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Aaron Stalnaker, academia, André Comte-Sponville, Ann Druyan, Augustine, Carl Sagan, chastened intellectualism, religion, Xunzi
I’ve lately been reading and enjoying The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan‘s manifesto against pseudoscientifc beliefs (such as alien abductions). One of the more enjoyable and thought-provoking sections of the book is a discussion of scientists’ humility: “I maintain that science is part and parcel humility. Scientists do not seek to impose their needs and wants on Nature, but instead humbly interrogate Nature and take seriously what they find. We are aware that revered scientists have been wrong. We understand human imperfection.” (32) The ideal scientist humbles herself before the truths about the natural world that she finds in her work. He quotes his wife Ann Druyan to the effect that science “is forever whispering in our ears, ‘Remember, you’re very new at this. You might be mistaken. You’ve been wrong before.'” (34-5) I hadn’t thought of science in these terms before, but I think Sagan is quite right about this – to an extent, as I’ll discuss below. Sagan repeatedly and rightly stresses the importance of uncertainty for a scientist; to live up to the ideals of scientific research requires the ability to admit we are wrong. A scientist must never be too confident in her own rightness; what first seems obvious is often exactly what turns out to be wrong, overthrown by the evidence. I think this is excellent advice for scientists to follow – or anyone else.
After quoting Druyan, Sagan proceeds immediately to add: “Despite all the talk of humility, show me something comparable in religion.” And this is where he goes astray. For the answer is right there in that very sentence. Talk of humility – humility as an ideal – is directly comparable to Druyan’s quote, which is, of course, itself talk. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Ideals are good things to live up to. It’s just that in practice we fail to do so.
The chastened intellectualists named by Aaron Stalnaker – the Christian Augustine and the Confucian Xunzi – tell us exactly the idea spoken in Druyan’s “whisper.” In the few decades we humans have on earth, we remain very new at this whole living thing. We may well be mistaken about a great deal; we have been wrong before. Even our reason can mislead us, a point on which they agree with Freud: too often it serves only to come up with rationalizations for the troublesome desires that are in fact bad for us. I have argued before that humility is, if anything, even more important for Judaism and Islam – for there the gulf between imperfect humans and perfect God is far greater than it is in Augustine’s Christianity, where a human being could be God.
Sagan’s reference to “talk” suggests a gap between ideals and practice. We are all too familiar with the arrogance of zealots, the Bible-thumping preacher and the unpersuadable New Age Buddhist who refuse to admit any doubts in their views. Such people fail to live up to their traditions’ own “talk of humility,” the ideal that Sagan himself identifies: they fail to acknowledge that they are mere humans and not an omniscient God or Buddha. But once we acknowledge that humility here is a gap between ideals and practice, then science does not seem so very different. It is not clear how often science changes because those who held falsified ideas recant them, and how often it changes because those whose beliefs didn’t fit the evidence simply die off. Here we are dealing with my point from last week: in scientific tradition as in “religious” traditions, there is a gap between theory and practice, the normative ideal the tradition advocates and the historical institutions charged with bringing that ideal to life.
This gap can be bridged, of course. Sagan does about as good a job as anyone can at the difficult (because paradoxical) task of demonstrating his own humility, when on pages 256-7 he comes out to list several cases where he has been proven wrong. But in this he is not so far from Augustine, whose Confessions is a book-length account of the various ways he has been wrong in his life to this point – and a painful acknowledgement of the ways he still falls short of the ideal.
There, Sagan (like Augustine) personally lives up to the ideal of humility he espouses. What he doesn’t show us is humility in the scientific tradition he advocates for. In arguing that science is humble in practice as well as theory, he proudly claims that “We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.” He proceeds to cite several examples of cases where young and up-and-coming scientists have managed to overturn ideas previously cherished. But this is no example of humility. It is no humility at all to show how someone else is wrong. Typically, that is the very opposite of humility, which requires acknowledging where you have been wrong. To reward those who generate new ideas and disprove the old can encourage an arrogance that goes against the scientific ideal. For if your data only serve to confirm your null hypothesis – the existing established views – you may well be tempted to fudge that data to get the new and exciting view you wanted, the one that is rewarded. The academic humanities and social sciences often proceed similarly on the model of rewarding those who demonstrate new things, and I can vouch those who have been so rewarded tend to have outsized egos.
Humility is hard work, harder than many other virtues. André Comte-Sponville calls it a contradictory virtue, because he who claims to have it does not. One of the more reliable ways to get it is to submit to the ideals of an established tradition, rather than exalting your independent ideals as the highest good. In this respect, scientific tradition is quite comparable to the traditions we call “religious.”
I think what Sagan may have in mind is the commonplace idea that religion claims to know things on the basis of nothing that he would recognise as evidence. Religion in that sense for him is ‘not even wrong’ so insisting on its truth is a form of hubris in contrast to due humility before the facts which is the ideal of sciences.
Unlike Sagan, I would assert that humility’s status as a virtue is unrelated to whether a person’s a scientific (or philosophical) view is correct or not.
Arrogance is the state of having an inflated concept of one’s self-worth. Poverty or self-denigration is the state of experiencing a lack of self-worth (deflation). It is really the same erroneous state of mind or view — but, in one case, there appears to be external support for the view and, in the other, external support is lacking.
Humility is a virtue because it is based on truth — that there is no territory to protect — nothing to gain or lose.
Interesting post. I intend to return and mull over some of your other remarks, but for now when you write that “It is no humility at all to show how someone else is wrong. Typically, that is the very opposite of humility, which requires acknowledging where you have been wrong.” I wonder whether your ideal of humility is now turning into some sort of irrational (anti)intellectual self-abnegation similar to irrational religious self-abnegation pertaining to basic needs and desires.
If the evidence disproves or undermines a belief or hypothesis, then it is irrational to adhere to this ideal of humility and refrain from pointing out the falsifying evidence. On the other hand, if the evidence proves or supports a belief or hypothesis, it is equally irrational to refrain, on the basis of some misconceived notion of arrogance, from pointing out the confirming or supporting evidence.
What turns this ideal of humility into something irrational to adhere in many contexts, and hence not worthy of unconditional adherence, is the fact that it is divorced from the ideals of rationality and truth-telling. Hence, it is likely to be employed (and has been employed particularly in Roman Catholicism) by any system of dogmatic belief as a means of submission to authority and suppression of dissent.
I also wonder how your espousal of the Popperian account of how science works is consistent with this ideal of humility. Apparently, fallibilism is consistent with this ideal of humility. (But fallibilism also renders one’s ideas on humility and its value fallible!!!)
However, the methodology of falsificationism consists, in the face of proposed hypotheses, solely in attempts to prove that those hypotheses are wrong. It seems that fallibilism involves taking the approach that proposed hypotheses or theories are prima facie false or wrong and falsificationism then requires us to design tests or experiments whose sole objective is to see if the proposed hypothesis or theory turns out to be false or wrong.
Thus, fallibilism and falsificationism both require us not only to take the approach that a proposed hypothesis or theory is prima facie wrong, but to actively set about trying to show that it is wrong. How is this consistent with your ideal of humility?
Well, first of all, humility, like any other virtue, is a mean between vices. Arrogance is a real problem, but so is having a mind so open that anything can crawl right in; an excess with respect to humility (in an intellectual context at least) can be gullibility and credulousness.
But of course saying that doesn’t establish where the target actually lies, when humility reaches the same kind of excess that turns courage into foolhardiness. On that point, though, I don’t think it makes sense to claim that humility as an ideal must be divorced from ideals of rationality and truth-telling. In the long history of the Catholic church, there have probably been priests out there somewhere who have told their flocks “Do not be rational,” or “Lie whenever necessary to promote the church.” But any such priests are diverting sharply and clearly from official Church teaching, which proclaims the unity of faith and reason, goes great lengths to demonstrate that unity, and prohibits lying much more strictly than would most modern scientific liberals. (Augustine was at least as strict on the matter as Kant.)
Re Popper, I haven’t actually endorsed his account of what science is; when I cited him it was merely to help establish why the nature of science is an important question, not what the answer to it is. I have deliberately not yet tried to answer that question on the blog yet, because I really haven’t sorted it out in my own mind. (I consider this post a step towards an answer, but a small step.) But in passing I will note, with regard to your comment “let’s read scientists and not philosophers” to establish what science is, that the one here who has quoted Popper most favourably so far was Ben, who has a PhD in neuroscience and works in a research lab.
I think I’ve mentioned Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar’s approach to science on an earlier occasion. I think he is a great embodiment of the quintessence of the scientific spirit. You may find his book “Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science” interesting and relevant to your concerns on the nature of science.
I find his account of the scientific enterprise, particularly in the field of astrophysics, illuminating. He draws our attention to “another aspect of scientific investigations in which predictions are made on the basis of laws derived from other evidence and confirmations are later sought for these same predictions.”
He gives numerous examples of the importance of confirmation in science, e.g., the confirmation of Halley’s astonishing prediction that the comet he observed in 1682 will return in 1758, confirmation of Dirac’s prediction on the positron, etc.
A far cry from Popper’s pitiful and contrived inversions of the central pillars of the traditional account of science!
I question the view that humility is a “mean between vices.” Humility to my mind is not a weak state or a state that lacks conviction. It is merely that the confidence of humility is without the reference point of self.
So, sticking with the scientific orientation of this thread, I could say with great confidence that a prediction based on observable phenomena is true. There is simply no need to take a further step and say that the scientific breakthrough is “my achievement”. The ultimate in humility would be to have equanimity and to take equal joy in the insights of others as in one’s own insights.
This is why I say that Sagan is wrong if he finds a basis for humility only in our possibility for error. Humility is equally appropriate when an insight that we have is 100% correct. This is because truth is impersonal. Making it about oneself through arrogance is just stupid — it clouds the mind and intellect and makes it difficult to see the world from a fresh perspective.
I wouldn’t go so far as to hold that humility requires a denial or disavowal of personal achievement. After all, it is individuals who are the bearers of insights, discoveries, inventions, etc. But you are right if you are suggesting that these singular and striking achievements of individuals are built on the work of others and that recognition of this truth is also an expression of humility.
As Newton wrote in a letter to Robert Hooke:
“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Note, however, that Newton is not professing “false humility” by denying or disavowing that he has seen further than others. He is conscious of his achievement, but also has the humility to recognize its dependence on the work of others.
It is not humility to show that Hitler’s ideas on the Herrenvolk or “Master race” is dead wrong? It is not humility to show that it is irrational to believe that a human being can die, be buried, and then come back to life, and then again disappear into thin air? So be it! Who needs this sort of humility? LOL
You have mentioned Augustine with admiration on many occasions. Perhaps, you know that he grappled with eminent sanity the deep problem of whether Jesus still bears the marks of crucifixion in his hands and proposed with equally eminent sanity the answer that Jesus still bears those marks but they are not unattractive to look at! I also see no evidence of either chastity, or intellectualism, or “chastened intellectualism” in his pornographic reflections on sexual relations between women and demons.
Since you also admire Nietzsche, here is what he thought of Augustine’s Confessions. The comments in parentheses are also Nietzsche’s:
“O this old rhetorician! What falseness…How I laughed! (For example, concerning the “theft” of his youth, basically an undergraduate story.) what psychological falsity! (For example, when he talks about the death of his friend with whom he shared a single soul, he resolved to go on living, so that in this “way his friend would not wholly die.” Such things are revoltingly dishonest.) Philosophical value zero. Vulgarized Platonism; that is to say, a way of thinking that was intended for the highest aristocracy of soul and which he adjusted to suit slave-natures. Moreover one sees into the guts of Christianity in this book.” (Selected Letters, Univ of Chicago Press, 1969)
In addition to the Confessions, Augustine also at the end of his life wrote the Retractationes, in which he qualified or took back a number of points he’d made earlier.
I also liked this book by Sagan, back in the day (I read it not long after he died).
Did he retract his previous claims, founded on mere hearsay, on the reality of sexual relations between demons and women?
It is curious that he did not see any logical inconsistency between denying the reality of witchcraft on the grounds that only God can suspend or violate natural laws and accepting the reality of sexual relations between demons and women.
Augustine’s attack on “Paganism” provided the basis for the incomprehension, a sense of superiority, and outright hostility of the Church toward non-Western religious beliefs and practices to this day.
I think you’re missing the core point of the comparison between scientific humility and religious humility. The important comparison there is not about the humility of individuals, but the humility of the whole tradition.
In science, this humility extends -critically- to encompass the belief that all the vaunted findings of respected scientists may be flawed. If new evidence is inconsistent with years or decades of established wisdom, then something is wrong with either the new evidence or the old wisdom. The whole community accepts (at least in the ideal case) the possibility that the community has been wrong all along.
Religious humility rarely allows that possibility. In most traditions, the established wisdom has an insuperable primacy, and is (in the ideal case) minimally, if at all, able to change and incorporate new thought. The bible is not changeable.
It’s been a long time since I read Demon-Haunted World, so I don’t recall how clearly Sagan makes (or sees) this argument. But it seems clear to me, that while both science and religion aim for humility in individual practitioners, only science accepts the fallibility of its founders and traditions and beliefs. This institutional humility is what comes into play when young scientists overturn old work.
Ben, this is a splendid point – I think you have explained what Sagan wanted to say, and done so far more clearly than he did himself. Sagan doesn’t really distinguish between individual and institutional humility, which is why his exalting of scientific humility over “religious” really doesn’t stick. But once that distinction is made, the force of his point comes out more clearly. I think you are quite right to note that science has an institutional humility of a sort that few other traditions have. On the other hand – and probably for that very reason – I think science does significantly less than those traditions to encourage individual humility. Science’s institutional humility encourages the cocky young newcomer who thinks he knows it all, giving him a chance to overthrow the consensus. To my mind, that is great for the institution and less so for the individual. It’s a fine line to walk.
Agreed and agreed! Humility as a *personal* virtue is a rarer bird in science. Good scientists will work hard to hold on to it, to test themselves and their work for confirmation bias, to listen to that little voice whispering “You might be wrong.” But doing so requires an active effort, since the short-term rewards come to the non-humble.
Interesting aside: some semi-recent public journalism has pointed out that a lot of radical findings disappear over time: wild claims eventually get smoothed back out, and that short-term success just makes you the scientist who gets overturned next. Actually rigorous stuff that can be reliably replicated, there’s where the long-term recognition comes from. But we all know how good humans are at giving up short-term rewards for long-term ones.
It’s an interesting tradeoff, rewarding individual arrogance to create institutional humility. Each one has its own sort of practicality, even virtue, but at very different scales- and has the potential for trouble at the other scale. In my biased opinion, science has a better setup, because it at least is aware of -and tries, however unreliably- to alleviate its faults. A good scientist should try to maintain the individual humility that you cite at the start of your entry; but most organized religions see their institutional inflexibility as a good thing.
“The important comparison there is not about the humility of individuals, but the humility of the whole tradition.”
There is a category mistake here. Traditions cannot be said to be humble or arrogant. Only individuals can be said to be humble or arrogant.
But it would make sense to hold that humility is an important value in the practice of science, that practitioners of science ought to understand the importance of humility in their approach to finding solutions to the problems of science.
I agree with Thill.
There is no such thing as institutional humility. It is not a useful concept and muddles the idea of what is otherwise clearly a characteristic of individuals.
What you can have are institutions that encourage the cultivation of virtues such as humility. And here, I think that our scientific institutions (aside from opinions of individual scientists such as Sagan) like most of academia have very little institutional bias toward humility.
I, too, think you’re overestimating the extent to which religion is humble. Religion talks a lot about humility as an abstract ideal, but science has actually gone to the work of putting in place institutional best practices that reflect humility.
Zerotarian, welcome to the blog! (Also, I saw your email address when I moderated your comment – good to hear from you, it’s been a while!) Re the points you’re making here, see Ben’s comment and my reply to it; I think the distinction between individual and institutional humility really gets to the heart of the issue.
Science cannot flourish merely on a one-sided diet of humility. Confidence, rational confidence, in the powers of reason and the scientific method is also essential to the successful practice of science. In religion this confidence in the words of scripture or a teacher is sometimes characterized as “faith”. The Sanskrit word “Sraddha” (Pali: Saddha) captures the nuances of this attitude of trust and confidence.
The concept of an institution having humility is a new one to me.
The real question is whether a person is able to value truth without seeing it through the lens of territory (my idea, my career, my belief system). This is independent of whether the idea one has is correct or not.
We are talking about a fundamental distortion in our ability to perceive truth. Humility — taking oneself out of the analysis is the way (perhaps the only way) to accomplish this.
Scientific humility is simply being required to acknowledge that the world – objective reality – is correct, and that our own understandings of it are at best incomplete and at worst quite wrong. The method of science is nothing more or less than an ongoing study of objective reality to refine as clear and complete an understanding of it as possible.
Religion allows for none of this, demanding of its adherents a near-absolute belief in the wrongness of the objective world in favor of its own subjective ideology. Any admission of error or change is anathema to most religions – particularly amongst their most devout followers.
In even taking the time to compare them as such, I think you draw absurd parallels that serve little purpose but to intentionally muddy the stark differences between these philosophies and methods.
I don’t mean to be rough about it – I’m just saying that the lines of discourse between science and religion are so dramatically divergent I don’t see where they meaningfully cross.
The participants have proceeded as if they all share the same concept of humility or have a common understanding of its meaning, but I think it is worthwhile to pause and examine the central concept of humility. What does it mean? I think this will also help in determining whether science and religion actually converge or diverge on humility.
That is my favorite of Sagan’s books. I used to use the second chapter in my critical thinking course. Sagan does a great job of explaining scientific reasoning as well as demonstrating his love of science. Someday I plan to write something about the relationship between the sort of skepticism you find in Sagan and Skeptical Inquirer magazine and philosophical skepticism (perhaps by way of Hume, who seems like an obvious link).
For all my admiration of Sagan, he does say some things about religion that probably need a heavy dose of qualification. For instance, he greatly underestimates the extent to which religions can and do change over time. I do love his idea that religious sermons should have error bars, though.
Sagan may have been the John the Baptist to Dawkins’ Christ. It’s always sad when a scientist gets sidetracked into scientism. Grof is a figure on the side of the uncanny who wants to turn it into science, a flawed project in my view. He describes his meeting with C.S. which has comedic elements.
http://anti-matters.org/articles/115/public/115-150-1-PB.pdf
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Siddhartha Mukherjee’s riveting and moving book “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer” has won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. One of his central claims, well-supported by evidence, is that scientific research has given us greater knowledge of cancer over the last decade or so. This kind of rational belief in the reliability of the scientific method, confidence in its future, and clear perception of what has been achieved to date is also essential to the success of scientific inquiry.
Link: http://sidmukherjee.com/
What is being urged by Sagan? Is it that there ought to be only one way of grasping the truth, and that all the other purported ways are folly that is hallowed by usage. This was called by Donald Mackay: nothing buttery
Every specialist can fall into that trap, it’s nothing but class struggle, it’s nothing but rational choice, it’s nothing but the noumenal &c.
Maybe my mother-in-law was right!
The quotes are taken from a paper:
http://www.isi.org/books/content/422chap1.pdf
They appear to be (isi.org) a conservative organisation perhaps libertarian in intent and therefore coming from their own particular angle. That doesn’t mean that they are wrong about everything naturally, just partial.