Analyticity: Carnap, Quine, and the Structure of Science

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"Creationist science" is continually being raised by fundamentalists who claim that it should have standing beside Darwinian evolutionary theory in the teaching of biology in our schools. In fact, in the recent elections in Virginia, attempts were made to elect a school board which would support the teaching of creationist science. Yet for scientists, the very words "creationist science" is an oxymoron. Creationism is based on revealed religion while science is empirically supported or justified. But what does this mean, "empirically supported"? How can we empirically confirm any theory unless we know what empirical confirmation is? And on pain of circularity it appears that that theory of confirmation must itself be established independently of the empirical evidence. Otherwise, we would be saying that we believe some theory of confirmation simply because that theory assures us that it itself is worth believing in the circumstances. Furthermore, even the barest empiricist doctrine seems to presuppose something that cannot be tested empirically (or at least not noncircularly so), namely that observation is to be trusted. The classical answer to support of beliefs is intuition. Intuition, however, is an appeal to a direct metaphysical insight, a non-observational grasp of independent matters of fact. Such an answer, though, answer is appalling to anyone who takes science seriously or, for that matter, anyone who wants to distinguish "creationism" from science. Under this grant, Professor Richard Creath is examining the competing answers to how science is justified which were given by two of the foremost leaders in the field of philosophy of science over the past fifty years: Rudolf Carnap W. V. O. Quine. These two philosophers of science have shaped the views of succeeding generations on how we are to conceive of the process of justifying our scientific beliefs. Using documents that have only recently become available, Professor Creath will articulate more fully than has been possible heretofore Carnap's and Quine's alternative philosophies of science and the searching criticisms that each made of the other. He will then extend and develop these criticisms in turn so as to bring the arguments of the Carnap-Quine debate fully to bear on current issues in the philosophy of science. This research thus promises to go a long way in clarifying the difference between a science that is based on empirical justification from a "science" that originates from divine or received sources.