Hutcheson’s Grammar School

RMPS Conference

Dr. Peter Vardy

“The certainties of reason, however real and tangible, eventually come to an end, and thus one is forced to rely on other certainties, based on a different scale of values regulated by love and illuminated by faith.” (John Paul 11 9/1989)
“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.” (Einstein ‘The world as I see it’)

‘Religion without science is blind,

Science without religion is lame.’

(Albert Einstein)

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment;
Cleverness is mere opinion, bewilderment is intuition. (The Sufi mystic Jalal-uddin Rumi)

Most scientific breakthroughs do not come from logic but from intuitions. Einstein said that his theory of relativity arose from imagining riding on a beam of light. Kekule, the leading chemist, realised that benzene is a string-like structure through his famous dream of a snake holding its own tail.

The Catholic Church, as part of combining the wisdom of the ancients with Christianity, accepted the Ptolemaic view – God was seen to have made the earth as the centre of everything. Copernicus (1473-1543) pointed out that many of mathematical difficulties with the Ptolemaic view would evaporate if the sun was at the centre and not the earth. He kept emphasising that this was only an hypothesis – and only published his views in the year of his death and dedicated the book to the Pope! This flatly contradicted Church teachings of a thousand years and also Ps. 93: “Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm”.

Catholic and Protestants were united in rejecting Copernicus and Galileo “People who give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth resolves round, not the heavens of the firmament, the sun and the moon…. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth.” (Luther) “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?” (Calvin)

THE QUESTION OF AUTHORITY WAS CENTRAL – THE WHOLE ESTABLISHED ORDER WAS UNDER THREAT.

Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) built up the best set of observations of the solar system and handed these over to Kepler. Copernicus considered that orbits were circular – Kepler showed that the orbits were eliptical.

However it was Galileo who was actually condemned by the Inquisition for two things: (1) for holding that the earth rotates on its axis, and (2) that it revolves round the sun. He was condemned privately in 1616 and publicly in 1633. The ideas were 100 years old, but they almost cost Galileo his life. He was forced to recant and never again to uphold the sinful view that the earth moves. As he signed the recantation he was heard to say: “BUT IT STILL MOVES, JUST THE SAME.”

Galileo , in spite of the vulnerability of his position, nevertheless said that all power and authority, including the authorities of the Christian Church, should have no right to interfere with the search for the truth. “Why, this would be as if an absolute despot, being neither a physician nor an architect, but knowing himself free to command, should undertake to administer medicines and erect buildings according to his whim – at grave perils of his poor patients’ lives, and speedy collapse of his edifices.” GALILEO WAS SAYING TO THE CHURCH: MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!

How does science advance?

Aristotle’s philosophy dominated science for nearly 1500 years. He was the first to use observation to work out the nature of different species of plants and animals and also to observe the nature of the earth. He considered that the earth was the centre of the Universe and, around this fixed point, the stars and planets moved in perfect circles.

The Aristotelian Universe was divided into two distinct regions – the sub-lunar region was the inner region extending for the central earth to just inside the moon’s orbit. The supra-lunar region was the remainder of the finite universe, extending from the moon’s orbit to the sphere of the stars which marked the outer boundary of the universe. Nothing existed beyond the outer sphere, not even space. Unfilled space is an impossibility in the Aristotelian system. All celestial objects in the super-lunar region are made of an incorruptible substance called aether. Aether possesses a natural propensity to move round the earth in perfect circles. This approach was endorsed by the Christian Church as it placed the earth at the centre. No-one today accepts Aristotle’s view – so

HOW DOES SCIENCE ADVANCE?

There is now a rich field of philosophy of science which explores the issue. Naïve inductionism is the way most non-scientists think science works – this holds that there are careful observations and general rules are framed based on these observations (this was Aristotle’s view). However this is simply wrong. Observations are not neutral. What is seen depends on the framework belief that is in place. ‘Seeing’ is not theory-neutral. Michael Polanyi gives the example of a medical student looking at an x-ray. At first the student is puzzled – he can see nothing of what the experts claim to see. Over weeks of study, a tentative understanding will begin to dawn. He will forget the ribs and see the lungs. Eventually, if he perseveres long enough, a rich range of detail will emerge for him that was not present at the beginning. Many tribal cultures cannot see in 3-dimensional terms.

OBSERVATION STATEMENTS ARE ALWAYS MADE BASED ON A PRIOR THEORY. They are not neutral.

The Vienna Circle, the logical positivists and the work of A.J. Ayer led to the dominance of a philosophic movement named VERIFICATIONISM between the two world wars. Verificationism holds that a statement is MEANINGLESS unless it can be:

A) Empirically verified – i.e. the observations that would verify the statement can be stated, or it is

B) A tautology

All religious statements, therefore, were considered to be meaningless (NB – not the same as false!) as no empirical statement would verify claims like ‘God exists’, ‘God loves me’ or ‘prayers are answered’. TO be part of science, a statement MUST be verifiable.

FALSIFICATIONISM is the other side of verificationism. Associated with Popper and Anthony Flew, it holds any statement to be meaningless unless the observations that would falsify it can be stated. Thus ‘God loves me’ is held to be a meaningless statement as the believer will not accept the possibility that ANYTHING could happen which would render this statement false. Formerly, some scientists were verificationists – holding that if statements could not be verified or falsified they were vacuous or meaningless. Only statements that could be falsified were considered to be scientific statements. The falsificationist sees science as a set of hypotheses that are proposed as a way of accounting for the behaviour of part of the whole of the universe. Science advances by proposed theories being falsified. In this way, failed theories are of great value than confirmed ones as they show which hypotheses are mistaken. Scientists learn from their mistakes. Falsificationists reject certain disciplines as not scientific at all as they cannot be falsified. Popper claimed that Marx’s theory of history, Freudian psychoanalysis and Adler’s psychology are not scientific as their hypotheses cannot be falsified. A successful theory, on this view, is one that has not yet been falsified. FOR FALSIFICATIONISTS, ALL THEORIES ARE TENTATIVE.

Aristotle’s physics could explain a great deal. Heavy objects fall to the ground (seeking their natural place at the centre of the universe); syphons and pumps worked because of the impossibility of a vaccum. However eventually Aristotle’s physics were falsified as, for instance, the moons of Jupiter orbited Jupiter not the earth. Newton’s theory could account for everything that Aristotle explained but also for those things that Aristotle failed to explain. It was therefore a superior theory. For 200 years it was successful (i.e. it was not falsified) but at the end of the 19th century it was getting into difficulties and was falsified. Einstein’s theory explained everything that Newton’s could, but also could account for those areas where Newton failed. Einstein’s theory is currently successful as it has not yet been refuted.

PROBLEMS WITH VERIFICATIONISM / FALSIFICATIONISM

When a new theory is produced, it may often be refuted by the technology available at the time and, if falsificationism was right, it would be dismissed. But this is not what happens – and it is fortunate for science that this is the case. As an example, when Maxell first published the first details of the kinetic theory of gases in 1859, in the same paper he acknowledged that the theory was falsified by measurements on the specific heat of gases. It was not till 18 years later that the measurements which would have falsified it were shown to be mistaken.

Most poetry and statements about morality are rendered meaningless on this view. How does one verify ‘Killing innocent people is wrong’? The verificationist principle (‘Any statement that cannot be empirically verified is meaningless’) cannot itself be verified and is, therefore, meaningless. Many scientific statements cannot be verified by empirical observation (e.g. the existence of black holes, dark matter or theories about the origin of the universe. Also general rules such as ‘all points on a Euclidean circle are equal distant for the centre’ .Given that the majority of the world’s population are religious, there is no reason why such people should accept a definition of meaning that renders their most cherished beliefs meaningless and, also, these theories fail to explain science.

The film ‘Contact’ well portrays the tension between a scientific and a religious perspective on life – appealing to ‘OCCAM’s RAZOR’. That the simplest explanation is to be preferred. Jodie Foster (the scientist Ellie) appeals to Occam against her male friend who is a theologian and who believes in God – maintaining, as many scientists do today, that God is irrelevant. She is working on a simple VERIFICATIONIST model – if a statement cannot be verified, it cannot be true……

Ellie is an astronomer involved in SETI and receives a signal from an extra-terrestrial race which give instructions for the building of a huge machine – designed to take one person. She goes on this machine through a series of wormholes and arrives at the Vega star system where she is met by her father (downloaded from her memories, the extra-terrestirals say, to make communication easier). They tell her the galaxy is connected by these worm holes and there are huge numbers of civilisations. The aliens are benign and she returns excited BUT WITH NO EVIDENCE. What is worse, although she thought she was away for 18 hours, on earth only a few seconds have elapsed. She is called before a Congressional session to testify in the face of considerable scepticism.

Until quite recently, many scientists have considered their understanding of the world to be ‘right’. Newton is a good example – he and his followers considered that Natural Laws were absolute. Indeed at the end of the 19th Century, some physicist were forecasting that soon there would be nothing left for them to do. Then came Einstein, chaos theory and quantum mechanics. The old understandings had to be rejected. YET Newton’s law still function very effectively at the macro, every day level. It is at the micro level that problems arise. Science does NOT advance by steady progress. Rather a paradigm is developed and then explored and then a sudden shift of paradigm takes places which is generally resisted

It was Thomas Kuhn who developed the crucially important idea of paradigm shifts which is a particularly significant way of seeking to understand how science advances. Scientists, he held, work within a given paradigm which is generally accepted and explored. A new paradigm represents a rupture of the understanding. It challenges many of the old ideas. It is not a development but a total shift of perspective and understanding. The shift from one paradigm to another comes suddenly – as a result of an insight or intuition rather than progressive development. Both paradigms can make sense of the observations, but one will come to command wider acceptance and therefore will be adjudged ‘true’.

Quotes from Kuhn: ‘The Structure of scientific revolution’

·  ‘If anomalies become serious and numerous, a scientist will sense a crisis for the paradigm. Typically they will begin to lose faith and then to consider alternatives. They do not renounce the paradigm that has led them into crisis.’ (p.77)

·  ‘The scientist in crisis will continually try to generate speculative theories that, if successful, may disclose the road to a new paradigm’ (p.87)

·  ‘A new paradigm emerges all at once, sometimes in the middle of the night, in the mind of a man deeply immersed in crisis. (p.90).

·  ‘When making the revolutionary change from one paradigm to another, scientists often speak of ‘the scales falling from the eyes’ (p.122) ‘The conversion experience that I (Kuhn) have likened to a gestalt switch remains, therefore, at the heart of the revolutionary process.’ (p.204)

Four key figures underpin the modern tension between science and religion: Feuerbach, Darwin, Marx and Freud.

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) was a German philosopher, who explained religion in psychological terms. He was an atheist and developed one of the first approaches to philosophy based entirely on materialism. In his youth he was a pupil of the eminent German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, whose philosophical approach he later rejected. In his most important book, The Essence of Christianity (1841; trans. 1854), Feuerbach argued that the existence of religion is justifiable only if it satisfies a psychological need. He maintained that a person's main preoccupation is with the self - the worship of God is actually worship of an idealized self. Feuerbach's materialism is arguably more important that his approach to religion. He argued that people and their material needs should be the foundation of social and political thought. Individuals as well as their minds are the products of their environment. The consciousness of a person is the result of the interaction of sensory organs and the external world. Being essentially a materialist, he argued “Der Mensch ist was er isst” (Man is what he eats), and advocated better food to improve humankind.