diff --git a/_index.db b/_index.db index 6cb7b4ff3..51d62d9f1 100644 Binary files a/_index.db and b/_index.db differ diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dei_Filius-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dei_Filius-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..d17a8ee24 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dei_Filius-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,45 @@ +--- +title: "Dei Filius" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dei_Filius" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:15.906944+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Dei Filius is the incipit of the dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council on the Catholic faith, which was adopted unanimously, and issued by Pope Pius IX on 24 April 1870. +The constitution set forth the teaching of "the holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church" on God, revelation and faith. + + +== Content == +The dogmatic constitution "deals with faith, reason, and their interrelations". +The document begins by observing that "God, the principle and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of human reason from created things". However, it then explains that, through divine revelation, this knowledge can more easily be attained "with firm assurance, and with no admixture of error". + +Faith and reason are seen as complementary. Following Thomas Aquinas, whose guiding thought Philip Egan paraphrases as that "it is the same God who grounds all truth, whether secular or divine, and the truth is ultimately one", Dei Filius saidthere can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind; and God can not deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. The false appearance of such a contradiction is mainly due, either to the dogmas of faith not having been understood and expounded according to the mind of the Church, or to the inventions of opinion having been taken for the verdicts of reason. + + +== Name used for the church == +The draft presented to the council on 8 March 1870 drew no serious criticism. But a group of 35 English-speaking bishops, who feared that the opening phrase "Sancta Romana Catholica Ecclesia" might be construed as favouring the Anglican branch theory, raised objections to this expression, "Holy Roman Catholic Church". They proposed that the word "Roman" be omitted out of concern that use of the term "Roman Catholic" would lend support to proponents of branch theory. While the council overwhelmingly rejected this proposal, the text was finally modified to read "The Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church". +The words "Sancta Romana Catholica Ecclesia" were voted on three separate dates. On the first occasion, when this chapter alone was considered, two votes concerned the opening words. The first was on a proposal by a few English-speaking bishops to delete the word "Romana", thus changing "Sancta Romana Catholica Ecclesia" (The Holy Roman Catholic Church) to "Sancta Catholica Ecclesia" (The Holy Catholic Church). This was overwhelmingly defeated. +The second vote, held immediately afterwards, was on a proposal to insert a comma, so that "Sancta Romana Catholica Ecclesia" (The Holy Roman Catholic Church) would become "Sancta Romana, Catholica Ecclesia" (The Holy Roman, Catholic Church). This too was defeated, though not as overwhelmingly as the first proposal. +In a later vote, held on 12 April 1870, the text as a whole, which preserved the same opening words, was approved with 515 affirmative votes (placet) and no opposing votes (non placet); but there were 83 placet iuxta modum votes, asking for retouches, many of them regarding the opening words of chapter I. +In view of the reservations thus expressed, the text presented for a final vote and approved unanimously on 24 April changed the order of the words and added "Apostolica", so that "Sancta Romana Catholica Ecclesia" became "Sancta Catholica Apostolica Romana Ecclesia" (The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church). + + +== Legacy == +The Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei verbum, 1965) presented itself as "following in the footsteps of the Council of Trent and of the First Vatican Council" and made a number of references to Dei Filius. + + +== See also == +Dei verbum +Lumen fidei + + +== References == + + +== External links == + +The Constitution on the Catholic Faith +Text and English translation \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..a02ce21e3 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,42 @@ +--- +title: "Demarcation problem" +chunk: 1/3 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:17.130830+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +In philosophy of science and epistemology, the demarcation problem is the question of how to distinguish between science and non-science. It also examines the boundaries between science, pseudoscience and other products of human activity, like art and literature and beliefs. The debate continues after more than two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields. The debate has consequences for what can be termed "scientific" in topics such as education and public policy. + +== The ancients == +An early attempt at demarcation can be seen in the efforts of Greek natural philosophers and medical practitioners to distinguish their methods and their accounts of nature from the mythological or mystical accounts of their predecessors and contemporaries. + +Aristotle described at length what was involved in having scientific knowledge of something. To be scientific, he said, one must deal with causes, one must use logical demonstration, and one must identify the universals which 'inhere' in the particulars of sense. But above all, to have science one must have apodictic certainty. It is the last feature which, for Aristotle, most clearly distinguished the scientific way of knowing. +G. E. R. Lloyd noted that there was a sense in which the groups engaged in various forms of inquiry into nature attempt to "legitimate their own positions", laying "claim to a new kind of wisdom ... that purported to yield superior enlightenment, even superior practical effectiveness". Medical writers of the Hippocratic tradition maintained that their discussions were based on demonstration of logical necessity, a theme developed by Aristotle in his Posterior Analytics. One element of this polemic for science was an insistence on a clear and unequivocal presentation of arguments, rejecting the imagery, analogy, and myth of the old wisdom. Some of their claimed naturalistic explanations of phenomena have been found to be quite fanciful, with little reliance on actual observations. +Cicero's De Divinatione implicitly used five criteria of scientific demarcation that are also used by modern philosophers of science. + +== Logical positivism == + +Logical positivism, formulated during the 1920s, is the idea that only statements about matters of fact or logical relations between concepts are meaningful. All other statements lack sense and are labelled "metaphysics" (see the verifiability theory of meaning also known as verificationism). +According to A. J. Ayer, metaphysicians make statements which claim to have "knowledge of a reality which [transcends] the phenomenal world". Ayer, a member of the Vienna Circle and a noted English logical-positivist, argued that making any statements about the world beyond one's immediate sense-perception is impossible. This is because even metaphysicians' first premises will necessarily begin with observations made through sense-perception. +Ayer implied that the demarcation occurs when statements become "factually significant". To be "factually significant", a statement must be verifiable. In order to be verifiable, the statement must be verifiable in the observable world, or facts that can be induced from "derived experience". This is referred to as the "verifiability" criterion. +This distinction between science, which in the opinion of the Vienna Circle possessed empirically verifiable statements, and what they pejoratively termed "metaphysics", which lacked such statements, can be considered as representing another aspect of the demarcation problem. Logical positivism is often discussed in the context of the demarcation between science and non-science or pseudoscience. However, "The verificationist proposals had the aim of solving a distinctly different demarcation problem, namely that between science and metaphysics." + +== Falsifiability == + +Karl Popper considered demarcation as a major problem of the philosophy of science. Popper articulates the problem of demarcation as: + +The problem of finding a criterion which would enable us to distinguish between the empirical sciences on the one hand, and mathematics and logic as well as 'metaphysical' systems on the other, I call the problem of demarcation." +Falsifiability is the demarcation criterion proposed by Popper as opposed to verificationism: "statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable observations." + +=== Against verifiability === +Popper rejected solutions to the problem of demarcation that are grounded in inductive reasoning, and so rejected logical-positivist responses to the problem of demarcation. He argued that logical-positivists want to create a demarcation between the metaphysical and the empirical because they believe that empirical claims are meaningful and metaphysical ones are not. Unlike the Vienna Circle, Popper stated that his proposal was not a criterion of "meaningfulness". + +Popper's demarcation criterion has been criticized both for excluding legitimate science ... and for giving some pseudosciences the status of being scientific ... According to Larry Laudan (1983, 121), it "has the untoward consequence of countenancing as 'scientific' every crank claim which makes ascertainably false assertions". Astrology, rightly taken by Popper as an unusually clear example of a pseudoscience, has in fact been tested and thoroughly refuted ... Similarly, the major threats to the scientific status of psychoanalysis, another of his major targets, do not come from claims that it is untestable but from claims that it has been tested and failed the tests. +Popper argued that the Humean induction problem shows that there is no way to make meaningful universal statements on the basis of any number of empirical observations. Therefore, empirical statements are no more "verifiable" than metaphysical statements. +This creates a problem for the demarcation the positivists wanted to define between the empirical and the metaphysical. By their very own "verifiability criterion", Popper argued, the empirical is subsumed into the metaphysical, and the demarcation between the two becomes non-existent. + +=== The solution of falsifiability === +In Popper's later work, he stated that falsifiability is both a necessary and sufficient criterion for demarcation. He described falsifiability as a property of "the logical structure of sentences and classes of sentences", so that a statement's scientific or non-scientific status does not change over time. This has been summarized as a statement being falsifiable "if and only if it logically contradicts some (empirical) sentence that describes a logically possible event that it would be logically possible to observe". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..db8848e14 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ +--- +title: "Demarcation problem" +chunk: 2/3 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:17.130830+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Kuhnian postpositivism == +Thomas Kuhn, an American historian and philosopher of science, is often associated with what has been termed postpositivism or postempiricism. In his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn divided the process of doing science into two different endeavors, which he termed normal science and extraordinary science (sometimes known as "revolutionary science"), the latter of which introduces a new "paradigm" that solves new problems while continuing to provide solutions to the problems solved by the preceding paradigm. + +Finally, and this is for now my main point, a careful look at the scientific enterprise suggests that it is normal science, in which Sir Karl's sort of testing does not occur, rather than extraordinary science which most nearly distinguishes science from other enterprises. If a demarcation criterion exists (we must not, I think, seek a sharp or decisive one), it may lie just in that part of science which Sir Karl ignores. +Kuhn's view of demarcation is most clearly expressed in his comparison of astronomy with astrology. Since antiquity, astronomy has been a puzzle-solving activity and therefore a science. If an astronomer's prediction failed, then this was a puzzle that he could hope to solve for instance with more measurements or with adjustments of the theory. In contrast, the astrologer had no such puzzles since in that discipline "particular failures did not give rise to research puzzles, for no man, however skilled, could make use of them in a constructive attempt to revise the astrological tradition" ... Therefore, according to Kuhn, astrology has never been a science. +Popper criticized Kuhn's demarcation criterion, saying that astrologers are engaged in puzzle solving, and that therefore Kuhn's criterion recognized astrology as a science. He stated that Kuhn's criterion results in a "major disaster ... [the] replacement of a rational criterion of science by a sociological one". + +== Feyerabend and Lakatos == +Kuhn's work largely called into question Popper's demarcation, and emphasized the human, subjective quality of scientific change. Paul Feyerabend was concerned that the very question of demarcation was insidious: science itself had no need of a demarcation criterion, but instead some philosophers were seeking to justify a special position of authority from which science could dominate public discourse. Feyerabend argued that science is not in fact special in terms of either its logic or method, and no claim to special authority made by scientists can be sustained. He argued that, within the history of scientific practice, no rule or method can be found that has not been violated or circumvented at some point in order to advance scientific knowledge. Both Imre Lakatos and Feyerabend suggest that science is not an autonomous form of reasoning, but is inseparable from the larger body of human thought and inquiry. + +== Thagard == +Paul R. Thagard proposed another set of principles to try to overcome these difficulties, and argued that it is important for society to find a way of doing so. According to Thagard's method, a theory is not scientific if it satisfies two conditions: + +The theory has been less progressive than alternative theories over a long period of time, and has many unsolved problems; and... +The community of practitioners makes little attempt to develop the theory towards solutions of the problems, shows no concern for attempts to evaluate the theory in relation to others, and is selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations. +Thagard specified that sometimes theories will spend some time as merely "unpromising" before they truly deserve the title of pseudoscience. He cited astrology as an example: it was stagnant compared to advances in physics during the 17th century, and only later became "pseudoscience" in the advent of alternative explanations provided by psychology during the 19th century. +Thagard also stated that his criteria should not be interpreted so narrowly as to allow willful ignorance of alternative explanations, or so broadly as to discount our modern science compared to science of the future. His definition is a practical one, which generally seeks to distinguish pseudoscience as areas of inquiry which are stagnant and without active scientific investigation. + +== Some historians' perspectives == +Many historians of science are concerned with the development of science from its primitive origins; consequently they define science in sufficiently broad terms to include early forms of natural knowledge. In the article on science in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the scientist and historian William Cecil Dampier Whetham defined science as "ordered knowledge of natural phenomena and of the relations between them". In his study of Greek science, Marshall Clagett defined science as "first, the orderly and systematic comprehension, description and/or explanation of natural phenomena and, secondly, the [mathematical and logical] tools necessary for the undertaking". A similar definition appeared more recently in David Pingree's study of early science: "Science is a systematic explanation of perceived or imaginary phenomena, or else is based on such an explanation. Mathematics finds a place in science only as one of the symbolical languages in which scientific explanations may be expressed." These definitions tend to emphasize the subject matter of science rather than its method and from these perspectives, the philosophical concern to establish a demarcation between science and non-science becomes "problematic, if not futile". \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2cdc0d6c7 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: "Demarcation problem" +chunk: 3/3 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:17.130830+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== Laudan == +Larry Laudan concluded, after examining various historical attempts to establish a demarcation criterion, that "philosophy has failed to deliver the goods" in its attempts to distinguish science from non-science—to distinguish science from pseudoscience. None of the past attempts would be accepted by a majority of philosophers nor, in his opinion, should they be accepted by them or by anyone else. He stated that many well-founded beliefs are not scientific and, conversely, many scientific conjectures are not well-founded. He also stated that demarcation criteria were historically used as machines de guerre in polemical disputes between "scientists" and "pseudo-scientists". Advancing a number of examples from everyday practice of football and carpentry and non-scientific scholarship such as literary criticism and philosophy, he considered the question of whether a belief is well-founded or not to be more practically and philosophically significant than whether it is scientific or not. In his judgment, the demarcation between science and non-science was a pseudo-problem that would best be replaced by examining the distinction between reliable and unreliable knowledge, without bothering to ask whether that knowledge is scientific or not. He would consign phrases like "pseudo-science" or "unscientific" to the rhetoric of politicians or sociologists. + +== Modern proposals == +Others have disagreed with Laudan. Sebastian Lutz, for example, argued that demarcation does not have to be a single necessary and sufficient condition as Laudan implied. Rather, Laudan's reasoning at most establishes that there has to be one necessary criterion and one possibly different sufficient criterion. +Various typologies or taxonomies of sciences versus nonsciences, and reliable knowledge versus illusory knowledge, have been proposed. Ian Hacking, Massimo Pigliucci, and others have noted that the sciences generally conform to Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of family resemblances. + +Other critics have argued for multiple demarcation criteria, some suggesting that there should be one set of criteria for the natural sciences, another set of criteria for the social sciences, and claims involving the supernatural could have a set of pseudoscientific criteria. Anthropologist Sean M. Rafferty of the University at Albany, SUNY in his text Misanthropology: Science, Pseudoscience, and the Study of Humanity contrasts science and pseudoscience within his discipline thusly:[E]ven for those subfields where there is a significant element of interpretation, those interpretations are still based on and constrained by physical evidence. And interpretations are always provisional, pending possible refutation by contradictory evidence ... Pseudoscience, by comparison, is scornful of evidence. The pseudoscientist reaches a preferred conclusion in advance, then selects evidence, often removed from any relevant context, to lend supposed support for their conclusions. Often the preconceived conclusion is one that justifies some closely held identity or ideology. Contradictory evidence is waved away or ignored, and as a last resort, one can always claim conspiracy to keep pseudoscientific ideas suppressed. +In 2025, Springer Nature published the monograph A Working Scientific Demarcation, by Damian Fernandez-Beanato, which purports to use multi-criterial meta-analyses to offer the first working general solution to the demarcation problem. + +== Significance == +Concerning science education, Michael D. Gordin wrote: + +Every student in public or private schools takes several years of science, but only a small fraction of them pursue careers in the sciences. We teach the rest of them so much science so that they will appreciate what it means to be scientific – and, hopefully, become scientifically literate and apply some of those lessons in their lives. For such students, the myth of a bright line of demarcation is essential. +Discussions of the demarcation problem concern the rhetoric of science and promote critical thinking, which is important for democracy. For example, Gordin stated: "Demarcation remains essential for the enormously high political stakes of climate-change denial and other anti-regulatory fringe doctrines". +Philosopher Herbert Keuth noted: + +Perhaps the most important function of the demarcation between science and nonscience is to refuse political and religious authorities the right to pass binding judgments on the truth of certain statements of fact. +Concern for informed human nutrition resulted in the following note in 1942: + +If our boys and girls are to be exposed to the superficial and frequently ill-informed statements about science and medicine made over the radio and in the daily press, it is desirable, if not necessary, that some corrective in the form of accurate factual information be provided in the schools. Although this is not a plea that chemistry teachers should at once introduce the study of proteins into their curricula, it is a suggestion that they should at least inform themselves and become prepared to answer questions and counteract the effects of misinformation. +The demarcation problem has been compared to the problem of differentiating fake news from real news, which became prominent during the 2016 United States presidential election. + +== See also == + +Boundary-work +Idealism +Relativism +Scientism + +== References == + +== External links == +Fieser, James; Dowden, Bradley (eds.). "Pseudoscience and the Demarcation Problem". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002. OCLC 37741658. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..e193398b3 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "Efficacy of prayer" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:18.538677+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The efficacy of prayer has been studied since at least 1872, generally through experiments to determine whether prayer or intercessory prayer has a measurable effect on the health of the person for whom prayer is offered. +First-person studies suggest that praying can affect the person praying—sometimes improving physiological measures (like cardiovascular responses) and mental health, though results are mixed and often limited by self-report bias. Third-party studies on intercessory prayer (praying for others) have produced inconsistent results, with the largest and most rigorous trials generally finding no significant effect. +While some religious groups argue that the power of prayer is obvious, others question whether it is possible to measure its effect. Dr. Fred Rosner, an authority on Jewish medical ethics, has expressed doubt that prayer could ever be subject to empirical analysis. Basic philosophical questions bear upon the question of the efficacy of prayer – for example, whether statistical inference and falsifiability are sufficient to "prove" or to "disprove" anything, and whether the topic is even within the realm of science. +According to The Washington Post, "...prayer is the most common complement to mainstream medicine, far outpacing acupuncture, herbs, vitamins and other alternative remedies." In comparison to other fields that have been scientifically studied, carefully monitored studies of prayer are relatively few. The field remains tiny, with about $5 million spent worldwide on such research each year. + +== Studies of intercessory prayer == + +=== First person studies === + +Studies can verify that those who pray are affected by the experience, including certain physiological outcomes. An example of a study on meditative prayer was the Bernardi study in the British Medical Journal in 2001. It reported that by praying the rosary or reciting yoga mantras at specific rates, baroreflex sensitivity increased significantly in cardiovascular patients. +A study published in 2008 used Eysenck's dimensional model of personality based on neuroticism and psychoticism to assess the mental health of high school students based on their self-reported frequency of prayer. For students both in Catholic and Protestant schools, higher levels of prayer were associated with better mental health as measured by lower psychoticism scores. However, among pupils attending Catholic schools, higher levels of prayer were also associated with higher neuroticism scores. + +It has also been suggested that if a person knows that he or she is being prayed for it can be uplifting and increase morale, thus aiding recovery. (See Subject-expectancy effect.) Studies have suggested that prayer can reduce psychological stress, regardless of the god or gods a person prays to, a result that is consistent with a variety of hypotheses as to what may cause such an effect. According to a study by CentraState Healthcare System, "the psychological benefits of prayer may help reduce stress and anxiety, promote a more positive outlook, and strengthen the will to live." Other practices such as yoga, tai chi, and meditation may also have a positive impact on physical and psychological health. +A 2001 study by Meisenhelder and Chandler analyzed data obtained from 1,421 Presbyterian pastors surveyed by mail and found that their self-reported frequency of prayer was well-correlated with their self-perception of health and vitality. This research methodology has inherent problems with self-selection, selection bias, and residual confounding, and the authors admitted that the direction of perceived prayer and health relationships "remains inconclusive due to the limits of the correlational research design". + +=== Third party studies === +Various controlled studies have addressed the topic of the efficacy of prayer at least since Francis Galton in 1872, which spawned an entire series of commentary-debates that lasted for several years. Carefully monitored studies of prayer are relatively scarce with $5 million spent worldwide on such research each year. The largest study, from the 2006 STEP project, found no significant differences in patients recovering from heart surgery whether the patients were prayed for or not. +The third party studies reported either null results, correlated results, or contradictory results in which beneficiaries of prayer had worsened health outcomes. For instance, a meta-analysis of several studies related to distant intercessory healing published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2000 looked at 2774 patients in 23 studies, and found that 13 studies showed statistically significant positive results, 9 studies showed no effect, and 1 study showed a negative result. +A 2003 levels of evidence review found evidence for the hypothesis that "Being prayed for improves physical recovery from acute illness". It concluded that although "a number of studies" have tested this hypothesis, "only three have sufficient rigor for review here" (Byrd 1988, Harris et al. 1999, and Sicher et al. 1998). In all three, "the strongest findings were for the variables that were evaluated most subjectively", raising concerns about the possible inadvertent unmasking of the outcomes' assessors. Other meta-studies of the broader literature have been performed showing evidence only for no effect or a potentially small effect. For instance, a 2006 meta analysis on 14 studies concluded that there is "no discernible effect" while a 2007 systemic review of intercessory prayer reported inconclusive results, noting that 7 of 17 studies had "small, but significant, effect sizes" but the review noted that the three most methodologically rigorous studies failed to produce significant findings. + +== Belief and skepticism == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..7963ed17d --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,50 @@ +--- +title: "Efficacy of prayer" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:18.538677+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Medical views === +Most scientists dismiss "faith healing" practitioners. Believers assert that faith healing makes no scientific claims and thus should be treated as a matter of faith that is not testable by science. Critics reply that claims of medical cures should be tested scientifically because, although faith in the supernatural is not in itself usually considered to be the purview of science, claims of reproducible effects are nevertheless subject to scientific investigation. +Scientists and doctors generally find that faith healing lacks biological plausibility or epistemic warrant, which is one of the criteria used to judge whether clinical research is ethical and financially justified. A Cochrane review of intercessory prayer found "although some of the results of individual studies suggest a positive effect of intercessory prayer, the majority do not". The authors concluded: "We are not convinced that further trials of this intervention should be undertaken and would prefer to see any resources available for such a trial used to investigate other questions in health care". +An article in the Medical Journal of Australia says that "One common criticism of prayer research is that prayer has become a popular therapeutic method for which there is no known plausible mechanism." +Medical professionals are skeptical of new claims by studies until they have been experimentally reproduced and corroborated. For instance, a 2001 study by researchers associated with Columbia University has been associated with controversy, following claims of success in the popular media. +Although different medical studies have been at odds with one another, physicians have not stopped studying prayer. This may be partly because prayer is increasingly used as a coping mechanism for patients. + +=== Skepticism on scope of prayer === + +In a debate/interview in Newsweek with Christian evangelical Rick Warren, atheist Sam Harris commented that most lay perceptions of the efficacy of prayer (personal impressions as opposed to empirical studies) were related to sampling error because "we know that humans have a terrible sense of probability." That is, humans are more inclined to recognize confirmations of their faith than they are to recognize disconfirmations. + +Harris also criticized existing empirical studies for limiting themselves to prayers for relatively unmiraculous events, such as recovery from heart surgery. He suggested a simple experiment to settle the issue: Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting. + +== Religious and philosophical issues == + +Religious and philosophical objections to the very study of prayer's efficacy exist. Some interpret Deuteronomy (6:16 "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test") to mean that prayer cannot, or should not, be examined. +The religious viewpoint objects to the claim that prayer is susceptible to experimental designs or statistical analysis, and other assumptions in many experiments, e.g. that a thousand prayers are statistically different from one. The objections also include the complaint that religion generally deals with unique, uncontrollable events; statistics, and science in general, deal with recurring phenomena which are possible to sample or control and are susceptible to general laws. + +Religious objections also include the complaint that as prayer starts to be measured, it is no longer real prayer once it gets involved in an experiment and that the concept of conducting prayer experiments reflects a misunderstanding of the purpose of prayer. The 2006 STEP experiment indicated that some of the intercessors who took part in it complained about the scripted nature of the prayers that were imposed to them, saying that this is not the way they usually conduct prayer: Prior to the start of this study, intercessors reported that they usually receive information about the patient's age, gender and progress reports on their medical condition; converse with family members or the patient (not by fax from a third party); use individualized prayers of their own choosing; and pray for a variable time period based on patient or family request. +With respect to expectation of a response to prayer, the 18th-century philosopher William Paley wrote: + +To pray for particular favors is to dictate to Divine Wisdom, and savors of presumption; and to intercede for other individuals or for nations, is to presume that their happiness depends upon our choice, and that the prosperity of communities hangs upon our interest. + +During the 20th century, philosopher Bertrand Russell believed that religion and science "have long been at war, claiming for themselves the same territory, ideas and allegiances". He also believed that the war had been decisively won by science. Almost 40 years earlier, a 22-year-old Russell also wrote: "For although I had long ceased to believe in the efficacy of prayer, I was so lonely and so in need of some supporter such as the Christian God, that I took to saying prayers again when I ceased to believe in their efficacy." + +The 21st-century evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, describing how Richard Swinburne explained away the STEP experiment's negative results "on the grounds that God answers prayers only if they are offered up for good reasons", finds one predictable result of prayer:Other theologians joined NOMA-inspired sceptics in contending that studying prayer in this way is a waste of money because supernatural influences are by definition beyond the reach of science. But as the Templeton Foundation correctly recognized when it financed the study, the alleged power of intercessory prayer is at least in principle within the reach of science. A double-blind experiment can be done and was done. It could have yielded a positive result. And if it had, can you imagine that a single religious apologist would have dismissed it on the grounds that scientific research has no bearing on religious matters? Of course not. + +== See also == +Magical thinking +Thoughts and prayers + +== Notes == + +== References == + +== Further reading == +Sloan, Richard P. (2006). Blind faith: the unholy alliance of religion and medicine. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-34881-6. +Behrman, E. J., "Testing Prayer", Skeptic, 11:4, 15(2005) + +== External links == \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Society_for_the_Study_of_Science_and_Theology-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Society_for_the_Study_of_Science_and_Theology-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..180dd5a85 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Society_for_the_Study_of_Science_and_Theology-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,29 @@ +--- +title: "European Society for the Study of Science and Theology" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Society_for_the_Study_of_Science_and_Theology" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:19.872130+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +ESSSAT is a scholarly, non-confessional organization, based in Europe, which aims to promote the study of relationships between the natural sciences and theological views. ESSSAT has members from almost every European country as well as members from other continents. They have different confessional backgrounds, and may include believers as well as non-believers and atheists. +Every two years, ESSSAT organizes an international conference, each time on a different venue in Europe. Two prizes for outstanding research are awarded on these conferences: the ESSSAT Student Prize and the ESSSAT Research Prize. ESSSAT publishes three series: Issues in Science and Theology (IST), Studies in Science and Theology (SSTh), and ESSSAT-News (a quarterly newsletter). +The organization was founded in the mid-1980s. Its current president is Dirk Evers, who succeeded Antje Jackelén, leading ESSSAT from 2008 to 2014. ESSSAT's president from 2002 to 2008 was Dutch theologian Willem B. Drees. + + +== See also == +Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (A similar American organization) +Zygon Center for Religion and Science (Chicago) (A similar American organization) +Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (Berkeley) (A similar American organization) +Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (a related journal) +Theology and Science (a related journal) +Issues in Science and Religion + + +== References == + + +== External links == +[1] Archived 2019-05-14 at the Wayback Machine Homepage \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..53c2d3139 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,40 @@ +--- +title: "Fact–value distinction" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:22.389309+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The fact–value distinction is a fundamental epistemological distinction between: + +Statements of fact (positive or descriptive statements), which are based upon reason and observation, and examined via the empirical method. +Statements of value (normative or prescriptive statements), such as good and bad, beauty and ugliness, encompass ethics and aesthetics, and are studied via axiology. +This barrier between fact and value, as construed in epistemology, implies it is impossible to derive ethical claims from factual arguments, or to defend the former using the latter. +The fact–value distinction is closely related to, and derived from, the is–ought problem in moral philosophy, characterized by David Hume. The terms are often used interchangeably, though philosophical discourse concerning the is–ought problem does not usually encompass aesthetics. + +== History == + +=== David Hume's skepticism === + +In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), David Hume discusses the problems in grounding normative statements in positive statements; that is, in deriving ought from is. It is generally regarded that Hume considered such derivations untenable, and his 'is–ought' problem is considered a principal question of moral philosophy. +Hume shared a political viewpoint with early Enlightenment philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704). Specifically, Hume, at least to some extent, argued that religious and national hostilities that divided European society were based on unfounded beliefs. In effect, Hume contended that such hostilities are not found in nature, but are a human creation, depending on a particular time and place, and thus unworthy of mortal conflict. +Prior to Hume, Aristotelian philosophy maintained that all actions and causes were to be interpreted teleologically. This rendered all facts about human action examinable under a normative framework defined by cardinal virtues and capital vices. "Fact" in this sense was not value-free, and the fact-value distinction was an alien concept. The decline of Aristotelianism in the 16th century set the framework in which those theories of knowledge could be revised. + +=== Friedrich Nietzsche's table of values === +Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) in Thus Spoke Zarathustra said that a table of values hangs above every great person. Nietzsche argues that what is common among different peoples is the act of esteeming, of creating values, even if the values are different from one people to the next. Nietzsche asserts that what made people great was not the content of their beliefs, but the act of valuing. Thus the values a community strives to articulate are not as important as the collective will to act on those values. The willing is more essential than the intrinsic worth of the goal itself, according to Nietzsche. "A thousand goals have there been so far," says Zarathustra, "for there are a thousand peoples. Only the yoke for the thousand necks is still lacking: the one goal is lacking. Humanity still has no goal." Hence, the title of the aphorism, "On The Thousand And One Goals." The idea that one value system is no more worthy than the next, although it may not be directly ascribed to Nietzsche, has become a common premise in modern social science. Max Weber and Martin Heidegger absorbed it and made it their own. It shaped their philosophical endeavor, as well as their political understanding. + +=== Religion and science === + +In his essay Science as a Vocation (1917) Max Weber draws a distinction between facts and values. He argues that facts can be determined through the methods of a value-free, objective social science, while values are derived through culture and religion, the truth of which cannot be known through science. He writes, "it is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual contents and the question of how one should act in the cultural community and in political associations. These are quite heterogeneous problems." In his 1919 essay Politics as a Vocation, he argues that facts, like actions, do not in themselves contain any intrinsic meaning or power: "any ethic in the world could establish substantially identical commandments applicable to all relationships." +According to Martin Luther King Jr., "Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary." He stated that science keeps religion from "crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism" whereas Religion prevents science from "falling into ... obsolete materialism and moral nihilism." + +Albert Einstein remarked that the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other, nevertheless there exist between the two strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies. Though religion may be that which determines the goal, it has, nevertheless, learned from science, in the broadest sense, what means will contribute to the attainment of the goals it has set up. But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. + +== Related fallacies == + +=== Naturalistic fallacy === + +The fact–value distinction is closely related to the naturalistic fallacy, a topic debated in ethical and moral philosophy. G. E. Moore believed it essential to all ethical thinking. However, contemporary philosophers like Philippa Foot have called into question the validity of such assumptions. Others, such as Ruth Anna Putnam, argue that even the most "scientific" of disciplines are affected by the "values" of those who research and practice the vocation. Nevertheless, the difference between the naturalistic fallacy and the fact–value distinction is derived from the manner in which modern social science has used the fact–value distinction, and not the strict naturalistic fallacy to articulate new fields of study and create academic disciplines. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..0cb3e3444 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +--- +title: "Fact–value distinction" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fact–value_distinction" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:22.389309+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Moralistic fallacy === + +The fact–value distinction is also closely related to the moralistic fallacy, an invalid inference of factual conclusions from purely evaluative premises. For example, the invalid inference "Unfaithfulness is immoral, and so it is unnatural to feel desire for others when in a monogamous relationship" is an instance of the moralistic fallacy. Where the naturalistic fallacy attempts to move from an "is" to an "ought" statement, the moralistic fallacy attempts to move from an "ought" to an "is" statement. + +== Criticisms == +Virtually all modern philosophers affirm some sort of fact–value distinction, insofar as they distinguish between science and "valued" disciplines such as ethics, aesthetics, or the fine arts. However, philosophers such as Hilary Putnam argue that the distinction between fact and value is not as absolute as Hume envisioned. Philosophical pragmatists, for instance, believe that true propositions are those that are useful or effective in predicting future (empirical) states of affairs. Far from being value-free, the pragmatists' conception of truth or facts directly relates to an end (namely, empirical predictability) that human beings regard as normatively desirable. Other thinkers, such as N. R. Hanson among others, talk of theory-ladenness, and reject an absolutist fact–value distinction by contending that our senses are imbued with prior conceptualizations, making it impossible to have any observation that is totally value-free, which is how Hume and the later positivists conceived of facts. + +=== Functionalist counterexamples === +Several counterexamples have been offered by philosophers claiming to show that there are cases when an evaluative statement does indeed logically follow from a factual statement. A. N. Prior argues, from the statement "He is a sea captain," that it logically follows, "He ought to do what a sea captain ought to do." Alasdair MacIntyre argues, from the statement "This watch is grossly inaccurate and irregular in time-keeping and too heavy to carry about comfortably," that the evaluative conclusion validly follows, "This is a bad watch." John Searle argues, from the statement "Jones promised to pay Smith five dollars," that it logically follows that "Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars", such that the act of promising by definition places the promiser under obligation. + +=== Moral realism === +Philippa Foot adopts a moral realist position, criticizing the idea that when evaluation is superposed on fact there has been a "committal in a new dimension". She introduces, by analogy, the practical implications of using the word "injury". Not just anything counts as an injury. There must be some impairment. When we suppose a man wants the things the injury prevents him from obtaining, haven’t we fallen into the old naturalist fallacy? + +It may seem that the only way to make a necessary connection between 'injury' and the things that are to be avoided, is to say that it is only used in an 'action-guiding sense' when applied to something the speaker intends to avoid. But we should look carefully at the crucial move in that argument, and query the suggestion that someone might happen not to want anything for which he would need the use of hands or eyes. Hands and eyes, like ears and legs, play a part in so many operations that a man could only be said not to need them if he had no wants at all. +Foot argues that the virtues, like hands and eyes in the analogy, play so large a part in so many operations that it is implausible to suppose that a committal in a non-naturalist dimension is necessary to demonstrate their goodness. + +Philosophers who have supposed that actual action was required if 'good' were to be used in a sincere evaluation have got into difficulties over weakness of will, and they should surely agree that enough has been done if we can show that any man has reason to aim at virtue and avoid vice. But is this impossibly difficult if we consider the kinds of things that count as virtue and vice? Consider, for instance, the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, courage and justice. Obviously any man needs prudence, but does he not also need to resist the temptation of pleasure when there is harm involved? And how could it be argued that he would never need to face what was fearful for the sake of some good? It is not obvious what someone would mean if he said that temperance or courage were not good qualities, and this not because of the 'praising' sense of these words, but because of the things that courage and temperance are. + +=== Of Weber === +Philosopher Leo Strauss criticizes Weber for attempting to isolate reason completely from opinion. Strauss acknowledges the philosophical trouble of deriving "ought" from "is", but argues that what Weber has done in his framing of this puzzle is in fact deny altogether that the "ought" is within reach of human reason. Strauss worries that if Weber is right, we are left with a world in which the knowable truth is a truth that cannot be evaluated according to ethical standards. This conflict between ethics and politics would mean that there can be no grounding for any valuation of the good, and without reference to values, facts lose their meaning. + +== See also == + +Baden School – Revival of Immanuel Kant's philosophyPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets +Empiricism – Idea that knowledge comes only/mainly from sensory experience +Is–ought problem – Philosophical problem articulated by David Hume +Non-overlapping magisteria – Concept created by Stephen Jay Gould +Value-freedom – Max Weber's methodological position +Positive and normative economics – Study of economics facts and values +Relativism – Philosophical view rejecting objectivity +Social science – Branch of science that studies society and its relationships + +== References == + +== Bibliography == +Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. 1739–1740 +Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 1748 +Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1883–1891. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin, 1969 +Weber, Max (1946). "Science as a Vocation". In Gerth, H. H.; Mills, C. Wright (eds.). From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (PDF). Translated by Gerth, H. H.; Mills, C. Wright. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 129–156. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 June 2025. Retrieved 28 July 2025. +Putnam, Hilary (2002). The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674009059. +Silvestri P. (ed.), L. Einaudi, On Abstract and Historical Hypotheses and on Value judgments in Economic Sciences, Critical edition with an Introduction and Afterword by Paolo Silvestri, Routledge, London & New York, 2017. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_rationality-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_rationality-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..c8dcd052a --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_rationality-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,59 @@ +--- +title: "Faith and rationality" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_and_rationality" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:24.295216+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Faith and rationality exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility. Rationality is based on reason or facts. Faith is belief in inspiration, revelation, or authority. The word faith sometimes refers to a belief that is held independently or in spite of reason or empirical evidence, or it can refer to belief based upon a degree of evidential warrant. + + +== Relationship between faith and reason == +Rationalists point out that many people hold irrational beliefs, for many reasons. There may be evolutionary causes for irrational beliefs—irrational beliefs may increase our ability to survive and reproduce. +One more reason for irrational beliefs can perhaps be explained by operant conditioning. For example, in one study by B. F. Skinner in 1948, pigeons were awarded grain at regular time intervals regardless of their behaviour. The result was that each of the pigeons developed their own idiosyncratic response which had become associated with the consequence of receiving grain. +Believers in the value of faith—for example those who believe salvation is possible through faith alone—frequently suggest that everyone holds beliefs arrived at by faith, not reason. +One form of belief held "by faith" may be seen existing in a faith as based on warrant. In this view some degree of evidence provides warrant for faith; it consists in other words in "explain[ing] great things by small." + + +== Christianity == + + +=== Catholic views === + +Thomas Aquinas was the first to write a full treatment of the relationship, differences, and similarities between faith, which he calls "an intellectual assent", and reason. +Dei Filius was a dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council on the Roman Catholic faith. It was adopted unanimously on 24 April 1870. It states that "not only can faith and reason never be opposed to one another, but they are of mutual aid one to the other". +Recent popes have spoken about faith and rationality: Fides et ratio, an encyclical letter promulgated by Pope John Paul II on 14 September 1998, deals with the relationship between faith and reason. Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg lecture, delivered on 12 September 2006, was on the subject of "faith, reason and the university". + + +=== Lutheran views === + + +=== Reformed views === + +Alvin Plantinga upholds that faith may be the result of evidence testifying to the reliability of the source of truth claims, but although it may involve this, he sees faith as being the result of hearing the truth of the gospel with the internal persuasion by the Holy Spirit moving and enabling him to believe. "Christian belief is produced in the believer by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, endorsing the teachings of Scripture, which is itself divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit. The result of the work of the Holy Spirit is faith." + + +=== Evangelical views === +American biblical scholar Archibald Thomas Robertson stated that the Greek word pistis used for faith in the New Testament (over two hundred forty times), and rendered "assurance" in Acts 17:31 (KJV), is "an old verb to furnish, used regularly by Demosthenes for bringing forward evidence." Likewise Tom Price (Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics) affirms that when the New Testament talks about faith positively it only uses words derived from the Greek root [pistis] which means "to be persuaded." +In contrast to faith meaning blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence, Alister McGrath quotes Oxford Anglican theologian W. H. Griffith-Thomas (1861–1924), who states faith is "not blind, but intelligent" and "commences with the conviction of the mind based on adequate evidence", which McGrath sees as "a good and reliable definition, synthesizing the core elements of the characteristic Christian understanding of faith." + + +== Jewish views == +The 14th-century Jewish philosopher Levi ben Gerson tried to reconcile faith and reason. He wrote: "the Law cannot prevent us from considering to be true that which our reason urges us to believe." + + +== Islamic view == + + +== See also == + + +== References == + + +== Further reading == +Becker, Siegbert W. (1957). "Faith and Reason in Martin Luther" (PDF). Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary Library online essay file. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-04-07. Retrieved 2014-04-06. +Marshall, Bruce D. (1999). "Faith and Reason Reconsidered: Aquinas and Luther on Deciding What is True". The Thomist. 63: 1–48. doi:10.1353/tho.1999.0041. S2CID 171157642. Archived from the original on 2003-09-04. Retrieved 2011-05-11. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_Institute_for_Science_and_Religion-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_Institute_for_Science_and_Religion-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..a769b10a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_Institute_for_Science_and_Religion-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,44 @@ +--- +title: "Faraday Institute for Science and Religion" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_Institute_for_Science_and_Religion" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:25.527202+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion is an interdisciplinary academic research institute based in Cambridge, England. It is named after the 19th-century English scientist Michael Faraday, the pioneer of electromagnetic induction. +It was established in 2006 by a $2,000,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation to carry out academic research, to foster understanding of the interaction between science and religion, and to engage public understanding in both these subject areas. The institute also leads debate on wider issues such as sustainability and education. + + +== Senior staff == +The institute's Executive Director is Graham Budd, and its Associate Director is Sarah Perrett. The emeritus directors are Denis Alexander and Robert (Bob) White. + + +== Activities == +The institute organises a wide range of activities, including: + +Free, regular lectures and seminars on a range of science and religion topics. +Providing access to resources such as downloadable audio and video recordings of over 350 Faraday Institute courses, lectures and seminars. The website also includes a wide range of written material, and an online shop featuring heavily discounted books. +Short, intensive weekend, and midweek courses. These are open to graduates or undergraduates from any university in the world, of any faith or none. Discounts and bursaries are available to students and those from low-income countries. Some courses give an overview of the science-religion debate, while others focus on a specific topic. +Residential and day conferences which focus on a particular aspect of the interaction between science and religion. +Informing and improving the media's understanding of the interaction between science and religion. +Activities of the Faraday Institute have included: + +Hosting a workshop on "The Social, Political, and Religious Transformations of Biology" in September 2007. A book arising from the conference, "Biology and Ideology – From Descartes to Dawkins" (eds D.R. Alexander and R.L. Numbers) was published in 2010 by University of Chicago Press. +A project on evolution, faith, and Charles Darwin, in collaboration with the think tank Theos. +The "Test of Faith" documentary, course, and books. +Commissioning the play Let Newton Be, which was reviewed in Science and Nature. +Organisation of The Georges Lemaître Anniversary Conference, April 2011 at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. +Organisation of the ‘Sustainability in Crisis’ Conference, Sept 26–28, 2011, held at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. +In his former capacity as director and now as emeritus director of the institute, Denis Alexander has commented on science and religion in UK national media and international media. +The institute has published 20 Faraday Papers discussing various science and faith issues, which are available online in 12 different languages. Its website hosts recordings of more than 350 lectures. Most of these lectures can also be found on the University of Cambridge Video & Audio Archive. Its work, along with that of other similar organizations, has led to a "complete reassessment of historical literature on the relationship between science and religion." + + +== References == + + +== External links == +Faraday Institute webpage +The Compatibility of God and Science Evans, Katie, Interview with Rodney Holder, Course Director of the Faraday Institute, "Cambridge Medicine", Vol 21, No 1 (2007) \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..29c96ec1e --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,52 @@ +--- +title: "God gene" +chunk: 1/1 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:29.566934+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +The God gene hypothesis proposes that human spirituality is influenced by heredity and that a specific gene, called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences. The idea has been proposed by geneticist Dean Hamer in the 2004 book called The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes. +The God gene hypothesis is based on a combination of behavioral genetic, neurobiological and psychological studies. The major arguments of the hypothesis are: (1) spirituality can be quantified by psychometric measurements; (2) the underlying tendency to spirituality is partially heritable; (3) part of this heritability can be attributed to the gene VMAT2; (4) this gene acts by altering monoamine levels; and (5) spirituality provides an evolutionary advantage by providing individuals with an innate sense of optimism. + + +== Proposal == + +According to the God Gene hypothesis, spirituality has a genetic component, of which (VMAT2) comprises one component by contributing to sensations associated with mystic experiences, including the presence of God and feelings of connection to a larger universe. +The research uses the self-transcendence scale developed by psychologist Robert Cloninger to quantify spirituality using three sub-scales: "self-forgetfulness" (as in the tendency to become totally absorbed in some activity, such as reading); "transpersonal identification" (a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe); and "mysticism" (an openness to believe things that remain unproven, such as ESP). Cloninger suggests that taken together, these measurements are a reasonable way to quantify (make measurable) an individual's propensity to be spiritual. +The self-transcendence measure was shown to be heritable by classical twin studies conducted by Lindon Eaves and Nicholas Martin. Their work demonstrated that approximately 40% of the variation in self-transcendence was due to genes. By contrast, specific religious beliefs (such as belief in a particular deity) were found to have no genetic basis and are instead cultural units or memes. Similar conclusions were drawn from studies of identical twins reared apart. +In order to identify some of the specific genes involved in self-transcendence, Hamer analyzed DNA and personality score data from over 1,000 individuals and identified one particular locus, VMAT2, with a significant correlation. VMAT2 codes for a vesicular monoamine transporter that plays a key role in regulating the levels of the brain chemicals serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. These monoamine transmitters are in turn postulated to play an important role in regulating the brain activities associated with mystic beliefs. +Hamer hypothesized that self-transcendence might provide an evolutionary advantage by providing human beings with an innate sense of optimism that gives people the will to keep on living and procreating, despite the inevitability of death, and promoting better health and recovery from diseases. + + +== Scientific response == +In the brain, VMAT2 proteins are located on synaptic vesicles. VMAT2 transports monoamine neurotransmitters from the cytosol of monoamine neurons into vesicles. Developmental biologist and science blogger PZ Myers argues: "It's a pump. A teeny-tiny pump responsible for packaging a neurotransmitter for export during brain activity. Yes, it's important, and it may even be active and necessary during higher order processing, like religious thought. But one thing it isn't is a 'god gene.'" +Popular science writer Carl Zimmer said that VMAT2 can be characterized as a gene that accounts for less than one percent of the variance of self-transcendence scores. These, Zimmer says, can signify anything from belonging to the Green Party to believing in ESP. Zimmer also points out that the God Gene theory is based on only one unpublished, unreplicated study. +However, Hamer notes that the importance of the VMAT2 finding is not that it explains all spiritual or religious feelings, but rather that it points the way toward one neurobiological pathway that may be important. Currently, there are several VMAT2 inhibitors marketed as drugs including deutetrabenazine, tetrabenazine, and valbenazine. The question of the God Gene could be answered by experimental studies. + + +== Religious response == +John Polkinghorne, a theoretical physicist and Anglican priest, member of the Royal Society and Canon Theologian at Liverpool Cathedral, was asked for a comment on Hamer's theory by the British national daily newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. He replied: "The idea of a God gene goes against all my personal theological convictions. You can't cut faith down to the lowest common denominator of genetic survival. It shows the poverty of reductionist thinking." +Walter Houston, the chaplain of Mansfield College, Oxford, and a fellow in theology, told the Telegraph: "Religious belief is not just related to a person's constitution; it's related to society, tradition, character—everything's involved. Having a gene that could do all that seems pretty unlikely to me." +Hamer responded that the existence of such a gene would not be incompatible with the existence of a personal God: "Religious believers can point to the existence of God genes as one more sign of the creator's ingenuity—a clever way to help humans acknowledge and embrace a divine presence." He repeatedly notes in his book that, "This book is about whether God genes exist, not about whether there is a God." + + +== See also == +Cognitive science of religion +Evolutionary origin of religions +Neurotheology +Religious instinct + + +== References == + + +== Sources == +The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes by Dean Hamer. Published by Doubleday, ISBN 0-385-50058-0. + + +== External links == +Daily Telegraph report +Carl Zimmer's review \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..b0c39a798 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,31 @@ +--- +title: "God of the gaps" +chunk: 1/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:30.815858+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +"God of the gaps" is a theological concept that emerged in the 19th century, and revolves around the idea that gaps in scientific understanding are regarded as indications of the existence of God. This perspective has its origins in the observation that some individuals, often with religious inclinations, point to areas where science falls short in explaining natural phenomena as opportunities to insert the presence of a divine creator. The term itself was coined in response to this tendency. This theological view suggests that God fills in the gaps left by scientific knowledge, and that these gaps represent moments of divine intervention or influence. +This concept has been met with criticism and debate from various quarters. Detractors argue that this perspective is problematic as it seems to rely on gaps in human understanding and ignorance to make its case for the existence of God. As scientific knowledge continues to advance, these gaps tend to shrink, potentially weakening the argument for God's existence. Critics contend that such an approach can undermine religious beliefs by suggesting that God only operates in the unexplained areas of our understanding, leaving little room for divine involvement in a comprehensive and coherent worldview. +The "God of the gaps" perspective has been criticized for its association with logical fallacies. The "God of the gaps" perspective is also a form of confirmation bias, since it involves interpreting ambiguous evidence (or rather no evidence) as supporting one's existing attitudes. This type of reasoning is seen as inherently flawed and does not provide a robust foundation for religious faith. In this context, some theologians and scientists have proposed that a more satisfactory approach is to view evidence of God's actions within the natural processes themselves, rather than relying on the gaps in scientific understanding to validate religious beliefs. + +== Origins of the term == +From the 1880s, Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part Two, "On Priests", said that "into every gap they put their delusion, their stopgap, which they called God". The concept, although not the exact wording, goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th-century evangelist lecturer, from his 1893 Lowell Lectures on The Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians who point to the things that Science has not explained as presence of God – "gaps which they will fill up with God" – and urges them to embrace all nature as God's, as the work of "an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology." +In 1933, Ernest Barnes, the Bishop of Birmingham, used the phrase in a discussion of general relativity's implication of a Big Bang: + +Must we then postulate Divine intervention? Are we to bring in God to create the first current of Laplace's nebula or to let off the cosmic firework of Lemaître's imagination? I confess an unwillingness to bring God in this way upon the scene. The circumstances which thus seem to demand his presence are too remote and too obscure to afford me any true satisfaction. Men have thought to find God at the special creation of their own species, or active when mind or life first appeared on earth. They have made him God of the gaps in human knowledge. To me the God of the trigger is as little satisfying as the God of the gaps. It is because throughout the physical Universe I find thought and plan and power that behind it I see God as the creator. +During World War II, the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer expressed the concept in similar terms in letters he wrote while in a Nazi prison. Bonhoeffer wrote, for example: + +how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know. +In his 1955 book Science and Christian Belief Charles Alfred Coulson (1910–1974) wrote: + +There is no 'God of the gaps' to take over at those strategic places where science fails; and the reason is that gaps of this sort have the unpreventable habit of shrinking. +and + +Either God is in the whole of Nature, with no gaps, or He's not there at all. +Coulson was a mathematics professor at Oxford University as well as a Methodist church leader, often appearing in the religious programs of British Broadcasting Corporation. His book got national attention, was reissued as a paperback, and was reprinted several times, most recently in 1971. +It is claimed that the actual phrase 'God of the gaps' was invented by Coulson. +The term was then used in a 1971 book and a 1978 article, by Richard Bube. He articulated the concept in greater detail in Man come of Age: Bonhoeffer's Response to the God-of-the-Gaps (1978). Bube attributed modern crises in religious faith in part to the inexorable shrinking of the God-of-the-gaps as scientific knowledge progressed. As humans progressively increased their understanding of nature, the previous "realm" of God seemed to many persons and religions to be getting smaller and smaller by comparison. Bube maintained that Darwin's Origin of Species was the "death knell" of the God-of-the-gaps. Bube also maintained that the God-of-the-gaps was not the same as the God of the Bible (that is, he was not making an argument against God per se, but rather asserting there was a fundamental problem with the perception of God as existing in the gaps of present-day knowledge). \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..66cfce787 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,54 @@ +--- +title: "God of the gaps" +chunk: 2/2 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:30.815858+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +== General usage == +The term "God of the gaps" is sometimes used in describing the incremental retreat of religious explanations of physical phenomena in the face of increasingly comprehensive scientific explanations for those phenomena. Dorothy Dinnerstein includes psychological explanations for developmental distortions leading to a person believing in a deity, particularly a male deity. +R. Laird Harris writes of the physical science aspect of this: + +The expression, "God of the Gaps," contains a real truth. It is erroneous if it is taken to mean that God is not immanent in natural law but is only to be observed in mysteries unexplained by law. No significant Christian group has believed this view. It is true, however, if it be taken to emphasize that God is not only immanent in natural law but also is active in the numerous phenomena associated with the supernatural and the spiritual. There are gaps in a physical-chemical explanation of this world, and there always will be. Because science has learned many marvelous secrets of nature, it cannot be concluded that it can explain all phenomena. Meaning, soul, spirits, and life are subjects incapable of physical-chemical explanation or formation. + +== Usage in referring to a type of argument == +The term God-of-the-gaps fallacy can refer to a position that assumes an act of God as the explanation for an unknown phenomenon, which according to the users of the term, is a variant of an argument from ignorance fallacy. Such an argument is sometimes reduced to the following form: + +There is a gap in understanding of some aspect of the natural world. +Therefore, the cause must be supernatural. +One example of such an argument, which uses God as an explanation of one of the current gaps in biological science, is as follows: +"Because current science can't figure out exactly how life started, it must be God who caused life to start." Critics of intelligent design creationism, for example, have accused proponents of using this basic type of argument. +God-of-the-gaps arguments have been discouraged by some theologians who assert that such arguments tend to relegate God to the leftovers of science: as scientific knowledge increases, the dominion of God decreases. + +== Criticism == +The term was invented as a criticism of people who perceive that God only acts in the gaps, and who restrict God's activity to such "gaps". It has also been argued that the God-of-the-gaps view is predicated on the assumption that any event which can be explained by science automatically excludes God; that if God did not do something via direct action, that he had no role in it at all. +The "God of the gaps" argument, as traditionally advanced by scholarly Christians, was intended as a criticism against weak or tenuous faith, not as a statement against theism or belief in God. +According to John Habgood in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, the phrase is generally derogatory, and is inherently a direct criticism of a tendency to postulate acts of God to explain phenomena for which science has not (at least at present) given a satisfactory account. Habgood also states: + +It is theologically more satisfactory to look for evidence of God's actions within natural processes rather than apart from them, in much the same way that the meaning of a book transcends, but is not independent of, the paper and ink of which it is comprised. +It has been criticized by both theologians and scientists, who say that it is a logical fallacy to base belief in God on gaps in scientific knowledge. In this vein, Richard Dawkins, an atheist, dedicates a chapter of his book The God Delusion to criticism of the God-of-the-gaps argument. He noted that: + +Creationists eagerly seek a gap in present-day knowledge or understanding. If an apparent gap is found, it is assumed that God, by default, must fill it. What worries thoughtful theologians such as Bonhoeffer is that gaps shrink as science advances, and God is threatened with eventually having nothing to do and nowhere to hide. + +== See also == +Deism +Deus ex machina +Miracles (book) +Non-overlapping magisteria +Watchmaker analogy + +== References == + +== Bibliography == +Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997 (ISBN 978-0-684-83827-4) "Letter to Eberhard Bethge", 29 May 1944, pages 310–312. +Richard H. Bube, "Man Come of Age: Bonhoeffer's Response to the God-Of-The-Gaps," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, volume 14 fall (1971), pages 203–220. +C. A. Coulson, Science and Christian Belief (The John Calvin McNair Lectures, 1954), London: Oxford University Press, 1955. Page 20, see also page 28. +Henry Drummond, The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man, Glasgow: Hodder and Stoughton, 1904 (Chapter 10, containing the relevant text). + +== External links == + +Miracles, Intelligent Design, and God-of-the-Gaps (PDF) +Skeptical Christian: God of the Gaps? \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-0.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-0.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..3982305a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-0.md @@ -0,0 +1,28 @@ +--- +title: "Steve Fuller (sociologist)" +chunk: 1/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:26.979527+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +Steve William Fuller (born July 12, 1959) is an American social philosopher and philosopher of science in the field of science and technology studies. He is the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology at the University of Warwick. He served as the president of the British Science Association's sociology division from 2008 to 2009. He has published in the areas of social epistemology, academic freedom, and in support of intelligent design and transhumanism. + +== Early life and education == +Fuller was born on July 12, 1959, in New York City. He attended Regis High School in Manhattan. After high school, Fuller graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University with a B.A. in history and sociology in 1979. As an undergraduate at Columbia College, he was a John Jay Scholar. +After graduation, Fuller was awarded a Kellett Fellowship to complete graduate studies in England at the University of Cambridge, where he earned an M.Phil. in the history of science and philosophy of science in 1981. He then earned his Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985, where he was an Andrew Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Fuller's doctoral dissertation, "Bounded Rationality in Law and Science", explored the implications of the views of Herbert A. Simon for political theory and philosophy of science. + +== Career == +Fuller held assistant and associate professorships at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Virginia Tech and the University of Pittsburgh. In 1994, he was appointed to the chair in sociology and social policy at the University of Durham, England. He moved in 1999 to the University of Warwick, England. In July 2007 Fuller was awarded a D. Litt. by Warwick in recognition of "published work or papers which demonstrate a high standard of important original work forming a major contribution to a subject". In 2008, Fuller served as President of the Sociology section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In that capacity, he staged a play, "Lincoln and Darwin—Live for One Night Only!", at the BA's annual Festival of Science in Liverpool. The play was later produced as a podcast in Australia. +Fuller has been a visiting professor in Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden (where he held a Fulbright Professorship in 1995 at Gothenburg University), and the United States (UCLA). +In 2010, Fuller became a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity at the University of North Texas. In 2011, the University of Warwick appointed him to the Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology. In 2011, Fuller was appointed a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. In 2012, he was appointed to an Honorary Professorship at Dalian University of Technology, China. In 2012, he was made a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Division I (Humanities). + +== Work == +Fuller is most closely associated with social epistemology as an interdisciplinary research program. Social epistemology is a normative discipline that addresses philosophical problems of knowledge using the tools of history and the social sciences. Fuller founded the first journal (1987) and wrote the first book (1988) devoted to this topic. The most obvious feature of Fuller's approach, already present in his 1988 book, is that he rejects out of hand the Cartesian problem of skepticism. +Along with 21 books, Fuller has written 65 book chapters, 155 academic articles and many minor pieces. He has given many distinguished lectures and plenary addresses, and has presented to academic and non-academic audiences throughout the world, including over 100 media interviews. His works have been translated into fifteen languages. 23 academic symposia have been published on his work. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1994, the year he organized a conference in Durham on "Science's Social Standing". +Since moving to the UK, Fuller has increasingly oriented himself towards public intellectual expression, including television, radio and internet, which he interprets as a natural outgrowth of his version of social epistemology. Two of his books have been recognized in this regard. Kuhn vs. Popper was Book of the Month for February 2005 in the US mass circulation magazine, Popular Science. However, Rupert Read wrote: "I did not have to read far into this book in order to conclude that it is worthless. ... In sum: this book offers only a cartoon opposition of a fake 'Popper' to a fake 'Kuhn.'" Fuller responded, coining the word "Kuhnenstein" (Kuhn + Wittgenstein) to capture Read's view of Kuhn, which Fuller calls a "figment of Read's – and other's – fertile imagination." The Intellectual was selected as a Book of the Year in 2005 by the UK liberal-left magazine, New Statesman. He periodically contributes a column to the Project Syndicate, associated with George Soros' Open Society project, which appears in several languages in newspapers across the world. In 2006 he also taught a course on the epistemology of journalism at an international summer school at the University of Lund, Sweden. + +=== Academic freedom === +Fuller believes (modeled on what he takes to be the German model) that academic freedom is a freedom reserved for academics, not a special case of freedom of speech. This includes the right to "cause reasoned offence", if within the terms of reason and evidence appropriate to the academic profession. He believes it important for academics to be able to express intellectual opinions for further debate which can result in progress. He also argues that students are equally entitled to academic freedom. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-1.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-1.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..b4c81534f --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-1.md @@ -0,0 +1,32 @@ +--- +title: "Steve Fuller (sociologist)" +chunk: 2/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:26.979527+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Intelligent design === +Fuller has made many statements about his support for the teaching of intelligent design (ID) and authored two books on the subject. In 2005, in the case of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, he testified on behalf of a local school system in the United States that required the teaching of intelligent design. The decision of the U.S. District Court held that intelligent design was a form of creationism and that its inclusion in the curriculum violated the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on the establishment of religion. The decision repeatedly cited Fuller's testimony to undermine the school system's position. Some of Fuller's critics within the Science and Technology Studies community described his participation in the trial as "naïve" and suggested that the field needs further development before it can constructively engage the legal community on the nature of science. +Fuller has said that he does not support intelligent design "but feels that it should have a 'fair run for its money'". In his book Dissent over Descent, he says he sees religion in general as a motivating influence in scientific pursuits and believes that the difference between science and religion is more institutional than intellectual. Critics have called his views on science postmodernist, though others characterize them as more closely related to social constructionism. +On February 21, 2007, Fuller debated Lewis Wolpert at Royal Holloway, University of London on whether evolution and intelligent design should be accorded equal status as scientific theories. Fuller supported the proposition. Fuller endorsed a work in support of intelligent design, the Discovery Institute's textbook Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism (2007). +Appearing in the 2008 documentary-style propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Fuller claimed that "abortion and euthanasia" are natural consequences of the acceptance of evolution by natural selection. He also believes that religious belief has furthered the development of science. + +=== Transhumanism === +Much of his work focuses on questions around technological enhancements and how they can improve the capacities of human beings. Fuller argues that the pursuit for enhancements is based on a need ″to create some distance between ourselves and the other animals.″ For Fuller, transhumanism offers humanity the prospect "to re-engineer the human body to enable us to live longer so as to work and play harder." +He featured in the 2016 documentary The Future of Work and Death. + +== Principal works == + +=== Science Vs Religion? === +In 2007, Fuller wrote Science Vs Religion?: Intelligent Design and the Problem of Evolution. In addition to introduction and conclusion chapters, it has chapters on the history of the relationship between religion and science, the thesis that modern science has its basis in an attempt by humanity to transcend itself and reach God, how Fuller believes complexity distinguishes ID from "other versions of creationism", legal issues, and the future of "Darwinism". +Professor of mathematics at Rutgers University Norman Levitt, in a review, described it as "a truly miserable piece of work, crammed with errors scientific, historical, and even theological". Levitt took issue with the following points: + +Fuller's acceptance at face value of William Dembski's claims on complexity and randomness, and his failure to come to grips with the wealth of results that this field has generated and with the trenchant criticism of Dembski's claims (or even to describe these claims accurately); +Fuller's disparagement of evolutionary biology, without doing "serious analysis of the working methods and logical structure of biology itself" on which to base it; +Fuller's misrepresentation of Isaac Newton's religious beliefs in order to make a point that is in fact antithetical to Newton's views; +Levitt infers that Fuller's views arise from an "animosity to science as such and to its cognitive authority [that] still pervades academic life outside the dominion of the science faculty". +Fuller later responded to these points, accusing Levitt of axe-grinding and questioning his understanding of the book, which Fuller claimed was less a defense of contemporary intelligent design theory than a demonstration of its rootedness in the history of science. Fuller also claims that Levitt misquotes one of the three passages Levitt cites from the book, making it mean the opposite of the original. Levitt subsequently responded at length to Fuller, concluding that "Fuller's misreading of the politics that generated and sustains the ID movement is so complete as to constitute a peculiar pathology all its own." Fuller has long been highly critical of the views of science of his opponents in the Science Wars, including Levitt, dating back at least to 1994. +Sahotra Sarkar, a philosophy professor and integrative biologist at the University of Texas at Austin also criticized Fuller's book for presenting an "analysis of the intellectual disputes over contemporary ID creationism [that] is almost vacuous". Sarkar further states that the book has an idiosyncratic interpretation of the history of philosophy, including of Kant, and of logical positivism; having a limited grasp of the history of science, including making claims about Newton, Cuvier, Agassiz, Lamarck, Mendel, Pearson and Galton that are not supported by their writings; failure to engage the "debate over naturalism that ID creationism has generated" with "remarks on supernaturalism [that show] him to be equally non-cognizant of the work of ... Philip Johnson"; and other scientific errors. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-2.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-2.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..2439ecd0c --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-2.md @@ -0,0 +1,48 @@ +--- +title: "Steve Fuller (sociologist)" +chunk: 3/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:26.979527+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Dissent Over Descent === +In 2008, Fuller's book on the intelligent design controversy, Dissent Over Descent: Intelligent Design's Challenge to Darwinism was published. Steven Poole of The Guardian wrote: "book is an epoch-hopping parade of straw men, incompetent reasoning and outright gibberish, as when evolution is argued to share with astrology a commitment to "action at a distance", except that the distance is in time rather than space. It's intellectual quackery like this that gives philosophy of science a bad name." Michael Ruse, Philosopher of Science at Florida State University wrote in the journal Science that Fuller's book "is completely wrong and is backed by no sound scholarship whatsoever. In at least one case, Fuller makes his case by an egregious misreading—of something I wrote about the role of genetic drift in Sewall Wright's shifting balance theory. For the record, Charles Darwin set out to provide a cause, what he called—following his mentors like William Whewell (who in turn referred back to Newton)—a true cause or vera causa. Darwin felt, and historians and philosophers of science as well as practicing evolutionary biologists still feel, that he succeeded…" In a "book of the week" review by retired Divinity Professor Keith Ward in the Times Higher Education Supplement, the book was praised for providing often overlooked information and provocative interpretations, but was criticized for a number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations. +A. C. Grayling, in New Humanist, wrote that the book contains a "mark of ignorance and historical short-sightedness on Fuller's part". In response, Fuller wrote an online response saying "if Grayling's grasp of the history of science went beyond head-banging standards, he would realize that our current level of scientific achievement would never have been reached, and more importantly that we would not be striving to achieve more, had chance-based explanations dominated over the design-based ones in our thinking about reality." To which Grayling wrote: "Steve Fuller complains, as do all authors whose books are panned, that I did not read his book properly (or at all)." He continued, "I'll take on Fuller any day regarding the history and theology of the various versions of Christianity with which humanity has been burdened. […] The same applies to the history of science." + +== Selected bibliography == + +=== Books === +Fuller, Steve (2002) [1988]. Social epistemology (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253215154. +Fuller, Steve; Woolgar, Steve; de Mey, Marc; Shinn, Terry (1989). The cognitive turn: sociological and psychological perspectives on science. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. ISBN 9789401578257. +Fuller, Steve (1993) [1989]. Philosophy of science and its discontents (2nd ed.). New York: Guilford Press. ISBN 9780898620207. +Fuller, Steve; Collier, James H. (2004) [1993]. Philosophy, rhetoric, and the end of knowledge a new beginning for science and technology studies (2nd ed.). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 9780805847680. +Fuller, Steve (1997). Science. Concepts in Social Sciences. Milton Keynes, UK / Minneapolis US: Open University Press / University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 9780335198481. +Fuller, Steve (2000). The governance of science: ideology and the future of the open society. Issues in society. Buckingham Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 9780335202348. +Fuller, Steve (2000). Thomas Kuhn: a philosophical history for our times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226268965. +Fuller, Steve (2002). Knowledge management foundations. Hartland Four Corners, Vermont Boston: KMCI Press Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 9780750673655. +Fuller, Steve (2004). Kuhn vs. Popper: the struggle for the soul of science. Thriplow, UK / New York, US: Icon Books / Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231134286 +Fuller, Steve (2005). The intellectual. Thriplow, UK: Icon Books. ISBN 9781840467215. +Fuller, Steve (2006). The philosophy of science and technology studies. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415941051. +Fuller, Steve (2006). The new sociological imagination. London Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE. ISBN 9780761947578. +Fuller, Steve (2007). The knowledge book key concepts in philosophy, science, and culture. Stocksfield England / Canada: Acumen / McGill-Queens University Press. ISBN 9781844650989. +Fuller, Steve (2007). New frontiers in science and technology. Cambridge, UK Malden, Massachusetts: Polity. ISBN 9780745636948. +Fuller, Steve (2007). Science vs. religion?: intelligent design and the problem of evolution. Cambridge: Polity. ISBN 9780745641225. +Fuller, Steve (2008). Dissent over descent: intelligent design's challenge to Darwinism. Thriplow, Cambridgeshire: Icon. ISBN 9781840468045. +Fuller, Steve (2009). The sociology of intellectual life: the career of the mind in and around the academy. Los Angeles London: SAGE. ISBN 9781412928380. +Fuller, Steve (2010). Science. The art of living. Durham U.K: Acumen. ISBN 9781844652044. +Fuller, Steve (2011). Humanity 2.0: what it means to be human past, present and future. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230233430. +Fuller, Steve (2013). Preparing for life in humanity 2.0. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137277060. +Fuller, Steve; Lipinska, Veronika (2014). The proactionary imperative: a foundation for transhumanism. Basingstoke, UK New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137433091. +Fuller, Steve (2015). Knowledge: the philosophical quest in history. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781844658183. +Fuller, Steve (2016). The Academic Caesar: University Leadership is Hard. Los Angeles London: SAGE. ISBN 9781473961784. +Fuller, Steve (2018). Post-Truth: Knowledge as a Power Game. London: Anthem Press. ISBN 9781783086931. +Fuller, Steve (2019). Nietzschean Meditations: Untimely Thoughts at the Dawn of the Transhuman Era. Basel, Switzerland: Schwabe Verlag. ISBN 9783796539466. +Fuller, Steve (2020). A Player's Guide to the Post-Truth Condition: The Name of the Game. London: Anthem Press. ISBN 9781785276057. +Fuller, Steve (2023). Back to the University's Future: The Second Coming of Humboldt. Berlin: Springer. ISBN 9783031363269. + +=== Chapters in books === +Fuller, Steve (1992). "Social epistemology and the research agenda of science studies". In Pickering, Andrew (ed.). Science as practice and culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 390–428. ISBN 9780226668017. +Fuller, Steve (1996). "Does science put an end to history, or history to science? Or, why being pro-science is harder than you think". In Ross, Andrew (ed.). Science wars. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. pp. 29–60. ISBN 9780822318712. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-3.md b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-3.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..23b7fa57f --- /dev/null +++ b/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)-3.md @@ -0,0 +1,35 @@ +--- +title: "Steve Fuller (sociologist)" +chunk: 4/4 +source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fuller_(sociologist)" +category: "reference" +tags: "science, encyclopedia" +date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:26.979527+00:00" +instance: "kb-cron" +--- + +=== Journal articles === +Fuller, Steve (November 1990). "They shoot dead horses, don't they?: Philosophical fear and sociological loathing in St Louis". Social Studies of Science. 20 (4): 664–681. doi:10.1177/030631290020004005. S2CID 146531717. +Fuller, Steve (2005). "Kuhnenstein: or, the importance of being read". Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 35 (4): 480–498. doi:10.1177/0048393105280868. S2CID 54546035. +Fuller, Steve; Haworth, Alan (2007). "Academic freedom". The Philosophers' Magazine. 38 (2): 72–77. doi:10.5840/tpm20073864. Debating the "statement of academic freedom" made by Academics for Academic Freedom (AFAF). + +== References == + +== Further reading == +Two essays written as part of a debate on the Sokal hoax and published in The Independent on 28 June 1998: +Who's Afraid of Science Studies by Steve Fuller, defending science studies. +an annotated bibliography of nonsense Archived 23 June 2016 at the Wayback Machine by Kenan Malik, takes a contrary view to Fuller's (but does not refer to him), criticizing what he considers to be the unrealistically excessive relativism of science studies. +Special Issue of Social Epistemology (2003) on Fuller's Kuhn thesis. +Remedios, F. (2003). Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge: An Introduction to Steve Fuller's Social Epistemology, Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, USA. +Fuller, Steve (2004). "The case of Fuller vs Kuhn". Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy. 18 (1): 3–49. doi:10.1080/0269172042000249363. S2CID 219692452. (Fuller's response to the Social Epistemology Special Issue) +Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005): +Fuller expert report +Transcript Day 15 AM (Steve Fuller direct) +Transcript Day 15 PM (Steve Fuller cross, redirect & recross) +Lambert, Kevin (December 2006). "Fuller's folly, kuhnian paradigms, and intelligent design". Social Studies of Science. 36 (6): 835–842. doi:10.1177/0306312706067899. S2CID 145775101. +Edmond, Gary; Mercer, David (December 2006). "Anti-social epistemologies". Social Studies of Science. 36 (6): 843–853. doi:10.1177/0306312706067900. S2CID 145069147. +Essays by Jeremy Shearmur and others on Fuller's approach to intelligent design, with a response by Fuller, in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, September 2010. + +== External links == + +Fuller's Homepage \ No newline at end of file