Naturalism in science

Have a look at the short (10 min) presentation. I think it explains the scientific approach (in contrast to the religious approach) very well. It’s Sean Carroll’s opening statement from the The Great Debate: Science vs. Religion. You don’t usually see such sensible contributions in  a debate.

Normally I don’t like to use words like materialism and naturalism – without careful definition they are too open to misinterpretation. I also think that science is concerned with understanding reality, the real world. Some people use “naturalism” to ring-fence a part of the world (they define as “supernatural”) as immune to investigation. They claim science is limited to the “natural” world.

However, I really like this presentation by Sean Carroll. He is not conceding a “supernatural” part of reality which science is excluded from. Reality itself is natural in his eyes – and that has been shown by all our scientific experiences. As he describes it he tries “to sum up the progress in human understanding that has led us to reject the supernatural and accept that the natural world is all there is.”

And he makes an intriguing reference to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia.

Professor Carroll invites comments on his presentation at his blog post The Case for Naturalism.

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