Science & Knowledge: Clearing the Air
The story of Western thought is rich, but fraught with twists and turns when we turn back the pages. Most of the time these changes were prompted by sudden discoveries, new inventions, and revolutionary theories. But all of these are somehow related to what we call science.
Far from being focused on test-tubes, scientific thought and activity was originally a much more integrative activity. After all, the word science itself refers to ‘knowledge.’ Historically people have believed that knowledge can be acquired through multiple avenues. Even today, everyday decisions are based on a practical knowledge we acquire through experience with the world, and not so much proven theorems calculated in a laboratory.
Yet much of modern science tends not to acknowledge these subtleties. Consequently, the everyday person is taught to think that what is meaningful science is certain, objective, and impersonal. This is the stuff that can be observed, quantified, and proven. This is because scientists possess certain assumptions about what knowledge is.
The nature of knowledge (epistemology) has often been disputed turf. Unfortunately, it has taken a decisively narrow pathway in the last few centuries. As a result, science is often portrayed as the only reliable way of arriving at objective certainties around which we can govern, develop social policy, and live more generally.
In concluding this emphasis month, we should expose some of the dogma from the scientific community for what it is: dogma without reality. This is not to discredit the honorable work of biologists, chemists, engineers, and others who broadly work in what we call the scientific community. Instead, by appreciating the subtle ways personal concerns shape the pursuit of knowledge, we learn that it’s not a purely objective pursuit. It is an invitation to excellence, honesty, and the passionate pursuit of truth.
Who Asks the Questions?
Asking the right question is the best way of getting the right answer. Everyday life teaches us this since the questions we formulate tend to set the agenda for what we consider relevant information in our pursuit of answers.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn challenged the conventional way that scientists viewed their work. Many of them see it as the ongoing accumulation of ‘objective facts’ as they move closer toward the way things are in reality. Kuhn challenged this by asserting that much of what scientists discover depends on what they’re looking for. Specifically, the questions they ask arise from their philosophical commitments. A person who assumes naturalism (only what is found and studied through natural sciences is real) limits the scope of theories they can even consider. Our presuppositions control the questions we ask or the problems to be solved.
Over time there is often a dominant scientific paradigm. However, problems with the model develop and eventually a paradigm shift takes place. Instead of continuing forward, the way scientists view things altogether changes, forcing them to begin asking different questions. This also may change the particular tools or methods they use. In the end, the new path is not necessarily toward truth (though it may be). It is mainly a move away from the errors of the older paradigm [1].
Kuhn shows that science is constantly involved in a process that moves from consensus, to crisis, to a solution. Of course, the process revolves around what the purported question to be answered is. But if the question drives scientific inquiry, what happens if the wrong one is being asked? Or if the ‘problem’ is not really a problem after all? It limits the types of inquiries made from the start! Perhaps modern science is guilty of its own brand of fundamentalism that often keeps it from appropriating new insights that don’t fit its existing theories.
This often-overlooked story of science’s “evolution” as a pursuit of knowledge is perhaps tied to an underlying assumption—that what truly counts as scientific is objective and certain.
Objectivity & Certainty
Objective thought has been demanded for quite some time. But when Plato and Aristotle spoke about knowledge, they did so in an environment in which many remembered Protagoras’ aphorism: “man is the measure of all things” (talk about subjectivity!). Throughout history the pendulum has swung back and forth from skepticism to certainty, with neither extreme finally succeeding because of the unavoidable problems of each [2].
The scientific community—especially in the natural sciences—has often prided itself on being objective. When the investigator focused on the object, using the right tools and methods, it was thought that this would yield objective information. The obvious problem is that a knower is involved in the pursuit of knowledge. There isn’t just an object to be studied, but a subject who engages in such study. And these subjects bring their own questions and assumptions about things to bear on our world. It isn’t that we create the world we find, but we certainly interpret it.
Many scientists are reluctant to acknowledge this is because it seems to make science imprecise. It must concede that research and discovery is driven by theories and assumptions—often unproven ones—in order to make sense of what’s learned. Even the 20th-century scientist Karl Popper recognized the tentative nature of scientific theories. He said they were only proximate to the truth as their application was successful, but they were always subject to better theories that may come around. Therefore, we must be wary of imposing a single viewpoint [3]. If taken out of context, it would be hard to know if Popper was indicting religious exclusivism or scientists!
Truth Is Personal
True science, if it intends to remain true to the pursuit of knowledge, would be better served to recognize the personal dimensions of knowledge. Michael Polyani was among the first in the 20th-century to understand this. The Hungarian chemist-turned-philosopher made this critical contribution in Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (1958).
After years of scientific research, Polyani concluded, “[C]omplete objectivity as usually attributed to the exact sciences is a delusion and is in fact a false ideal” [4]. He didn’t think that subjectivity compromised science. In fact, he makes a compelling argument for why pure objectivity—where personal concerns, background, or understanding is absent—is not only impossible, but undesirable.
This argument is difficult to appreciate because science is often too driven by philosophical biases to consider the rich means through which we come to know our world. However, philosophy, theology, and other sciences help account for many unknowns, and in turn enrich life. Sadly, it is more common for scientific theories to become dogma, and these dogmas to become a form of public truth that no one is allowed question.
But truth is personal. It maps onto everyday concerns. Leroy Forlines explains this rather simply in The Quest for Truth. He admits that he fell prey to the sharp (and unnecessary distinction) between the objective and the practical. He notes,
In my early years of teaching in the 1950s, I worked hard to maintain objectivity. I demanded that students write their papers in the third person. I insisted that in an exegetical paper that the students retrain from introducing anything into their papers besides bare exegesis of the text…I have come to believe that there are some serious problems in trying to maintain objectivity as the guiding ideal in the search for Truth. Objectivity seeks to make a person a neutral investigator of Truth [5].
Forlines follows this with a question that challenges conventional thought:
Why is a person supposed to be more capable of discovering Truth if he is a neutral investigator rather than one who is deeply involved in what he is doing and who feels strongly about it? Who learns the most about art—a person who is neutral about art, or a person who loves art? Who learns more about baseball—one who studies with a feeling of detachment or one who is deeply involved? We are not to wring all the feeling out of Truth if we expect it to speak to life. Thinking and feeling must be found together [6].
Of course, Forlines’ argument makes sense if one presupposes that there is more than just raw data and brute facts. One has to assume there is something called truth, and that it is essential to human flourishing. The Christian can only practice science from this perspective.
Conclusion
Because we’re human, in some sense we all belong to the scientific community. I’m not suggesting that we all have research degrees. To belong to the scientific community is to be a homo sapien—that is, a thinking being. By our very nature we are knowers. We pursue knowledge. We are curious. Our assumptions, aspirations, and curiosities are inextricably bound up with the methods we use to acquire knowledge. The dialogue between modern science and religious believers will endure. However, it will be more fruitful if both sides acknowledge their hidden commitments, and at least come to some consensus on the authentic ways of arriving at knowledge, and to what end.
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[1] I am indebted to Matthew Rees for his summary of Kuhn’s project. Cf. “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions at Fifty,” The New Atlantis (Fall 2012).
[2] Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People(Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003), 28-31. Meek says “confidence” is a better for the reliability of knowledge, as opposed to “certainty” (137).
[3] Cf. Karl Popper, The Open Society and wits Enemies (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
[4] Michael Polyani, Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 18.
[5] F. Leroy Forlines, The Quest for Truth: Answering Life’s Inescapable Question (Nashville: Randall House, 2001), 3.
[6] Ibid.
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