Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33673
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33673
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Science and faith are not opposites. They are different modes of knowing. They are other modes of knowing as well, such as logic, mathematics, ethics, and the historical method. Each of them addresses a different subject matter and we use each of them according to type of evidence available to us and the type of question we are asking.

These different modes of knowing have clear dependencies on each other. Science, for instance, depends heavily on mathematics. Mathematics depends on certain axioms that cannot be proved and must be taken on faith. But science depends on faith in far more profound ways than this. Science depends on the following propositions which it cannot prove by the scientific method:

- The human mind is rational.
- The universe is real and consistent.
- Human senses have access to all the relevant information for reaching scientific conclusions. 

Scientists maintain these items of faith despite the findings of modern neuroscience casting doubt on the first, quantum mechanics and philosophy both in their own way casting doubt on the second and the history of science suggesting that we can never be certain of the third.

None of the methods of knowing enjoy perfect certainty, if only because of the circular dependencies that exist between them. The human mind may have trouble accepting this lack of certainty and settle at any point in this circle of dependencies for a while, declaring it the rock on which all others depend or which invalidates all others. But this always leaves fundamental questions unanswered, and while some will cling to their chosen rock till they die, there is always the possibility that something will detach them and send them reeling, perhaps to attach themselves to a different rock, perhaps to a position that acknowledges the limits of all methods of knowing and thus accepts that the act of knowing is always and inevitably an act of will.

Throughout the history of thought there are cases in which we have discovered that one method of knowing is better than another for treating certain subjects. The Greek logicians discovered the limits of logic which led in time to a greater use of the scientific method. Darwin, as Amadeus relates, discovered the limits of the Bible as a biology textbook.

Of course, finding that the Bible is not a good biology text is not, in itself, a reason to conclude it is not a valid text for other purposes, for other methods of knowing. And it is worth noting that through much of what we consider the modern period of thought, most intellectuals in the European tradition considered all ancient texts to be reliable textbooks. Thus Newton, like many others of his time, spent years trying to calculate the age of the universe from ancient texts.

As the invention of new instruments made new sets of evidence available, scientists changed their methodology and their faith accordingly (as did theologians, who had to figure out different ways to understand the nature and import of scripture). Scientists of that period worked as if the evidence they had available to them was correct and sufficient for the conclusions they were trying to draw. Scientists today make exactly the same assumptions, and like their predecessors, cannot be certain that it is either correct or sufficient, or that it won't be superseded by new evidence revealed by new instruments. And then as now they depend on the basic items of faith mentioned above.

However firm our metaphysics and our epistemology may seem at any given moment, the historical method reveals to us that far from being fixed, these things are constantly shifting, which in itself should shake our faith in the reliability of our knowing.

One of the most interesting examples of this is that the tradition of the west going back at least to the Greeks, was to regard the seat of wisdom as the rational soul. It was generally recognized that the body was weak, subject to deception, and a slave to appetite. The seat of reason was not the body but the soul. The belief in the rational soul thus preceded Christianity and survived it. Today, however, materialists deny the existence of any type of soul. In doing so, they naturally must transfer the seat of rationality to the body. This move from the rational soul to rational meat is a revolution in epistemology, and it runs into the very real problem that neuroscience is constantly confirming the skepticism of the ancients about the rationality of meat (a skepticism which gave rise to post-modernism and it denial of reason).

In short there are all kinds of good reasons for a "science hero" as you call them to have an epistemological crisis. Indeed, the very term "science hero" contains within it the seeds of that crisis. A hero is one who fights on in the face of overwhelming opposition, and there are many chinks in the armor of science, many places for the knife to slip beneath the breastplate.

If the armor were impregnable, the science hero would be no hero, just a pitiless god. It is because their armor can be pierced that they can be a hero, and like any hero, they can be wounded and they can die. And we should remember also that in literary terms what separates a hero from a bully is humility. If your science hero has no humility about their method of knowing, they will be nothing more than a science bully, and will appeal, as a literary construct, only to bullies of the same ilk.

Original score: 6