What Is Naturalism?
by Timothy Williamson
September 4, 2011
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/what-is-naturalismI am sometimes described as a naturalist. Why do I resist the description?
...naturalism becomes the belief that there is only whatever the scientific method eventually discovers, and (not surprisingly) the best way to find out about it is by the scientific method. That is no tautology. Why can't there be things only discoverable by non-scientific means, or not discoverable at all?
What is meant by "the scientific method"? Why assume that science only has one method?...One challenge to naturalism is to find a place for mathematics...which proves its results by pure reasoning, rather than the hypothetico-deductive method.
...Still, I sympathize with one motive behind naturalism — the aspiration to think in a scientific spirit. It's a vague phrase, but one might start to explain it by emphasizing values like curiosity, honesty, accuracy, precision and rigor. ...
The scientific spirit is as relevant in mathematics, history, philosophy and elsewhere as in natural science. Where experimentation is the likeliest way to answer a question correctly, the scientific spirit calls for the experiments to be done; where other methods — mathematical proof, archival research, philosophical reasoning — are more relevant it calls for them instead. ...
Naturalism tries to condense the scientific spirit into a philosophical theory. But no theory can replace that spirit, for any theory can be applied in an unscientific spirit, as a polemical device to reinforce prejudice. Naturalism as dogma is one more enemy of the scientific spirit.
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