Science is more than the books it produces
These days it’s common to hear the modest disclaimer that there are some questions science can’t answer. I most recently came across such a show of humility by Dr John Kirk speaking on ABC Radio National’s Ockham’s Razor [1]. Kirk says that “science cannot adjudicate between theism and atheism” and insists that science cannot bridge the divide between physics and metaphysics. Yet surely the long history of science shows that divide is not hard and fast.
Science is not merely about the particular answers; it’s about the steady campaign on all that is knowable.
Science demystifies. Way before having all the detailed answers, each fresh scientific wave works to banish the mysterious, that which previously lay beyond human comprehension.
Textbook examples are legion where new sciences have rendered previously fearsome phenomena as firstly explicable and then often manageable: astronomy, physiology, meteorology, sedimentology, seismology, microbiology, psychology and neurology, to name a few.
It's sometimes said that in science, the questions matter more than the answers. Good scientists find a way to ask good questions. Great scientists show where there is no question anymore.
Once something profound is no longer beyond understanding, that state of affairs permeates society. Each wave of scientific advance is usually signalled by beneficial new technologies, but more importantly, deep down, what science does for the human condition is it imparts confidence. In an enlightened society, those with no scientific training still appreciate that science gets how the world itself works. And over time this vital communal confidence has supplanted astrologers, shamans, witch doctors, and even the churches. Laypeople may not know how televisions work, nor nuclear medicine, semiconductors, anaesthetics, antibiotics or fibre optics, but they sure know it’s not by magic.
The arc of science ever parts mystery’s curtain. Contrary to Dr Kirk's partitions, science frequently renders the metaphysical as natural and empirically knowable. My favorite example: To the pre-Copernican mind, the Sun was perfect and ethereal, but when Galileo trained his new telescope upon it, he saw spots. These imperfections were shocking enough, but the real paradigm shift came when Galileo observed the sunspots to move across the face, disappear and then return hours later on the other limb. Thus the Sun was shown―in what must have truly been a heart-stopping epiphany―to be a sphere turning on its axis: geometric, humble, altogether of this world, and very reasonably the centre of a solar system as Copernicus had reasoned a few decades earlier. This was science exercising its most profound power, titrating the metaphysical.
An even more dramatic turn was Darwin's discovery that all the world’s living complexity was explicable without god. He thus dispelled teleology (the search for ultimate reason). He not only neutralised the Argument from Design for the existence of god, but also the very need for god. The deepest lesson of Darwinism is that there is simply no need to ask "What am I doing here?" because the wonderous complexity of all of biology, including humanity's own existence are seen to have arisen through natural selection, without a designer, and moreover, without a reason. Darwin himself felt keenly the gravity of this outcome and what it would mean to his deeply religious wife, and for that reason he kept his work secret for so long. It seems philosophers appreciate the deep lessons of Darwinism more than our modest scientists: Karl Marx saw that evolution “deals the death-blow to teleology” and Frederich Nietzsche claimed “God is dead ... we have killed him”.
So why shouldn’t we expect science to continue? Why should we doubt―or perhaps fear―its power to remove all mystery? Of course many remaining riddles are very hard indeed, and I know there’s no guarantee science will be able to solve them. But I don't see the logic of rejecting the possibility that it will. Some physicists feel they’re homing in why the physical constants should have their special values. And many cognitive scientists and philosophers of the mind suspect a theory of consciousness is within reach. I’m not saying anyone yet gets it, but surely most would agree that consciousness just doesn’t feel like a total enigma anymore.
Science is more than the books it produces; it’s the optimism we will keep writing new ones.
References
[1]. “Why is science such a worry?” Ockham's Razor 18 December 2011 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/ockham27s-razor-18-december-2011/3725968