Revisioning of Science

My Main Thesis...

• Despite the apparent “excess” of some postmodernist positions vis a vis faith and knowledge, it helps us see that the modernist programme is not an option for Christians (or other theists). Modern Science appears to fit naturally within the modernist framework only to the extent that it is articulated within a scientific-materialist world view by some groups of scientists.

Quick Overview...

• Galileo and Newton: end of the Medieval and the birth of Modernity

• The unfortunate settlement between Theology and Newton and the rise of a-theism

• Cracks in the Foundations - scientific and social upheavals

• Quantum “madness” - strange but true!• Parting of Ways - where modernity leads us and why we

can’t go there• Science in a post-modern era

Galileo and the Mathematization of WorldView

Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever lies open before

our eyes - I mean the universe - but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in the mathematical

language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometric

figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single

word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.

(Galileo Galilei, Letter to Dowager Duchess Christina)

By What Standard do we Find Truth?

• Rediscovery of Greek thought

• turmoil of Reformation/Counter-Reformation

• Introduction of new sets of questions and categories

Newton... Nature and Nature's Lawslay hid in night: God said: "Let Newton be! and all was light.

What Does Newton’s World Look Like?

• The world METAPHOR changes during the time of Newton

• Kingdom gives way to Clock!

• Theologians (“pulpeteers”) latch on to Newton

• Newton ushers in an era of unprecedented mathematical precision as a way to describe nature

Newton’s successors and a radically changing vision...

theism

deism

atheism

Cracks in the Foundations

• Success after success (Dalton, Darwin, Maxwell, etc) but…

• 3-body problem

• two “dark clouds”

The Great Heresy!

• A wave “is a particle”

• A particle “is a wave”

a fundamental blurring of the universe

Some Questions ...• QM - regardless of the interpretation that you

choose - radically alters our conception of what "physical reality" entails. If you adopt the stance that Theology also speaks about reality (including the physical) does QM pose any challenges for Theology?

• if the world is indeterministic (or has that built in at some level) does this constrain "god" - does this "push" in the direction of Process Theology?

The Necessary Parting of Ways...

• The modernist world view and science founded in this view leads to bleak prospects for humans!

• We strive for an objectivity that ultimately must exclude us!

• This ultimately leads to a skewed sense of value and meaning...

Quotables ...

“We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“I think ... that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate. Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion.”

Richard Dawkins, Humanist in Canada, Winter 1999

“Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe’s unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance”

Jaques Monod, Chance and Necessity

Worldviews in Collision

“Science and Religion are diametrically opposed at their deepest philosophical levels. And because the two worldviews make claims to the same intellectual territory - that of the origin of the universe and humankind’s relationship to it - conflict is inevitable”

The Humanist, (May-June, 1986),. 26.

Scientific Materialism• science is the only reliable path to

objective, timeless, value-neutral knowledge

• matter and energy are the fundamental entities of the universe.

Science in a Postmodern Age• Science, appropriately bracketed, is a

powerful means to a type of knowledge about the physical world

• Science needs to acknowledge other ways of knowing and it must understand its own meta-narrative(s) or that it is rooted in a meta-narrative(s)

• The notion of truth itself must be broadened

Living in a World Without Certainty

• How can I know that the findings of science are true? How can I know that my belief in Christ is true and not a delusion? How can I know that Christ is who he claims to be? How can ....

• It would seem to heresy for me to say to you that I am not certain at least that God is the one true God, that Christ is the Word made Flesh and so on. In order to be a Christian (or a Moslem, Jew, ...) surely some of this must be known with certainty!

• I must be certain that the earth goes around the sun, the the basic theory of stellar evolution is true, that U Cep is really eclipsing and the data that I get is reliable. How could I doubt this and call myself an astronomer?

To all of the above I would answer that I hold those statements to be true! But my truth claim does not imply indubitability. I would go on to maintain that no knowledge can be held without admitting that I could be wrong.

Why would we accept Descartes conception of knowledge? Is it possible to know anything (aside perhaps your existence) indubitably? Augustine anticipated this problem and replied "I believe in order to know". The way out of the downward spiral into nihilism is, I think, to radically reshape our understanding of knowledge itself.

Two Influential Books...

Personal Knowledge

1. Science is always done within a tradition. One learns science - especially a practitioner of science - through a process essentially the same as apprenticeship into that science.

2. Scientists "indwell" the tradition in which they operate. They operate from within a matrix or web of theories, questions, conjectures etc. that focus and direct their thinking.

3. We know bodily. The mind/body dualism is false. We cannot know independent of ourselves in some abstracted way. Knowing is not a passive act.

4. To know something is to assert that that thing is true and this always entails risk - the risk that we may be wrong.

5. There is always a tacit dimension to our knowing. We cannot exhaustively unpack all that we know and in many cases we know far more than we think we know.

Michael Polanyi was a Hungarian born chemist who, in mid life, left chemistry to become a philosopher. His greatest book Personal Knowledge (1958) is an attempt to refashion our understanding of what it means to know. Polanyi began with a number of central understandings of science as it is lived

and practiced.

So nothing really is "true" then? ...

1. the claim is made with universal intent - it is not true only for me but I state it as though I expect it to be true for you as well. This entails that I acquire the skills and understandings of my craft and that I operate with integrity. I must sincerely - passionately - believe that which I assert.

2. the claim has an "appeal" to rationality. Polanyi's critical realist understanding comes through here. In doing science we make contact with reality. Our act of indwelling and the tacit dimension of our knowing convict us of the truthfulness of our claim. Further, this claim must be fruitful, leading to as yet unknown understandings.

Together, these characterize that which Polanyi labeled "personal knowledge". Gone is radical objective/subjective split and the idea of the dispassionate knower.

Let me try to illustrate this with a few examples that Polanyi used from science: • The Copernican Revolution • Michelson Morely Experiment

Wrong! Polanyi would (and I agree) say that a statement in science can be considered true providing:

Challenges ...

• Facing the relativist claim that science is just a social construction

• Re-visioning of science in the absence of timeless, absolute truth claims

• Recognising the necessity (and unavailability) of making meta-scientific claims

Some Examples... Theories of origins (cosmological, biological, sociological)

...– what parts point toward a world that is not

solely a social constuct?– what parts are bound-up in one’s own sets

of stories?

– what parts point toward a world that is not solely a social construct?

– what parts are bound-up in one’s own sets of stories?

Theories of structure (cosmological, biological, sociological)

Theories of application (cosmological, biological, sociological)

– what parts point toward a world that is not solely a social construct?

– what parts are bound-up in one’s own sets of stories?

Science within the Judeo-Christian Narrative

• Conveys deep truths about the cosmos and humanity…

• Sees truth in a multi-faceted way and fundamentally understands truth in a relational sense

• Despite our seeming insignificance we nonetheless bear the imprint of the DIVINE

• We have significance through our relationship with the God of the Cosmos