Conceptions of Science

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�LS2�The purpose of this research is to examine the proposition that science comprises "the stories we tell to convince ourselves that everything is all right in the world," from an anthropological perspective. The plan of the research will be to examine realist, relativist, and constructionalist views of science, as opposed to the view that science is factual and not fictional, with reference to theoretical material on both religion and science.

The realist view of science relies significantly on the view that science reflects objective facts of reality. That is, whatever is scientifically unknown can be revealed or more exactly uncovered by means of the scientific method. In this regard, Rimoldi (1992) praises the realism of anthropologist John Anderson by comparing his approach to the nature of universal and particular reality to that of fellow anthropologist Clifford Geertz. According to Rimoldi, Anderson is more Aristotelian in his approach to reality, viewing "a particular" instance of reality as fundamental rather than "�MDUL�the�MDNM� particular" as a more categorical and fundamental reality. That is, individual instances are particular; there is not a "realm" of reality that can be used to come to scientific conclusions.

On the other hand, the realist position is criticized as positivistic in the extreme. Longino questions the connection between the philosophy of science and the "hard" metho

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verse, he sought "to understand the motions of the planets, to seek a harmony in the heavens" (Sagan, 1980, p. 67) based on scientific explanations and observations rather than on the heritage of faith. Sagan also says that Kepler's work directly influenced Newton, whose achievement was to quantify the scientific theories that had previously arisen from direct observation of natural phenomena. the more mechanistic, mathematical concept of the universe had the effect of demystifying divine force and pointing in the direction of modern anxiety. For if there is no guarantee of the divine, then all is natural and there may be no point (i.e., salvation) to living in the natural world. Kuhn's discussion of conditions under which new scientific discoveries emerge includes the idea that in the history of science, prevailing scientific theory (i.e., a view of the universe) will exhibit an "insufficiency of methodological directives, by themselves, to dictate a unique substantive conclusion to many sorts of scientific questions" (Kuhn, 1962, p. 3). For example, the pre-Darwinian conception of creation was built, widely among the nonscientific community and to an extent among the scientific community, in no small measure around the biblical

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