|
Antiscience is a position that rejects science and the scientific method. People holding antiscientific views do not accept that science is an objective method, as it purports to be, or that it generates universal knowledge. They also contend that scientific reductionism in particular is an inherently limited means to reach understanding of the complex world we live in. ==History== In the beginnings of the scientific revolution, scientists such as Robert Boyle found themselves in conflict with those such as Thomas Hobbes, who were skeptical of whether science was a satisfactory way to obtain genuine knowledge about the world. Hobbes' stance is sometimes regarded as an antiscience position:
It was also Hobbes who "put forth the idea of the significance of the nonrational in human behaviour." 〔Richard H Jones, ''Reductionism: Analysis and the Fullness of Reality,'' Lewisburg, Pa: Bucknell University Press, 2000, p.199〕 Jones goes on to group Hobbes along with others he classes as 'antireductionists' and 'individualists,' such as Wilhelm Dilthey, Karl Marx, Jeremy Bentham and J S Mill, and then he adds Karl Popper, John Rawls and E. O. Wilson.〔Jones, p.213〕 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his ''Discourse on the Arts and Sciences'', claimed that science can lead to immorality. "Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the corruption of virtue and morality" and his "critique of science has much to teach us about the dangers involved in our political commitment to scientific progress, and about the ways in which the future happiness of mankind might be secured".〔(Jeffrey J S Black, ''Rousseau's critique of science: A commentary on the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts'', Boston College, 2005 )〕 Nevertheless, Rousseau does not state in his Discourses that sciences are ''necessarily'' bad, and states that figures like René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and Isaac Newton should be held in high regard. In the conclusion to the Discourses, he says that these (aforementioned) can cultivate sciences to great benefit, and that morality's corruption is mostly because of society's bad influence on scientists. William Blake reacted strongly against the work of Isaac Newton in his paintings and writings, and is seen as being perhaps the earliest (and almost certainly the most prominent and enduring) example of what is seen by historians as the aesthetic or romantic antiscience response. For example, in his 1795 poem Auguries of Innocence, Blake describes the beautiful and natural robin red-breast imprisoned by the materialistic cage of Newtonian mathematics and science.〔(William Blake, Auguries of Innocence )〕 In Blake's painting of Newton, he is depicted "as a misguided hero whose gaze was directed only at sterile geometrical diagrams drawn on the ground".〔(Notes to Blake's ''Newton'', at Princeton University )〕 Blake thought that "Newton, Bacon, and Locke with their emphasis on reason were nothing more than 'the three great teachers of atheism, or Satan's Doctrine'...the picture progresses from exuberance and colour on the left, to sterility and blackness on the right. In Blake's view Newton brings not light, but night".〔(''Newton: Personification of Man Limited by Reason'', Tate Gallery, London )〕 In a poem, W.H. Auden summarises Blake's anti-scientific views by saying that he "() off relations in a curse, with the Newtonian Universe".〔W.H. Auden, "New Year Letter, 1940", in Collected Poems, Edited by Edward Mendelson, London: Faber, 1994, p.203〕 One recent biographer of Newton〔(Stephen D Snobelen, ''Writings on Newton'', 2007 )〕 considers him more as a renaissance alchemist, natural philosopher, and magician rather than a true representative of scientific illuminism, as popularized by Voltaire and other illuminist Newtonians. Antiscience issues are seen as a fundamental consideration in the transition from 'pre-science' or 'protoscience' such as that evident in alchemy. Many disciplines that pre-date the widespread adoption and acceptance of the scientific method, such as geometry and astronomy, are not seen as anti-science. However, some of the orthodoxies within those disciplines that predate a scientific approach (such as those orthodoxies repudiated by the discoveries of Galileo) are seen as being a product of an anti-scientific stance. The term 'scientism' derives from science studies and is a term spawned and used by sociologists and philosophers of science to describe the views, beliefs and behavior of strong supporters of science. It is commonly used in a pejorative sense, for individuals who seem to be treating science in a similar way to a religion. The term reductionism is occasionally used in a similarly pejorative way (as a more subtle attack on scientists). However, some scientists feel comfortable being labelled as reductionists, while agreeing that there might be conceptual and philosophical shortcomings of reductionism.〔George J. Klir, ''Facets of Systems Science,'' New York: Springer, 1991, pp.263-265〕 However, non-reductionist (see Emergentism) views of science have been formulated in varied forms in several scientific fields like statistical physics, chaos theory, complexity theory, cybernetics, systems theory, systems biology, ecology, information theory, etc. Such fields tend to assume that strong interaction between units produce new phenomena in higher levels that cannot be accounted for solely by reductionism. For example, it is not valuable (or currently possible) to describe a chess game or gene networks using quantum mechanics. The emergentist view of science ("More is Different", in the words of Nobel physicist Philip W. Anderson) has been inspired in its methodology by the European social sciences (Durkheim, Marx) which tend to reject methodological individualism. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Antiscience」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|