Posted by
Rob on Monday, October 09, 2006 6:46:12 PM
In the Editors preface to the October 2006 edition of Scientific American, and then later in the book review sections, SA provides a perfect example of what is lacking in materialism, why post modernism has made such headway. If I had to put a single word on it, it would be
hubris, the overweaning arrogance that tempts the gods. Here are large chunks from the article with some comments of my own thrown in:
SA PerspectivesLet There Be LightBy the Editors
It is practically a rite of passage that scientists who reach a certain
level of eminence feel compelled to pub-licly announce and explain
their religious beliefs. The new books by Owen Gingerich and Francis
Collins, reviewed this month on page 94, follow in the footsteps of
Arthur Eddington and Max Planck. Yes, these authors say, they believe
in God, and no, they see no contradiction between their faith and their
research--indeed, they see each as confirming the other. Why this enduring fascination? Doubtless it is partly a reaction to the
tensions that always seem to arise between science and religion: the
recurring war over the teaching of evolution and creationism, the
statements by physicists that they are plumbing the instant of
"creation" or searching for a "God particle," the reassurances of some
evangelicals that a Second Coming will make global warming irrelevant.
In writing books about their own faith, religious scientists may be
hoping to point the way to reconciliations for the rest of society.
* * *
No matter how earnest their testimonies, when researchers write about
their faith in God, they are not expressing a strictly scientific
perspective. Rather they are struggling, as people always have, to
reconcile their knowledge of a dispassionate universe with a heartfelt
conviction in a more meaningful design....
If you were to evaluate the editors on their attitude toward Gingerich and Collins, would it be perhaps,
a bit condescending? And what is the reference for this mythological statement (laughable in its multiple misunderstandings) about global warming and "evangelicals"? And whom do the editors think are the better judges of science, science journalists or scientists? And what exactly separates an "earnest testimony" from truthful observation? And why is the universe dispassionate? And why is "meaningful design" only detected by "heartfelt convictions" and not by the same standards as "dispassionate universe"?
If the editors, by dint of great effort, managed to sound somewhat reasonable, albeit amused and condescending in the introduction, the reviewer was under no such obligation. Here's the book review.
In God's Universe, Owen Gingerich, a Harvard University
astronomer and science historian, tells how in the 1980s he was part of
an effort to produce a kind of anti-Cosmos, a television series called Space, Time, and God
that was to counter Sagan's "conspicuously materialist approach to the
universe." The program never got off the ground, but its premise
survives: that there are two ways to think about science. You can be a
theist, believing that behind the veil of randomness lurks an active,
loving, manipulative God, or you can be a materialist, for whom
everything is matter and energy interacting within space and time.
Whichever metaphysical club you belong to, the science comes out the
same.
In the hands of as fine a writer as Gingerich, the idea almost sounds convincing. "One can believe
that some of the evolutionary pathways are so intricate and so complex
as to be hopelessly improbable by the rules of random chance," he
writes, "but if you do not believe in divine action, then you will
simply have to say that random chance was extremely lucky, because the
outcome is there to see. Either way, the scientist with theistic
metaphysics will approach laboratory problems in much the same way as
his atheistic colleague across the hall."
But what sounds like a harmless metaphor can restrict the intellectual bravado that is essential to science....
So, what are the problems with a religious, nay Aristotelean, metaphysics? Why it restricts the bravado that "is essential to science"! And you thought I was exaggerating this hubris angle. You need only read the first page of Titus Lucretius Carus' De Rerum Natura, written around 50 BC as a materialistic response to Aristotle, to catch the bravado. Here's an extract:
(I:50)When human life lay grovelling in all men's sight, crushed to the earth under the dead weight
of superstition whose grim features loured menacingly upon mortals from the four quarters of the sky,
a man of Greece was first to raise mortal eyes in defiance, first to stand erect and brave the challenge.
Fables of the gods did not crush him, nor the lightning flash and the growling menace of the sky. Rather,
they quickened his manhood, so that he, first of all men, longed to smash the constraining locks of
nature's doors. The vital vigor of his mind prevailed. He ventured far out beyond the flaming ramparts
of the world and voyaged in mind throughout infinity. Returning victorious, he proclaimed to us what
can be and what cannot; how a limit is fixed to the power of everything and an immovable frontier post.
Therefore superstition in its turn lies crushed beneath his feet, and we by his triumph are lifted level
with the skies.
So you see, it's wimpy to believe in God, that's the real reason science is so successful. Isn't it obvious? Only when man is allowed to be man, only when his intellect is given free rein, then and only then can he create the master race, the perfect society, the economic utopia! ...
And the sad thing about SA's blind optimism, is they think sentiments 2050 years old are so, well, modern. It is this hubris, this arrogance that brought us the 20th century, the century of Modernism, with multiple hubris-inspired conflagarations. Can there be any doubt that Communism, Fascism, Maoism, Shining Path, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein, are all visible expressions of arrogant Modernism? If there be any silver lining to the present Global War on Terror, it is that at least it is no longer Modernism.
And so we come to the 21st century, the first century after Modernism, the Post Modern era, when humility is again considered a virtue. Perhaps mankind always has these cycles, of success due to rationalism, followed by arrogance and collapse. The Romans were excellent engineers, rational administrators, calculating militarists, and yet collapsed into dissipation and moral rot. Similar fates befell the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Incas and the Aztecs. Will that also be the end of Western Modernity, or will a new-found humility provide the foundation for a resurgence of those characteristics that made the West great?
As I see it, the West has two choices: to reject the arrogance of Lucretius and accept the rule of the gods, or to reject the damning data and accept that life is irrational, without cause. We can once again submit to moral and ethical standards, or relativize away all those 20th century experiences. Many post Moderns prefer irrationality to responsibility. It is a moral choice, the choice that the Romans made about their northern borders. A choice with consequences, for irrationality leads to death. It is a choice that primarily affects future generations, which may already have been denied in a shrinking, ageing populace. As Shakespeare said, cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant taste of death but once. Nations too, can die many times before their end, as much from internal rot as external force. GK Chesterton wrote about the choices facing England's flirtation with Modernism in the early 20th century:
A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity and art admired decay;
The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order their crippled vices came--
Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume.
Post Modernity, the 21st century, is all about this choice. For 20th century England, the future was clarified by first the Russian and then the German revolutions. This was no help on the Continent, however, which suffered heavily for its sins. Today, with the onslaught being the Global War on Terror, England appears to be the first ally vanquished. And the suffering has yet to begin.