Do You Trust Science?
I'm reading a book called 7 Men who Rule the World from the Grave and it contatins a good summary of science. At heart, science is observation - more careful and patient than our ususal, casual observations ("Hmmm... nice tree") but nevertheless, it's still observation. Here are some of the things it observes:
- Entities: things that exist, ranging from simple ("this is a rock") to more analytical ("this is granite").
- Combinations of entities: what things usually go together ("this moss with this rock", or "thunder and lightning with these air conditions").
- Phenomena: things that happen when the entities interact ("water + sodium = fire!").
Science does most of its observing by performing experiments. It brings certain entities together and watches closely for the phenomena that happen; carefully controlling the environment to gain an accurate understanding of the phenomena. Science is all about finding out the facts.
It also goes a step further. After discovering all these nice things about enti-majiggies and phenoma-wotsits it then suggests practical uses of what it has observed. 'Hey!' a big lightbulb appears over somebody's head one day, "by adding sodium to water it causes fire, we could use that to start a rocket engine". So many of the observations that are made by science become practical and useful to everyday life. That is how science gains respects: it produces wonders. It certainly deserves that respect but sometimes we can give it a little too much credit...
Science has its limitations. Here are some useful ones to think about:
- It cannot know the ultimate nature of things. Science deals with electricty but doesn't tell us what electricity is, what its purpose is, why it is here. Science can tell us what things do but not what they are.
- It cannot know 'Why'. Imagine a little kid: "Why does the sun come up?", "Because the earth rotates". "Why does the earth rotate?", "Because of the gravity caused by its mass". "Why does mass cause gravity?"... etc. This may seem silly but even for grown-ups, when you reach the end of the line science does not answer the question "why?".
- It cannot control the forces. In an experiment, a scientist may control the temperature, not allowing the ice to melt in one flask (at 50 degrees) and causing the ice to melt in the other (at 100 degrees). But at the end of the day, he wasn't the one who decided that ice melts at 100 degrees, he is just observing the fact.
- It cannot say what ought to be. Again, it's just observing what happens and can't make judgments on what is right to happen and what is wrong to happen.
- It cannot prove the past. Science relies on observation. We observe the present and try to predict what has happened in the past but we simply cannot say for certain. We can't prove the past because the past cannot be observed.
- It cannot predict the future with certainty. Yes, we know that putting sodium in a bucket of water will produce fire but what if there is an undiscovered element called Glurdge present at the same time? Think about this: would you get on a plane that worked in theory but hadn't been tested?
Quite a list! Science has more limitations than we often imagine. Think about it in practice: science observes that "this is a knife" and "it is made of metal". It can also observe the phenomena "knife + rock = rock chipped away" or "knife + heart = heart stops beating". Science observes that the knife is a knife if it is used to carve a statue or kill a friend. Morals are not a scientific thing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against science - I'm just against trusting science. Science is a brilliant tool for discovering God's universe, a God that most certainly is worth trusting.