(I used to have an education blog. This was the 2009 post that marked the point where i moved from writing mostly on the creative potential of maths and science and learning with IT , to questions of God and faith. Both topics did, and still do, compel me, but seemed better to seperate the forums. The old blog is currently off line, but i repost this one, from 2009. here, for a particular context.)
There is a famous account of Laplace being asked, when giving an account of his cosmology, of how the heavens worked - "where is the role ascribed to God?" He is supposed to have replied, “I have no need of that hypothesis”. That is, his system worked without saying – ‘this bit follows these laws, but this bit is where God comes in – the Deity adds a force here, etc’.
In less grand terms, we might imagine a cook who produces a book of recipes without any reference to Providence or Creation; and the recipes still work just fine without any overlay of folklore or piety that might have been customary in previous generations. The question is whether this omission is just a question of efficiency of communication - whether its just that there is no immediate need to mix cultural or religious context with the instructions on slicing tomatoes - or whether the separation goes to the very core of things? Are carrots and communication and commerce all ultimately the blind consequences of dancing atoms, which are themselves the consequences of some random properties of quantum flux - a universe that happened to pop into being - or is there another realm of explanation and integration underlying all this- which all draw on for meaning even while ruling it off as ''not science''?
Short of positing God behind the Big Bang, the original event, this separation of technical detail from metaphysical perspective seems, to a scientific mind set, to be the most practical way to proceed, since science tends to wants only the minimum (and often reductionist) perspective it can work with. And indeed one does not really want an aircraft mechanic or brain surgeon saying – “we know we'll run out of fuel or anaesthetic but that bit is where God comes in”; the understanding wants to holds without predicating that sense of explicit intervention*. This is so well established as to seem unremarkable. vindicated by technological planning a million times over. The only question is how complete is this account and approach, not in terms of mechanistic gaps (lets leave that question - quantum impossibility of full specification etc - alone) but does the separation that makes sense in cookery or astronomy or physics, ultimately need to be reconciled with another frame of reference; indeed does it already presuppose one, however disregarded the assumptions are?
It's true to the history to note Laplace was evidently a theist and Christian. While he is known for viewing the universe as entirely mechanistic, he drives home the point by imagining a mighty intelligence able to stand apart from this and see all of history - and calculate the future - all from the deterministic path of the atoms. This imaginary intelligence is conceived as outside the system - variously described - by others - as a demon or God. This is hardly part of his science per se - since he disavows that hypothesis - yet his imagination still posits such an omniscient observer to illustrate the point. And while he certainly promoted a deterministic and mechanical view of nature, it is not clear he actually imagined every act of human will was predetermined by the blind and inevitable pathways of atoms. So we have a sense of another view or realm of human existence.
Indeed reconciling a mechanistic universe with any notion of self determination is an unresolved paradox for any single minded scientific view - since even those who are convinced the "God hypothesis" has been falsified and should be permanently dismissed, like to retain a sense of independent personal action and moral indignation, which hardly emerges from that view of the universe. Galileo, Descartes, Newton and most of the ‘scientists’ (a 20th century word) also embraced some version of faith... so whatever separation of science and religion we now see in their name, was not necessarily developed in them; that is, while they may have methodologically bracketed off theology from ‘natural philosophy’, it did not rule out general faith in Creator, or, for that matter, Saviour.
We tend not to bother with these aspects of their thinking; we’d rather pull Newton’s laws away from his theology; we ignore his lengthy attempts to use his new understanding of the heavens to reconcile dates and appearances of comets with biblical prophecy, just as we leave behind his prolific experiments in alchemy. Poor Newton, genius that he was, evidently didn’t attend popular schooling 101 to see how his science should have ruled all these aspects out of court (or so 101 asserts). We also take a Cartesian ‘frame of reference’ as to mean a coordinate plane for geometry, or the logical frame of thinking that privileges cognition as a basis for identity- (I think therefore ....) Some might deplore the divided personality and view of the world that tends to arise from this approach - logical categories and primary qualities (mass, extension) here as the main game, while secondary qualities, and the human condition, take a much less privileged role over here; but nevertheless most assume we can rule off his references to a Deity, or ignore his own account of a personal vision that propelled him into philosophy, not least to address sceptical currents of his day.
So popular history – including the science text book version - simplifies and purifies these ‘scientists’, extracts and codifies their science, removes most of the context; removes whatever theism was involved, and often casts them, or at least their science, as the enemy of the ‘stories of religion’. (Just as science truncates the ‘scientific method’ to the merits of controlling variables and testing hypotheses, as a demonstration of logical purity. And, of course, that’s good, but its hardly all that’s going on in as a ‘scientist’ ponders the next step, maps their experiment to reality, deals with insight, etc.)
Above all moderns tend to imagine Galileo’s dispute with the Catholic church as the paradigmatic example of how religion has opposed the ascent and reign of science - uninformed by any subtler grasp of the history. (Peter Slezak, who happens to be atheist, has a much more nuanced view, he notes Gaileo's friendships with many of the cardinals, comments on his faith, and sees the real issue behind the issues is who had the right to interpret scripture – so while religion indeed ''got in the way’, both science and faith were politicised in a way that we forget and over simplify).
In any case it is worth distinguishing between methodological naturalism as practiced by many of these ‘scientists’ (‘my method will proceed without direct reference to God; does not need that hypothesis’) and naturalism in a broader more encompassing sense; there is no God. They are not one and the same. Indeed, its arguable that the materialistic scientist in the latter sense, is much less common than many assume- - those who follow Newton and other early pioneers who reconcile theism with scientific method, seem more common historically. While we might not so readily proclaim on nature as a ‘second book’ of revelation today, it's notable that many still do not equate their science with atheism. (Claiming that the faith of historical scientists was just social conditioning of their day will hardly do to explain it; one might just as well see the explosion of western science as drawing on, depending on, an underlying faith in a rationally structured universe, which itself derived from this heritage - i’m not the first to suggest that of course).
I’ve written various ponderous posts here over a few years, without broaching all this; but i’m feeling i need to write on that dimension.My own faith, for the record, is more immediate than it may appear from these writings, and i have no intention of defending it with reference to history or philosophy; trying to make its seems suitably reflective, intellectual, academically respectable. I’m not really going to make much effort to quote Whitehead, and the deep and insightful commentaries he writes on science, religion and education, as much as i did draw from his insights in earlier days. Nor Plantinga on methodological naturalism, or even CS Lewis, for a clear exposition of the reasonableness of faith, or a recent reading of Latour, on how the crossed out God is part of the modern set of pacts with has left us with multiple omissions in how we see science, society and religion.
Instead of doing that, casting things in that respectable and somewhat academic light I’ve decided to start another blog [2018: ie this one], which starts with a faith commitment just assumed up front, taken as given, not as needing defence or justification. Simple observation and experiences of faith as conceived and worked out in life, with a reflective edge i guess. There is overlap of course between the educative questions of this blog and faith - i reflected on it often enough when i worked in Catholic schools – and maybe opening the door in that blog will feedback here; or open other ideas that are better located here. I might thrash out more cross over post in this style.
*(Divine intervention may happen or be vouchsafed in other ways, and we might be well persuaded it's happened / happening, but it's not part of science per se, which really has to limit itself to a smaller frame ("step out of the shot, honey"). Insisting divine intervention is written directly into the science is like claiming to know the life and loves of a lab technician by reading their best lab reports. We might admire the work but other, less scientific channels will be needed to get past a vague sense that someone is there, a logical mind of some kind, and to move to know the real person - it's ok to admit the science itself doesn't give a grid for that. As soon as we start to conjecture what the lab technician might be like, we've left the process of the science per se, as typically defined. Once we know the person, we might admire the work more, admire every detail of their technical handwriting, and find it a confirming evidence of who they are - but the pure process of science itself, it's models and conjectures, can't add that dimension of personal knowledge. )
2021 Post script : now, that's the sort of view I got to, over the years. Now, I wonder if quantum mechanics will end up positing "the role of the observer", into the science in a much deeper sense - the correlation with our thinking, the mysteries of how reality exists, tis observed, interacts with us, the processes of quantum entanglement of matter at larger scales. That's a loose grab back of wonderings, but maybe the subject / object distinction will be forced back into view, won't be so easily able to just suppress the observer into the dispassionate passive voice; the subject's role in choosing the frame, their view of it, etc. That's a loose philosophical wondering - and maybe it might not ever get into the physics per se, but i wonder if it's part of it at a deeper level. AN Whitehead's view of creation as coming into being every instant, brought forth by God, also appeals, there. You can wonder these things as a scientist or a mathematician (Davies, Whitehead) - you just have to know you're generally doing philosophy, at this stage of things.
