Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years by Luther H. Martin & Donald Wiebe

Author:Luther H. Martin & Donald Wiebe
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-09-21T03:00:00+00:00

Cohen’s book review (a cautionary tale)

Even a cursory reading of this review reveals that Cohen is not merely critiquing a book published in 1970 by the theoretical biologist Robert Rosen. Rather, Cohen uses his critique as the illustrative component of a cautionary tale intended to influence the development of mathematical reasoning in theoretical biology. Rosen’s book describes what he claims is a new mathematical approach for discovering general principles in biology that are similar in scope to the lawlike principles of classical physics. Cohen points out that “[u]‌nfortunately, the grammatical form of principles that claim [such] generality does not tell how useful those principles are in particular experiences” (1971: 674). Cohen, moreover, deplores the fact that Rosen presents the theoretical aspects of his new approach in great detail without first establishing their empirical foundation. Cohen, in contrast, maintains that establishing the empirical basis of such principles is a necessary part of the first stage of the theory-building process because it enhances the likelihood that succeeding stages will remain grounded in reality.

In support of his argument, Cohen notes that successful examples of theorizing in biology, such as the extensively used models of molecular biology, were preceded by work that elucidated their empirical basis. Cohen claims that the failure to use this proven methodology tends to occur “[b]‌ecause the elaboration of language is, for some people, much easier than the labor of establishing concordance or tension between general principles and experience” (ibid.). Consequently, he avers, “there is enormous temptation to spin out language that has the sound and syntax of general principles, and to declare it scientifically satisfying without scrupulous regard to its relation to reality” (ibid.). He claims that Rosen’s book is flawed in that respect and that it “is not the only recent work in theoretical biology that succumbs to this temptation” (ibid.). Furthermore, Cohen declares that such a flaw cannot be avoided by adopting the strategy of first developing a full-blown theory and then purporting to establish its empirical validation by showing that a distorted, tailored-to-fit version of that theory is consistent with some preexisting empirical data cherry-picked from the biological literature.

Cohen (1971: 675) also quotes Rosen’s claim that his methodology “is a manifestation in biology of the same kind of reasoning used in physics.” Cohen disagrees, and he expresses his disagreement in the form of a metaphor based on the Cinderella folktale. For he points out that Rosen’s own account of his methodology “describes attempts to force the size-12 feet of ecological communities, cellular biochemistry, and neural networks into the glassy size-4 slippers of the formalism of statistical mechanics” (ibid.). Cohen thus equates Cinderella’s stepsisters’ attempts to force their oversize feet into the glass slipper with Rosen’s attempt to demonstrate that elements of his overblown theory fit some biological data. As pointed out earlier, Cohen’s remarks are more than a book review. In toto, we call them a cautionary tale because Cohen clearly seeks to apprise others of the danger that physics envy may lead to a dead end, and by so doing, “physics envy,” he says, becomes “the curse of biology” (ibid.

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