Is science part of human nature?

I was reading an interesting review of a new book, God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human by Dominic Johnson who trained both as an evolutionary biologist and a political scientist. The book "examines the role of religion in the evolution of cooperation, and how cross-culturally ubiquitous and ancient beliefs in supernatural punishment have helped to overcome major challenges of human society." which all sounds intriguing. But what brought me up short was this quote.

“Learning religion is part of human nature. Learning science is a battle against human nature.”

I can see how human traits like belief in supernatural forces and an ability to reason through cause and effect can sometimes lead to conflicting conclusions, but what evidence is there at religion is part of human nature whereas science is not? It would seem to me that, but definition, they are both things humans do and so are part of human nature. Is it not the scientific view that humans are just another animal and therefore part of nature, and that everything humans do is part of human nature?

rrp,

Your post is asking questions beyond me.

I actually don't think religion or science is part of human nature. We have awareness. And intelligence. And we can put other names or descriptions about that aspect of human nature.

Religion might be an ancient manifestation of that awareness.

Science might be a more recent and more disciplined manifestation of that same awareness.

It seems to me that it is what I have called awareness which is from human nature.

Scientific thought as we know it arrived at the end of a long evolutionary process. Freud noted the movement from animism to religion (he takes monotheism as his model of religion) to scientific thought in Totem and Taboo. According to Freud, what distinguishes science from animism and monotheism is the fact that scientific thinking concedes that an external reality exists outside the thoughts of an individual. However, what animism, monotheism, and science share in common is a desire or wish to control reality through thought (ideas).

An alternative theory of scientific thought can be found in Claude Lévi-Strauss’ The Savage Mind. On his account, human beings did not wait for the experimental, natural sciences to emerge to acquire knowledge of the world. A neolithic science, as distinct from modern science, is characterized by Lévi-Strauss as sensible, perceptual, and imaginative. “Neolithic, or early historical, man was therefore the heir of a long scientific tradition. However, had he, as well as all his predecessors, been inspired by exactly the same spirit as that of our own time, it would be impossible to understand how he could have come to a halt and how several thousand years of stagnation have intervened between the neolithic revolution and modern science like a level plain between ascents. There is only one solution to the paradox, namely, that there are two distinct modes of scientific thought. These are certainly not a function of different stages of development of the human mind but rather of two strategic levels at which nature is accessible to scientific enquiry: one roughly adapted to that of perception and the imagination: the other at a remove from it. It is as if the necessary connections which are the object of all science, neolithic or modern, could be arrived at by two different routes, one very close to, and the other more remote form, sensible information.” (15)

I think there should be a moratorium on the use of "How xxxxx makes us human..."

It's like the "Send in the Clowns" of book subtitles.

language, tool use, opposable thumbs, upright stance, culture, science, religion ... I seem to recall someone wrote a much longer list somewhere recently that I read.

But I though everyone had reached a consensus. It's poetry that makes us human.

>2 richardbsmith: I think I would agree that both science and religion are manifestations of our nature. Hence the reaction to "Learning science is a battle against human nature". But I think I know what the author is getting at. Experiments show that human reasoning is often flawed and that we have to work had at avoiding those flaws. But isn't that working hard bit also a part of human nature?

>3 theoria: I think I have read to much Popper to find value in anything attributed to Freud.

But didn't religion thought as we know it, also arrive at the end of a long evolutionary process? I thought the question was posed in the context of a scientific argument and so scientific evidence would be required to show that "Learning science is a battle against human nature".

rrp,

Let me repeat. Your question is well above me.

My thoughts are that learning science is a manifestation of an aspect of what I would call human nature. The struggle, the interest, the questions - I think at least in part is what distinguishes humans.

We can add poetry. (Which BTW it may be time for another poem. (Though I offered Walt Whitman last time and got no offers. This could be a tough crowd.)

>1 rrp: “Learning religion is part of human nature. Learning science is a battle against human nature.”

It's probably foolish to try to interpret a comment from a book I haven't read. I wonder, though, whether by "human nature" one might understand 'instinct". Curiosity is an instinct; the ability to infer is an instinct; language is an instinct, and so also, of course, is symbolic representation. While all these are inborn abilities, I can affirm after a career spent teaching adolescents that manipulating symbols beyond a kind of first-order level of abstraction is definitely not instinctual. To describe learning that skill "a battle against human nature" is not an exaggeration.

There is an NPR piece from a few years ago on Johnson and his colleague, Jesse Bering: Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?

Dominic Johnson, by the way, is on the faculty at U of Oxford and is not to be confused with Dominic Johnson in the Dept of Drama at Queen Mary U of London.

Also related is The Secret of our Success: how culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter, which you can read about in an article by Joe Brewer at the Evolution Institute site.

>8 richardbsmith: Please. No more poetry.

I failed the Turing Test the other day. I was re-reading The Diamond Age in which one of the main characters gives a Turing Test to a machine by sending it a poem. You can find the section here on page 350

https://books.google.com/books?id=aAV6wV4Rn00C&printsec=frontcover&sourc...

I failed the test, because my reaction would have been almost the same as the computer's. I haven't a clue what the character was on about in the poem, but would have been interested in the continuing the conversation about Turing Machines.

We need some Emily Dickinson. I love Emily.

Apparently with no surprise
To any happy flower
The Frost beheads it at its play –
In accidental power –
The blonde Assassin passes on –
The Sun proceeds unmoved
To measure off another Day
For an approving God.

No sooner said ...

Now that's poetry, and instinctive understanding follows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations

Plus quantum mechanics

A lot to take in, but it is poetry I think.

Condensed - particle and wave.

Still working on that. : )

>14 librorumamans:

Excellent choice. Thank you.

Very nice to wake up to Emily.

>15 rrp:

No argument from here.

Do not follow this link.

>9 librorumamans: To describe learning that skill "a battle against human nature" is not an exaggeration.

What I may have been trying to get at in >15 rrp: is that there is no such thing as "human nature" (maybe also to agree with the sentiment in >4 Jesse_wiedinmyer:). For some, learning to manipulate the symbols in Maxwell's equations is easy; the symbols and their meaning seem instinctual. Those same students may have an extremely hard time learning to manipulate the symbols in poetry or religion. So, for those students, learning science and mathematics is part of their human nature (and not against it) and learning poetry and religion is not part of their human nature (and so is against it.)

It's wrong to assume that religion is part of human nature whereas science is against it.

>20 rrp: . . . there is no such thing as "human nature"

I do not see how this could be a useful statement since it can be contradicted in so many ways, physical and metaphysical.

It's probably no more or less useful than "xxxxxxxx" makes us human.

War makes us human.

>21 librorumamans:

Jesse is on the right lines. I don't think we can define "human nature" in anyway that is both completely generalizable, i.e. applies to all humans, and is at the same time useful, i.e. distinguishes us from non-humans. For example, it is not in the nature of many humans to wage war, so how can it be part of human nature? It may be reasonable to talk about probabilistic distributions of traits within a population of humans. Some humans wage war. The percentage of humans currently engaged in acts of war is X %. That sort of thing.

What examples were you thinking of that contradicted "there is no such thing as "human nature""?

>24 rrp:

I have already mentioned several in >9 librorumamans:. I'll leave it as an exercise to extend the list

Is the topic "what makes us human" or if a particular thing is part of human nature?

>26 richardbsmith: Well "human nature" is one of those philosophically controversial things. Some use it to distinguish innate or instinctual traits from cultural traits, and I think that was the intent of the quote from the article in the OP. There is also an implied value judgement, culture is something superior to animal instincts.

I just question the whole blather. >9 librorumamans: mentions curiosity, the ability to infer and language as human instincts. The author in the OP would add belief in supernatural forces. One could say that the instinct of being able to reason leads to the cultural phenomenon of science and the instinct of belief in supernatural forces leads to the cultural phenomenon of religion. Then it makes no sense to say “Learning religion is part of human nature. Learning science is a battle against human nature.”

But I would go farther and say that traits like curiosity, language, reason and belief in supernatural forces all exist as a spectrum and that it makes no sense to speak of human nature as possession of those traits. How much curiosity, language, reason and belief does one have to possess to be counted as human? If you lack an ability to process language (say as a stroke victim) are you still a human being?

rrp,

I probably have a different perspective.

Human beings occupy a phylogenetic classification as far as considerations of identity and inclusion as a member of a species.

The ideas that I might include in the term awareness would be a general attribute of the species which is distinctly defined by phylogenetic characteristics.

Science and religion and technology for that matter, would seem possibly to be manifestations of that generally shared trait.

>26 richardbsmith: a long time ago there was an extended discussion with rrp where we did manage to conclude that there's nothing unique or special about being a human. We're just another animal on the planet.

But one thing that all animals do, is try to make sense of the world around them. Can I safely eat this? will this one have sex we with me now? how do I know this is a predator? etc etc

religion and science are both human tools for doing this. One works a lot better than the other. Other animals do explore both options to some degree, learning and experimenting about their world, and sometimes being having specific behaviours patterns for no discernible reason.

Thank you reading_fox.

I understand what is meant by the determination that there is nothing unique or special about being a human. It is a religious or perhaps philosophical claim of man's special relation to God or as the end purpose of the universe.

I am not sure that is the point we are discussing. I am sure that it is not the point I am discussing.

Except that there is something unique about being human.

We are the only species called human beings. Which makes us unique as are all species, at least all eukaryotic species.

We are us. Whales can have their own self aware status as they talk about their science and their religion. We can distinguish our science and religion as science and religion that is done by humans, a unique species.

And while we can consider that the cognitive difference between humans and other species is one of degree, that does not remove the difference.

And at some point a difference in degree might be called a difference in kind.

>28 richardbsmith:

Just to break it down a little, do you agree with the statement “Learning religion is part of human nature. Learning science is a battle against human nature.” ?

I would not agree with that statement. Neither religion nor science would be aspects of what I consider the nature of being human.

They both seem perhaps to be manifestations, acting out, of an intelligent awareness. And that awareness is something which I would consider an aspect of human nature - a quality typical of the human species.

>30 richardbsmith: - "Which makes us unique as are all species, at least all eukaryotic species." perhaps a topic for another thread. But "species" is very very arbitrary, I wouldn't label a species as unique without careful consideration of that case in particular. Look up ring species for a start if you want some anomalies.

I disagree with you here "We are us. Whales can have their own self aware status as they talk about their science and their religion. We can distinguish our science and religion as science and religion that is done by humans, a unique species."

Science is a method of exploring how accurate our models of the universe are by reproducible trial and error. Religion is an acceptance of models of the universe without such testing. Animals display both behaviors and hence it's a matter of degree rather than absolute difference between us and whales, or rats in mazes.

So you're saying science (and religion) are what make whales (and rats in mazes) human?

>32 richardbsmith: "I would not agree with that statement."

Good. Then we are in agreement on that point at least. I fear others would agree with it though.

>33 reading_fox:

I agree with your comment about "species". It's a category whose boundaries are hard to define. But the same applies to both science and religion and your characterizations of both are not widely accepted.

Science is a not method of exploring how accurate our models of the universe are by reproducible trial and error.

Religion is not an acceptance of models of the universe without such testing.

>34 Jesse_wiedinmyer:

Jessie, was that comment towards me?

If so, I did not understand your point.

>33 reading_fox:

Thanks for clarifying what is a species. We can disagree on that point how to categorize our cognitive differences with other species. Whether degree or kind, it would be difficult to engage another species in this discussion.

That is the difference I am suggesting exists. And I think it would be a difference in kind.

Religion is intuitive. Science is counterintuitive. - Thus the problem with trash-canning the old "science" called religion and getting on board with the new and pragmatic science called "science".

I always thought that the basic drive of humans from earliest times is toward "science." And I think we see this basic drive toward "science" in other animals as well.

Formal scientific inquiry is not the only way to think about science, which is in its earliest manifestation probably best described as curiosity.

The scientific bent of the human is exhibited in every human infant in infancy, poking, manipulating, tasting. Before that child is capable of framing a question it is questioning its surrounding to find out what it is.

This near-primordial scientific bent led to all those alterations to his environment, to all the earliest inventions, to discovery of all types that led to making life easier.

I suggest that "science" is a more normal and far earlier manifestation of what makes us human than is religion. Asking questions of one's surroundings, manipulating it, and making discoveries about it, and putting those discoveries to use are the stuff of proto-science.

It's only in the absence of being able to answer the questions that humans are capable of raising does he invent a mythology to explain that which he is as yet unable to explain by testing and demonstrating.

In regards to the original poster and the quote;

“Learning religion is part of human nature. Learning science is a battle against human nature.”

I believe this statement is relatively true, but misleading and whole-heartedly misunderstood.

Humans are animals that have many biological, cognitive biases. Humans are made to survive and in that way, we have a lot of evolutionary baggage. The main problem with proponents of religion is their insistence of an ego-centric worldview. This view is a cognitive bias, but a good survivable trait. The study of Science flips this on its head.

So science can be said to be a "battle against human nature." Science is an objective, truth-finding methodology that can not stand on authority alone. Good science requires peer-review, requires falsifiability, and requires proof; all things unnecessary to become powerful or survive. Technically speaking, the poorest, least educated human is on equal footing with the richest and most powerful in the scientific community, a ideal that goes against all our primitive tribal instincts.

>40 DMAndersen:
“Learning religion is part of human nature. Learning science is a battle against human nature.”

what is common in both those statement is the word "learning". What humans learn is largely a function of circumstance. But the phrase "human nature" is always understood to be probabilistic, not definitive. Descriptive, not prescriptive. You could say it is human nature to be curious, but what works as a generalization in the aggregate rarely holds true at the level of the individual. "Nature" always likes to have a few outliers kicking around in the gene pool.

It makes religion, especially, peculiarly unsuited to telling us what is "true" human nature, because it - at least the Abrahamic variety- tends to be focused on the fate of the individual, not the aggregate. I'll bet that on some level "human nature" from a religious perspective is simply a "soul." Eternally, indivisibly, purely "essence of human."

But purity is not a useful trait from an evolutionary perspective.