Libertine

Since I am still in too much pain to walk over to the couch and get back to reading the Phaedrus, I might as well step in and be the voice of reason here.

First some comments on (parts of) people's posts in this thread, since I believe that may aid in guiding us towards a better understanding of the subject matter.

Let me start of by saying that all human knowledge either consists of "theories", some stronger than others, or of formal, closed and invented systems.

Now, as for theories, it is logically impossible to prove them - any of them actually. The two main reasons for this are the problem of induction (it is impossible to logically derive general rules/laws/facts from single facts/instances) and the impossibility of verification as proof (if your theory holds that "if A, then B", and B is the case, that does not prove A).
What this means is that no theory can ever really be proven. Theories come to be regarded as "laws" because they withstand the harshest tests over extended periods of time and are not refuted, but even then, they never cease to be theories.

As for logic, that is a good example of a closed, invented and formal system. Ironically, this makes it utterly infallible. It's like a game: if you follow the rules, all positions you achieve are valid. If for example, following Aristotelian syllogistics, you have the premiss "All apples are fruits" and the premiss "X is an apple", then it necessarily follows that "X is a fruit".

The problem is not that logic is fallible, it's that applying logic to the real world presents us with problems. Deriving true premisses from the real world and accounting for all possible premisses is, in most cases, impossible.


Your view on science seems to be mostly Popperian, i.e. there is a scientific method which, if we follow it, will lead us necessarily to a "growth of knowledge". However, since the works of Kuhn and Lakatos (and later thinkers like Latour), this has become somewhat of an untenable position.
Scientists, by and large, do not actually follow a strict "scientific method". Rather, they mostly work within existing paradigms, and sometimes are forced to choose between competing paradigms. The choice between competing paradigms, however, is often not made by rational deliberation on the merits of each paradigm, since paradigms tend to be incommensurable (that is, untranslatable). They can not be rationally compared, since they conflict not only in their theories and predictions, but in their very language and methods. Although this view is a radical one, it undoubtedly contains at least one important truth: science is a human practice, and because of that is entrenched in its own culture. The roads taken by science are not determined by some inevitable truth, but are (at least partly) determined by contingent social interactions.

I'm afraid that you are far off in this post, but it quite adequately indicates the problems with your initial postulation.

First, let's examine your idea of "traditional science". It's important to note that this view of science is quite recent (it only became popular after Popper and the logical positivists), something that pulls the adequacy of the term "traditional science" into doubt, but what is perhaps even more important, and at least as interesting, is that this form of science even today hardly exists, if at all, and has certainly not existed in the past. Scientists, by and large, have always been creative thinkers, speculating continuously if only for heuristic purposes and raising and examining many possible frameworks over and over again in the hope that any of those will prove adequate, or at least will aid in finding other frameworks more adequate than the current ones. String theory, seen in this light, is not at all as different from "normal science" as some make it out to be.

Second, your idea of religion. Looking at it historically, it is misleading at best, and plainly wrong at worst. Religion, throughout the ages, has been shaped at least as much by political and cultural issues as it has by the desire to provide answers to the unknown. Catholicism, for example, at one point had three separate popes, each contesting the legitimacy of the others, and each backed by different political groups. Dogma was often entirely shaped by political considerations, rather than spiritual ones. Or look at Luther, who adapted his ideas to suit the needs of those nobles supporting him. And I won't even go into Anglicanism. Clearly, the basis for organized religion is not a search for knowledge or truth, whether or not beyond the bounds of science. The basis for organized religion is tradition, coupled with a desire to answer all questions (especially moral ones!) within that framework of tradition.

Faith is something different from religion altogether. Although it can be based on, derived from or indeed exist within religion, it is by no means the same. Rather, faith is speculation without the critical mindset that comes with science. Indeed, that critical mindset may well be the very essence of science. Scientists, ideally, apply perform a critical search for knowledge

What I perhaps find most baffling is the perceived distinction between metaphysics and science you wish to close, and the distinction between metaphysics and religion you fail to make. Metaphysics and science are, in origin, siblings. They both originate in the search for knowledge, and metaphysics can - and probably should - be seen as one of the sciences not dealing with empirically observable facts. Metaphysics has also been extensively (and at times mainly) applied to religion, of course, mainly because the existence of a God was taken to be an absolute reality, and metaphysics is obviously one of the few branches of science capable of dealing with non-empirical reality. Metaphysics without religion is entirely possible, so even if string theory would fall within the realm of metaphysics, that is by no means a reason to believe it falls within the realm of religion.

However, even to see string theory as metaphysics is somewhat curious. It is a theory still very much in its early phases, which obviously creates problems in testing it or parts of it, but it is a theory of the physical (in the broadest sense of the word) nonetheless. When string theory starts producing such results as "murder is bad", then it may be time to call it religion. Right now, however, it is merely a very promising, ill-understood theory in its larval stage.

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