Jeff Forshaw, the author of the piece in The Guardian entitled Science and religion are united in a shared sense of wonder [1] is a serious physicist. Simon Jenkins, a regular columnist for, again, The Guardian, is someone I read quite regularly. I do not find him irresistible. Yet, as he is tolerated by the paper that I generally endorse, I too tolerate him. He has written an article Wave a banknote at a pundit and he’ll predict anything, almost defending, at least justifying, the verdict against the scientists in the L’Aquila earthquake missed-prediction affair [2]. These are the people I would count as friends of science, the latter because of his affiliation with the newspaper. And, now you understand the subtext of the title of this post.
But these are not friends of science along the same lines. Therefore, the title has two further subtexts, the different ways in which they play the role of fifth columnists. And, I really have nothing to choose between them. Let me take them one by one. If I am able to, I will connect them later in the post.
First, Forshaw. The article has as its basis a jamboree among “particle physicists, cosmologists, theologians [why them?] and philosophers.” He characterizes his research as an “ultimately futile attempt” to lift his spirits “in the face of a meaningless and eternal oblivion.” This truly surprised me. He, along with Brian Cox, is a shining star of the firmament of science popularizers (I have and read their book The Quantum Universe and thoroughly enjoyed their bold extensions of existing knowledge and ideas expressed in layman language). I am surprised not because he admits to engaging in “ultimately futile attempts”. Every scientist worth his salt knows that the so-called “reality” will always be unreachable, at least through science. Our brain just does not appear to have evolved beyond the basics. But, why “meaningless and eternal oblivion”?
This phrase appears to me to have been put in only to bring in religion into the discussion. As you would readily agree, it is philosophy and philosophy alone that asks, “What is the meaning of it all? When did it all start? How will it all end?” When philosophers ask these questions, and scientists try to find even tentative answers, they mean them as starting lines of enquiry. But, religion treats the questions as the period at the end of this sentence. A full stop, God. So, Forshaw has succeeded in bringing religion into this question.
I wish to analyze a few sentences he has written. I promise you I have not taken these out of context. If you harbor any doubts on this score, the URL is given at the end. “By overstating science’s powers and not acknowledging its limitations, we risk fostering growth of a religion-substitute.” I do not know any scientist who has not acknowledged the limitations of science. This is a straw man statement. But, I will excuse that. To be generous to Forshaw, I am going to assume he has mistaken science and technology, use of science.
Just listen to technologists – “Geo-engineering will take care of global warming,” is a typical boast. It has engineering and not scientific hubris behind it. It is technology-hubris, backed up by scientific “explanations”, that is behind the “Curiosity” probe to Mars.
Science would have never used “will”, for one thing. Had science been arrogant, there would not have been much anxiety on the faces of engineers when they did not know what was happening to the probe during the last minutes of its descent. For all his iconoclasm, Darwin never answered what the title of his book Origin of Species proclaimed.
Forshaw acknowledges this when he says, “Science, which advances through the weight of evidence, is inherently uncertain.” This gives me a connection to the other article, by Simon Jenkins, that I had referred earlier. But, I am jumping the gun. I am going back to Forshaw.
“[Q]uestions that science can tackle are … limited in scope.” No one disputes this. But, what that scope is at any particular time, no one has even tried answering that. There is a strong reason behind this silence. Once upon a time, the why of thunders and lightning were considered beyond the scope of explanations. Gods were invented, through the mechanism of religion. We had Thor, Indra and a whole lot of other Gods. Gods filled this gap in our knowledge quite snugly.
But, only till science developed. Now, scientific “explanations” abound on the same. Why the quotation marks? Just so, you would understand that the “explanations” that are given are within the bounds of science as we currently know it. Science is always current, just as much as religion is outdated. Forshaw asserts that science “cannot even hope to answer the question why there is something rather than nothing.” I do not know how he can say this with confidence, even after knowing what happened to the Gods of thunder and lightning. No, I am not saying that science will find the answer; only that we cannot say it cannot. We just do not know and it will be wise to leave the unknown to itself. As an aside, religion co-opts the unknown most spuriously.
It is truly funny that the writer says that scientific “explanations”, like for why something exists, is trivial. He is an accomplished scientist and I am not going to dispute that. Yet, as he is balancing religion and science on the two plates of a balance, I have to pose this question: Can religion answer why there is something rather than nothing. Indeed, as far as I know, a Vedic scripture says that may not be knowable. That may be the only instance religion and science can even be considered to have come together. Ever since, it has been divergence. This is good and I can only hope it gets better.
One last point: “In addition to being unable to conjure up material existence, the laws of physics cannot create meaning either.” OK. Can religion conjure up material existence? No. What meaning can religion create? None. Religion, in its self-interest, celebrates ignorance under the name of God. Science, on the other hand, celebrates ignorance with a view to dispelling darkness. It is up to us to choose. There is no point in trying to reconcile choice and unchoice.
I will leave Forshaw and his jamboree now to join Jenkins. My response will be very short, focused on one line of Forshaw. Jenkins argues that when others who fail to do their jobs or inflict damage, like a forester, a cook, a mechanic, a builder are punished for their professional lapses, how can the weather forecaster, an epidemiologist, or a seismologist be spared. On the face of it this is a cutting argument. But, it slices only through warm butter.
Forshaw said, and I repeat, “Science, which advances through the weight of evidence, is inherently uncertain.” The technologies that enable the forester, the builder, the cook et al have developed to a level of certainty that a professional practitioner can be deemed to have been negligent in his duty if he contributes to damage. Hence the punishment.
This definitely is not so in the case of a meteorologist, an epidemiologist, a seismologist or even an economist. The science (if indeed economics is a science!) has just not developed, for one thing because the factors are so complex (remember, the butterfly flap in Beijing and snowstorm in Denver!), to reduce the uncertainty to the level where professional incompetency can be charged against failure to predict. By the way, a Japanese government agency stopped its research efforts to predict earthquakes about a decade and a half ago and the leader of the team apologized to the nation for wasting so much public money over three to four decades.
Jenkins shows an astounding intensity of level-confusion in his equating different things. I have just one other thing to say in response to Jenkins. He wrote, “[P]eople have craved prediction against uncertainty.” Yes, they have. But, that is their fault. If scientists are asked to predict what is now essentially unpredictable, one cannot pin the blame on scientists. They give out messages in the form that carries significance only to the level to which knowledge has developed. Just because people demand certainty, what is merely probable does not suddenly become a certainty. The solution to problems like L’Aquila lies not in imprisoning the messenger but in educating the people to receive the messages in their true form. It is a demand on the civic authorities for which scientists cannot pay through spending six years behind bars.
By the way, at L’Aquila the scientists did not proclaim that there will not be an earthquake. It is only when their probabilistic message got translated to certainty to reach the masses, error entered the scene. Yes, it was the certainty that was erroneous. Do not blame the scientists for that, please. The rot is in the unscientific minds of the people.
There is another thing to connect religion and science. Jenkins says, “Science has taken the place of religion in a cocoon of uncritical certainty.” No. Religion is still in a “cocoon of uncritical certainty.” More importantly, it is society that has forced science into this cocoon, because and only because it does not have the patience to understand uncertainty. It seeks the certainties of astrologers from scientists. Whose fault is that? Let Jenkins respond to this question.
Now, you would understand why I said that science does not need scientists like Forshaw and media personalities who have built up a reputation for themselves, like Jenkins. They, from these two pieces, are more like the fifth columnists of the Spanish Civil war in the 1930s.
If there is a civil war between science and religion, you know where my sympathy lies.
Raghuram Ekambaram
References
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/28/science-religion-life-universe-questions
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/italy-earthquake-laquila-banknote-predict
But these are not friends of science along the same lines. Therefore, the title has two further subtexts, the different ways in which they play the role of fifth columnists. And, I really have nothing to choose between them. Let me take them one by one. If I am able to, I will connect them later in the post.
First, Forshaw. The article has as its basis a jamboree among “particle physicists, cosmologists, theologians [why them?] and philosophers.” He characterizes his research as an “ultimately futile attempt” to lift his spirits “in the face of a meaningless and eternal oblivion.” This truly surprised me. He, along with Brian Cox, is a shining star of the firmament of science popularizers (I have and read their book The Quantum Universe and thoroughly enjoyed their bold extensions of existing knowledge and ideas expressed in layman language). I am surprised not because he admits to engaging in “ultimately futile attempts”. Every scientist worth his salt knows that the so-called “reality” will always be unreachable, at least through science. Our brain just does not appear to have evolved beyond the basics. But, why “meaningless and eternal oblivion”?
This phrase appears to me to have been put in only to bring in religion into the discussion. As you would readily agree, it is philosophy and philosophy alone that asks, “What is the meaning of it all? When did it all start? How will it all end?” When philosophers ask these questions, and scientists try to find even tentative answers, they mean them as starting lines of enquiry. But, religion treats the questions as the period at the end of this sentence. A full stop, God. So, Forshaw has succeeded in bringing religion into this question.
I wish to analyze a few sentences he has written. I promise you I have not taken these out of context. If you harbor any doubts on this score, the URL is given at the end. “By overstating science’s powers and not acknowledging its limitations, we risk fostering growth of a religion-substitute.” I do not know any scientist who has not acknowledged the limitations of science. This is a straw man statement. But, I will excuse that. To be generous to Forshaw, I am going to assume he has mistaken science and technology, use of science.
Just listen to technologists – “Geo-engineering will take care of global warming,” is a typical boast. It has engineering and not scientific hubris behind it. It is technology-hubris, backed up by scientific “explanations”, that is behind the “Curiosity” probe to Mars.
Science would have never used “will”, for one thing. Had science been arrogant, there would not have been much anxiety on the faces of engineers when they did not know what was happening to the probe during the last minutes of its descent. For all his iconoclasm, Darwin never answered what the title of his book Origin of Species proclaimed.
Forshaw acknowledges this when he says, “Science, which advances through the weight of evidence, is inherently uncertain.” This gives me a connection to the other article, by Simon Jenkins, that I had referred earlier. But, I am jumping the gun. I am going back to Forshaw.
“[Q]uestions that science can tackle are … limited in scope.” No one disputes this. But, what that scope is at any particular time, no one has even tried answering that. There is a strong reason behind this silence. Once upon a time, the why of thunders and lightning were considered beyond the scope of explanations. Gods were invented, through the mechanism of religion. We had Thor, Indra and a whole lot of other Gods. Gods filled this gap in our knowledge quite snugly.
But, only till science developed. Now, scientific “explanations” abound on the same. Why the quotation marks? Just so, you would understand that the “explanations” that are given are within the bounds of science as we currently know it. Science is always current, just as much as religion is outdated. Forshaw asserts that science “cannot even hope to answer the question why there is something rather than nothing.” I do not know how he can say this with confidence, even after knowing what happened to the Gods of thunder and lightning. No, I am not saying that science will find the answer; only that we cannot say it cannot. We just do not know and it will be wise to leave the unknown to itself. As an aside, religion co-opts the unknown most spuriously.
It is truly funny that the writer says that scientific “explanations”, like for why something exists, is trivial. He is an accomplished scientist and I am not going to dispute that. Yet, as he is balancing religion and science on the two plates of a balance, I have to pose this question: Can religion answer why there is something rather than nothing. Indeed, as far as I know, a Vedic scripture says that may not be knowable. That may be the only instance religion and science can even be considered to have come together. Ever since, it has been divergence. This is good and I can only hope it gets better.
One last point: “In addition to being unable to conjure up material existence, the laws of physics cannot create meaning either.” OK. Can religion conjure up material existence? No. What meaning can religion create? None. Religion, in its self-interest, celebrates ignorance under the name of God. Science, on the other hand, celebrates ignorance with a view to dispelling darkness. It is up to us to choose. There is no point in trying to reconcile choice and unchoice.
I will leave Forshaw and his jamboree now to join Jenkins. My response will be very short, focused on one line of Forshaw. Jenkins argues that when others who fail to do their jobs or inflict damage, like a forester, a cook, a mechanic, a builder are punished for their professional lapses, how can the weather forecaster, an epidemiologist, or a seismologist be spared. On the face of it this is a cutting argument. But, it slices only through warm butter.
Forshaw said, and I repeat, “Science, which advances through the weight of evidence, is inherently uncertain.” The technologies that enable the forester, the builder, the cook et al have developed to a level of certainty that a professional practitioner can be deemed to have been negligent in his duty if he contributes to damage. Hence the punishment.
This definitely is not so in the case of a meteorologist, an epidemiologist, a seismologist or even an economist. The science (if indeed economics is a science!) has just not developed, for one thing because the factors are so complex (remember, the butterfly flap in Beijing and snowstorm in Denver!), to reduce the uncertainty to the level where professional incompetency can be charged against failure to predict. By the way, a Japanese government agency stopped its research efforts to predict earthquakes about a decade and a half ago and the leader of the team apologized to the nation for wasting so much public money over three to four decades.
Jenkins shows an astounding intensity of level-confusion in his equating different things. I have just one other thing to say in response to Jenkins. He wrote, “[P]eople have craved prediction against uncertainty.” Yes, they have. But, that is their fault. If scientists are asked to predict what is now essentially unpredictable, one cannot pin the blame on scientists. They give out messages in the form that carries significance only to the level to which knowledge has developed. Just because people demand certainty, what is merely probable does not suddenly become a certainty. The solution to problems like L’Aquila lies not in imprisoning the messenger but in educating the people to receive the messages in their true form. It is a demand on the civic authorities for which scientists cannot pay through spending six years behind bars.
By the way, at L’Aquila the scientists did not proclaim that there will not be an earthquake. It is only when their probabilistic message got translated to certainty to reach the masses, error entered the scene. Yes, it was the certainty that was erroneous. Do not blame the scientists for that, please. The rot is in the unscientific minds of the people.
There is another thing to connect religion and science. Jenkins says, “Science has taken the place of religion in a cocoon of uncritical certainty.” No. Religion is still in a “cocoon of uncritical certainty.” More importantly, it is society that has forced science into this cocoon, because and only because it does not have the patience to understand uncertainty. It seeks the certainties of astrologers from scientists. Whose fault is that? Let Jenkins respond to this question.
Now, you would understand why I said that science does not need scientists like Forshaw and media personalities who have built up a reputation for themselves, like Jenkins. They, from these two pieces, are more like the fifth columnists of the Spanish Civil war in the 1930s.
If there is a civil war between science and religion, you know where my sympathy lies.
Raghuram Ekambaram
References
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/oct/28/science-religion-life-universe-questions
2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/italy-earthquake-laquila-banknote-predict
2 comments:
"What meaning can religion create? None. Religion, in its self-interest, celebrates ignorance under the name of God. Science, on the other hand, celebrates ignorance with a view to dispelling darkness. It is up to us to choose."
And people choose religion! People choose religion thinking it is the light, the only light! And they think that religion creates meaning.
Perhaps, religion does create meaning. Life is meaningless, as far as I know. As meaningless for man as it is for the housefly: a nuisance for others. But we, human beings, create meaning. Religion makes that creation easy!
No Matheikal ... You are reaching into ontology, into exitence. Your argument is that man thinks / needs meaning to life (and you don't, which fortunately stands you in good stead), therefore life should have meaning. I do not accept this line of thought.
Second, while religion may make it easy to create meaning for life,, it makes human life more miesrable - a loss-loss truth / proposition.
RE
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