(May 25, 2020 at 8:26 am)Belacqua Wrote:(May 25, 2020 at 8:15 am)polymath257 Wrote: If a frog did that, we would start studying how and why it did that.
Science is limited to methodological naturalism. If scientists could discover why a frog sang Mozart, then the reason would not be supernatural.
And how would you know if they are unable to do this? It isn't uncommon for there to be unanswered questions for decades. For example, is dark matter supernatural? It almost seems to be by your definition.
Science does NOT rely 'methodological naturalism' as you (and others) say. It merely relies on the scientific method: observation, proposing hypotheses that can be tested, testing said hypotheses (even better if there are several competing hypotheses), and eliminating/modifying those that don't pass the tests.
The core of science is being able to test. And if something *can't* be tested, then it is meaningless as an explanation.
Quote:Attributing it to being 'supernatural' adds absolutely nothing to the discussion.
If no natural explanation is possible, then it wouldn't be natural.
And how you you know whether a 'natural' explanation is possible?
Quote:Quote: For that matter, talking baout the 'nature' of a frog also adds nothing to the discussion.
Every summer there are thousands of frogs in the rice paddies down the mountain from where I live. They have characteristics and regularities. They are made of frog stuff, they do frog things. There are variations, within limits. That is their nature. They cannot be made of solid lead, be a million miles long, and live in the center of the sun -- that is not their nature.
There's nothing odd or spooky about saying something has a nature. It's just the word to say that it is what it is. Science tells us what the nature of the frog is. That's science's job. If science tells us that it is impossible for a frog to sing the duet from Don Giovanni, then it isn't natural for a frog to do that.
And if we find an outlier that can sing Mozart, we adapt our understanding based on that evidence. And, in that case, that particular frog's 'nature' would include singing Mozart.