An interesting piece over at Slate. I put it here but it is equally applicable to the philosophy or religion forum.
Basically it revolves around this:
The problem, obviously, isn’t science; it’s the arrogance with which many scientists, and popularizers of science, dismiss the value of other ways of thinking about questions of meaning, about the world and our place in it. Lehrer, say, wants us to believe that, because neurologists can demonstrate how Observable Phenomenon X was happening in Part Y of Bob Dylan’s brain when he wrote “Like a Rolling Stone,” science can therefore “explain” the human capacity for creativity or imagination. This is like saying that the song itself is best appreciated by putting it on your stereo and then mapping the sound waves it creates. It doesn’t really tell us anything useful, or usefully true. But this is the kind of truth in which scientism, and the culture that accommodates it, puts most stock.
For me it’s not a case of being either for or against reason but of situating reason out in the world of actual human interaction. What are its limitations in other words. Or what seem to be its limitations to folks like me.
The author concludes that:
I am, I suppose, more or less an atheist, but when I read the Book of Genesis, I find that there is something profoundly true about the picture of human nature in those verses—a picture of our perversity and self-alienation that neuroscience, for instance, has no way of getting at or talking about. Schopenhauer, Freud, and Heidegger all give us comparable forms of truth—truths that aren’t verifiable or measurable in the same way as those of science, but that are no less valuable. The most important truths are often untranslatable into the language of fact.
I’ll go along with this. Leastwise until the hard guys nail it all down once and for all.
…but try to not confuse Science with Reason. Just because someone uses a bit of reasoning in what they do doesn’t mean that they define what reasoning is.
The ONLY purpose of Science is to Verify someone’s reasoning, not define what reasoning means nor to profess what might be true.
A lot of that just seems like a caricature of science to me. Anytime you hear the word ‘scientism’, it’s likely a caricature of science. There may be some few so-called scientists who match this caricature, but just as I wouldn’t describe all Christians as ‘Fanatics’, I wouldn’t describe all of science or even a sizable portion of scientists the way this article wants to make them look.
The only “reasoning” attributable to Science is that a given condition will bring about a given result, Cause->Effect. The reasoning as to why it happened is up to individuals to speculate, postulate, and verify.
A car mechanic might listen to someone’s reasoning as to what might improve gas mileage and try it. Him trying it to verify the hypothesis is the “science”. The reasoning behind the hypothesis is entirely another issue left up to scientists, philosophers, engineers, metaphysics, mathematicians, logicians, doctors, and who ever else.
So Science isn’t in the game of reasoning, merely verifying hypotheses through observation. Their reasoning is simply that if your hypothesis (your reasoning) is right, then your proposed result should be seen… and in every case.
Anyone can do far MORE reasoning than that one function. The two concerns don’t compare. The mathematician and logician do nothing but reasoning (when they don’t get carried away into fanciful speculations and metaphysics).