ON SUPERSTITION - 13th June 1997
Today seems to be an appropriate occasion to think about this subject. The Chambers Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions defines superstitions as "beliefs regarded by reasonable and educated people to be unfounded." If we consider, critically, how well-founded are ANY of our beliefs then we might conclude that almost all of them are superstitions within the terms of the above definition.
How much do we really KNOW and how do we know it?
Some of the beliefs that almost anyone might term superstitious are distorted reflections of received religion; Friday the 13th is suspected as being an unlucky day because of the thirteen men directly involved in the Last Supper - the twelve apostles and Jesus Himself; the 'Friday' of this superstitious belief is, of course, related to the crucifixion reportedly having occurred on a Friday. This particular superstition represents a neat inversion of official Christian doctrine; it is precisely by virtue of the alleged events of that Friday, involving as they did the thirteen men, that Christians see the only hope of salvation. The unlucky day of superstition is the 'luckiest' day ever in official Christian terms!
Are there any secular superstitions that are inversions of the beliefs held by "reasonable and intelligent" secularists? The answer is 'yes there are' - and it would take a large book to list them all.
One such secular superstition is that the main ideas of modern science are KNOWN to be true - that the Big Bang, Evolution, the Laws of Thermodynamics ... are facts as surely as the fact that my telephone number is what it is, that the capital of France is Paris, that there is no sewing machine in my office, that the battle of Waterloo was fought in 1815 ... and other such practical certainties.
These practical certainties are either contrived (I have to have a particular telephone number if people are to be able to call me and British Telecom has contrived that I have a particular number - they could as easily have contrived another number that would serve just as well. In fact our numbers are changed from time to time, by BT). Paris is the capital of France because the relevant authorities chose it to be; they could as easily have selected Vichy (they did in 1940).
Rather than being mere contrivance, some of these practical certainties are matters of direct observation - come to my office and see for yourself that there is no sewing machine in it.
Some practical certainties are well supported by their compatibility with other, perhaps stronger, certainties - to claim that Waterloo was fought in 1814, or maybe 1816, would be contrary to a huge amount of circumstantial evidence that 1815 was when it actually happened.
If 'science' is not all that certain then, one might ask, what degree of certainty does it have? To attribute to science more certainty than is its due would be a superstition.
Some beliefs held by "reasonable and intelligent" secularists include such as:
1) that we are, ourselves, real material entities inhabiting a real material world including many other real material entities interacting, often with us, in real processes of various kinds.
2) that, via our senses, we are sufficiently reliably informed as to what that world, including ourselves, is actually like. The content of 'sufficiently' is the subject of the next, third, secularist belief.
3) that we, by the use of logic to order the data reaching our brains via our senses, can achieve a sufficient degree of comprehension of, and control over, the real world from which the data arise.
These three beliefs constitute 'The Plain View' (a phrase used by a noted humanist, H J Blackham) - the view plainly taken by all of us in the practical conduct of daily life. The beliefs held by "reasonable and intelligent" secularists" are precisely that this plain everyday view is the only view we really need, indeed the only view we are, critically speaking, entitled to take.
But to elevate the Plain View to the status of the Sufficient View is to adopt a questionable attitude; each of the points 1, 2, and 3 can be questioned. Given that these points CAN be questioned then what remains of the truth of science?
One set of truths is in the area of science-based knowhow; is it conceivable that, say, a nuclear reactor could be made to work, that we could build a computer capable of solving problems quickly that the unaided mathematician could solve only slowly (if at all) or that modern surgical and medical procedures could work ... UNLESS our knowledge of atomic structure, electronics, human anatomy and physiology were 'true knowledge'.
It is scarcely credible that these achievements in knowhow could have arisen by pottering about and stumbling upon the necessary procedures.
But, wait a moment, what is this claim to 'true knowledge' all about? Classical physics (nineteenth century and earlier) was once thought to be 'true knowledge' - are there not many machines and structures serving their purposes perfectly well having been designed and constructed in accordance with classical physics? However, classical physics has been shown to be quite untrue in respect of many well attested observations in atomic science and in cosmology.
What is the solution to this seeming paradox of knowledge deemed to be true because of the actual knowhow that arose from it while that same supposed knowledge is now known to be false in the light of more recently available data?
The solution is that 'true knowledge' is remarkably elusive; the best we can hope for is 'true-enough knowledge' - true enough for limited purposes but, often, nothing like 'true enough' for wider purposes.
Science does not give us absolutely true comprehension (whatever that ambitious phrase is taken to mean). Science gives us tenable conceptual models of the world - tenable to the extent of being both internally coherent and externally corresponding to the observed data. New thought might reveal incoherence in the model; new data might reveal want of correspondence with the model.
In science there is no guarantee of absolute truth; there is 'truth enough to be going on with'. Stronger claims are made for science - mostly by non-scientists; such claims are among the most cherished of modern secular superstitions.
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