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Are Book of Mormon Studies Scientific?
I recently discussed characteristics of science and pseudo-science. As an exercise I thought I would see how Book of Mormon studies aimed at establishing historicity fare under the criteria. I casually follow the back-and-forth between critics and apologists, so I welcome contributions or corrections from those more knowledgable than myself.
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First lets look at the criteria of pseudo-science:1. It has been less progressive than alternative theories over a long period of time, and faces many unsolved problems; but
The answer to this part seems pretty obvious--certainly as applied Native American origins and culture.2. the community of practitioners makes little attempt to develop the theory toward solutions of the problems, shows no concern for attempts to evaluate the theory in relation to others, and is selective in considering confirmations and disconfirmations.
This certainly applies to the institutional Church, but then the Church is not in the business of science. As for believing scholars, I think it is demonstrable that they do make attempts to develop solutions. The selectivity issue is a little more difficult because it ties into ultimate beliefs regarding the Book of Mormon. Those for or against historicity have at least some evidence in their favor, so charges of selectivity could be made in both directions. Also, Book of Mormon scholars are a loose and varied group, so generalizations about selectivity may not be accurate.
Now for characteristics of science:
Independent Testability: If the divine origin of the Book of Mormon is not directly falsifiable, are there auxilary hypotheses that can be tested? A few immediately come to mind, though there are others. First there is the origin of at least some Native Americans. So far the evidence--as interpreted by secular scholars--has been largely negative, which some would view as falsification of the book's historicity. However, additional auxilary hypotheses have been proposed that entail a limited geography and limited to negligable genetic contribution to surviving Native Americans. Such hypotheses may be justifiable, but it is hard to see how they are testable.
Another line of inquiry concerns geological changes that might have occured at the time of Jesus' death. For example the hypothesis that the cataclysms of 3 Nephi are due to volcanic activity is testable in principle--at least to the level of correlation. (See here for one inconclusive investigation.)
There is also the approach that seeks Near Eastern characteristics in the text (dicussed a little more below).
Unification: The two main competing theories for the origin of the Book of Mormon are either that it is an ancient book, or a 19th century work. I don't think either theory has brought unification to the data; I think it is fair to say that there are favorable and unfavorable data on each side.
Fecundity: Hugh Nibley pioneered the approach of looking for congruences between the Book of Mormon and the ancient Near East culture from which it purportedly originated. This approach has given rise to much of the supporting information with which readers of FARMS publications would be familiar (Hebraisms, chiasmus, etc) and has been relatively fertile. Doing the same with mesoamerica has not yielded as productive results yet. But in both cases the fecundity has thus far been one-way; so far, outside scholarship has not been illuminated by the Book of Mormon--to my knowledge.
So are Book of Mormon studies scientific? My overall opinion is that they are not--at least not yet. This is not to say that they are not scholarly, that they cannot ever become scientific, or that no issues can be addressed scientifically. I just think that, on the whole, Book of Mormon studies have not assembled a critical mass of scientific characteristics to qualify as science. I would place them on the borderlands between the poles of pseudo-science and science. Am I wrong?
4 comments:
"Such hypotheses may be justifiable, but it is hard to see how they are testable."
They are certainly testable since all one would have to do is find some clear Nephite artifact. Whether they are easily fallsifiable is an other matter. But the fact is some claims can be tested but not falsified. Which leads us back to how one views science...
It seems to me though that the real issue vis a vis pseudo-science and the Book of Mormon is the view of theories. Among let us say the apologists they seem quite willing to allow theories to be falsified and merely bring out better theories. So to me this is very much in keeping with science.
Those attacking Book of Mormon studies as science (although arguably they aren't science but more history) tend to want to stick with a single theory to attack. But this, to my eyes, merely shows that critics are being a little pseudo-scientific in their approaches. (i.e. those who continue to attack hemisphere models decades after serious proponents of the Book of Mormon have discarded such theories)
To add, clearly hermeneutics (which is what we're really talking about) isn't really science. Most of the questions raised about Book of Mormon scholarship can be raised about most Biblical scholarship.
Clark, there's an issue with respect to your understandings regarding "testing" and "falsifiability." There's almost certainly no such thing as falsification, due to the incessant ability of scientists to spawn the kind of auxiliary hypotheses that are discussed in the original post. Nonetheless, there is evidence that tends to disconfirm.
People often claim that "the absense of evidence is not evidence of absense." This is of course nonsense. Absense of evidence is indeed evidence of absense -- just weak and fragmentary evidence. However, given a broad enough search with enough opportunities for success, absense of evidence becomes strong enough evidence for absense that it becomes irrational to continue to accept the hypothesis of presence. So testability and disconfirmability are identical -- even if falsifiability is a phantasm.
The struggle with respect to Book of Mormon studies is certainly a contest of quite different theoretical paradigms. But I think the apologists' trajectory isn't really best described in the terms you've offered: "allow theories to be falsified and merely bring out better theories." What is your criterion for a better theory? If we use an encompassing criterion, of explaining all the evidence accounted for by previous theory, the evidence generating the puzzle that produced the new theory, and at least some new and novel implications, it's not at all clear that limited-geography theories, for example, are better -- they don't encompass, they merely solve the generating problems while actually failing to fit with some of the information (prophetic statements) that the hemispheric theory accomodated.
In Lakatosian terms, what's really being produced isn't anything other than a new protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses designed to make the core ideas of the theory untestable. That's what all theories do -- but the difference between "better" and "worse" theories is that the better theories produce unexpected empirical findings. Chiasmus and near-eastern parallels are good examples of such findings, although there are alternative explanations in both cases. The Meso-American component of Book of Mormon studies has no such good examples. The 19th-century text research program has its own examples of unexpected empirical findings; a good example would be the existence of ideas about chiasmus in 1820s Palmyra.
That said, the idea of "science" in Book of Mormon studies has become so profoundly political that I wonder if the concept is worth retaining. People on one side of the debate cling to naive 19th-century conceptions of science, while people on the other have endorsed the relativist crazy train. It seems to me that a more valuable root comparison here might be to the concept of "history." What we want are fruitful historical interpretations -- intepretations that make the data sing and lead us to unexpected discoveries.
RT, I'd say the same problems which beset falsification beset testability in general.
Regarding lack of evidence, certainly it's circumstantial evidence. But that kind of weak evidence really isn't sufficient to claim something has been tested one way or the other.
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