philosophy of science

Ep. 226: Francis Bacon Invents Science (Part Two)

September 30, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

Continuing on Sir Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620).

We cover more of Bacon’s “idols” and how Bacon divides religion from science (and what this means politically). We then move on to book 2, including Bacon’s novel update of the term “form,” and take a look at Bacon’s method of doing science by filling out tables before actually doing experiments.

Start with part one or get the full, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL, like, get Patreon’s feed for a mere $1/month.

End song: “Stuck in a Cave” by Chrome Cranks; hear Mark talk to singer/songwriter Peter Aaron on Nakedly Examined Music #93.

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Ep. 226: Francis Bacon Invents Science (Part One)

September 23, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Sir Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620).

Bacon claims to have developed a new toolset that will open up nature to inquiry in a way that wasn’t possible for ancient and modern natural philosophy.

Mark, Wes, and Dylan consider how much what Bacon describes resembles modern scientific method, talk through Bacon’s “four idols” that interfere with impartial inquiry, and consider how Bacon’s method fits in with his larger political-ethical-religious views.

Don’t wait for part two; get the full, unbroken Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

Ep. 226: Francis Bacon Invents Science (Citizen Edition)

September 23, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Sir Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620).

Bacon claims to have developed a new toolset that will open up nature to inquiry in a way that wasn’t possible for ancient and modern natural philosophy. Mark, Wes, and Dylan consider how much what Bacon describes resembles modern scientific method, talk through Bacon’s “four idols” that interfere with impartial inquiry, and consider how Bacon’s method fits in with his larger political-ethical-religious views.

End song: “Stuck in a Cave” by Chrome Cranks; hear Mark talk to Peter Aaron on Nakedly Examined Music #93.

Saints & Simulators 23: #SimulatorShowdown

August 22, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

As it turns out, if our purpose is to test the simulator hypothesis against religious belief, it is only in the specifics that we can easily distinguish between the two. The Deist God, who creates the universe, and then leaves it to run entirely on its own, is not easily disambiguated from the hands-off simulator. One might well call them one and the same. Similarly, the Platonic ideal of good, which remains removed and remote in eternal perfection while the demiurge creates the world in imitation of it, needs not change at all if we choose to think of the demiurge as working with pixels and electrons rather than with primal matter. Such abstract, philosophical conceptions of God are general enough that even a shift as dramatic as reconceptualizing reality itself as a simulation can be integrated relatively easily. It is more of a challenge, however, to reconfigure the simulation hypothesis in order to yield the specificity of Christ.

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXV: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part C

September 20, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

In our last two articles, we’ve explored one book in the exciting new field of cognitive science of religion. And we’ve seen how one of the findings in this area is that belief in God, or something like God, is natural to us, given the types of minds we have. Of course, this doesn’t show that one ought to believe Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXIV: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part B

September 6, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 7 Comments

In our last article, we explored some recent findings in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). We saw how current research suggests that belief in God, or something like God, comes naturally to most human beings, most of the time, in virtue of the types of brains we have. I’d like to explore Justin L. Barrett’s arguments on this front Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXXIII: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part A

August 16, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 8 Comments

“Belief in God is an almost inevitable consequence of the kind of minds we have.” —Justin L. Barrett

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXII: Alvin Plantinga and Reformed Epistemology

August 2, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 6 Comments

“Faith is not to be contrasted with knowledge: faith (at least in paradigmatic instances) is knowledge, knowledge of a certain special kind.” —Alvin Plantinga

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXI: William James—The Will to Believe

July 19, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

“To preach skepticism to us as a duty until ‘sufficient evidence’ for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law.” —William James

Science, Secularism, and Religion, Part XXX: William Kingdon Clifford—The Ethics of Belief

July 5, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Imagine a ship owner who sells tickets for transatlantic voyages. He is at the dock one day, bidding his ship farewell, when he remembers a warning he had received from his mechanics the week before, that the integrity of the ship’s hull was questionable and that it might not be seaworthy. But on some plausible grounds or other he forms Continue Reading …

Science, Secularism, and Religion, Part XXIX: Antony Flew—The Presumption of Atheism

June 27, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

“If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic.”
—Antony Flew

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVIII: Charles Taylor—The Dark Abyss of Time

May 24, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

In our last article we explored Charles Taylor’s concept of “the buffered self,” a peculiar kind of self-consciousness engendered by Enlightenment rationalism, and which has become customary (at least for educated elites) in our own time. We saw how it can be at once a source of pride, a profound source of accomplishment and self-worth, and also a source of Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVII: Charles Taylor—The Malaise of Modernity

May 17, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

In our last article, we explored Charles Taylor’s discussion of a new religion that took shape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Providential Deism. Yet, as we saw, it was not entirely new but in many respects a development and expansion of themes already expounded on by the Protestant Reformation. Where the Protestant Reformers accused Catholicism of being authoritarian, superstitious, Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXVI: Charles Taylor — Providential Deism and the Impersonal Order

April 12, 2018 by Daniel Halverson Leave a Comment

In the last article, we saw how the Protestant Reformation challenged the premodern conception of reality, and began to put in place some of the elements we can recognize today in modern, Western-style secularism. In particular, there was a “flattening effect” when it came to time, space, and devotion. More and more, secular, ordinary time came to the forefront. The Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXV: Charles Taylor—The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of the Disciplinary Society

April 5, 2018 by Daniel Halverson Leave a Comment

In previous articles, we’ve taken some first steps toward answering the underlying question of Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age. He asks us to look at Europe around the year 1500, and observe that belief in God had an unproblematic, normative, even a central, character for those societies. But when we look around today, we find a very different climate. Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXIV: Charles Taylor—Time, Space, and Self in the Enchanted World (Part B)

March 29, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

In our previous articles, we began to explore what Charles Taylor calls the “bulwarks of belief.” These are the aspects of psychology and society that made belief nearly irresistible for most Europeans around the year 1500. Taylor postulates these bulwarks thus: that purpose and design were evident in nature and history; that God was implicated in the very existence of Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXIII: Charles Taylor—Time, Space, and Self in the Enchanted World (Part A)

March 23, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 8 Comments

In the previous article, we explored the “Bulwarks of Belief”—those features of the premodern, European mindset that, according to Charles Taylor, made belief in transcendent realities nearly inescapable. There were basically three of them: God’s purposes were evident in the design of nature, and in particular incidents (often construed as this-worldly dispensations of divine justice); God was implicated in the Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXII: Charles Taylor—The Bulwarks of Belief (A Secular Age, Part B)

March 14, 2018 by Daniel Halverson Leave a Comment

In our last article, we began to explore the philosophy of secularism, through Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age. We saw how Taylor’s three senses of the word describe a progressive development: first, a retreat of religion (itself a problematic term) from the public to the private sphere; then, a decline of religiosity in the private sphere; and finally, the Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXI: Charles Taylor: A Secular Age (Part A)

March 6, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

Of the three elements in our series—science, religion, and secularism—science has probably received the most philosophical attention, at least in the contemporary context. Indeed, the constitution of a category, “philosophy of religion,” presumes a sectioning-off of certain topics that have, historically, been integral to philosophy. It presumes, in other words, a growing distance between religion and philosophy. This in turn Continue Reading …