Knowledge and science instead of a useless even injurious run-around

How can a person stick to knowledge and science, and avoid a run-around into falsehood, confusion, deception, wastefulness, injury, etc?

God says that humanity needs to study and obey His Word (cf. Proverbs 1; John 14). 

The philosopher Socrates is reported to have said that he was wisest in Athens because he was honest in admitting when he did not know a true answer to a question. 

University of Oxford professor John C. Lennox (mathematics) observed that science has been highly productive in producing knowledge (i.e. facts) by asking extremely limited questions. This is effective for two well-known reasons: 

(1) It is possible for the scientific community to test extensively (in different ways and by different people) a hypothesis-answer to an extremely limited question. That testing filters out false hypotheses and obtains knowledge (facts, true statements). 

(2) The true answers to extremely limited questions help science to ask and answer more (extremely limited) questions. Reductionism accumulates and links together facts.

So we have three highly credible (and tested) answers to our question. 

From these answers, one can evaluate claims about scientific methodology made at a Swedish university recently (U. of Gothenburg), that "research traditions" are important, and that doing research using hypotheses is dangerous and unnecessary. [1]

Are research traditions (where a disciplinary field preserves specific methods) important for producing knowledge and science? Absolutely not: the history of science proves resolutely that research traditions have usually been the greatest obstacle to knowledge and science (cf. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). They should be treated like nuclear waste (figuratively speaking). 

Are hypotheses dangerous and unnecessary in research whose goal is to produce knowledge and science? No. A hypothesis is a tentative claim that is made the object of evaluation. It is impossible to do research effectively unless one evaluates one's claims. A scientific work must identify what new claims it is making (i.e. what hypotheses it is raising for evaluation), so that these can be evaluated as either true or false.

Here is a useful distinction: science, journalism, churnalism. Science produces knowledge through critically evaluating claims in a way that can be agreed upon objectively or inter-subjectively. It cannot claim to produce knowledge if "only some people can see it". When only some people believe something, and cannot prove it to all other people, they have produced belief, not knowledge. Although they may claim to have produced esoteric (hidden) knowledge, verifying that in a way that all people can agree on is a demanding task in and of itself. 

Journalism seeks to describe the world in a factual way. It claims, "This is what happened." It produces purported knowledge of the world. It is not scientific knowledge because journalism's process does not work with testing claims (hypotheses) that can then be tested by any other person (with the required research resources like microscopes or field-time). Journalism produces less reliable information about the Universe, and as such cannot participate in the highly productive process of reductionism and accumulation that science does. One cannot build on journalism's facts reliably, the way that one is supposed to be able to with science's facts.

Churnalism is a relatively new form of journalism, where the journalist simply takes the statements of others and assembles them into a new publication. There is no attempt to be factual beyond accurately repeating what others have said. Those statements may be complete falsehoods. No attempt to verify those statements is made at all. The onset of churnalism is related to the financial interests of journalistic publications, or perhaps more accurately named information media. Churnalism has few risks (of lawsuits for example) and low costs (information can be produced simply by "churning" information that others provide, through for example "press releases"). 

Astoundingly, a lot of what is published in the humanities field is closest to churnalism, in terms of informativeness, factuality, tendency to mislead, and method. Humanities academics often simply "churn" the contributors of others into a new publication, adding no knowledge (scientific or purported) at all. The typical method is to critique the work of other humanities academics using the theories of yet other humanities academics, thus merely churning. Without going into the self-defeating foundational ideas of the humanities dating from the early 19th century (ideas concerned with meetings of minds and similar romantic, poetical, unscientific concepts), one can conclude from the patent and ubiquitous churnalistic bankruptcy of the humanities that the entire project ought to be turned out of the universities, where the production of new knowledge should be the rule for all intellectual work.

This brings us back to the need for hypotheses, tentative truth claims that are subjected to rigorous testing to decide whether they are true or not. If they are true, then presto, one has produced knowledge (so long as the hypothesis is new). 

What can we say of Gothenburg University regarding hypotheses as dangerous because its students do not know how to handle them? It is a confirmation that the humanities are not really in the business of producing knowledge. Again, the growth of knowledge can only come through making and testing tentative truth claims (hypotheses). If a humanities department (e.g. for the study of religions) has not trained its students to handle hypotheses, then it is unlikely that its focus is knowledge, and much more likely that it is engaged in a highly manicured form of churnalism. That is, although it will claim society's prestige and resources to focus on knowledge, its ineptitude and fear in regard to hypotheses unmasks it as a churnalistic organization.

Once one has made the decision to stick to knowledge and science and to avoid a useless (even injurious) run-around, there still remain a huge number of pitfalls that the history of science and knowledge-production informs us of. One of the best summaries here is by the Cornell University agricultural scientist and theory of science scholar Hugh G. Gauch, Jr., Scientific Method in Brief (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Many scientists can attest to hitting unjust obstacles set up within their community. Gauch gives various examples of the kinds of unjust obstacles appearing regularly in the scientific community. A particularly important type of obstacle also appears regularly in the humanities: "the fallacy of unobtainable perfection". Let's let the talented Dr. Gauch describe it for us:

An alluring fallacy for scientists is unobtainable perfection, or at least excessive perfection. This fallacy discredits a result by requiring greater accuracy or scope. For instance, if a paper under review compares methods A and B, a reviewer might say that it must also compare method C in ordre to be publishable. But simply to complain that more could be done is irrelevant because this is always the case. Rather, the relevant criteria are whether that paper adds to what was known before and whether it has some theoretical interest or practical value. [2] 

Again Gothenburg University furnishes a cautionary case-example. An obligatory course for a BA degree in theology sets up a range of requirements for students to meet, but some of these requirements are defined so vaguely that a student must hope that the university official's arbitrary decision will be favourable so that the student can receive a degree for several years' work. Specifically, students in this course (RKT 145) should at the course's completion be able to:

"describe central theoretical perspectives in one of the five disciplinary areas and connect these to identified problems" [3]

"communicate scientific problems and solutions" [4]

What are "the central theoretical perspectives" in any humanities field? There is a continuous upheaval and expansion in the theories of a humanities field, not least because of churnalism (where theory is substituted for knowledge). So this is an arbitrary decision to be made by a university official, a situation exacerbated by requiring a student to "connect" these theoretical perspectives to "identified problems". The spectre of unobtainable perfection appears quite clearly here. But that spectre really gets to spook when armed with the requirement to communicate "scientific solutions" to problems established in the humanities. What are these? Only the university official can say, using his or her arbitrary calculation. 

Science outside engineering and other applied areas rarely talks about "scientific solutions" to "scientific problems", not least because science doesn't progress that way. Science asks questions and then tries to answer them truthfully. Hey do you have a solution on gravity? What's your solution on the effects of sucrose on mammals? Science doesn't orient to solutions but to questions and hypotheses.  



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Notes:

[1] The context was theology and the study of religions. The assertion that hypotheses are dangerous focused on the inability of university students to handle them properly. 

The associate professor who made these claims has disagreed that I have understood what he said, and requested I publish an apology. At present I do not yet see any evidence that I have misunderstood the points at issue. In lieu of an apology, I asked if I could publish the email where he argues I've misunderstood and requests an apology, to which he agreed. Here is the main body text of the email.

Jag menar inte att hypoteser per se är farliga; det är en uppenbar missuppfattning.

Den fråga som ställs i en uppsats kan antingen inbegripa en hypotes eller inte. Det är fortfarande en fråga: dvs. Är denna hypotes hållbar? Man anför då argument och bevis mot och för hypotesen som på detta sätt prövas. Detta är helt oproblematiskt.

Sedan är det ett empiriskt faktum att många studenter inte är så pass insatta i sitt fält att de har formulerat en hypotes.

Vissa studenter har dock en kvasireligiös tro på sin hypotes, med andra ord oavsett vilken kritik som framförs eller vilka motbevis som läggs fram så håller man fast vid den. Då är det inte längre en fråga om hypotesprövning utan om ett slags religiös tro.

Jag önskar dig lycka till med ditt uppsatsarbete, men i fortsättningen skulle jag stämma av med den person som du kritiserar innan du gör det offentligt på en blogg. Det skulle vara trevligt om du kunde föra in en ursäkt på din blogg att du missuppfattat det jag sa på presentationen.

To understand the associate professor's email with more context, I include here the immediately preceding email from me to him.

Jag ber om ursäkt om jag har missuppfattat din presentation. Jag har ett starkt minne av att du sade:

(a) grundutbildningsstudenter har ofta svårt att hantera hypoteser, exempelvis de fokuserar på att driva på och stödja sin egen idé. Min sammanfattning var att presentationen håller hypoteser för farliga (en universitetsstudent kan ej nödvändigtvis hantera dem).

Jag står kritiskt till dessa påståenden i din presentation, och står fast vid min sammanfattning (dock det kan förbättras genom att bakgrundsfakta läggs fram. Jag bör göra det.)

(b) grundutbildningsstudenter behöver inte ha en hypotes. Min sammanfattning var därför att din presentation höll hypoteser för icke nödvändiga.

Jag hoppas att du inte tar det personligt att jag tar upp kritiska invändningar. Jag menar inte att göra personpåhopp eller dylikt. Jag tar på största allvar universitetets uppgift att producera kunskap och vetenskap, och i linje med denna uppgift försöker jag dela mina kritiska invändningar med dig och offentligt. En definition av vetenskap som finns i literaturen är "a community of scepticism". Ingen perfekt definition kanske, men den närmar sig det som krävs för att universitetet ska vara vetenskapligt (producerar kunskap).

[2] Gauch, Scientific Method in Brief, p. 125.

[3] "redogöra för centrala teoretiska perspektiv inom något av de fem ämnesområdena samt koppla dessa till identifierade problem"

[4] "kommunicera vetenskapliga problem och lösningar"