Ultimacy, Science, and a Gospel Worldview
I’ve been reading Oppenheimer’s Atom and Void lately. In the work, he raises the question of exactly how much scientific discovery can or ought to affect our worldview. While his motives will always be a controversial issue, I think his ideas are, in themselves, quite intriguing, and they’ve got me thinking about standards of truth other than revelation. I’d like to explore the issue here, give an example, and ask a question. Sorry if it starts and ends as a musing.
Oppenheimer, for instance, notes the change from a world in which the constant movement of objects had to be explained to one in which objects in motion tended to stay in motion. In the earlier version of the world, people explained a sliding bar of soap, in some instances, by saying the air was opening for it and closing behind it, pushing it forward. Now, we know that objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Inertia, correspondingly had a great affect on the way we view the world. We no longer think in terms of constant exertion in quite the same way. Things change only when acted upon by some force. Our philosophy, changed to one of analyzing the forces that change the world, rather than those that moved the world. And yet, Oppenheimer’s point is that we don’t know absolutely why things in motion stay in motion, even now. Though he doesn’t say so, there may be something we don’t know about acting much like a constant in pushing things along as it opens before us and closes behind us.
Thus what we believe scientifically may have a great effect on our worldview if we let it. Witness the atomists. In the nineteenth century, it was quite popularly believed that God had made the world out of hard, unchanging spheres, atoms. Our modern word is really an adaptation. We thought we had found the atom, and so we named it that. We know now that what we found was no such ultimate material of the universe. Atoms were a very convenient standard of ultimacy in the 19th century. Their supposed hardness was bedrock. It was as small as things could get. It was a standard set by God for the ordering of a very orderly universe. It was the dream of scientists to discover the primitive tissue of everything (witness Dr. Lydgate in George Eliot’s Middlemarch). While Darwin and the carnage of two world wars are frequently cited as and certainly were cause for much of the skepticism that our world currently enjoys, such doubt and misgiving were only worsened as the structure was pulled out from under the scientific world’s endeavor and replaced by a science of uncertainty and constant brownian motion, a science that, moreover, began to recognize the limitations of observation, an end to the absolute reign of the empirical.
While we might smugly see ourselves as beyond the day when hard atoms seemed like proof of God’s design, we are quite prone to see in each new scientific theory a chance to adjust our theology or affirm it. It would have been quite reasonable at the time to be an atomist, and actually quite progressive, comparatively, from a scientific point of view. At the same time, perhaps, as Oppenheimer actually suggests, there is an ultimate tissue and we simply haven’t found it. My question is whether we ought ever to adjust our theology to fit our understanding of science. On one hand, I feel that science, or whatever passes for it in any age, is so much a part of our world view that it may be impossible not to. It is only through a worldview that is quite profoundly shaped by current scientific paradigms, that we have any mechanism for understanding truth at all, which would make adjustment necessary. On the other, there is the danger of believing what is not true simply because it is popular or seems well-supported at the time. As well, when old paradigms are disrupted, something we should not think will never happen again in any major way, there are always those that are not able to adjust their thinking to the new paradigms, and thus see the refutation of science they connected to theology as a refutation of theology itself. To name just a few waves of this–Darwin, Freud (If he can join the ranks of sceince), Heisenberg, Chaos Theory, and lately emergence theory. Each has been used as a refutation of God’s existence by certain people (who may or may not be picking up whatever is at hand to make the point they decided on long ago) and has been adapted to by a different group of believers. I can certainly say that I am in favor of never owing enough allegiance to any idea that I couldn’t give it up if I needed to. What I don’t know is whether I am ready to think of theology in isolation from other ideas, though I might sometimes yearn for the possibility.
While I think there are some ideas which are absolute. (THe idea that I exist nad have some form of value, the idea that God is real and loves and cares about me, the idea that my family is important) most ideas are not absolute. We need to be willing to go with the best information we have at the time and be grateful god judges us on the intents of our hearts, not on the actual events which occur.
Comment by matt witten — 9/21/2005 @ 8:10 am
J, my son:
Put some paragraphs in here! I want to read it, but it looks so exhausting.
Comment by Ronan — 9/21/2005 @ 9:10 am
Nay Ronan, this is not the work of my hands. In fact, Welcome back, Steve H.; we missed you!
I’m pretty sensitive to this, as a chemist. You can go back and look at Widtsoe’s essays on how the ether (the pre-Enstienian stuff that was the fabric of the universe) is the Light of Christ. Now, obviously, it would be easy to refute such a claim. I’m actually quite grateful for Widtsoe’s claims because the outline how apt we are to conform our religion to our science. It stands as a great warning to our tendencies.
I tend to draw the line at speculative physics. There are contradicitons that are unresolved and the answers are difficult to experimental confirm. It think there are many aspects of science that are required for rational existance.
That said, I’m open to re-evaluating just about everything. For me, things that stands as evidence for the Gospel, however, are the tangible realities of God in my life. Tangible, so a reevaluation of all things tangible would necessarily effect my persception of the Gospel.
Comment by J. Stapley — 9/21/2005 @ 11:09 am
J-
Interesting concept. Or maybe I should say concepts. This discussion relates to my field in the “soft sciences.” Perhaps because we are fundamentally insecure about not being a real science, a whole philosophy has emerged within the social sciences. This philosophy (for want of a better word) is called positivism wherein we attempt to put social science into natural science terms and models. A good example is the adaptation of Stephen J. Gould’s concept of punctuated equilibrium. Originally developed to help explain biological evolution, political science used this concept to explain institutional evolution. Indeed, I have used Newton’s Laws of Motion to help explain bureaucratic intransigence.
This is important because we humans must attempt to explain our environment even though we cannot completely do so given our limited perspectives. Ancient man used myth, modern man uses science. This ontology (read world view) helps to shape our understanding. The fact remains, when we cannot comprehend phenomenon through our constituted ontology, either screen out the phenomenon or seek to explain it through new theory (this is known as cognitive dissonance–for a brief explanation see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance).
From a personal perspective. I personnally believe that there are fundamental truths that can be comprehended (if imperfectly). Indeed, I rely on this fact such that when I am contemplating truths in political science, I can and do rely on the spirit to help me in teaching and research.
Comment by Craig S. — 9/21/2005 @ 11:09 am
Again, always happy to accept credit for Steve’s work. And you’re right they are not real sciences :-p
Nice comment. There was a paper at FAIR this year on Mormons and cognitive dissonance…I’ll have to dig that up and read it.
Comment by J. Stapley — 9/21/2005 @ 11:12 am
J
I must tell an anecdotal story about Einstein. Enstein was presenting a paper at a conference wherein the topic of nuclear weapons was brought up. An attendant asked Einstein the following: “We as scientists have learned so much. We have even harnessed the power of the atom. Why cant we develop a system of government with which to control that power?”
To which Einstein thought for a moment and answered, “Well you see my boy…physics is easy.”
So much for not being a real science!
Comment by Craig S. — 9/21/2005 @ 11:21 am
Craig,
I think there is nothing the social sciences need fear from not being a “real” science. It’s the “soft” sciences that really keep us from being slaves to the tyrany of empiricism. At least those of us not in the “hard” sciences admit that life is interpretation. I think the social sciences departments ought to become social science and social philosophies departments, but that wouldn’t hold as much water with administrations or donors.
Interestingly, though, it has often been the social sciences that have been foremosti n the bridging of science and philosophy, as your comment on punctuated equilibrium makes clear. For good or evil, the social sciences seem to be the place where philosophy and science meet most clearly.
J,
I won’t even start with quetioning tangibility here. It seems to be the one thing that science hasn’t questioned, though philosophy has. Of course what tangibility means has been much changed by much of this debate.
ronan,
I will, later today, try to go back and re-paragraph.
Comment by Steve H — 9/21/2005 @ 1:27 pm
Steve: What I don’t know is whether I am ready to think of theology in isolation from other ideas, though I might sometimes yearn for the possibility.
Don’t worry, none of the prophets were really able to separate the two either. We all have lenses through which we see the world — it is to our advantage to have a more advanced scientific lens to look through in the present. To reject that more advanced lens in favor of an outdated one would be foolish I think — and I suspect the prophets of old would agree.
BTW — it seems to me that the jury is still out on the overall concepts taught by LDS apostles of yore (comparing the light of Christ to “ether” or calling the building blocks of all matter “atoms”). It may not have been “ether” or “atoms”, but it seems we are still searching for the actual root of these things no matter what names we give them right?
Comment by Geoff J — 9/21/2005 @ 4:16 pm
Absolutely. This is why I don’t see current science as absolutely more complex or more accurate. When we make new “discoveries” we tend to be smug in our view of past attitudes that went along with their science. In reality we sometimes leave behind some really pretty possible notions, though perhaps not as much as we gain. In all, I’m not pinning my hopes on the implications of any particular scientific view of the world. Your right, though, I don’t worry about it–just think about it now and then.
Comment by Steve H — 9/22/2005 @ 2:13 am