talking or thinking about supernatural entities, they are actually referring to natural entities (though confusedly).

Any method of inquiry or investigation or any procedure for gaining knowledge that limits itself to natural, physical, and material approaches and explanations can be described as naturalistic.

Contents

[edit] Naturalist

Many modern philosophers of science[1][2] use the terms methodological naturalism or scientific naturalism to refer to the long standing convention. This makes the methodological assumption that observable effects in nature are best explainable only by natural causes. This is often contrasted with the approach known as ontological naturalism or metaphysical naturalism, which refers to the metaphysical belief that the natural world (including the universe) is all that exists, and therefore nothing supernatural exists.

This distinction between approaches to the philosophy of naturalism is made by philosophers supporting science and evolution in the creation–evolution controversy to counter the tendency of some proponents of Creationism or intelligent design to refer to methodological naturalism as scientific materialism or as methodological materialism and conflate it with metaphysical naturalism.[3] These proponents of creationism use this assertion to support their claim that modern science is atheistic, and contrast it with their preferred approach of a revived natural philosophy which welcomes supernatural explanations for natural phenomena and supports theistic science.

[edit] History

The ideas and assumptions of philosophical naturalism were first seen in the work's of the Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers. Particularly Thales, the man considered to be the father of science, as he was the first to give explanations of natural events without the use of supernatural causes. Jonathan Barnes's introduction to Early Greek Philosophy (Penguin) describes these early philosophers as subscribing to principles of empirical investigation that strikingly anticipate naturalism.

But the modern emphasis in methodological naturalism can be traced back more directly to the ideas of medieval scholastic thinkers during the Renaissance of the 12th century:

By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of Paris cleric Jean Buridan (a. 1295-ca. 1358), described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle Ages," contrasted the philosopher’s search for "appropriate natural causes" with the common folk’s erroneous habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural. In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme (ca. 1320-82), who went on to become a Roman Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we believe are well known to us."
Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating the world. The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy, insisted that nature "never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her." [4]

Isaac Newton, when asked about the lack of mention of God in his works on physics, is said to have replied, "Hypotheses non fingo." ("I do not make hypotheses.") Similarly, Pierre Simon de Laplace, when asked about the lack of mention of God in his work on celestial mechanics, is said to have replied, "I have no need of that hypothesis."

During the Enlightenment, a number of philosophers including Francis Bacon and Voltaire outlined the philosophical justifications for removing appeal to supernatural forces from investigation of the natural world. Subsequent scientific revolutions would offer modes of explanation not inherently theistic for biology, geology, physics, and other natural sciences.

The term "methodological naturalism" for this approach is much more recent. According to Ronald Numbers, it was coined in 1983 by Paul de Vries, a Wheaton College philosopher. De Vries distinguished between what he called "methodological naturalism," a disciplinary method that says nothing about God's existence, and "metaphysical naturalism," which "denies the existence of a transcendent God."[5] The term "methodological naturalism" had been used in 1937 by Edgar Sheffield Brightman in an article in The Philosophical Review as a contrast to "naturalism" in general, but there the idea was not really developed to its more recent distinctions.[6]

In a series of articles and books from 1996 onwards, Robert T. Pennock wrote using the term methodological naturalism to clarify that the scientific method confines itself to natural explanations without assuming the existence or non-existence of the supernatural, and is not based on dogmatic metaphysical naturalism as claimed by creationists and proponents of intelligent design, in particular Phillip E. Johnson. Pennock's testimony as an expert witness[7] at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial was cited by the Judge in his Memorandum Opinion concluding that "Methodological naturalism is a "ground rule" of science today"[8]

Apart from the creationist claims, the historical support of methodological naturalism by Christians is noted by Numbers:

Despite the occasional efforts of unbelievers to use scientific naturalism to construct a world without God, it has retained strong Christian support down to the present. And well it might, for (...) scientific naturalism was largely made in Christendom by pious Christians. Although it possessed the potential to corrode religious beliefs — and sometimes did so — it flourished among Christian scientists who believe that God customarily achieved his ends through natural causes. [9]

[edit] Naturalism as epistemology

Main article: Naturalized epistemology

W. V. Quine describes naturalism as the position that there is no higher tribunal for truth than natural science itself. There is no better method than the scientific method for judging the claims of science, and there is neither any need or any place for a "first philosophy", such as (abstract) metaphysics or epistemology, that could stand behind and justify science or the scientific method.

Therefore, philosophy should feel free to make use of the findings of scientists in its own pursuit, while also feeling free to offer criticism when those claims are ungrounded, confused, or inconsistent. In this way philosophy becomes "continuous with" science. Naturalism is not a dogmatic belief that the modern view of science is entirely correct. Instead, it simply holds the processes of the universe have a scientific explanation, and those processes are what modern science is striving to understand.

[edit] Philosophy

Karl Popper equated naturalism with inductive theory of science. He rejected it based on his general critique of induction (see problem of induction), yet acknowledged its utility as means for inventing conjectures.

A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt. […] I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.

– Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Routledge, 2002), pp. 52-53, ISBN 0-415-27844-9.

Popper instead proposed the criterion of falsifiability for demarcation.

Contemporary philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued that evolutionary naturalism is incoherent. In Science and Theology News[2] he attacks the conclusions of the Kitzmiller trial and suggests that the term "science" denotes any activity that is:

  1. a systematic and disciplined enterprise aimed at finding out truth about our world, and
  2. has significant empirical involvement. Any activity that meets these vague conditions counts as science.

He concludes "if you exclude the supernatural from science, then if the world or some phenomena within it are supernaturally caused – as most of the world's people believe – you won't be able to reach that truth scientifically."

[edit] Methodological Naturalism vs. Metaphysical Naturalism

Metaphysical naturalism, which is often called "philosophical naturalism" or "ontological naturalism", takes an ontological approach to naturalism. Ontology is a branch of metaphysics that studies being, and so this is the view that the supernatural does not exist, thus entailing strong atheism.

Steven D. Schafersman contends methodological naturalism is "the adoption or assumption of philosophical naturalism within scientific method with or without fully accepting or believing it … science is not metaphysical and does not depend on the ultimate truth of any metaphysics for its success (although science does have metaphysical implications), but methodological naturalism must be adopted as a strategy or working hypothesis for science to succeed. We may therefore be agnostic about the ultimate truth of naturalism, but must nevertheless adopt it and investigate nature as if nature is all that there is." [10]

This definition rules out recourse to the supernatural. Pennock contends[11] that as supernatural agents and powers "are above and beyond the natural world and its agents and powers" and "are not constrained by natural laws", only logical impossibilities constrain what a supernatural agent could not do, and "If we could apply natural knowledge to understand supernatural powers, then, by definition, they would not be supernatural". As the supernatural is necessarily a mystery to us, it can provide no grounds on which to judge scientific models. "Experimentation requires observation and control of the variables … But by definition we have no control over supernatural entities or forces." Allowing science to appeal to untestable supernatural powers would make the scientist's task meaningless, undermining the discipline that allows science to make progress, and "would be as profoundly unsatisfying as the ancient Greek playwright's reliance upon the deus ex machina to extract his hero from a difficult predicament."

Naturalism of this sort says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural which by this definition is beyond natural testing. Other philosophers of science hold that some supernatural explanations might be testable in principle, but are so unlikely, given past results, that resources should not be wasted exploring them. Either way, their rejection is only a practical matter, so it is possible to be a methodological naturalist and an ontological supernaturalist at the same time. For example, while natural scientists follow methodological naturalism in their scientific work, they may also believe in God (ontological supernaturalism), or they may be metaphysical naturalists and therefore atheists. This position does not preclude knowledge that derives from the study of what is hitherto considered supernatural, but considers that if such a phenomenon can be scientifically examined and explained naturally, it then ceases to be supernatural.

Supporters of creationism claim that the possibility of supernatural action is unnecessarily excluded by the current practices and theories of science. Currently, proponents of intelligent design argue that the naturalist conception of reality is not needed in order to do science. Their general criticism is that insisting that the natural world is a closed system of inviolable laws independent of theism or supernatural intervention will cause science to come to incorrect conclusions and inappropriately exclude research that claims to include such ideas.[12]

The subject was given detailed attention during the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial in 2005, and in his memorandum of findings[8] United States federal court judge John E. Jones III concluded that "Methodological naturalism is a 'ground rule' of science today". This ruling sets a federal district judicial precedent in the context of legal restrictions on the teaching of religion in U.S. schools, and more broadly the memorandum sets out an impartial assessment of the evidence and arguments relating to the use in science of methodological naturalism as against supernatural explanations.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ Butterflies and wheels article by Raymond Bradley, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in New Zealand, The Tower of Babel by Robert T. Pennock, Naturalism is an Essential Part of Science and Critical Inquiry by Steven D. Schafersman, The Leiter Reports, Report on "Naturalism, Theism and the Scientific Enterprise" conference, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, 11: GOD, SCIENCE, AND NATURALISM by Paul R. Draper, Philosophy Now: The Alleged Fallacies of Evolutionary Theory, Statement on Intelligent Design, Science and fundamentalism by Massimo Pigliucci, Justifying Methodological Naturalism by Michael Martin
  2. ^ a b Whether ID is science isn't semantics by Alvin Plantinga (March 7, 2006)
  3. ^ Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection (2000), Barbara Forrest, Retrieved 2007-05-20.
  4. ^ Ronald L. Numbers (2003). "Science without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs." In: When Science and Christianity Meet, edited by David C. Lindberg, Ronald L. Numbers. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, p. 267.
  5. ^ Nick Matzke: On the Origins of Methodological Naturalism. The Pandas Thumb (March 20, 2006)
  6. ^ ASA March 2006 - Re: Methodological Naturalism
  7. ^ Kitzmiller trial: testimony of Robert T. Pennock
  8. ^ a b Kitzmiller v. Dover: Whether ID is Science
  9. ^ Numbers 2003, op cit, p. 284
  10. ^ Naturalism is an Essential Part of Science - Steven D. Schafersman
  11. ^ Robert T. Pennock, Supernaturalist Explanations and the Prospects for a Theistic Science or "How do you know it was the lettuce?"
  12. ^ CSC - Open Debate on Life’s Origins By: Stephen C. Meyer

[edit] External links

[edit] Supportive

[edit] Neutral

  • The Craig-Taylor Debate: Is The Basis Of Morality Natural Or Supernatural? William Lane Craig and Richard Taylor October 1993, Union College (Schenectady, New York)
  • Naturalism David Papineau, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  • Naturalism Jon Jacobs, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[edit] Critical