Bookraft

In The Marriage of Sense and Soul, Ken Wilber, the seminal philosopher, has done something astonishing - as one whose works generally exult in precision of meaning, the book starts out as almost a vulgar tirade with imprecise characterizations of one of the main subjects of discourse - Science.

Here is a sampler:
"Science and technology have created a global and transnational framework of industrial, economic, medical, scientific, and informational systems. Science tells us about electrons, atoms, molecules, galaxies, digital databits, network systems: its tells us what a thing is, not whether it is good or bad or what it should be or could be or ought to be. Thus this enormous global scientific infrastructure is, in itself, a valueless skeleton, however functionally efficient it may be."

Wow, wrong on so many levels - I thought I would never say this. But why is Science deemed valueless when it does the following all the time:
1)Defines the truth (or to be Wilberian precise, a domain of veracity) by positing better models or explanations of cause and effect by open, repeatable and therefore verifiable tests or experiments;
2)Describes from the same testable models what is believable by defining what is known and unknown. The known increasingly has to be couched not in certainties, but possibilities or probabilities - the ensuing shower of events have probabilities associated with them and this is not just in the world of particle physics but everywhere in science from economics to zoology. The known of a theory also has acknowledged limits - things it cannot explain.
The unknown is also intriguing and sometimes hidden because scientists want to be the first to discover the next turn of the key - so often they do not discuss the unknown. But eventually good science and scientists will also have to define the unknowns:
a)what is made impossible by the theory as it stands; or equally brutal - why this conjecture, desire or wish cannot be;
b)what remains unproven and unknowable. These phenomena are not ruled out by the theory, but cannot be ruled in. These connections can be made to other models and hypotheses; but these cannot. Finally, some other hypotheses or theories will have to be developed to account for these unprovens and unknowables.
c)what is close - yet may be derived and deduced from the main main theory but has not been done. It is sort of like those RTP exercises from math class - some of which are trivial and other of which are demon tasks;
3)Always science and theory elucidate hard measures of goodness - efficiency, reliability, limits to growth, entropy, MTBFs-Mean Time Between Failure, usability, maintainability, and millions of others measures of success and failure again both small and large;
4)Science also derives models of how to explore and then decide among courses of action - these are broad and growing such as portfolio theory, optimization methods, game theory, MAD and literally thousands more models of possible behavior;
5)Science is constantly describing its limits. From Kuhn, Popper, Godel and a constantly growing world of practitioners - science is describing a) what its methods are and are not; b)what it can do and cannot; and c)where it stands on elucidating basic questions on how the Universe works.

Now lets take the fourth point, how Science derives models of behavior. These are not empty, valueless models - but rather they explicitly describe how to encapsulate values and priorities. Then they describe the different ways those priorities can be evaluated, maximized, and made effective not just for the existing decision but in the context of many related and future decisions. The humanity is in defining what are the priorities and what ought to be maximized while other detrimental factors are minimized. The decision models are robust enough to consider as well real world constraints and limits to behavior. What those limits and constraints are Science will even offer statistical judgements on what has worked well in the past. So, these choices of constraints and limits plus these choices of priorities and goals to be optimized have resulted in these measures of successful outcomes. In short, there is a Science for measuring detrimental and positive outcomes not just for one moment but over time - and it appears Wilber is not giving full credence to this aspect of Science.

As well I would like to argue that Science is now built-in and innate in humans. This the Stephen Pinker argument in several of his books including the Blank Slate. But basic research by many neuroscientists on human perception systems show consistently that theses are not dumb I/O systems waiting to dump unadorned evidence into the brain and its Good/Bad/Indifferent All Deciding ForeBrain or neocortex ; but rather they are proactive and anticipatory - scanning for hypotheses signals/signs and unconsciously turning on a millisecond to a new hypotheses of whats out there/going on when one or more signals refute the Topof Stack hypotheses. This hypotheses making, testing, refining phenomena is built into hearing, moving, seeing and a broad range of "instinctive" reactions and behavior. In short what is good for the Old Brain is good for the ForeBrain.

Finally, Science is contingent. Depending on what your goals, priorities and constraints are (the contingencies) - Science can help tell us what a)what your best set of decisions are including the likely outcomes and b)what goals, constraints, and priorities one may want to change in order to achieve better outcomes and decisions. So Science is definitely not valueless; but rather like a great Butler waits to evaluate your decisions and to perhaps hint/suggest another possible set of priorities and/or courses of action.

Summary

So with Science built in, I will have to take The Marriage of Sense and Soul with a grain of salt. On Barnes and Noble it gets a rave review. So I shall advance onwards, and see what The Marriage has to offer and report back here.