unbent@ecsvax.UUCP (02/12/84)
==> Good grief, am I the only academic philosopher on net.philosophy? Oh well, here goes. (It's hard to know where to begin.) First, I don't know what cosmology books you folks have been reading, but as *I* understand the Big Bang theory it involves neither miracles nor creation, but rather a singularity in the retrospective history of the universe of such a character that the "And what happened before *that*?" question becomes ill-formed. There's nothing "faithlike" or "miraculous" about Big Bang cosmology. Indeed, I gather that it's well supported by astronomical evidence (Doppler shifts, quasars, pulsars, and stuff like that. Don't ask me. I'm a philosopher, not an astronomer.) The *reason* that the "And what happened before that?" question breaks down is, inter alia, the fact that our concepts of *time* (and thus, e.g., "before that") are themselves theory-laden. They're embedded in a complex picture of a universe of law-governed physical processes, some causal and some cyclical, which account for the uni-dimensionality and the anisotropy of time and for the possibility of a temporal metric. Big Bang cosmology advances a theory which posits (not as an "item of faith" but for *good empirical reasons*) a singularity in the retrospective history of the universe at which such law-governed physical processes did not exist. It does *not* posit a unique act of "creation", much less a "miracle". Parenthetically, one of the main things wrong with hypotheses like "The universe was created 10, 15, 20,... minutes ago" is that their very *formulation* presupposes concepts (e.g., "ten minutes ago") which are logically inseparable from the theoretical picture of the universe and its history which the hypothesis wishes to oppose. Of course, there's lots more wrong with such hypotheses--not the least of which is that they're just plain *silly* (a not-quite- technical term of epistemology). We could in principle have no empirical reasons (good *or* bad) for accepting them. Philosophers of science have been trying for over fifty years now to deliver the message that empirical assertions do not admit of "falsification" *in isolation*. (Actually, Duhem pointed this out quite clearly in 1914.) An empirical theory is an *holisitic* beast, correlative to a research *programme* and related to "observational evidence" in intricate and complex ways. *No* theory is "falsifiable" by a single observation, or even by any finite set of observations. (In fact, the only reason for giving up a good theory is that someone has come up with a *better* theory.) Oh dear! I could run on for hours. Two quickies to finish up: (1) The chief virtue of an empirical theory is not its predictive utility but its explanatory force. Explanation is a complicated business, nothing like the simple model of deductive nomological subsumption advanced by the "logical empiricists" during the 1920's and 30's. (2) I haven't the vaguest idea what's supposed to be meant by "miracle". Is a "miracle" a phenomenon which we in fact can't now explain by mobilizing the resources of current empirical theories? If so, there are innumerable "miracles". Is it a phenomenon which we *in principle* can't explain (now or ever) by mobilizing the resources of current empirical theories? OK, so what? Strong nuclear interactions couldn't be explained by mobilizing the resources of Newtonian kinematics. We had to wait for *new* explanatory theoretical resources. There may well be some phenomena lying around today which must wait on new explanatory theoretical resources. So be it. Or is a "miracle" something which in principle can't be explained (now or ever) by mobilizing the resources of *any* empirical theories (present or future)? Then we are *never* in an epistemic position to *identify* any "miracles" as such. (In the 19th century, Auguste Comte published a list of "questions to which man will never know the answers", e.g., "What is the composition of the distant stars?" At the same time, Kirchoff was busy developing the science of spectroscopy.) "Miracle" is no more an *explanatory* category than the carnival barker's remark "Go away, kid. You bother me!" is an answer to anyone's question. Enough for today! In ecsvax.1958, I recommended a good book, Philip Kitcher's ABUSING SCIENCE. I recommend it again. If anyone still wants to play at "scientific creationism" *after* reading Kitcher's treatment, I'll be glad to continue the conversation. Yours for clearer concepts, --Jay Rosenberg Dept. of Philosophy Univ. of N.C., Chapel Hill (...mcnc!ecsvax!unbent)