« Movie Updates | Main | If you saw the Opening Ceremony... »

May 21, 2008

Orson Scott Card on Science

always find Orson to be a fine essayist. Here's one of his essays that's worth your time. Here's just one brilliant segment of his essay:

Why Science and Faith Don't Mix Well

It is not that science disproves -- or tries to disprove -- the existence of God. The acts of a transcendent creator are simply outside the realm of anything that science can examine.

Science is the process of trying to discover mechanistic causes of publicly observable phenomena. The trouble is that causation cannot be positively proven. Ever. Under any circumstances.

So the best that scientists can do is make guesses (hypetheses) about causation and then conduct experiments designed to prove those guesses wrong. If the experiments don't prove them wrong, then the guess is considered to be a good one, an educated one, and scientists assume that it is true, or true enough, until new evidence emerges to contradict it.

But in science, no answer is ever final. No assumption of cause is beyond question. We never know enough to say, "This subject is now closed."

And that's just on the subject of mechanical cause. When it comes to final cause, which we call "purpose" or "motive," science is simply helpless. It is up to historians and biographers and fiction writers to provide motive and purpose and meaning -- and their work is specifically considered not to be science.

Scientists must therefore conduct their work as if the entire universe were one big machine, in which everything that happens is caused to happen by outside forces that push on each other.

Every serious student of science knows that this does not imply that the mechanical model of the universe is a complete explanation of anything -- it's not provable, it's simply the assumption that must be made before any useful scientific work can take place.

Here's why: The moment you allow transcendent or metaphysical forces into the equation, by definition they cannot be measured or replicated on demand. So the moment you say, "This event does not have a mechanical cause, but rather a spiritual/intelligent/purposive/magical one," science has stopped cold.

Think how much progress medicine made back when diseases were blamed on gods, and "treated" through sacrifices or prayers alone. Whether invoking gods does any good is a matter of faith; it will never lead you to effective medical treatments.

That is why science simply cannot admit God -- or Intelligent Design -- into the public discussion of science. The moment transcendent forces are invoked, science ends. And that's why I am among those who do not want to see Intelligent Design offered as a scientific alternative to Darwinism in science classes. It is, at best, a distraction; it is not that ID is wrong, it's that it's irrelevant to the project of science.

Why Faith in Darwinism Is No Better

Just because ID cannot be part of the public discussion of science does not mean, however, that people who believe in Intelligent Design cannot be trusted to do good science.

Most scientific discoveries through history have been made by people who believed in God. Period. That's a historical fact.

Why shouldn't a scientist believe that the natural world has a purpose, that it was designed by God, and that life has value for reasons having to do with the purposes of that God? As long as he recognizes that science deals only with mechanical causation, his personal faith will not interfere with his ability to examine the evidence and perform useful and accurate experiments.

In fact, it is an open secret that throughout the sciences, researchers constantly use purposive assumptions to arrive that the hypotheses they test. They may disguise these assumptions by speaking of "elegant" solutions, or "symmetry," but the fact is that scientists commonly expect the universe to make sense. And "making sense" is a very unscientific idea.

Science thus becomes a game -- you are allowed to play only within the rules. But within that sandbox, scientists have made extraordinary discoveries that have transformed our understanding and our lives.

The tragedy is that many scientists forget that the assumption of mechanical causation has not been proven and cannot be. It is a natural human trait to want to believe that what we accomplish in our lives is real, that is has permanent, lasting value. Not all people are able to maintain the humility of a true scientist -- knowing that all his work will inevitably be contradicted, amplified, or otherwise redone by somebody else. And it is profoundly annoying to some of them, at least, to have to admit that they are only playing a game.

H/T to Michael Prescott

Posted by witnit at May 21, 2008 10:55 AM

Comments

Posted by: Eric at July 10, 2008 6:17 PM

Post a comment