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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: A Conversation With Sir John Eccles (tired of Rosen!)
Message-ID: <309@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 31-Dec-84 16:34:56 EST
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.309
Posted: Mon Dec 31 16:34:56 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Jan-85 06:23:21 EST
References: <79@decwrl.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 48
Summary: 

In article <79@decwrl.UUCP> arndt@lymph.DEC writes:
> 
> Sir John Eccles is a Nobel laureate in medicine and physiology and a pioneer
> in brain research.  A neurobiologist, he has taught at universities in 
> Great Britain, Australia and the U.S.

Yup.  He's a really neat guy.

> "We need to discredit the belief held by many scientists that science will
> ultimately deliever the final truth about everything. Science doesn't deliever
> the truth; what it provides are hypotheses in an attempt to get nearer the
> truth.  But scientists must never claim to know more than that."

Yup.  No argument.  If the final truth doesn't exist, scientists won't find it.

> "Unfortunately, many scientists and interpreters of science don't understand
>  the limits of the discipline.  They claim much more than they should.  They
> argue that someday science will explain values, beauty, love, friendship, 
> aesthetics and literary quality.  They say: 'All of these will eventually be
> explicable in terms of brain performance.  We only have to know more about the
> brain.' That view is nothing more than a superstitution that confuses both the
> public and many scientists.

Whoops.  Here he goes off the deep end.  While advancing his own superstition
of unknowability, he accuses others of his own sin of superstition.

Now, it may seem a bit a bit brash to argue with a Nobel Laureate, and
with an agreeing Karl Popper thrown in too.  However, there are three major
points which encourage me to do so:

1)  He nowhere supports his claim with anything more than "I feel so".

2)  He (and Popper) are both speaking out of their fields of expertise.
    Morals, feelings and the like are part of the SOCIAL workings of our
    species, since they affect our behavior.  An analogy would be a particle
    physicist claiming that it would be impossible for us to understand
    proteinaceous enzymes.  I envision teamups between AI researchers,
    sociobiologists, and game theorists to deal with these questions.

3)  Finally, according to people like Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific
    Revolutions),  this sort of argument can be safely ignored as
    a probable example of opinions that are no longer at the cutting edge
    of scientific thought.  There is always an old guard that protests
    changes in scientific thought.  And other thought too... let's not
    forget Shockley. (sp?)
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh