SCIENCE (1609AD)
“The important thing is not to stop questioning.” (Albert Einstein)
Until now we mainly wrote about ‘internalization’. The second key trend in our cultural history is ‘rationalization’. This will be our next topic. Rational attitudes and behavior started a long time ago (see theme ‘property’). But from the 17th century onwards, they started to prevail, amongst others in the economy and in science. Till then, studying, describing and controlling nature was clearly part of religion and philosophy. Since Galilei and Newton, however, science increasingly went its own way.
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa. Here he became professor in mathematics and found a completely novel way to investigate nature; i.e., by doing experiments using instruments and mathematical calculations rather than looking with the naked eye and reflecting on spontaneous phenomena. People thought this was rather artificial and the results were exactly like that. Galileo said, no force was required to move an object at constant speed, whereas everybody knew that in practice it really was. Also he claimed that the earth is really circling around the sun instead rather than apparently the other way around. Galileo came into conflict with everyday experience, with the great philosophers, with the Bible and worse still with the authority of the Church.
In his footsteps, Newton founded modern science. He discovered gravity: the connection between an apple falling to the ground and the planets moving along the night-sky. He developed new mathematics – the language and logic of science. Together with others he laid the foundation of our rational worldview. Real knowledge is acquired by conducting and analyzing experiments, not by reading books.
Ever since, science has made tremendous progress. It has become an indispensable part of modern life. Its open, provisional character of knowledges and its technical applications form the basis of its strength, see below. Two centuries later the behavioral sciences (sociology, psychology and economics) emerged. Currently reality is considered to be a pyramid of levels: at the base, elementary particles and the laws of physics. At the summit human values like happiness, beauty, love, hope. And in between many layers of increasing complexity and surprising properties: first concepts like temperature and pressure; then material properties like fluidity or (electrical) conductivity; then natural phenomena like storms and stars; lightning and nerve pulse; then biological life from microbe to ant to human, to morality and metropole; then history and evolution…ever more complex aspects of reality. Each time something novel appears (called emergence). It cannot be fully explained by its constituent parts and becomes less predictable, reversible and controllable.
Which perspective brings us closer to the truth or to God? The natural sciences trying to explain higher levels bottom-up from matter and natural laws? Or faith and ethics aiming to understand all layers of creation by human values like hope and love? Or the behavioral sciences with their mix of scientific methods and human values as a kind of middle ground? The bottom-up approach is objective, analytical, skeptical and factual. The top-down perspective is relational, intuitive, trusting and full of meaning. These approaches are so different that one may ask: are they “friends, foes or foreigners?”
More than a century ago, fundamentalism emerged in response to science, a movement that saw the Bible as literally correct and dictated by God. Their faith became a kind of science. On the other side, there were scientists and philosophers who thought that human values were mere illusions, born of social convention or psychological need. Their science became a kind of faith. Both views look unpromising.
Of course, no science is completely factual and value-free (if only because research money can only be spent once, so choices need to be made). Yet it is helpful to discriminate between relational values and objective facts. Certainly, they will influence each other. Just think of attention to ecological wellbeing, climate change and natural environment in our time. But values and facts cannot be interchanged. So, let’s move on, calibrating worldview and science continuously rather than marginalize or ignore one or the other.