Thread by @RealHasanSpiker

ON “SCIENCE” A Twitter thread by Hasan Spiker.
We don't have "rijāl al-dīn" (a priestly class, nor even "clerics") in Islam, we have al-ʿulamāʾ, the possessors of knowledge. (1)

So, all of the discourse about "religious" scholars sticking to religion and "worldly" scholars sticking to "the world" is a bit sad, even if it does reflect contemporary reality (2)

The word “science” has been commandeered and expropriated by “modern science” only quite recently; until the end of the 19th century, it was “natural philosophy” and thus a branch of science still (at least nominally) continuous with metaphysics.The Latin *scientia* referred (3)

most fundamentally to demonstrative knowledge, with metaphysics being the most “scientific” of the sciences because of the unequivocal nature of its principles and conclusions, its foundationality to the other sciences, and its irreducibility to any other sciences. (4)

In Islam, amongst many definitions of ʿilm, the most pertinent as indicating, rather than mere perception, the theoretical certainty which is the fruit of (traditional) scientific activity, was ṣifatun tūjibu tamyīzan bayn al-maʿānī lā yaḥtamilu al-naqīḍ, (5)

and thus “science” ultimately pertained to the universal, and thus, cognition of intelligibles, not indeed to the empirical qua empirical at all. (6)

Thus, in the past, the ʿulamāʾ were the final arbiters of all of the sciences, and they would study the physics and other "natural sciences" of the time, because they too took their places in a subordinated model of the sciences crowned by theology/metaphysics (7)

Yet today for a host of sociopolitical and historical reasons, most Muslims have also bought into the "bifurcated" model where "the religious sciences" and the "natural sciences" are completely compartmentalized divisions, and "never the twain shall meet". (8)

Not everyone knows this, but if you go to most Arab countries today, for most ordinary people, the ʿulamāʾ primarily means “modern scientists”, Stephen Hawking, et al. The Arabic term ʿilm has been largely expropriated just like the word “science.” (9)

This embodies our unreflective acceptance of a radically different conception of natural science (formerly "natural philosophy") developed in a very different philosophical milieu in Europe in the 16th-18th centuries Scientific Revolution, (10)

in which formal and final causality (essence and purpose) came to be strictly banished from the realm of "nature" (11)

, and prevalent conceptions of what was "really there" in the natural world and thus worthy of study, were explicitly confined to "primary qualities", i.e. the ultimately quantitative dimensions of physical reality (12)

Unlike the earlier forms of "natural science", this alien, dichotomous conception of "science"never had time to become critically integrated into the Islamic sciences; and in the chaos and confusion of colonialism, the remaining ʿulamāʾ sought to preserve the basic essentials(13)

and thereby ceded,as if by default,the whole area of study of the natural world to the blind followers of the new natural science in the burgeoning third-rate secular schools and universities emerging in the Muslim world, who readily bought into its claims to "neutrality"(14

The diagnosis in this life by şeyhülislam Mustafa Sabri is especially poignant and one of my favourites (15)

The reality of modern science is that far from being "neutral", it is so geared towards instrumentality, adapting means to ends, and technology, that the best philosophers of science frequently opine that it does not in fact study the "nature" of the physical world at all (16)

We urgently need to begin to transform our contemporary conceptions of theʿulūm and what it means to be an ʿālim in order to counteract this bifurcated, unintegrated vision of reality;the ʿulamāʾ must as standard study the modern natural sciences, understand their philosophical17

presuppositions and implications, and be able to make the distinction between instrumentally-geared "model", on the one hand, and extramental reality, on the other; (18)

it should also become widely known that many and really most modern scientists can't tell the difference, because of their lack of philosophical training; (19)

they do not fully understand the real demarcation of the domain in which they are themselves working. As a result, much (not all), modern science really is, speaking frankly, the glorified hocus pocus of a materialist cult, stewarded and guarded by an initiated priestly class(20)

who send down their pronouncements to "follow the Science" to the fervent ʿawāmm masses. (21)

As we saw during the dark lockdowns of Covid, however, "The Science" (which sounds personified, like some false god in the sky) changes its mind rather a lot, despite so often framing its directives as absolute revelations.(22)

Its alliance with the big pharmaceutical companies, which led to the disaster of the “follow the science” Covid vaccines — (23)

(like so many others, I personally know individuals whose health was irredeemably destroyed by these, so kindly do not suggest this is a “conspiracy theory”) — is just the latest incarnation of a happy, long marriage between the new science and business (24) TBC ...

a marriage originally contracted by Francis Bacon, the first person that we know of to have advised a government to invest in “science” in order to increase its power; this was indeed the primary factor in the delivery of the Industrial Revolution (25)

Another pressing reason making a healthy (informed) scepticism about “science”, well, healthy, is the massive disconnect between popular false concretizations of scientific theories amongst consumers of “popular science”, on the one hand (26)

and the actual highly tentative or even strictly groundless nature of the theories themselves, on the other, (27)

theories which are often little more than elaborate mathematical models enjoying literally zero empirical corroboration after forty years of research (string theory), or even, no empirical corroboration even in principle (multiverse theory) (28)

whereas widespread popular conviction (richly imaginative but ultimately fantasy) holds these multiple dimensions to be actual entities. This doesn't seem to bother most scientists too much! (29)

A particularly ludicrous instance amongst illimitable other examples of this type of phenomenon, is the way that so many popular “Believers in Science” think that “Schrödinger's Cat” was a real cat that, once upon a time, was both alive and dead in a lab somewhere; (30)

but far from being alive and dead at the same time, there was no cat at all! (31)

Schrödinger's Cat was nothing more than a “thought-experiment”, designed to show the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics precisely because it would IMPLY that the cat would be alive and dead at the same time! (32)

Almost the precise opposite of the popular conception. (33)

Another is the popular assumption that what philosophers of science call “theoretical entities” and “unobservable entities”, such as quarks, electrons (which are detected, but not observed, in cloud chambers), and even atoms, straightforwardly exist, rather than constituting (34

exigencies of explanation and coherence. But in fact, the existence of these entities and others is the subject of vigorous debate between scientific realists and anti-realists. (35)

The latter particularly point to the underdetermination of theories by observational data, which means the data could in fact be explained by numerous other theories. (36)

This is partly because of the unobservability of many of the theoretical entities posited by the theory, implying that they could in principle be replaced by alternative theoretical “entities”. (37)

Proponents of this view, such as Larry Laudan in his “A Confutation of Convergent Realism”, especially point to the empirical SUCCESS of theories, employing unobservable entities such as “phlogiston” , which scientific consensus now deems entirely fictional (38)

See (39)philosophy.hku.hk/courses/dm/phi…

Now on another note: We are victim to numerous permutations of “science’s” quantitative reduction of reality to the instrumental adaption of means to ends; (40)

some are merely irritating, like artificial "intelligence", in the broadest sense, e.g., regularly blocking your legitimate bank transfers for "your" "security" (41)

As if it has omniscient access to your overall context and intentions, when in fact it is merely working with crude criteria of probabilistic variables and almost always get it wrong; (42)

or these AI “wonders of science” answering phone calls to your service providers and almost invariably proving completely incapable of processing the most basic human nuance, and thus useless at fulfilling the most basic of human needs (43)

Now, yes, there are scientific “facts” like the truth of the Copernican rather than Ptolemaic models of astronomical phenomena, etc., but again the popular conception of these as directly “observed” entities is false; (44)

one of the private tutors I studied a little physics and astronomy with (the brilliant Dr. Youssef Ismail from Zaytuna) actually took me through many of the steps involved in getting from the one to the other such that I appreciated some of the monumental calculations involved(45

which in the process also showed that while the Copernican model removed the equant problem and replaced retrograde with relative motion,and is ultimately the basis of the correct answer, the Ptolemaic model had considerable predictive explanatory value and was far from stupid(46

On a final note, it is an advanced historical consequence of the trajectory adopted by modern science ... (47)

... at its very roots in the Scientific Revolution, particularly in its fixation on primary qualities and abhorrence of final causes – that something as bizarrely irrational and hollow as physicalism could become a de facto “scientific” orthodoxy of our time (48)

even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with empirical science, even on the most generous of definitions. (49)

Consciousness is an epiphenomenon of brain states, and is thus reducible to said brain states. (50)

The problem is, on the assumption, for the sake of argument, of the truth of this proposition, consciousness if only identified as such, i.e. as an epiphenomenon reducible to “physical” brain states, THROUGH the brain-state mechanism itself. (51)

The conscious enunciation of a proposition that the epiphenomenalist considers false, such as “epiphenomenalism is false”, correlates with the brain firing neurons at a certain frequency just as much as does the conscious enunciation of “epiphenomenalism is true.” (52)

But brain states have no truth value; “truth” is only a function of the conscious experience. (53)

Now, the epiphenomenalist may concede that in light of this, there isn’t REALLY such a thing as truth, and it is fair to say that we needn’t be terribly concerned with a theory whose own proponents do not believe to be true;(54)

but if the epiphenomenalist believes the theory to be true in any objective and literal sense, then necessarily reality (the “physical”, in this particular case, the human brain) is intrinsically directed towards consciousness not as subjective experience (55)

but as accurate representation of the intelligible structure of reality; and as such, cannot credibly be construed as “physical” at all. (56)

This, then, is the most fundamental problem with “science”; the absurd abolition of mind from the “natural” world, and of the significance of the inexorable presence of the human knowing subject in all scientific activity; (57)

This is all present at the roots of modern science in the Scientific Revolution, in its fixation on primary qualities and abhorrence of final causes, and it has stayed there. (58)

It is not thus sufficient to just make a few “metaphysical” alterations to modern science; we need a complete rerooting (59)

And yes, we are naïve if we think that will be easy, and it is unclear if at this stage it is even feasible, and yes, the “success” of science in developing technology is undoubted; this will continue, and we will eagerly consume it, often with insufficient discretion. (60)

But as we have seen, science does not need to be a true picture of reality in order to produce instrumentally effective technology (61)

And while the instrumental (if not moral) "success" of science is not in doubt, it is surely rather less successful as a depiction of the nature of reality, and even less so as a moral guide. (62)

SOME READINGS: Some readings:
* Habermas’s “Knowledge and Human Interests”
* The Reality of the Unobservable: Observability, Unobservability and Their Impact on the Issue of Scientific Realism
More popular: The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory.

Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory

Addendum to (38) and (39) from linked article

should be "in this slide", not "life"! Don't know what happened there!

Addendum 2: Often newcomers to philosophy think that if they are realists about essences, they should also be against "scientific anti-realists" and for "scientific realism", In fact, these have very little to do with each other. Just a side note. I'll go into more detail if

anyone problematizes this, or needs to enquire further. In fact, being a metaphysical realist should, in my view, incline one towards being a scientific anti-realist.

Typo. Should be "consciousness IS only identified as such.

Addendum 3: Typo in 51. Should be: The problem is, on the assumption, for the sake of argument, of the truth of this proposition, consciousness IS only identified as such, i.e. as an epiphenomenon reducible to “physical” brain states, THROUGH the brain-state mechanism itself.

@faxoverfeeels but that was because I agreed with most of what that post was saying on a more general level. As I've said, I haven't seen the "flat earth" video and I'm not really interested. I know the earth isn't flat, just for the record. (2)

@faxoverfeeels And I see no compelling reason not to believe in the moon landings. The surrounding discussion did prompt me to put together some thoughts about science in general that I've been developing for years though, hence my thread. Bless you for your sweet presumptuousness !((3))

@Evollaqi realists that so many of the theoretical entities they posit seem very unlikely to refer to real, distinct, extramental - rather than merely instrumental-theoretical - properties (2)

@Evollaqi *many, not may

@Evollaqi That's my two cents. Would be interested to hear your thoughts.

@TheghostofMT @Evollaqi that in the unobservable, theoretical entities that it posits, it is actually able to identify the real essences of things. Of course, yes, I believe that reality is intrinsically intelligible so yes, in principle one could come to know the detailed essences of things (2)

@TheghostofMT @Evollaqi even in the places sciences is looking. But for me broad *scientific* realism — i.e. realism that rests epistemologically on a commitment to the scientific method which I consider to be FUNDAMENTALLY instrumental in operation and intent — is untenable. (3)

@TheghostofMT @Evollaqi *science

AFTERWORD: It is simply an occupational hazard on Twitter to be subject to uninformed censure by individuals who have not taken the time to try to understand what you are saying but instead presumptuously spin an interpretation based on a skim read, or even more often, (1)

are personally incapable of acknowledging their own inability to comprehend and thus the need to learn more, and so instead pronounce based on their overall sense of whether your words are “for” or “against” their own preconceived opinions. (2)

The word “anti-science” is itself a slightly hysterical, quasi-religious judgement simply drenched in unthinking acquiescence to positivism and the doctrine of necessary progress. (3)

The thread is immensely clear; the historical genesis of modern science, its anti-metaphysical methodological commitments, and its fundamentally instrumental nature (4)

should be sufficient to alert us to the fact that it is geared almost exclusively towards the mastery of nature and technology. (5)

Now the moral status of these latter two is another matter entirely, which we can deal with another time, and I made no judgement on them. (6)

The point is that popular misconceptions of the nature of science as infallible guide, or as unlocker of the innermost nature of reality, are like all falsehood, potentially harmful, oppressive and misleading.(7)