Introduction

Here are a few random thoughts connected with the subject of Science and Faith.

Fact and Faith

The orthodox understanding in Western society is that rational people (such as scientists and engineers) deal with facts, while irrational people (such as religious believers and conspiracy theorists) rely on faith. Many people are highly committed to this story. Many of those who consider themselves rational refer to this story as a fact; when asked for the evidence (as I sometimes cruelly do), they affirm that it is ‘self-evidently true’, and thus they have no need to produce evidence. The irony seems to escape them.

The reality is that the world is not divided into rational and irrational people: everybody deals with facts - there is no other way to live in the real world. But everybody also works on the basis of faith, from big, risky steps of faith (such as getting married), to small steps with little risk (such as getting on a bus, trusting that the driver will take you where you need to go).

Science and the Scientific Method

We happily talk about 'Science' and 'the Scientific Method', assuming that we (and the person we are talking with) understand what we are talking about. But the more we try to pin down what we mean, the more difficult it gets. It sometime seems that the most accurate definition of Science is a recursive one: it is the activity which is undertaken by Scientists.

This point has been made by many people in the past. To give one example, here is a quote from Robert P Crease, taken from Physics World:

You know what the scientific method is until you try to define it: it’s a set of rules that scientists adopt to obtain a special kind of knowledge. The list is orderly, teachable and straightforward, at least in principle. But once you start spelling out the rules, you realise that they really don’t capture how scientists work, which is a lot messier. In fact, the rules exclude much of what you’d call science, and includes even more of what you don’t. You even begin to wonder why anyone thought it necessary to specify a “scientific method” at all.

This raises the interesting question: why do we need to define the Scientific Method? In his book, The Scientific Method: an Evolution of Thinking from Darwin to Dewey, Henry Cowles (a historian from the University of Michigan) offers his theory about why some people thought it necessary to define “scientific method” in the first place.

In a review of Cowles’ book, Jessica Riskin (a historian from Stanford University) argued that the 'Scientific Method' originated not within science itself, but “in the popular, professional, industrial, and commercial exploitation of its authority” (New York Review of Books 2 July 2020). Integral to this idea, she writes, was the claim that “science held an exclusive monopoly on truth, knowledge, and authority, a monopoly for which ‘the scientific method’ was a guarantee”. Cowles wants to reject such a view of scientific method and suggests we should think instead of science “as the flawed, fallible activity of some imperfect, evolving creatures and as a worthy, even noble pursuit”.

Science and Faith

In the real world, both fact and faith are important, and there is no inherent conflict between scientists and religious people - not least because they are often the same person. Fact plays a vital part in religion, and faith plays a vital part in science - we believe the science we have been taught, and nobody has the time or resources to check even a small fraction of the scientific laws we freely make use of. So, instead of assuming a conflict between the two, I would like to propose a different framework.

It seems to me that the important distinction is between the people who want to discover truth, and the people who want assurance that what they believe is true. One group believes they already have the truth, the other believes there is more to be discovered.

Of course, both groups actually believe that what they currently 'know' is true, and they also both believe that there is more to be discovered, but some people focus more on one aspect and some focus more on the other. And the key difference lies in how they respond when new ideas seem to contradict old, established truth: some embrace the new ideas, and some cling to the old, established certainties.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn famously describes this process. It is often the case, especially when a radical change is being proposed, that the old guard never accept the new idea, but they eventually die off, and the new idea becomes the new dogma. The idea is sometimes known as Planck's principle, from a passage in Max Planck's autobiography which is often paraphrased as "science progresses one funeral at a time".

Both science and organised religion are human activities (despite the repeated claims of their followers to the contrary), and both science and religion experience this tension - between those whose focus is on discovering new truth, and those whose focus is on defending established truth. And, of course, both science and religion need both groups - those who want to see progress and those who want to preserve the benefits that the established truths have provided.

What we see now as science was developed within the Christian worldview, by people who were seeking truth. At that time, there was no real distinction made between theological truth and other kinds of truth. People sought truth, partly for its own sake, and partly because all truth helps us to know the Creator better. For a long time, many people believed in a general narrative of decline: in the past they had great heroes and mighty leaders, there was a 'golden age', and what we have today is just a pale imitation of it. They often assumed that the great thinkers of the past knew more than us, and we have lost much of what they taught. In this context, truth is primarily understood as what we have managed to preserve of the teachings of the ancient authorities. But the more you study ancient texts, the more you discover that they sometimes disagree with each other, and they sometimes say things which are obviously wrong. So you need to look outside the texts, to find ways to resolve the conflicts and correct the misunderstandings.

As people slowly moved away from trusting institutions and ancient authorities, they developed alternative approaches to seeking truth. In Europe, this was fuelled by their belief in the Christian God who wanted to be known, and who could be known through the two basic sources of truth: the revelation contained in scripture, and the revelation contained in nature - often referred to as the 'two books'. In seeking truth, people learned to formulate a story clearly, and then test the truth of that specific story by looking for evidence, either for or against it; simplicity was an advantage, and contradicting other known truth was a serious disadvantage. The same disciplines worked, whether you were seeking truth concerning spiritual matters, or truth concerning the natural world.

And the move away from trusting institutions and ancient authorities was only a move towards embracing other ways of discovering truth, it was not a complete rejection of the institutions and authorities. Whether you are dealing with science or religion, the only way you can move forward is by trusting the bulk of what you have been taught, but recognizing that what you have been taught is not the whole truth, and some details may need to be modified.

In every age, some people have sought to understand truth better, and some people have sought to use the establishment (either the religious or scientific establishment) to assure the public that their ideas were correct. And, of course, sometimes the same people did both: the world is not divided neatly into good and bad people, or into establishment figures and progressives. But, for some people, the emphasis is on "I want to know the truth"; and for others, the emphasis is on "I want other people to know that I have the truth."

And, of course, many young upstarts who sought to overturn the establishment have become in their time pillars of the establishment, resisting the dangerous ideas of the next generation.

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Science and Faith

Introduction

Fact and Faith

Science and the Scientific Method

Science and Faith

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