Science is not Truth
Though many believe it so, it ain’t.
To say that science and truth are one and the same is to propose that the truth changes over time: that 120 years ago space was truly filled with a luminiferous ether that suspended the stars and planets in a fluid gel; that 500 or so years ago the planets in fact revolved around the earth; 1,000 years ago that disease was in reality caused by the imbalance of bodily fluids. Or offensive smells. Or evil spirits.
But wait! you say: Just because people were wrong back then doesn’t mean that underlying reality was different. They were just wrong.
Precisely.
Science does not proscribe truth. Rather, it is a strategy for coping with the limits of our faculties and a method for expanding upon what knowledge we can acquire. As such, the Bible is a scientific book. It is just that its science is a pre-Enlightenment one.
Go back 2,000 years ago and you will find that intelligent people believed all manner of glumdiggle about the composition and mechanics of the natural world, some of which forms the underpinnings of the world view of the biblical authors, and some of which makes it into the pages of the biblical texts.
But let us be fair: What we find in the Bible that we now consider jabberwocky was, in its day, cutting-edge. It was “known” to be “true” by learned and respectable men and women everywhere.
It’s downright uncharitable to hold Moses and his ilk guilty for being innocent of, for instance, the wave-particle duality of light, just as we hope that future generations will not ridicule us too much for believing such obvious (from their point of view) hogswallop today.
Imagine that Genesis began this way:
In the beginning, all matter and energy, as well as time and space, were compressed down into a single point. Something (let’s call it “God”) caused the point to explode into a million billion trillion quinta-gazillion stars and galaxies.
I barely understood that paragraph, and I wrote it. How could we expect an ancient Israelite to? Besides, within a generation or two that theory of cosmic origins, popularly known as “The Big Bang,” will no doubt be considered shamefully foolish. Superstitious, even.
Just this: Reality doesn’t (necessarily) change over time, but our models of it certainly do. And that is what the Bible gives us: a model of reality from a particular time and place. And that is precisely all that science gives us.
Models come and models go, but the newest models are not always the most useful. For example, nowadays it is held that the Bohr model of the atom Just Ain’t So. Nevertheless, it is indispensable to the task of stoichiometry. One must suspend disbelief long enough to use a model that is known to have little or no correspondence with nature in order to do something useful: Balance an equation so you can mix chemical A and chemical B without blowing your fingers off. For that particular task, a more accurate model of the atom is not only unnecessary, it’s downright unhelpful because it’s beside the point: Dr. Heisenberg would be well-advised to stand by and keep his opinions to himself while I determine precisely how much sulphuric acid to pour into this flask.
As stoichiometry, so hermeneutics: A more accurate understanding of the cosmos is not only unnecessary to understanding, say, the message of the Psalms, it is downright unhelpful because it is beside the point. Theories of interpretation that pound the square pegs of scripture into the round holes of scholastic and post-Enlightenment philosophy take an already brackish pond and muddy it further.
On the one hand,
Science thrives on open questions. So does faith rightly understood. Both are journeys into the unknown with the lightest of equipment: a metanarrative or mathematical formula for a compass, and a few fixed reference points on a map that may, who knows, be turned upside down.
— John F. Hobbins, ”Psalm 8: The Common Epistemology of Faith and Science”
On the other,
People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations.... For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations.... You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that.
— G.F.R. Ellis in W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55.
I conclude that humility is always a good idea.
Ombudsman
pilgrim at strangerpilgrim dot com
