I don't use myth or story in the sense of make believe and therefore false, but rather in the more powerful sense of that which gives shape to our lives, our beliefs, our emotions, our thinking, our speaking, our writing, our art and on and on.
So why is it that I think science makes us idiots? What forced me to this conclusion? Well, it was watching Q & A (an Australian panel discussion show broadcast on the ABC). Amongst panel this week were Dr John Dixon from the Centre for Public Christianity and Professor Lawrence Krauss from the Origins Project. Two far more qualified intellectuals than I, yet I sat and watched them back and forth with each other and couldn't but want to give them the batman slap:
Yes, not new, popular in the digital space for stupid things people say that need to be confronted. And so what was it that I felt constantly needed the batman slap? It was phrases of the ilk around "scientific fact" - and both these highly intellectual gentleman - one speaking from a Christian perspective and one from an atheistic perspective - seem to hold to the same idiotic fantasy that science is primarily about concretising facts. This is the myth or story about science that to me makes many intellectuals look like idiots - and will do the same for the rest of us if we fall for that story. Why?
Let's actually use some science - in the sense of empirical data that supports our argument. And to make it extra nice, this is an exercise that you could carry out from the safety of your home. Try to think back to your year eight science class. Now, think really hard, what was the text book that brought a wealth of scientific wisdom into your class. If you're like me, you've probably got no idea. That's ok, this experiment will still work. But it will require a stretch of intellectual skill that is beyond some of our best intellectuals. Ask yourself why it might be that this scientific text - the most important of texts during your scientific learning in year eight - no longer has a scientific hold over your life. Could it perhaps be that you're clever enough to realise that some of what was in that text book may just happen to be flat out wrong? Scientific facts that are now anything but? Maybe your textbook was a little like mind and actually contained some stories about how wrong science had been 10 years back, 20 years back, 50, 100, 1000 years back. Yet, the story repeated over and over again is that science is our only trusted source for what is true. Bah humbug! What arrogant rot! (irony intended).
I think Postman in his book The End of Education hits this on the head - which I happened to re-read again not long after wanting to batman slap my TV!
Yes, we know things, but much of it is wrong, and what replaces that may be wrong as well. And even that which is right, and seems to need no amendment, is limited in its scope and its applicability (p. 69).
It seems it is so simple it is too complex for those for whom it should matter most. But perhaps it's not its simplicity, but rather that it's simplicity calls for something that doesn't come easy - humility. To proclaim with certainty what is discovered on one hand, with the other hand poised in a batman slap. And nobody likes a batman slap! So it seems much more popular to hold up science as the authority of truth because no one seems to want to point out how this makes us idiots. Maybe that's because calling ourselves idiots is something we're not too fond of either?
Don't get me wrong - I'm not decrying science - just the myth that it makes facts. It's strange to me in an industry that is built on discoveries, and powered by the ability to prove others wrong (including other scientists), the story we're told so often is that science is always right and by all sides of many spheres. Yes it can be right - but only until it is discovered that it was wrong. Which is always a possibility for even the most concrete scientific fact. The Achilles heal of science is that it cannot discover what is to come, it can only measure what has been. It can theorise and predict but it cannot prove that what is, will always be, that it will operate as it always has, and that the facts of today will be the facts of tomorrow.
Perhaps all of us need to stop bowing at the idol of science before it makes idiots of us all.
Great article, Adam.
ReplyDeleteI've always found it strange that hypothesis are put forward as 'gospel' truth without acknowledging it for what it is - a hypothesis. Even good hypothesis are only that, a good hypothesis.