6.5 John Oakes’ Assumptions of Science

These ideas were aggregated from a series of presentations that can be found at http://www.grossmont.edu/johnoakes/, the website for John Oakes at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California. He, I am sure, is not the originator of this list. But he did a very good job of compiling them into a single presentation which I summarize here. In his view, they express the core set of basic assumptions that both science and rational empiricism embrace:

• The rules of logic are valid tools for learning and understanding.
• The world is real. The physical universe exists.
• Human senses are reliable.
• The real world is knowable and comprehensible.
• There are laws that govern the real world. The universe is orderly, having regularity, pattern, and structure. Laws of nature describe that order.
• Those laws are knowable and comprehensible. The principles that define the functioning of the universe can be discovered. Nature is understandable.
• Those laws don't radically change according to place or time, since the early stages of the big bang. They are universal.
• All phenomena have natural causes. Scientific explanation of human behavior opposes religious, spiritualistic, and magical explanations.
• Language is adequate to describe the natural realm
• Mathematical rules are descriptive for the physical world
• Unexplained things can be used to explain other phenomenon (e.g. gravity is thus far unexplained but it is used to explain the movement of planets and the bending of light)
• Observable phenomena can provide information and knowledge about unobservable phenomena (induction)
• All ideas are tentative, potentially changed by new information. This harkens back to Newton's fourth of his Rules of Reasoning in Natural Philosophy :

"Propositions deduced from observation of phenomena should be viewed as accurate until other phenomena contradict them.” Unless proven otherwise, the best theory that successfully explains the facts should be accepted, keeping in mind that all theories are provisional, subject to revision given new evidence.

• Nothing is self evident. Truth claims must be demonstrated objectively.
• Knowledge is derived from acquisition of experience, empirically, through senses directly or indirectly.

6.6 Norm Levan Panel on Intelligent Design

When you compare the list in the previous section to this next one, you will notice quite a lot of overlap. Even after examining the assumptions presented in just these two sections, one can see a common thread emerge: With the use of empiricism, informed by logic and rational thought there appear to be few if any blocks to acquiring an understanding of the universe. The Norm Levan Panel is part of a secular humanist research facility based in Bakersfield CA. It investigates issues related to Intelligent Design, Evolution, and the conflict between religion and science. These assumptions were presented during a forum held at Bakersfield College on April 21, 2006:

• There is a reality independent of us or our viewpoint
• Nature follows fundamental rules and laws
• Humans have the ability to figure out rules of nature
• Peer review is critical to filtering out human biases
• Objective observational experiences are necessary for advancing knowledge of reality
• Scientific method combines rationalism's deductive logic with empiricist's inductive logic based on observational experience
• Invoking the supernatural is dead-end to further inquiry. Science cannot test supernatural explanations, since they are unfalsifiable, unverifiable, and can be altered to fit any situation post-hoc.

I cannot completely agree with the last of the bulleted items. There is nothing inherently untestable about supernatural claims. What is untestable are supernatural causes if they are presented as being immune from being disproved. Claims of ESP or faith healing, which rely on supernatural powers, can certainly be tested. But supernatural causes that can transform to fit any outcome, which elude falsification, or defy testing are, by definition, unscientific and fall outside the realm of the scientific method. They may be true or not true, but science is not equipped to find that out.

So, the elements in these catalogs of assumptions underlying the scientific method and empirical inquiry revolve around assertions that reality is objective and consistent, that humans have the capacity to perceive reality accurately, and that rational explanations exist for elements of the real world. These assumptions are based in naturalism, logic, and empiricism, which provide a framework within which science can be performed.

Biologist Stephen J. Gould included two additions that augment these lists: 1) Uniformity of law and 2) uniformity of processes across time and space--must first be assumed before you can proceed as a scientist doing science.