John Robbins understands it. Science is the enemy of Clarkists. In his historical context, Clark was primarily an apologian and he was defending Christianity against modernist arguments.

Clark must be read in light of his context and his purpose. Clark used the arguments of relativists like Feyerabend against modernism and science. Basically, Clark is asserting that science in non-Newtonian — that we don’t get precisely the same results every time. There’s uncertainty in all measurements, therefore we cannot really know anything about the world.

Clark says that science can be useful, but he doesn’t show why this is, especially if science is always false. Of course, understanding the historical context, we can assume that Clark is merely trying to undercut modernism’s reliance upon science’s credibility. In order to accomplish this, Clark doesn’t have to construct anything; he only has to raise epistemological questions about science.

(I’m not sure what the force of “perhaps” is; it seems to be in tension with “must indeed be false.” But let chalk that up as a stylistic infelicity.)

Clark’s discussion of the “law of the pendulum” leads you to say that the laws of Physics “describe imaginary scenarios, not the physical realities - by the admission of the physicists who write the laws”; but your statement is false at several levels.

I have not found in these pages anywhere that Clark claims “the admission of the physicists who write the laws.” So why do you say that?

The “law” that Clark discusses — for which “the pendulum so described must have its weight concentrated at a point, its string must be tensionless, and there must be no friction on its axis” (p. 140) –, namely, “the period of the swing is proportional to the square root of the pendulum’s length” is not a law, but a limiting case of the law which is set up most generally with an integral equation. It happens that the limiting case can be solved analytically (to first order) when you also add the limit of very small displacement (which Clark neglects to mention). (Moreover, that the “string must be tensionless” is not only not a necessary assumption, it is false, and indeed, according to the theory, the pendulum would not move at all without tension, either in the ideal or real world!)

Limiting cases are useful pedagogically and practically, but it is very misleading to say either that the limiting case is the law, or that therefore “the law” only applies to some “imaginary scenario.”

It is claimed by Phyicists (I say) that the law applies to the real world.

To think that this claim is rebutted by pulling out a limiting case and suggesting that the limiting case could not be realized perfectly simply misunderstands what is going on with such limiting cases. It is, frankly, schoolboyish.

Then, T-fan, you start to quibble that Clark might grant that “the laws might actually be true in some respects.”

Frankly, such an admission would be as far from something the real Clark would make as possible, if I understand his project at all. Truth is not something to be qualified by “in some respects.” A proposition might be true when properly qualified, and false when not so qualified. But the notion of “truth” is not. And I find no place that Clark give the slightest hint that the propositions of science could be qualified in such a way as to take on the truth value TRUE.

It is really not very helpful to pull qualifications out of thin air and say, “Clark could have meant this.” We have the texts he wrote. Deal with those.

As to my “point 2,” you say my “formulation might seem to overcome the infinite of lines problem, but I don’t think it fully does … there will still be an infinite number of epsilons, higher order curves, etc. that could have been selected, and so on …”

That’s not the point. I’m not worried about infinities. My whole point is that Clark has allowed an uncontrolled use of infinities to confuse him.

The question is, can the proposition (i.e. a scientific law as proposition) be formulated in such a way, that it takes on the truth value TRUE?

As I said, perhaps there are other reasons to deny that such a proposition can be true, or known to be true; but I submit, that the specific argument of “an infinity of lines,” as to Clark’s argument that this eo ipso implies falsehood, has thereby been rebutted.

I still haven’t found my copy of the main work under discussion. I did locate my copy of Christian View of Men and Things (though a different edition than the one you cited). It contains what appears to be much the same arguments that you describe at Section V, “Science,” in the subsection entitled “Facts, Laws, and Verification.”

(As an initial matter, I don’t think I’ve departed in any significant way from Clark’s views on epistemology, but I suppose I could be wrong.)

He does state, “[scientific laws] cannot be true.” (italics in original) However, he immediately follows that up with: “Or, at the very least, the point of all this argument is that scientific laws are not discovered, but chosen.”

I think your number 1 really attempts to quibble over whether the laws are objectively false, whereas Clark’s point was somewhere entirely else. I don’t think Clark would particularly mind the objection from a naturalist that the laws might actually be true in some respects.

I think Clark’s reason for calling all of the laws of physics “false” was (and here I’m going based on his actual argument in CVMT) that they describe imaginary scenarios, not the physical realities - by the admission of the physicists who write the laws. In other words, Clark is stating that on their face, the laws do not correspond to the reality of nature, regardless of whether they would be accurate in an “ideal” world.

With that understanding, it’s not any big deal for Clark to say that he knows they are false (using “know” in the ordinary sense of the term).

As to 2, formulations of the laws with tolerances would address the immediate objection that the laws of physics do not relate to the real world, but to an imaginary ideal world.

Your formulation might seem to overcome the infinite of lines problem, but I don’t think it fully does … there will still be an infinite number of epsilons, higher order curves, etc. that could have been selected, and so on …

Just adding though that this law is an approximation, however, removes much of the sting of the reductio, while (again) bolstering Clark’s underlying point that the law is chosen, not discovered.

-Turretinfan

You say that science collectively says R. In reality, the truth is R’. This is trivial. Who wouldn’t agree with that? Are there people out there who think that science has always given us the truth? The whole idea behind science is that we keep modifying our “knowledge”.

Nevertheless, this makes more sense of Clark’s claim that science is “false.” Collectively, yes it probably is, but once again, if he’s concerned about epistemic certainty then he still can’t say its truly false, only probably false.

You wrote in response to JC: Are you unwilling to accept that proposition as a presupposition for the conversation?

Now you’re just making up stuff up.

By the way, how does Clark know that the Bible says what he thinks it says given the uncertainty of language?

Keith

“Therefore, all the laws of Physics are false.”

Not N out of Q; not, any one might prove to be false. No. “All… are false.”

You can find a nearly identical assertion in Christian View of Men and Things, (1990 [1952]) p. 139 in regard to the law of gravitation, and Introduction to Christian Philosophy (1993 [1968]) p. 41 “Since the choice is made from an infinite number of equally possible laws, there is zero probability that the laws chosen describe anything that occurs in nature.”

Before continuing with your version, will you concede that

1. Clark says that all (not some, but all) laws of Science are false; moreover, that we know they are false (otherwise Clark, being an honest man, would not have asserted it).

2. I have proposed a way of formulating a law of science that escapes from this specific objection (though perhaps not from all other objections); namely, the objection that there are an infinite number of curves through the points.

This would make more science of Clark’s claim that science is false, yet its trivial.

I’m confident that Clark would agree with the syllogism above. The fact that Science is unreliable, does not mean that for all propositions P, the truth is P’ (something other than P).

Nevertheless, for an indeterminate number of propositions N (less than the total number of all propositions P) Science says R, when the truth is R’.

Thus, where the total number of all propositions in Science is X (and obviously that number is increasing exponentially these days), and the total number of false proposition is N, Science is unreliable according to the relationship between N and X.

Science, however, is unable to tell us what the value of N is.

History has shown that N was a large number in previous generations, and there is no reason at all to suppose that N has been reduced to zero in the present generation. In fact, Science does not claim such a feat has been accomplished.

Consequently, aside from claims like the one above, where revelation authenticates Science, we can only ascribe utility, not truth (absolutely certain knowledge of reality) to science, and (by implication) science is “false” (meaning not “truth” within that extremely high standard of truth), although individual claims of Science certainly do, at some undetermined ratio, correspond exactly to reality.

I’m not sure if I’m explaining this in a cogent way. Does what I said make any sense?