It just occurred to me after reading a post on Cold Fury about another (doubtlessly well-deserved) banning of commenters something that's rather important out here in the world of the wars of words and wars of ideas.

One of the invitations to banning included argument from authority. While this could mean stupid things like saying "Michael Moore said it, and I believe it, and that's it," we actually rely on argument from authority a great deal.

Isn't arguing that something is Science a simple resort to authority? For instance, I can argue that a hydrogen atom has a single proton and a single electron and treat this as an inarguable, unquestionable truth. But I haven't ever looked at a hydrogen atom; I've never directly done anything to prove one exists, haven't measured one, haven't analyzed one to determine properties that might convince me things like electrons and protons exist, and therefore do not argue from experience when I assert properties of hydrogen. I simply beg the question of the credibility of authority - a chain of authorities - who have transmitted to me their received wisdom.

Arguments from authority are as good or as bad as the authority they cite. The problem is not that we argue from authority - all but the omniscient must either do so or ignore topics outside of their personal experience - but that we beg the question of the credibility of our sources. Cite Trofim Lysenko, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, or swarms of names in the Sagas of The Struggle of Science Versus Ignorance and you find different degrees of credibility even if in some sense each name this babel of philosophers, frauds, mathematicians, empiricists, anti-empiricists, iconoclasts, apologists, saints, sinners, con-men, debunkers, entrepreneurs, speculators, physicians, ideologues, posers, and hands-on-experimenters practiced science.

I would be fascinated to meet someone whose knowledge of the world was entirely empirical and not based at all on resort to authority. It almost would have to be someone who did not use language.

Labels: Epistemological agnosticism