Naturalism is "the idea or belief that only laws of nature and forces operate in the world;
the idea or belief that nothing exists beyond the natural world." Adherents of naturalism
assert that natural laws are the rules that govern the structure and behavior of the natural
universe, that the changing universe at every stage is a product of these laws.
"Naturalism can intuitively be separated into a [metaphysical] and a methodological component."
Metaphysical here refers to the philosophical study of the nature of reality. Some philosophers
equate naturalism with materialism. For example, philosopher Paul Kurtz argues that nature
is best accounted for by reference to material principles. These principles include mass,
energy, and other physical and chemical properties accepted by the scientific community. Further,
this sense of naturalism holds that spirits, deities, and ghosts are not real and that
there is no "purpose" in nature. Such an absolute belief in naturalism is commonly referred
to as metaphysical naturalism. In contrast, assuming naturalism in working
methods, without necessarily considering naturalism as an absolute truth with philosophical entailments,
is called methodological naturalism. The subject matter here is a philosophy of acquiring knowledge.
With the exception of pantheists—who believe that Nature and God are one and the same thing—theists
challenge the idea that nature contains all of reality. According to some theists, natural
laws may be viewed as so-called secondary causes of god(s).
In the 20th century, Willard Van Orman Quine, George Santayana, and other philosophers argued
that the success of naturalism in science meant that scientific methods should also
be used in philosophy. Science and philosophy are said to form a continuum, according to
this view.
Origins and history The ideas and assumptions of philosophical
naturalism were first seen in the works of the Ionian pre-Socratic philosophers. One
such was Thales, considered to be the father of science, as he was the first to give explanations
of natural events without the use of supernatural causes. These early philosophers subscribed
to principles of empirical investigation that strikingly anticipate naturalism.
The modern emphasis in methodological naturalism primarily originated in the ideas of medieval
scholastic thinkers during the Renaissance of the 12th century:
By the late Middle Ages the search for natural causes had come to typify the work of Christian
natural philosophers. Although characteristically leaving the door open for the possibility
of direct divine intervention, they frequently expressed contempt for soft-minded contemporaries
who invoked miracles rather than searching for natural explanations. The University of
Paris cleric Jean Buridan, described as "perhaps the most brilliant arts master of the Middle
Ages," contrasted the philosopher's search for "appropriate natural causes" with the
common folk's habit of attributing unusual astronomical phenomena to the supernatural.
In the fourteenth century the natural philosopher Nicole Oresme, who went on to become a Roman
Catholic bishop, admonished that, in discussing various marvels of nature, "there is no reason
to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious
God as if He would produce these effects directly, more so than those effects whose causes we
believe are well known to us." Enthusiasm for the naturalistic study of nature
picked up in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as more and more Christians turned
their attention to discovering the so-called secondary causes that God employed in operating
the world. The Italian Catholic Galileo Galilei, one of the foremost promoters of the new philosophy,
insisted that nature "never violates the terms of the laws imposed upon her."
During the Enlightenment, a number of philosophers including Francis Bacon and Voltaire outlined
the philosophical justifications for removing appeal to supernatural forces from investigation
of the natural world. Subsequent scientific revolutions would offer modes of explanation
not inherently theistic for biology, geology, physics, and other natural sciences.
Pierre Simon de Laplace, when asked about the lack of mention of God in his work on
celestial mechanics, is said to have replied, "I had no need of that hypothesis."
According to Steven Schafersman, president of Texas Citizens for Science, an advocacy
group opposing creationism in public schools, the progressive adoption of methodological
naturalism—and later of metaphysical naturalism—followed the advances of science and the increase of
its explanatory power. These advances also caused the diffusion of positions associated
with metaphysical naturalism, such as existentialism. The current usage of the term naturalism "derives
from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed 'naturalists'
from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars."
For them nature is the only reality. There is no such thing as 'supernatural'. The scientific
method is to be used to investigate all reality, including the human spirit: "So understood,
'naturalism' is not a particularly informative term... The great majority of contemporary
philosophers would happily... reject 'supernatural' entities, and allow that science is a possible
route to important truths about the 'human spirit'."
Etymology The term "methodological naturalism" for this
approach is much more recent. According to Ronald Numbers, it was coined in 1983 by Paul
de Vries, a Wheaton College philosopher. De Vries distinguished between what he called
"methodological naturalism," a disciplinary method that says nothing about God's existence,
and "metaphysical naturalism," which "denies the existence of a transcendent God." The
term "methodological naturalism" had been used in 1937 by Edgar S. Brightman in an article
in The Philosophical Review as a contrast to "naturalism" in general, but there the
idea was not really developed to its more recent distinctions.
Metaphysical naturalism
Metaphysical naturalism, also called "ontological naturalism" and "philosophical naturalism",
is a philosophical worldview and belief system that holds that there is nothing but natural
elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences, i.e.,
those required to understand our physical environment by mathematical modeling. Methodological
naturalism, on the other hand, refers exclusively to the methodology of science, for which metaphysical
naturalism provides only one possible ontological foundation.
Metaphysical naturalism holds that all properties related to consciousness and the mind are
reducible to, or supervene upon, nature. Broadly, the corresponding theological perspective
is religious naturalism or spiritual naturalism. More specifically, metaphysical naturalism
rejects the supernatural concepts and explanations that are part of many religions.
Methodological naturalism Methodological naturalism concerns itself
not with claims about what exists but with methods of learning what nature is. It is
strictly the idea that all scientific endeavors—all hypotheses and events—are to be explained
and tested by reference to natural causes and events. The genesis of nature is not addressed.
This second sense of naturalism seeks only to provide a framework within which to conduct
the scientific study of the laws of nature. Methodological naturalism is a way of acquiring
knowledge. It is a distinct system of thought concerned with a cognitive approach to reality,
and is thus a philosophy of knowledge. Studies by sociologist Elaine Ecklund suggest that
religious scientists in practice apply methodological naturalism. They report that their religious
beliefs affect the way they think about the implications - often moral - of their work,
but not the way they practice science. In a series of articles and books from 1996
onward, Robert T. Pennock wrote using the term "methodological naturalism" to clarify
that the scientific method confines itself to natural explanations without assuming the
existence or non-existence of the supernatural, and is not based on dogmatic metaphysical
naturalism. Pennock's testimony as an expert witness at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School
District trial was cited by the Judge in his Memorandum Opinion concluding that "Methodological
naturalism is a 'ground rule' of science today": "Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific
revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for
natural causes to explain natural phenomena.... While supernatural explanations may be important
and have merit, they are not part of science." Methodological naturalism is thus "a self-imposed
convention of science." It is a "ground rule" that "requires scientists to seek explanations
in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify."
Views Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Plantinga, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Notre Dame, and a Christian, has become
a well-known critic of naturalism. He suggests, in his evolutionary argument against naturalism,
that the probability that evolution has produced humans with reliable true beliefs, is low
or inscrutable, unless their evolution was guided. According to David Kahan of the University
of Glasgow, in order to understand how beliefs are warranted, a justification must be found
in the context of supernatural theism, as in Plantinga's epistemology..
Plantinga argues that together, naturalism and evolution provide an insurmountable "defeater
for the belief that our cognitive faculties are reliable", i.e., a skeptical argument
along the lines of Descartes' Evil demon or Brain in a vat.
Take philosophical naturalism to be the belief that there aren't any supernatural entities
- no such person as God, for example, but also no other supernatural entities, and nothing
at all like God. My claim was that naturalism and contemporary evolutionary theory are at
serious odds with one another - and this despite the fact that the latter is ordinarily thought
to be one of the main pillars supporting the edifice of the former. More particularly,
I argued that the conjunction of naturalism with the belief that we human beings have
evolved in conformity with current evolutionary doctrine... is in a certain interesting way
self-defeating or self-referentially incoherent. — Alvin Plantinga, Naturalism Defeated?:
Essays on Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, "Introduction"
Robert T. Pennock Robert T. Pennock contends that as supernatural
agents and powers "are above and beyond the natural world and its agents and powers" and
"are not constrained by natural laws", only logical impossibilities constrain what a supernatural
agent could not do. He states: "If we could apply natural knowledge to understand supernatural
powers, then, by definition, they would not be supernatural". As the supernatural is necessarily
a mystery to us, it can provide no grounds on which to judge scientific models. "Experimentation
requires observation and control of the variables.... But by definition we have no control over
supernatural entities or forces." Science does not deal with meanings; the closed system
of scientific reasoning cannot be used to define itself. Allowing science to appeal
to untestable supernatural powers would make the scientist's task meaningless, undermine
the discipline that allows science to make progress, and "would be as profoundly unsatisfying
as the ancient Greek playwright's reliance upon the deus ex machina to extract his hero
from a difficult predicament." Naturalism of this sort says nothing about
the existence or nonexistence of the supernatural, which by this definition is beyond natural
testing. As a practical consideration, the rejection of supernatural explanations would
merely be pragmatic, thus it would nonetheless be possible, for an ontological supernaturalist
to espouse and practice methodological naturalism. For example, scientists may believe in God
while practicing methodological naturalism in their scientific work. This position does
not preclude knowledge that is somehow connected to the supernatural. Generally however, anything
that can be scientifically examined and explained would not be supernatural, simply by definition.
W. V. Quine
W. V. Quine describes naturalism as the position that there is no higher tribunal for truth
than natural science itself. There is no better method than the scientific method for judging
the claims of science, and there is neither any need nor any place for a "first philosophy",
such as metaphysics or epistemology, that could stand behind and justify science or
the scientific method. Therefore, philosophy should feel free to
make use of the findings of scientists in its own pursuit, while also feeling free to
offer criticism when those claims are ungrounded, confused, or inconsistent. In Quine's view,
philosophy is "continuous with" science and both are empirical. Naturalism is not a dogmatic
belief that the modern view of science is entirely correct. Instead, it simply holds
that science is the best way to explore the processes of the universe and that those processes
are what modern science is striving to understand. However, this Quinean Replacement Naturalism
finds relatively few supporters among philosophers. Karl Popper
Karl Popper equated naturalism with inductive theory of science. He rejected it based on
his general critique of induction, yet acknowledged its utility as means for inventing conjectures.
A naturalistic methodology has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view:
It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered
a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into
a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of
meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical
method. — Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific
Discovery,, pp. 52–53, ISBN 0-415-27844-9.
Popper instead proposed that science should adopt a methodology based on falsifiability
for demarcation, because no number of experiments can ever prove a theory, but a single experiment
can contradict one. Popper holds that scientific theories are characterized by falsifiability.
See also
Notes
References Audi, Robert. "Naturalism". In Borchert, Donald
M. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement. USA: Macmillan Reference. pp. 372–374.
Danto, Arthur C.. "Naturalism". In Edwords, Paul. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New
York: The Macmillan Co. and The Free Press. pp. 448–450.
Kurtz, Paul. Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism. Prometheus Books.
Lacey, Alan R.. "Naturalism". In Honderich, Ted. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford
University Press. pp. 604–606. Post, John F.. "Naturalism". In Audi, Robert.
The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 517–518.
Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-50832-5. Further reading
Mario De Caro and David Macarthur Naturalism in Question. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press, 2004. Mario De Caro and David Macarthur Naturalism
and Normativity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Friedrich Albert Lange, The History of Materialism, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd,
1925, ISBN 0-415-22525-6 David Macarthur, "Quinean Naturalism in Question,"
Philo. vol 11, no. 1. External links
Supportive naturalism.org
Naturalist Newsletter Center for Naturalism
Naturalism: The Naturalistic Worldview Naturalism David Papineau, The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy The Brights Illuminating and elevating the
naturalistic worldview Neutral
Naturalism at PhilPapers Naturalism entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy Naturalism at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology
Project Naturalism entry in the Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy The Craig-Taylor Debate: Is The Basis Of Morality
Natural Or Supernatural? William Lane Craig and Richard Taylor October 1993, Union College
Critical biologos.org
"Naturalism" article in The Catholic Encyclopedia Alvin Plantinga. Naturalism Defeated.
A shorter version of C. S. Lewis' Dangerous Idea
Philip Johnson's Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism from First Things
Robert A. Delfino's Replacing Methodological Naturalism Metanexus Institute. Archived from
the original. Robert A. Delfino's Scientific Naturalism
and the Need for a Neutral Metaphysical Framework