[FoRK] Practicing Science: Secular vs. Religious Ideology

[Russell Turpin]

Lion Kimbro:
> But there's *another* class of projects, where you don't know how it's 
> going to turn out, where you're investigating a new territory, or 
> something like that -- and I think that a kind of faith is required. 

"Faith" has a range of meaning, and I think it's important to distinguish
two senses that often get conflated. 1) Belief in a factual proposition 
for which one lacks evidence, and 2) holding enough expectation of 
fulfilling goals to continue effort or action toward them. No matter how 
much confidence one has in a particular project, the reality is that the 
future is uncertain, and all teleological action is based on partial 
knowledge. 
 
Our language lends itself to this confusion. And I suspect there is a 
degree of human psychology behind that. We'd like to think we have more
control over the future than we do. Despite that, an important part of
rationality is taking the precision to distinguish, at least each in 
their own mind, between what we know is the case, and what we hope to 
make the case through some project.  

_________________________________________________________________
Share life as it happens with the new Windows Live.
http://www.windowslive.com/share.html?ocid=TXT_TAGHM_Wave2_sharelife_012008