Unresolved Questions: Concluding Bibliographical Essay
In this section, I'll mention some of the many questions that remain and I'll suggest some sources to help you in your search for answers and deeper questions. I plan to add references and field-tested quiz questions at the web site.
The biggest unsettled question concerns the claim with which I started: There is no difference between science and religion. To argue for this without going beyond the ideas I've presented here, I'd have had to argue in this way:
The only separation principles worth refuting are precisely those we've considered here.
All of these separation principles have been decisively refuted.
Therefore, there's no principled difference between science and religion.
But I've not tried to establish either premise of this argument, and I'm not even sure how one would argue for the first one. Instead, drawing on over twenty years of experience with thousands of bright students, I've argued in this way:
The most common views about science and religion are influential caricatures of science and religion that are expressed in the separation principles we've considered here.
We've found good reasons to doubt each of these principles.
So, we have good reason to doubt the most common views about science and religion.
I hope that I've succeeded in doing this much; if not, I hope you'll do better. (Please let me know if you succeed.)
Since I'm often asked what my own views are - not that they matter much even to me; the quality of reasons and arguments should be center-stage - I'll offer a spatial metaphor by way of summary. I think that there are many ways in which religious and scientific views may be evaluated; each way may be represented as a dimension of a thus multi-dimensional space. As a matter of history, views that have been called "religious" and views that have been called "scientific" sometimes overlap on some dimensions but not others. And the shapes of the regions so-called shift over time, as do their overlaps. In the end, though, how a view is labeled in this way is far less important than locating its region in evaluation space.
If you've worked through this book carefully, then you've begun to acquire skills in reasoning that you'll need to develop even further if your search is to have any chance of succeeding. The best place to start is
Richard Feldman, Reason and Argument (Prentice Hall, 1993).
I wish that every school above primary level would use this book (fat chance). After that, more work in both deductive and inductive logic would be useful. There are lots of texts in deductive logic, and I'm not sure which to recommend, partly because this material is best mastered with the help of an instructor. For inductive logic, start with:
Brian Skyrms, Choice and Chance: an Introduction to Inductive Logic 3rd ed. (Wadsworth, 1986).
Skyrms tells you where to go next. Two other good books on causal and inductive reasoning are
Ron Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning, 4th ed. (Harcourt Brace, 1996)
Michael Resnik, Choices: An Introduction to Decision Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
Everything in these four books should be part of doing good science and good religion. The next three sources, two magazines and one book,
Journal of Irreproducible Results
Journal of Polymorphous Perversity
James McConnell and Marlys Schutjer, eds., Science, Sex, and Sacred Cows: Spoofs on Science from the Worm Runner's Digest (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971)
all provide often hilarious instruction by example in how not to do good science. ("Proceedings of the Institute of Exopsychology's First International Symposium on the Scientific Utilization of Pancakes," in the latter volume gives terrific examples of how to misapply purpose-directed explanation.)
What's the right way for a theory to be based on observation? How should scientific progress be assessed? How does science change while continuing to talk about reality? What more to science is there than theorizing? How are theories applied? What's the difference between good and bad explanations? What are the various kinds of explanation, and what are their proper roles? Is there a unified Scientific Method? These are some of the questions that our investigation has raised without resolving. They are standard fare in 'general philosophy of science' (as distinguished from philosophy of the branches of science, e.g., philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology). There are many introductions to general philosophy of science. Here are a few that I have found useful:
Gordon G. Brittan, Jr. and Karel Lambert, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 2d ed. (Ridgeview Pub. Co., 1979)
Clark Glymour, Philosophy of Science (Westview Press, 1998)
Carl G. Hempel, Philosophy of Natural Science (Prentice-Hall, 1966)
John Losee, An Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, 2nd ed., (Oxford University Press, 1980).
Some controversies within the field are the focus of
Steve Fuller , The Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents (Westview Press, 1989).
A somewhat dated, but still useful and elegant intermediate level text is:
Israel Scheffler, The Anatomy of Inquiry: Philosophical Studies in the Theory of Science (Hackett Publishing, 1981)
Intended for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students is
Merrilee H. Salmon, John Earman, Clark Glymour, James G. Lennox, Peter Machamer, J. E. McGuire, John D. Norton, Wesley C. Salmon and Kenneth F. Schaffner, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Prentice Hall, 1992).
Michael W. Friedlander, At the Fringes of Science (Westview Press, 1995)
shows how to demolish pseudoscientific views while recognizing that there is no sharp difference in kind between science and pseudoscience.
To get started in philosophy of (Western) religion, use
Alvin Plantinga, God, Freedom, and Evil (Harper and Row, 1974)
Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro, eds., A Companion to the Philosophy of Religion (Blackwell, 1997).
Del Ratzsch, The Battle of the Beginnings: Why No One is Winning the Creationism Debate (W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 199?)
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of Religion (W. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1976).
For background on astrology, see the brief, critical introduction
George O. Abell, "Astrology," in George O. Abell and Barry Singer, eds., Science and the Paranormal (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981).
Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology (Routledge, 1994)
S.J. Tester, A History of Western Astrology (Boydell Press, 1987)
place astrology in historical context and help to explain why, though false, it wasn't an irrational view for some earlier times (though it is irrational now and, of course, it's still false).
Patrick Grimm, ed., Philosophy of Science and the Occult, 2nd ed. (SUNY Press, 1990)
reprints some misguided "Objections to Astrology" by over 185 prominent scientists. Paul Feyerabend quite properly takes them to task in his "The Strange Case of Astrology," reprinted in the same anthology. Feyerabend was an iconoclastic philosopher of science who delighted in attacking overly simple views about science. See, for example,
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (Verso, 1975).
In case you are still curious about astrology's (lack of) predictive and explanatory power, see
Shawn Carlson, "A Double Blind Test of Astrology," Nature v318 (December 5, 1985) 419-425.
There is a good account of the importance of phrenology to psychology's development in
Bryan Kolb and Ian Q. Whishaw, Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, 4th ed. (W. H. Freeman and Co. 1996).
This frequently revised text also explains how the hypothesis of localization of mental function continues to shape contemporary research on the brain and mind.
For historical background, see
Michael Martin, "Bumps and Brains: The Curious Science of Phrenology - The Wrong Idea at the Right Time," American History Illustrated (September 1984) 38-43.
Lots of marvelous phrenological maps are reproduced in
Edwin Clarke and Kenneth Dewhurst, An Illustrated History of Brain Function, 2nd ed. (Norman Pub., 1996).
Historically informed critical assessment of phrenology can be found in
Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, rev. ed. (W. W. Norton, 1996)
Robert M. Young, Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century: Cerebral Localization and its Biological Context from Gall to Ferrier (Oxford University Press, 1990).
The social role of science is well described by working scientists in
Frederick Grinnell, The Scientific Attitude 2nd ed. (Guilford Press, 1992)
and At the Fringes of Science (see above).
Social role characterizations and definitions of science are defended in
Barry Barnes, David Bloor and John Henry, Scientific Knowledge: a Sociological Analysis (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society (Harvard University Press, 1987)
Helen Longino, Science as Social Knowledge (Princeton University Press, 1990).
Accounts of Lysenkoism are given in
David Joravsky, The Lysenko Affair (University of Chicago Press, 1970)
Z. Medvedev, The Rise and Fall of T. D. Lysenko (Columbia University Press, 1969)
For recent history of the physical sciences, see
Mary Jo Nye, Before Big Science: the Pursuit of Modern Chemistry and Physics, 1800-1940 (Twayne Publishers, 1996)
The weighty medical work to which I alluded is
Sir Stewart Duke-Elder, ed., System of Ophthalmology, 15 vols. (Mosby, 1958-76).
On the virtues of scientific hypotheses
W. V. O. Quine and J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief, 2nd ed. (Random House, 1978)
is an elegant introduction. An advanced, well-written book that stresses the importance of unified explanations is
Philip Kitcher, The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend, Objectivity without Illusions (Oxford University Press, 1993).
A brief introduction to parapsychology's failures is
David F. Marks, "Investigating the Paranormal," Nature v320 (March 13, 1986) nnnn-nnnn
Gatekeeping issues are raised by
Paul Kurtz, "Is Parapsychology a Science?" Skeptical Inquirer (Winter 1978).
This journal is an excellent source for those who detest pseudoscientific bunk.
Parapsychological claims and their possible significance are analyzed with great thoroughness in:
Stephen E. Braude, ESP and Psychokinesis: A Philosophical Examination (Temple University Press, 1979)
Stephen E. Braude, The Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the Philosophy of Science (Routledge, April 1991).
Some of the difficulties in finding reasons for dismissing parapsychology as pseudoscience are detailed in
Robert J. Ackermann, Data, Instruments, and Theory: A Dialectical Approach to Understanding Science (Princeton University Press, 1985).
J. B. Rhine, the 'father of modern parapsychology', stresses the importance of proper statistical technique in:
J. B. Rhine and J. G. Pratt, Parapsychology, Frontier Science of the Mind; A Survey of the Field, the Methods, and the Facts of ESP and PK Research, rev. 2d printing (Thomas, 1962).
Conceptual revision in physical science is chronicled in
Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought: Kepler to Einstein, Rev. ed., (Harvard University Press, 1988).
Major conceptual issues in biology are introduced in
David Hull, Philosophy of Biological Sciences (Prentice Hall, 1974)
Alexander Rosenberg, The Structure of Biological Science (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
Elliott Sober, Philosophy of Biology (Westview, 1993).
A sampling from the debates about the definition of "species" can be found in:
Elliott Sober, ed., Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology: An Anthology 2nd ed. (The MIT Press, 1994)
and the difficulties in demarcating life from death are made pellucid in
Fred Feldman, Confrontations with the Reaper (Oxford University Press, 1992).
The amazing shared birthday phenomenon is a staple of many statistics texts and courses. I got it from
William Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and its Applications v1 3rd ed. (John Wiley and Sons, 1967)
Psychological research on how and why so many people are so persistently bad at inductive reasoning is presented in
Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, Amos Tversky, eds., Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Larry Laudan indicates how disastrous such errors have been for public policy making in
The Book of Risks: Fascinating Facts about the Chances We Take Every Day (John Wiley and Sons, 1994)
The Arkansas Creation Science trial has been the subject of much discussion. See
Marcel C. La Follette, ed., Creationism, Science, and the Law: the Arkansas Case (The MIT Press, 1983)
Langdon Gilkey elaborates on his testimony in
Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (Winston, 1985)
and gives a brief account in
Langdon Gilkey, "The Creationist Controversy: The Interrelation of Inquiry and Belief," Science, Technology and Human Values v7 n40 (Summer 1982) 67-71.
Ruse's summarizes his testimony in
Michael Ruse, "Creation Science is not Science," Science, Technology and Human Values v7 n40 (Summer 1982) 72-78.
Larry Laudan refutes Ruse's arguments in his essay
"Commentary: Science at the Bar - Causes for Concern," Science, Technology and Human Values v7 n41 (Fall 1982) 16-19.
Ruse's rejoinder is
Michael Ruse, "Response to Laudan: Pro Judice," Science, Technology and Human Values v7 n41 (Fall 1982) 19-23.
Another perspective is offered in
Philip L. Quinn, "The Philosopher of Science as Expert Witness," in C. F. Delaney, J. T. Cushing, G. Gutting, eds., Science and Reality (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984) 32-53.
Roland M. Frye, Is God a Creationist?: The Religious Case against Creation Science (Scribner's Sons, 1983)
contains a moving essay by a geologist who struggled to reconcile his belief in the Bible with his knowledge of geology.
The social roots and contemporary prevalence of creationist thinking are the focus of
Francis B. Harrold and Raymond A. Eve, Cult Archaeology and Creationism: Understanding Pseudoscientific Beliefs about the Past, exp. ed. (University of Iowa Press, 1995)
The Big Bang theory is well-explained by Nobel Laureate in Physics
Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: a Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, updated ed. (Basic Books, 1993)
For a history of cosmology:
Frank Durham and Robert D. Purrington, Frame of the Universe: A History of Physical Cosmology (Columbia University Press, 1983)
Other works that help in evaluating criticisms of Scientific Creationism:
Connie Barlow, ed., Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life (The MIT Press, 1994)
Peter Forrest, God Without the Supernatural: a Defense of Scientific Theism (Cornell University Press, 1996)
William Lad Sessions, The Concept of Faith: a Philosophical Investigation (Cornell University Press, 1994)
One stop shopping for your First Amendment Establishment and Free Exercise needs:
Terry Eastland, Religious liberty in the Supreme Court: the Cases That Define the Debate over Church and State (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1993)
which reprints Edwards v. Aguillar.
My discussion of Scientific Creationism owes an enormous debt to
Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case against Creationism (The MIT Press, 1982)
which remains the fairest, most thorough assessment of the debate. If you care at all about this debate, then you owe it to yourself to study this book and to pursue the readings it recommends.
One standard text on evolutionary theory is
Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed. (Sinauer Associates, 1986)
Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial: the Case for Evolution, updated ed., (Sinauer Associates, 1995)
is shorter and more elementary.
The elegant essays of Stephen Jay Gould provide a superb introduction to evolutionary thinking in biology. One of the many collections is
Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb (Norton, 1980).
Freeman Dyson, Origins of Life (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
provides a brief, sophisticated assessment of the theories of its topic.
While it should not be your only source on evolutionary theory, I have found that
Richard Dawkins, Blind Watchmaker (WW Norton, 1986)
(the Macintosh software supplemented by the corresponding section of the book of the same name) are useful for illustrating some aspects of evolutionary theory's explanatory power.
Richard P. Feynman, QED: the Strange Theory of Light and Matter (Princeton University Press, 1985)
is an accurate, formula-free account of the most predictively successful theory, by one of its Nobel Prize winning originators. It is one of the very best pieces of science popularization ever.
Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (Bantam Books, 1988)
highlights the distance between theory and observation. This book and its author have been the subject of a documentary film, sparked much debate about the relationship between physics and religion, and given rise to a boom in publishing science popularizations. The results have been of mixed quality.
The remarkable new physical theory that says space has nine dimensions is described in:
P.C.W. Davies and Julian Brown, eds., Superstrings: a Theory of Everything (Cambridge University Press, 1988)
Leibniz's views on creation are given fullest development in his Theodicy, but also appear in most of his other works.
C. D. Broad, Leibniz: an Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1975)
is one of the best elementary introductions to his views.
One of the best histories of creationism controversies is
Ronald L. Numbers, The Creationists (Knopf, 1992).
His article, "Creationism in 20th-Century America," Science v 218 (November 5, 1982) 538-544 [expanded version: "The Creationists," in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (University of California Press, 1986) 391-423]
gives a brief overview.
No study of Angelic or Satanic Science can be complete without a careful reading of the 15th century text,
Malleus Maleficarum
For Satanic biography, see
Paul Carus. The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court Publishing Company, 1974), unabridged reproduction of the original 1900 edition.
Grillot de Givry. Witchcraft, Magic & Alchemy, trans. J. Locke (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1971), an unabridged republication of the Houghton Mifflin edition of 1931.
For cautionary tales about the misuse of demonology, consult:
Robert D Hicks. In Pursuit of Satan: the Police and the Occult (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1991).
Frances Hill. A Delusion of Satan - The Full Story of the Salem Witch Trials (New York: Doubleday, 1995).
For highly critical assessments of Satanic Science, see:
Carl Sagan. The Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark, ch. 7 "The Demon-Haunted World," (New York: Random House, 1995).
[If you read the latter, be sure also to read Richard Lewontin's rather critical review of the book in The New York Review of Books cited here.]
Homer W Smith. Man and His Gods, Ch. VI "The Rise and Fall of His Satanic Majesty's Empire" (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1953).
For more general background pertinent to the broader study of angels, fallen and otherwise, see:
Matthew Bunson Angels A to Z (ISBN 0-517-88537-9)
Malcom Godwin Angels: An Endangered Species (ISBN 0-671-70650-0):
C. Fred Dickason Angels: Elect & Evil (ISBN 0-8024-0734-X)
The New Oxford Annotated Apocrypha (ISBN 0-19-528368-6)
Gustav Davidson A Dictionary Of Angels (ISBN 0-02-907052-X)
Willis Barnstone, ed., The Other Bible (ISBN 0-06-250030-9)
New Age writings are unfortunately readily available in most US bookstores. The chain stores have whole sections devoted to them, though they're sometimes found with the bestsellers, too, alas. There is so much stuff that a catalogue was compiled to help people find it:
Editors of Body, Mind and Spirit Magazine, The New Age Catalogue: Access to Information and Sources (Doubleday, 1988)
Perhaps you'd like to make your fortune by updating this reference.
Martin Gardner, who is one of our finest lay anti-pseudoscientists, had his say in
Martin Gardner, The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher (Prometheus Books, 1988)
Martin Gardner, Science: Good, Bad and Bogus (Prometheus Books, 1990)
The effectiveness of acupuncture for some types of pain control is documented in the medical literature:
Gabriel Stux, Bruce Pomeranz, Basics of Acupuncture, 3rd rev. and enl. ed.(Springer, 1995).
For an account of the traditional explanation of its effectiveness in terms of Qi, see:
Chen Chiu Hsieh, Acupuncture: a Comprehensive Text -Shanghai College of Traditional Medicine trans. and ed. John O'Connor and Dan Bensky (Eastland Press, 1981)
It was an elegant essay by one of my teachers,
Lewis White Beck, "Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life," repr. in Edward Regis, Jr., ed., Extraterrestrials: Science and Alien Intelligence (Cambridge University Press, 1987) 3-18.
that inspired and shaped my discussion of ET and UFOs.
For more on UFOs, see
Carl Sagan and T. Page, eds., UFOs: A Scientific Debate (Cornell University Press, 1987),
and for more on ETs, see
John Billingham, ed., Life in the Universe (The MIT Press, 1982)
Paul Davies, Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life (Basic Books, 1995)
Donald Goldsmith, ed., The Quest for Extraterrestrial Life: A Book of Readings (University Science Books, 1980)
Carl Sagan, Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CETI) (The MIT Press, 1973).
A charming and informative piece of speculative exobiology is
Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature (Simon and Schuster, 1981)
where Crick, a leading theoretical biologist and Nobel Prize winning co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, considers the Directed Panspermia Hypothesis.
The depth of ignorance about sex is highlighted in:
Diane di Mauro, Sexuality Research in the United States: an Assessment of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Social Sciences Research Council, 1995)
The study on sex cited is:
Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael and Stuart Michaels, The Social Organization of Sexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1994)
a more readable version of which is
Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann and Gina Kolata, Sex in America: A Definitive Survey (Little, Brown, 1994)
Lewontin's criticisms are in his review
"Sex in American," The New York Review of Books v42, n7 (April 20 1995) 24-29
The authors replied by letter in a subsequent issue, where Lewontin then disposes of their objections.
The first book to read on Chaos theory is
James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (Penguin Books, 1987).
The second book to read is
Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? the Mathematics of Chaos (Blackwell, 1990),
supplemented by
Douglas Hofstadter, "Mathematical Chaos and Strange Attractors," repr. in Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern (Basic Books, 1985) 364-395.
Ian Stewart and Martin Golubitsky, Fearful Symmetry: Is God a Geometer? (Blackwell, 1992)
is an interesting sequel.
Stanislaw Lem, One Human Minute (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986)
contains a brilliant essay about the significance of Chaos theory for human affairs.
To go any further than this into Chaos, you'll need calculus. If you've got it, study
Robert L. Devaney, A First Course in Chaotic Dynamical Systems: Theory and Experiment (Addison-Wesley, 1992).
You can revel in the beautiful imagery without any advanced mathematical background. All your Chaos and fractal shopping needs (and more!) may be met through
Media Magic Catalog, PO Box 598, Nicasio, CA 94946 1-800-882-8284 FAX: 1-415-662-2225.
Benoit Mandelbrot, Fractal Geometry of Nature, rev. ed. (WH Freeman, 1983)
is artfully designed, but it is also a difficult mathematics book and, as a pioneering work, is not the best introduction to the subject even for an advanced undergraduate mathematics student.
If you study Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, be sure to read both first and second editions, University of Chicago Press (1962, 1970) as well as reviews of each.
Gary Gutting, ed., Paradigms and Revolutions: Applications and Appraisals of Thomas Kuhn's Philosophy of Science (University of Notre Dame Press, 1980)
reprints important reviews.
Ian Hacking, ed., Scientific Revolutions (Oxford University Press, 1981)
offers a broader perspective and has an extensive bibliography. One of the best extended critiques of Kuhn's work is still
Israel Scheffler, Science and Subjectivity (Hackett, 1982).
My approach to the question of how to distinguish between science and pseudoscience was guided by
Larry Laudan, "The Demise of the Demarcation Problem," Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science v? (Reidel, 197?).
See also
Larry Laudan, Science and Values (University of California Press, 1984).
For more up-to-date reporting, see
Gerald Holton, Science and AntiScience (Harvard University Press, 1993)
Staff of Scientific American, "Science versus Antiscience?," Scientific American (January, 1997) 96-101.
Clark Glymour and Douglas Stalker, "Winning through Pseudoscience," in Patrick Grimm, ed. Philosophy of Science and the Occult 2nd ed. (SUNY Press, 1990)
is an hilarious account of how not to do good science.
An exemplary debunking of much 'alternative medicine' is
Douglas Stalker and Clark Glymour, Examining Holistic Medicine (Prometheus Books, 1985).
[By the way, if you suffer from sciatica (as I did for 25 years), I'd see a medical doctor who has lots of experience with the specific kind of cause for your sciatica. In medicine, it's prudent to start at the top and work your way up.]
Biblical interpretation is a difficult matter that deserves far more discussion than I've been able to give it. Some of the defenders of Scientific Creationism are far less sophisticated than the best defenders of a literal interpretation of the Bible who realize, at least that it is indeed an interpretation and as such needs to be defined and defended. For more on approaches to scriptural interpretation, see:
John Goldingay, Models for Interpretation of Scripture (W.B. Eerdmans/Paternoster Press, 1995)
An authoritative exposition of scientology is
Staff of the Church of Scientology of California; .ed the LRH Personal Secretary Office, What is Scientology?: Based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard (Church of Scientology of California, 1978)
Hernandez v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1989) 490 U.S. 680; 109 S. Ct. 2136
is the US Supreme Court case about the Church of Scientology's claim to some tax exemptions.
Mormonism is described in
Thomas F. O'Dea, The Mormons (University of Chicago Press, 1957).
A good edition of Hume's classic examination of Arguments from Design is:
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Routledge, 1991)
St. Frank is (the late) Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention. While Zappa appreciated poignancy in music, this feature is not prominent in his "Call Any Vegetable."
The source of the witty quote in this section is
Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons: Review of Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," The New York Review of Books (January 9, 1997) 28-32.
Murray Gell-Mann, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex (W.H. Freeman, 1994)
discusses quark confinement authoritatively. (Gell-Mann originated quark theory).
On the evidential value of religious experience, see
William Alston, Perceiving God: the Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cornell University Press, 1991).
Three writers who have long stressed the continuities between religion and science are
Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (Prentice Hall, 1966)
Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997)
A. R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford University Press, 1979)
A.R. Peacocke, Intimations of Reality: Critical Realism in Science and Religion (University of Notre Dame Press, 1984)
John Polkinghorne, One World (SPCK, 1986)
John Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-up Thinker: the Gifford Lectures for 1993-4 (Princeton University Press, 1994).
Peacocke is a physical chemist and a theologian. Polkinghorne is a mathematical physicist and Anglican priest. In these and other works, all three of these authors offer fuel to those who may wish to defend Separation by Personal Improvement.
The enormous diversity of the world's religions is outlined in a standard introductory text,
Niels C. Nielsen, Jr. Norvin Hein Frank E. Reynolds Alan L. Miller Samuel E. Karff Alice C. Cochran and Paul McLean, Religions of the World, 3rd ed. (St. Martin's Press, 1993).
Rita M. Gross, Feminism and Religion: an Introduction (Beacon Press, 1996)
contains a good, brief discussion of difficulties in defining "religion," and explains why some major religions need to make moral progress.
Problems of definition and diversity are discussed from an anthropologist's view in
Morton Klass, Ordered Universes: Approaches to the Anthropology of Religion (Westview, 1995).
Wonderfully bad sci-fi movies are catalogued in:
Welch Everman, Cult Science Fiction Films: from the Amazing Colossal Man to Yog, Monster from Space (Carol Pub. Group, 1995).
Some wonderful religious writing on Nature's beauty is in:
St. Francis of Assisi, Writings and Early Biographies: English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis, ed. Marion A. Habig (Franciscan Herald Press, 1973)
More of the religious literature on divinely beautiful Nature can be found through
Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics: a Theological Study of Making and Meaning (Princeton University Press, 1989)
Jean Holm with John Bowker, eds., Attitudes to Nature (St. Martin's Press, 1994)
T. C. McLuhan, The Way of the Earth: Encounters with Nature in Ancient and Contemporary Thought (Simon and Schuster, 1994)
James Alfred Martin, Jr., Beauty and Holiness: the Dialogue between Aesthetics and Religion (Princeton University Press, 1990)
John Navone, Toward a Theology of Beauty (Liturgical Press, 1996)
A. Maude Royden, Beauty in Religion (G. P. Putnam, 1923)
Crispin Sartwell, The Art of Living: Aesthetics of the Ordinary in World Spiritual Traditions (SUNY Press, 1995).
The most recent comprehensive discussion of aesthetics in science is
James W. McAllister, Beauty and Revolution in Science (Cornell University Press, 1996).
In assessing criticism of Separation by Attitude, you need to evalute this argument
Nature is beautiful
A beautiful theory is more likely to describe Nature accurately (that is, to be true)
So, more beautiful (aesthetically virtuous) theories are preferable, other things being equal.
and to distinguish it from arguments for the conclusion that aesthetically virtuous theories are intrinsically better, apart from their likely verisimilitude to Nature and its parts.
Aesthetics in chemical theory is highlighted in
Roald Hoffmann and Vivian Torrence, with a commentary by Lea Rosson DeLong, Chemistry Imagined: Reflections on Science (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).
On beauty in physics, see:
Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (Simon and Schuster, 1983)
Paul Davies, The Mind of God: the Scientific Basis for a Rational World (Simon and Schuster, 1992).
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, On Growth and Form, new ed (Cambridge University press, 1942)
is a classic compendium of biological beauty.
Philip Morrison, "On Broken Symmetries," in Judith Wechsler, ed., On Aesthetics in Science (The MIT Press, 1978) 55-70
is a gem on symmetry and symmetry-breaking. For more on the role of symmetry in physics, see
Anthony Zee, Fearful Symmetry: The Search for Beauty in Modern Physics (Macmillan, 1986)
Bas van Fraassen, Laws and Symmetry (Oxford University Press, 1989)
Klaus Mainzer, Symmetries of Nature: a Handbook for Philosophy of Nature and Science (Walter de Gruyter, 1996)
Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford University Press, 1983)
is highly technical and explains in detail how there's more to physical theory than laws expressed in equations.
The claim that knowledge has intrinsic value is a rather old one and can be found in Plato and Aristotle. Somewhat more recently, it has been advocated in
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, Chapter VI "The Ideal" (Cambridge University Press, 1903)
and the notion of intrinsic value has been explored in
Roderick Chisholm, Brentano and Intrinsic Value (Cambridge University Press, 1986).
(See also sources cited above on the social role of science and general philosophy of science.)
The best introduction to ethical theory, from which I have taken my discussion of objectivity and naturalism, is
Fred Feldman, Introductory Ethics (Prentice Hall, 1978) [2nd ed. due out soon]
Einstein offers his vision in
Albert Einstein, "Science and Religion," repr. Ideas and Opinions (Crown Pub, 1954) 105-111.
Something a great deal like Einstein's view is developed at book length in
Stephen J Gould, Rock of Ages
A highly sophisticated variation on Einstein's theme is defended in
Robert John Ackermann, Religion as Critique (University of Massachusetts Press, 1985)
Ackermann makes ingenious use of some of Nelson Goodman's ideas (Languages of Art) and defends his approach against the "Marxism is a religion" objection. But Ackermann is not attempting to give historically accurate necessary and sufficient conditions for being a religion, any more than Einstein was.
This is the most difficult section of the book but the theory of knowledge is very difficult, and there's no (responsible) way around this. The discussion of foundationalism was heavily influenced by
Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge 1st ed., 2nd ed. Prentice Hall, 1966, 1977
Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa, eds., A Companion to Epistemology (Blackwell, 1994)
is a useful anthology.
Our most well-known chronicler of interesting neurological disorders is neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks:
Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On (Summit Books, 1984)
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Summit Books, 1985)
This section is based directly on the work of the world's leading philosopher of religion, Alvin Plantinga
"Is Belief in God Properly Basic?" Noûs 15 (1981) 41-51.
Further development is in
Alvin Plantinga, "On Reformed Epistemology," Reformed Journal 32 (January 1982) 13-17
Alvin Plantinga, "Reason and Belief in God," in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) 16-93.
James E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen, eds., Alvin Plantinga (Reidel, 1985)
For more on the question of how one decides which beliefs deserve foundational, or basic, status see:
Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (Oxford University Press, 1993)
Alvin Plantinga, ed., Warrant: the Current Debate (Oxford University Press, 1993)
Excellent, advanced discussions of issues in philosophy of religion are:
Robert Merrihew Adams, The Virtue of Faith and other Essays in Philosophical Theology (Oxford University Press, 1987)
William P. Alston, Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Cornell University Press, 1989).
Those who get their 20th century philosophy of religion from the famous atheist
Bertrand Russell, Religion and Science (Oxford University Press, 1935)
may be surprised by what other philosophers have to say in
Kelly James Clark, ed., Philosophers Who Believe: the Spiritual Journeys of 11 Leading Thinkers (InterVarsity Press, 1993).
Foundationalism is certainly not beyond challenge. See, for example:
Susan Haack, Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (Blackwell, 1993).
If foundationalism is rejected, then we still must confront the fact that in each context of inquiry, some beliefs are presupposed and there taken to be beyond challenge. But this leaves room for the hypothesis that there is a systematic difference between religious and scientific contexts, and so a systematic difference between the kinds of beliefs taken on faith in one rather than the other. The task facing anyone who finds this idea attractive is to find a clear alternative to foundationalism and to apply it to classifying the enormously diverse beliefs in the world's religions as well as the enormously diverse beliefs in science, past, present and future. The task is worth undertaking, and I wish you the best of luck. If you want to stick to foundationalism, then a similar task can be undertaken by investigating how systematically to draw the distinction between normal and non-normal contexts of justification. More luck to you!
The classic statement of Arguments for Design for the existence of God is Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (cited above). An important and influential analysis of the arguments in this tradition is part of
Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Cornell University Press, 1967),
a book which raised the standards and so the status of analytic philosophy of religion in the academic world.
For more about the prominent early 20th century physicist, Max Planck, consult:
Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers (Philosophical Library, 1949)
Max Planck, "The Mystery of Our Being," repr. Ken Wilber, ed., Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the World's Great Physicists (Shambhala Publications 1986).
The Problem of Freedom and Determinism is detailed in "Determinism and Free Will," the last chapter of
John Earman, A Primer on Determinism (Reidel, 1986)
where you will also find references to other expositions of the problem. Roderick Chisholm's discussions, cited by Earman, are always very lucid and worth reading.
On the attempt to re-introduce purpose-directed explanation into physics, see
John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press, 1986)
Martin Gardner, "WAP, SAP, PAP and FAP," The New York Review of Books (May 8, 1986) 22-25
Frank J. Tipler, Reply to Gardner, The New York Review of Books (December 4, 1986)
Steven Weinberg, "Origins," Science v230 n4721 (October 4, 1985) 15-18.
Despite Gardner's sharp criticisms, with which I am inclined to agree, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle is worth studying. It begins with a two-hundred page essay on design arguments (in Western and non-Western religions) and on the history of purpose-directed (teleological) explanation in science generally.
The history of biological ideas, including recent thinking on the nature of life, is masterfully detailed in
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Belknap Press, 1982).
Ernest Nagel, Teleology Revisited and Other Essays in the Philosophy and History of Science (Columbia University Press, 1982)
contains Nagel's analysis of biological function and his criticisms of Ruse's analysis.
If, as suggested in the discussion of parapsychology, science can get along without precise definitions, why ask for a definition of "life"? Some answers are in
Margaret A. Boden, ed., The Philosophy of Artificial Life (Oxford University Press, 1996),
which contains two helpful essays on defining "life:" Gareth Matthews, "Aristotle on Life," and Mark Bedau, "The Nature of Life." See also Feldman's Confrontations with the Reaper (cited above).
Larry Wright, Teleological Explanations: an Etiological Analysis of Goals and Functions (University of California Press, 1976)
Christorpher Boorse addresses the problem of defective organisms in his article
Philosophy of Science???
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (Lightyear Pub., 1993)
is a haunting (science-fictional) account of the difficulty of applying purpose-directed explanation.
The problems faced by substance dualism are now widely regarded as so severe that it is difficult to find contemporary defenses of these views; one of the few is:
John Foster, The Immaterial Self: a Defence of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind (Routledge, 1991)
Concept dualism does receive more positive attention nowadays, from
Colin McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness: Essays Towards a Resolution (Blackwell, 1991)
and most recently and massively in
David J. Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (Oxford University Press, 1996).
Chalmers's most well-known opponent is
Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Little, Brown and Co., 1991).
To get some sense of how difficult it would be to defend Cartesian Dualism against the No Interaction Argument by re-analyzing causation, consult:
Michael Tooley and Ernest Sosa, eds., Causation (Oxford University Press, 1993).
[In the digression on Separation by Immaterial Causation, I mentioned the difference between numbers and numerals, and the fact that science refers to nonphysical objects. To follow up on these claims, you need to dig into the philosophy of mathematics, to which there are no elementary introductions, in part because of the technical nature of the subject, but also because of the extraordinary difficulty of accounting for mathematical knowledge. You might try
Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, eds., Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings, 2nd. ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1983)
Charles S. Chihara, Constructibility and Mathematical Existence (Oxford University Press, 1990)
Jody Azzouni, Metaphysical Myths, Mathematical Practice: the Ontology and Epistemology of the Exact Sciences (Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Thomas Tymoczko, ed., New Directions in the Philosophy of Mathematics: An Anthology (Rev. and Exp. Ed.) (Princeton University Press, 1998.]
There are deep connections, some obvious, between the nature of the mind and the nature of personal identity. The best introduction to these connections is
John Perry, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality (Hackett, 1978)
after which you may want to try
John Perry, ed., Personal Identity (University of California Press, 1975)
with a superb introductory essay by Perry, and
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford University Press, 1986)
which explains what personal identity could look like without the soul or the role it plays in personal identity.
Two excellent introductions to contemporary philosophy of mind, the second more compressed and advanced than the first, are
Owen Flanagan, Jr., Science of Mind, 2nd ed., (The MIT Press, 1991)
Jaegwon Kim, Philosophy of Mind (Westview, 1996)
For lots more, see
Ned Block, ed., Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, 2 vols. (Harvard University Press, 1980-1981)
Robert Cummins, The Nature of Psychological Explanation (The MIT Press, 1983)
David M. Rosenthal, ed., The Nature of Mind (Oxford University Press, 1991)
The Unthinking Waldo Simulator's design comes from:
Ned Block, "Psychologism and Behaviorism," Philosophical Review 90 (1981) 5-43.
A good history of AI is
Margaret A. Boden, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man (Basic Books, 1987).
The best introduction to AI's basic ideas is
John Haugeland, Artificial intelligence: the Very Idea (The MIT Press, 1985)
with a briefer introduction in
John Haugeland, "Semantic Engines: An Introduction to Mind Design," in John Haugeland, ed., Mind Design: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, 2nd ed. (The MIT Press, 1999) ?-??.
Useful articles and a bibliography are in
Margaret A. Boden, ed., Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 1990).
For more on cognitive science and the computer model of the mind, see:
Daniel N. Osherson, ed., An Invitation to Cognitive Science 3 vols 2nd ed. (The MIT Press, 1995-1997)
No theory of mind does a satisfactory job of explaining the nature of consciousness. Some of the difficulties are explained in
Ned Block, Owen Flanagan and Güven Güzeldere, eds., The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical and Scientific Essays (The MIT Press, 1997).
A critique of evolutionary functionalism is given in
Jerry Fodor [TBS].
The kernel of a refutation of functionalism can be found in:
Saul A. Kripke, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language: an Elementary Exposition (Harvard University Press, 1982)
Members of the US legal system face extraordinarily complex problems in defining "religion." On the one hand, the language of the First Amendment and the concerns that underlie it seem to require a fairly sharp, practically applicable definition. On the other hand, every definition that has ever been proposed has either made some obviously false claim about religion or has been vague to the point of practical uselessness. Legal scholars debate at length over how to balance various theoretical and practical concerns in dealing with these issues. Judges, who must make and justify decisions affecting people's lives, are driven to adopt flawed definitions in specific instances. Much of the public debate, however, oversimplifies or ignores these difficulties. I hope that this book helps you to appreciate just how deep the difficulties go. For background on the First Amendment, see:
John H. Garvey and Frederick Schauer, eds., The First Amendment: a Reader (West Pub. Co., 1996)
Steven H. Shiffrin and Jesse H. Choper, The First Amendment: Cases, Comments, Questions, 2nd ed. (West Pub. Co., 1996)
William W. Van Alstyne, First Amendment: Cases and Materials (Foundation Press, 1995)
On controversies involving public schools, see:
Stephen Bates, Battleground: One Mother's Crusade, the Religious Right, and the Struggle for Control of Our Classrooms (Simon and Schuster, 1993)
Nel Noddings, Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief (Teachers College Press, 1993).
To place these issues in a broader context, see:
Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (Basic Books, 1993)
For more on religion and the First Amendment, see:
Michael S. Ariens, Robert A. Destro, Religious Liberty in a Pluralistic Society (Carolina Academic Press, 1996)
Terry Eastland, Religious liberty in the Supreme Court: the Cases That Define the Debate over Church and State (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1993)
Leonard W. Levy, The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment (Macmillan, 1986)
Peter Schotten and Dennis Stevens, eds., Religion, Politics, and the Law: Commentaries and Controversies (Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1996)
Before you announce your own definitions or solutions to an anxiously waiting polis, check these articles and the references that they cite:
James M. Donovan, "God is as God Does: Law, Anthropology, and the Definition of 'Religion,'" Seton Hall Constitutional Journal 6 (Fall, 1995) 25
Dmitry N. Feofanov, "Defining Religion: an Immodest Proposal," Hofstra Law Review 23 (Winter, 1994) 309
John H. Garvey, "Courts and Constitution: Is There a Principle of Religious Liberty?" [Reviews of: Jesse H. Choper, Securing Religious Liberty: Principles for Judicial Interpretation of the Religion Clauses (University of Chicago Press, 1995); and Steven D. Smith, Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom (Oxford University Press, 1995)]. Michigan Law Review 94 (May, 1996) 1379
Symposium: How Much God in the Schools? William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 4 (Summer, 1995).
A very interesting (and, it seems, quite urgent) question in social and political philosophy is, What is it reasonable to do in the face of persistent ignorance concerning key legal, political, moral or social concepts? A deep analysis of this difficulty is contained in the deep and difficult
John Rawls, Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, 1993).
Conscientious and wholly admirable popularizers of science like Carl Sagan use both rhetoric and expertise to form the mind of masses because they believe, like Evangelist John, that the truth shall make you free. But they are wrong. It is not the truth that makes you free. It is your possession of the power to discover the truth. Our dilemma is that we do not know how to provide that power.
Richard Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons" (32)
Lewontin's pessimism is, I know, well justified. Nevertheless, I hope that you feel that your power has been increased at least a bit by working through this book.
(c)2000 David F. Austin
This page last updated on July 14, 2000