After a weekend with no news at all, we begin the week on a serious note with an article that is, at least superficially, about the philosophy of Werner Heisenberg, whose name is associated with the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. That’s a subject about which your Curmudgeon is not only unschooled, but probably also in denial.
We are therefore in awe of the intellectual prowess of the Discoveroids, who have posted this at their creationist blog: Heisenberg on the Delusion of Scientism. The author is Michael Egnor — that’s his writeup at the Encyclopedia of American Loons.
Egnor goes where your Curmudgeon fears to tread. That is most impressive. Despite our inadequacies in this area, we shall nevertheless endeavor to grasp Egnor’s meaning. He begins with a quote from Heisenberg:
What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
We checked. Heisenberg said that, but we’ll leave the context for another day. Here are some excerpts from the rest of Egnor’s little essay, with bold font added by us:
Here Heisenberg identifies the chief delusion of scientism, the delusion that the scientific method reveals truth in a way that other methods of knowing — metaphysical, logical, intuitive — don’t.
Is that what Heisenberg was saying? We don’t know, but Egnor knows — or at least he thinks he does. Egnor has a track record on the subject of whatever it is that he calls “scientism.” It’s a slippery word he uses to blur the very real differences between Philosophical naturalism and the scientific method. His latest essay is a sequel to an earlier one we wrote about here: Discoveroids’ Straw Man: Naturalism. He’s building his castle on a foundation of hot air. Let’s read on:
Scientism is a delusion. The scientific method will never lead us to the full truth about nature in itself. Scientific knowledge is inherently limited by our method of questioning. It does not — cannot — provide full certain knowledge of nature. It is inherently limited by our methods and by the ideological presumptions from which we draw our methods.
We suspect that we know where Egnor is going with this. He continues:
How then do we get closer to the truth about nature? We do so by acknowledging our bias, and working to ensure that our methods of studying nature don’t blind us to aspects of nature as it is.
Ah yes, it’s starting to come into focus. No doubt we’ll soon be told that Darwinists are blinded by their methods, whereas the Discoveroids, with their deep spiritual insights, are able to see The Truth™. Is our suspicion correct? Here’s more:
Such self-blindness is most striking in the dogmatic atheism that afflicts most evolutionary biologists, who refuse to consider purpose in biology, which is replete with purpose. By eschewing causation other than an arid materialism, atheist scientists leave much of nature unexposed to their method of questioning.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! The Discoveroids are soooooo predictable! And now, having come this far, Egnor goes all the way — perhaps where even Heisenberg didn’t go:
Do theists suffer an analogous blindness? No. Most versions of theism acknowledge primary and secondary causes. Where inference to an intelligence behind nature is unnecessary to describe a natural process, none is offered. Where intelligence behind nature is manifest, the truth is acknowledged.
Theists aren’t blinded by their philosophy, but scientists are. That’s what Heisenberg says — as interpreted by Egnor. This is the final paragraph:
The wisest approach to the study of nature is to keep an open mind, and to eschew dogmatic metaphysical presumptions that prevent us from following the evidence.
This is only the first step. Heisenberg died in 1976, so he can’t defend himself. That makes him eligible for recruitment into the Discoveroids’ zombie legion, who add prestige to what’s going on in their Seattle ministry. They have an illustrious roster of long-deceased members, and occasionally they find a new cadaver they can dig up for display in their gruesome gallery. The last time we wrote about their macabre membership drive (and the only time we approved of their choice) was William Jennings Bryan Joins Discovery Institute.
Copyright © 2013. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Re “The scientific method will never lead us to the full truth about nature in itself.” uh, and the Bible will? So, all of the Earth’s scientist can quit their jobs because all of the answers are in the Bible? What the heck are they thinking? Oh, my mistake; I assumed they were thinking.
The usual: attack science, but offer nothing positive.
Why does he use naturalistic means to communicate? If the supernatural is so much better, why not use that?
What method does he propose, apart from the scientific method, we employ in understanding nature that will bring results? Do we start to consult seers as we are told in Judges?
The definition of “knowledge” is “a justified, true belief (that would remain true even if the circumstances in which it is held changed somewhat)”.
“Other ways of knowing” fall flat because what they produce ain’t knowledge, skipping over, as they always do, the “true” and “justified” stipulations.
And if our senses distort the Ding an sich, the Discorrhoids cannot claim special privilege because their senses are equally limited.
Eggwit’s advice to “eschew dogmatic metaphysical presumptions” is worth a hearty horselaugh. He could start a horseshoe factory with all that irony and his roping in of Heisenberg would be offensive if he (i.e., Eggwit) had any credibility at all.
The Egnorant one causes me to remember that while science doesn’t know everything, religion doesn’t know anything.
I agreed with the first half of Egnor (apart from “scientism is a delusion”, but I don’t know what that means). Science is limited, it will never lead us to absolute truth. We can only get closer and closer to the truth, dismissing and rejecting what has been demonstrated to be wrong (like a young or flat Earth) and formulating new ideas, sometimes we can demonstrate them to be correct (like the Uncertainty principle), but science functions around the idea that we could be wrong and we must continually question and test everything. To figure these things out we do have to acknowledge our biases.
But I think Egnor and I differ on why we have to acknowledge our biases. He appears to think we have to acknowledge our biases because our biases tells us that we are special and everything was created by magic and some book gives us some vague hints about why without ever telling us how, because science has given us no evidence that our biases are correct here, we must discard science and stick to this bias. He has got a fascinating mind, I bet he knows all the different colours crayons can make.
The DI spends a great deal of it’s time trying to convince others that intelligent design is science, a theory based on evidence, yadda yadda yadda. So why are they now arguing that no, actually, science is not enough, we need to get a little non-scientific in order to know “the truth.” Is this a confession that ID has a significant component of non-science to it? If so, perhaps the DI can educate us on exactly which non-scientific thought process or tool is required to understand ID and why that particular one is required and not some other.
Heisenberg was right in that our knowledge of nature is dependent on our means of questioning it. For example, we don’t really know what an electron is, but we can measure it in different ways and describe it mathematically, and that will have to suffice as our description of the election. I don’t think Heisenberg was advancing the notion that we need to consult shamans or priests to truly know sub-atomic particles. Maybe the DI, with their religiously augmented science, can tell us exactly what an election is.
Scientific inquiry may be looking through a glass darkly but all other attempts have been more like watching a polar bear eat marshmallows in a snowstorm.
Egnor quotes Heisenberg: “What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Which is not news to science, but a modern formulation of the truth of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” from 2500 years ago.
No doubt some of Egnor’s ancestors made a comfortable living back then, interpreting the alignment of the planets, and examining the entrails of sacrificial poultry.
Ceteris Paribus said:
Egnor quotes Heisenberg: “What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Which is not news to science, but a modern formulation of the truth of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” from 2500 years ago.
I disagree, given that Plato seems to be referring to his theory of Forms, in which he postulates the existence of a metaphysical world of perfect forms or ideas. The interior of the cave represents the world of sense perception, i.e. that which is available to us empirically. For Plato, true knowledge can never be the result of empirical investigation, since true knowledge pertains to his (imaginary) metaphysical world. So he’s not exactly a forefather of science nor of Heisenberg. I’m not a physicist, but I don’t think Heisenberg was getting all mystical. I thought he was just saying that at the subatomic level, observation itself affects the results.
So what Egnor is saying is that science is absolutely relative whereas religion and “other ways of knowing(?)” are absolutely infallible.
linnetmoss notes: “I thought he was just saying that at the subatomic level, observation itself affects the results.” Actually, it’s true not only at the subatomic level. For example, if we want to measure local temperature of the earth in a borehole, the very act of lowering the probe affects the local temperature regime. . .at least until thermal equilibrium is reached. And, I agree with you that Heisenberg was not being mystical at all — just keenly observant.
The Darwin quote mine has finally ran out of ore and they’ve moved on to mine Heisenburg? This should be fun, they know even less about physics than they do about biology.
Can’t wait to hear how the double slit experiment confirms ID.
@Ed: Nice insight. Egnor is unwittingly revealing the true nature of the DI’s purpose, which is purely religious.
Egnor further reveals his bias by his choice of loaded words:
“By eschewing causation other than an arid materialism, atheist scientists leave much of nature unexposed to their method of questioning.”
Arid materialism? Is there a juicy variety?
Atheist scientists? How about the Methodist scientists, or the Lutheran, or Jewish? Or is it just the atheists who employ the scientific method? (I thought the Scientific Methodists might as well, but what do I know?) And what about the Christian Scientists?
Here is the original, in context:
“…With regard to this situation Bohr has emphasized that it is more realistic to state that the division into the object and the rest of the world is not arbitrary. Our actual situation in researc work in atomic physics is usually this: we wish to understand a certain phenomenon, we wish to recognize how this phenomenon follows from the general laws of nature. Therefore, that part of matter or radiation which takes part in the phenomenon is the natural `object’ in the theoretical treatment and should be separated in this respect from the tools used to study the phenomenon. This again emphasizes a subjective element
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in the description of atomic events, since the measuring device has been constructed by the observer, and we have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning. Our scientific work in physics consists in asking questions
about nature in the language that we possess and trying to get an answer from experiment by the means that are at our disposal. In this way quantum theory reminds us, as Bohr has put it, of the old wisdom that when searching for harmony in life one must never forget that in the drama
of existence we are ourselves both players and spectators. It is understandable that in our scientific relation to nature our own activity becomes very important when we have to deal with parts of nature into which we can penetrate only by using the most elaborate tools…”
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Full text here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CEEQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.naturalthinker.net%2Ftrl%2Ftexts%2FHeisenberg%2CWerner%2FHeisenberg%2C%2520Werner%2520-%2520Physics%2520and%2520philosophy.pdf&ei=E0CmUprIFcGSkQe224CQBQ&usg=AFQjCNFdmmdCPFmpYSJb6nwa6sYVyGIo1w&sig2=7YZ1aqg1JNiYXMWq9WHGOg
linnetmoss comments re Heisenberg and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave:
It happens that in Heisenberg’s time, he was definitely on the mystical side of debates on the human understanding of quantum mechanics. Einstein was an example of the other side of that debate. Quantum Mysticism: Gone but Not Forgotten
What Egnor ignores is that science is quite able and willing to work to continually improve probabilistic descriptions of reality, while Creationists are intellectually lazy and nail their truth wall the easy way, simply discovering their truths in the myths of moldy old manuscripts.
“Is that what Heisenberg was saying? We don’t know.”
As a teacher physics I know – the answer is negative. That was not what Heisenberg was saying. What he was saying is that the setup for your experiment at an atomic scale influences the outcome of that experiment.
So I stopped reading after Egnor’s first paragraph.
“Scientism is a delusion. The scientific method will never lead us to the full truth about nature in itself.”
That’s not what scientism is about. Scientism means that the scientific method is the best, if not the only way to obtain knowledge. That’s not the same as truth the way theists understand this word.
Egnor is f**king a strawman. I hope he gets off.
“Can’t wait to hear how the double slit experiment confirms ID.”
Neither can I as this experiment is a fine example of what Heisenberg meant with
“What we observe is not nature itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
The most vivid example is of course Schrödinger’s Cat, which is dead, alive or both depending on the way we look at it (disclaimer: this is an exaggerated thought experiment illustrating a point, not a claim about reality).
Yup, I also would love to read Egnor’s take on Schrödinger’s Cat. The Great Designer, blessed be He/She/It perhaps loves a game of dice?
He’s contrasting “scientists” with “theists.” Not only is that insulting to a lot of scientists, but it strikes me as a bit of an own goal. I doubt many people are going to see that comparison and go “hey, he’s right, it should be the latter group that writes all the science textbooks.”
Egnor is a neurosurgeon: imagine letting someone who reasons like that cut into your brain.