Professor Ian Hutchinson of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and the
Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
(Image from the MIT website)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his book Monopolizing Knowledge<\/em>, MIT plasma physicist Ian Hutchinson first cites a passage from Chance and Necessity<\/em>, by the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective. \u00a0In other words, the systematic denial that \u2018true\u2019 knowledge can be got at by interpreting phenomena in terms of final causes\u2013that is to say, of \u2018purpose.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hutchinson agrees that Monod has correctly characterized science, and then proceeds to comment on the implications of science\u2019s self-limitation:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Science rules out explanation in terms of personality, and hence rules out purpose, from the beginning, as an operational postulate. \u00a0The way this exclusion works is first by science\u2019s insistence on reproducibility. \u00a0If a cause and its effect are to be truly reproducible, then the cause cannot be a free agent. \u00a0Free agents\u2019 actions are precisely not reproducible. \u00a0That non-reproducibility we take to be one of the evidences of agency. . . . \u00a0Since science requires reproducibility, and describes the world only in so far as it is not reproducible, it rules out of its scope of description the irreproducible agent, and hence purpose. \u00a0(68)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are, then, strong reasons founded in science\u2019s reliance on reproducibility and Clarity why science effectively rules out explanations in terms of purpose. \u00a0Purpose presupposes an agent, a personality. \u00a0Persons can\u2019t be adequately described within the rubrics of reproducibility and Clarity. \u00a0They are methodologically excluded. \u00a0And so is purpose.<\/span><\/p>\nIt should be no surprise, therefore, that science fails to find personality and purpose in the world. \u00a0It could not possibly do so because it rules them out from the beginning. \u00a0There can never be a scientific explanation of personality or purpose as such. \u00a0There can be a scientific description of the material substrate in which personality is embodied; brain science is at the very rudimentary beginnings of such a description for humans; but this does not prove that there is no such thing as personality. \u00a0It is mere presumption, not based on scientific results, to suppose that a scientific description \u2018explains away\u2019 personality, in the sense of rendering descriptions in personal terms empty or meaningless. \u00a0(71)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Another relevant passage:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is far from obvious that the notion of personal agency is less familiar than mechanism. \u00a0From a purely humanistic viewpoint, personality is actually more familiar, for example, than impersonality. \u00a0(61)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 In his book Monopolizing Knowledge, MIT plasma physicist Ian Hutchinson first cites a passage from Chance and Necessity, by the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Jacques Monod: \u00a0 The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective. \u00a0In other words, the systematic denial that \u2018true\u2019 knowledge can be got at by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Hutchinson](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/10\/top_resting.jpg\")
<\/a>