[permaculture] Philosophy of Science

Toby Hemenway toby at patternliteracy.com
Tue Nov 4 16:23:16 EST 2008


Since I did science for many years, I spent some time digging into both 
the philosophical and historical underpinnings of science, and will add 
a few of my favorites. Some of the biggies have been mentioned, such as 
Kuhn, Popper, Hegel; these are all great, although Popper's take on 
logical positivism has had some strong critics and much of the 
positivist program has been abandoned. JD Bernal has written from a 
Marxist point of view and is worth checking out. Feyerabend is indeed 
great. Herbert Butterfield's "The Origins of Modern Science" is a fine 
overview of where science has come from. Jacques Barzun's "Science: The 
Glorious Entertainment" looks at the overriding influence of science in 
our world in many places where it has no business being applied. In a 
narrower focus, Daniel Dennett's "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" shows how 
Darwin has been used to support conflicting religious and political 
views, and several of Michael Ruse's books on Darwin ("The Triumph of 
the Darwinian Method") also show how our idea of evolution has spread 
into the way many people think about nearly everything. Ernst Mayr has 
written extensively about how science is actually done, although he's 
got his critics, too.

I've also gotten a huge amount from a CD/DVD set from The Teaching 
Company called "Science Wars" that is great listening in the car, etc 
(get if from the library). I had lots of "aha's" from it. The narrator 
covers about 2000 years of philosophy of science, based on the old 
conflict of whether science can tell us what is eternally, objectively 
"true" or whether it can only give us explanations that work for the 
time being. I'm pretty much in the latter camp, judging from the fact 
that everything we thought was "true" 75 years ago about the atom, 
geology, physics, and most of biology turns out to have been inadequate 
if not plain wrong. We can expect that what we "know" now about these 
things will also need serious revising in the future. The series lists 
many good authors to follow up on. Life is too short!

Science is a useful tool, but I like that old saying that if the only 
tool you have is a hammer, all your problems start to look like nails. 
Like everything else, science takes a huge chunk of assumptions and 
faith to make it work for us.

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com



Dick Pierce wrote:
> Deep Ecology! A spot on idea and reference. The *Absence of the Sacred* by
> Jerry Mander comes immediately to mind as a classic and a good read for
> those with strong stomachs for what modern science and technology have done
> to the Earth and its Indigenous peoples - kind of a *Guns, Germs, and
> Steel*but written with an outsiders view of our Western culture, not
> the
> rationalizations by the victors (but, Earth will abide!).
>
> Reminds me of two personal favorites - both quite old and very interesting
> perspectives. The 1st is *Earth Abides*, written in the 50's?, a novel about
> an international virus [almost] wiping out the human population when a
> trans-Atlantic Lockheed Electra introduces a deadly, new virus to the US -
> life continues but civilization/culture/knowledge/education starts over from
> zero with the few lone survivors. The other is the classic by Barry
> Commoner, *The Closing Circle*. He writes at the beginning of the post-war
> technology/good life-for-the-privileged boom - he notices that all does not
> seem perfect in "Pleasantville" (a inciteful movie on the subject) and has
> remarkable insight into the causes of some growing difficulties and some
> real wisdom from the beginning of the "ascent economy" that might be of use
> in David Holmgren's "descent economy" that lies ahead for most of us.
>
> Best to all
>
> On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 10:01 PM, <yarrow at sfo.com> wrote:
>
>> At 2:10 PM -0700 10/30/08, jason brown wrote:
>>> I am currently doing a masters degree in forestry. While the
>>> material is amazing and I am learning a lot. There has been a
>>> consistant mechanistic world view expressed and assumed. I am
>>> working on a paper analysis for the class and would like to include
>>> a critique of the mechanistic world view.
>>>
>> Books on "deep ecology" directly address the weaknesses of the
>> mechanistic world view. Arne Naess wrote some papers on it a couple
>> decades ago.
>>
>> One of the most entertaining philosophy of science books I've read is
>> Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. He discusses the scientific method
>> as one of the possible approaches to describing the world, rather
>> than the only method. (Maybe shoulda been titled Against Dogma.)
>>
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