Pseudo-Science

I finally received the newest issue of Jewish Action. Don't they know that bloggers should be at the top of their mailing list, not the bottom? R. Yitzchok Adlerstein (a contributing editor to JA, by the way) seems to have beaten me to the punch on an interesting exchange in the magazine which, oddly enough, has not been uploaded to the magazine's website.

A letter-writer, Howard Shapiro in the name of R. Chaim Eisen, makes some strong points against Dr. Nathan Aviezer's approach of reconciling Torah and science:

Since we can only observe "customary conjunction" (i.e., correlation) but can never definitively establish causality, the ultimate causes of natural phenomena must remain scientifically unknowable. Historically, this conclusion had been manifest repeatedly, as one hypothesis supersedes a hitherto universally accepted, successful one, only to give way in turn to another, in the relentless and endless evolution of modern science. As Thomas S. Kuhn (and many others) amply demonstrated, the historical development of scientific understanding is predominantly through such destructive succession rather than mere accumulation of knowledge and theories... Every scientific paradigm is provisional by definition.

Dr. Aviezer replies:

Every competent scientist can distinguish between the more speculative theories and those that are firmly anchored by a vast array of scientific evidence. The latter have an excellent record for longevity. For example, since their inception nearly a century ago, the theory of relativity and quantum theory have enjoyed unqualified success in explaining hundreds of diverse phenomena.

The excellent track record of well-established scientific theories was emphasized by Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg (Dreams of a Final Theory [New York, 1993], 102):

One can imagine a category of experiments that refute well-accepted scientific theories that have become part of the standard consensus of physicists. Under this category, there are no examples whatsoever in the past hundred years.

Since not a single well-established scientific theory has been refuted within the past hundred years, we can feel confident about the future.

I don't know nothing about this stuff, but Dr. Aviezer seems to be echoing what I wrote in this post about distinguishing between science and pseudo-science.