Topics Science

Question How do we tell apart bad science from good science? For example, suppose one textbook says that magnetism demonstrates that the deity is able to make opposite poles attract, while a second textbook says it illustrates a force between electric currents. Defenders of the first book say its description provides the better account because it is more consistent with reality (namely scripture). Defenders of the second book say its description provides the better account because it is more consistent with reality (namely certain other facts about the physical world). On what basis (if any) can we say that the second book’s description is better science than the first book’s?

Accepted:
November 30, 2005

Comments

We are a very small part of the universe, and our best shot at figuring out what it is like involves making ourselves as causally sensitive as possible to the rest of it. That is what scientists do, through careful and sophisticated observation and experiment. If we are lucky, this will give us good reason to think that some of our scientific theories about the world are along the right lines.

There is a very different way one might go about trying to figure out what the world is like, and this is by consulting an answer book that just tells you. Some people believe that their favored religious text is such a book. But we would need some good reason to believe that their text is reliable answer book, some good reason to trust it, and no such reason is available. Of course that won't dissuade someone who is convinced that they do have a reliable answer book, but they don't have good evidence for their view.

To put the matter more externally, practices that depend on careful and sophisticated observation and experiment are reliable routes to discovering more about the nature of the universe; practices that depend instead on consulting religious texts are not reliable.