Download Science? - York Minster

Faith and Wisdom in Science
(1)‘Science and Religion’: Narrative and History.
(2)Biblical Wisdom for Christian Thinking on Science
(3)A Theology of Science and Consequences
Tom McLeish
York Minster Lectures
July 2015
Where we are going ….
• Science needs (desperately) a deep cultural narrative
• Current perception that ‘Science is Modern’ is a harm
• Mine wisdom books, especially Job rather than
Genesis for Biblical sources
• From “Theology and Science” to
Theology of Science.
• Reappraisal of Science culturally,
anthropologically, theologically.
• The Church can embrace Science
What is Science?
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What is Science?
Atomic hypothesis:
All things are made of atoms, little
particles that move around in
perpetual motion, attracting each other
when they are a little distance apart,
but repelling upon being squeezed into
one another.
Richard Feynmann
Peptide 1: K24 - organic solvent
Lys-Leu-Glu-Ala-Leu-Tyr-Val-Leu-Gly-Phe-Phe-Gly-Phe-Phe- Thr-Leu-Gly-Ile-Met-Leu-Ser-Tyr-Ile-Arg
-
+
Hydrophobic
did this at only 1% in water
+
They must have formed ‘polymers’...
100nm
P11-II
P11-I
50nm
K24
tape
tape
Flexible -sheet ribbons
200nm
With increased concentration they go on
self-assembling..
ribbon
fibril
fibre
tape
ribbon
fibril
fibre
Application: these structures resemble “amyloids”
C. Dobson and A. Hill (Oxford)
What is Science?….
Science and Technology are the key to improving our quality
of life and the competitiveness of the UK.
UK White paper 1993
Art is made to disturb. Science reassures. There is only
one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.
Georges Braque
Of course in science there are things that are open to doubt
and things need to be discussed. But among the things that
science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything
we know.
Richard Dawkins
High-pitched narratives….
In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not
worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei
Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem
without creating ten more.
George Bernard Shaw
Like priests in a former age, [scientists] seem to guard the
key to knowledge, to have access to transcendent truths
which the rest of us could never hope to understand. Many
people feel that what they do is cut off from everyday life,
that it is irrelevant and rather frightening, a form of magic.
Angela Tilby
Religion without Science is blind;
Science without Religion is lame.
Albert Einstein
The Poet’s View?….
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine
Unweave a rainbow.
John Keats in Lamia
What is Science? (ontology)
• A Unique path to knowledge (epistemology) about the Universe?
• A cultural and human activity of the imagination and logic?
• An threat to human imagination and art?
• A cause of pain and difficulty?
• A social community of practice?
What’s in a name?
“Science”
- scio – ‘I know’
“Natural Philosophy”
– philo-sophia – ‘I love wisdom’
Ways of Acquiring Knowledge
Authority hierarchy?
• Sense
Science?
• Reason
• Testimony
• Memory
• Revelation
Religion?
‘Two books?’
Retreat of God?
Historical Eras – Evolving Narratives
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Ancient world of Hellenism and Hebraism
Late Antiquity
Islamic science and commentary
Medieval Scholasticism
Renaissance
Early Modern enlightenment
Modern
Post Modern
Late Antiquity
Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240 AD)
[Paul] had been at Athens, and had in his interviews (with its philosophers)
become acquainted with that human wisdom which pretends to know the truth,
whilst it only corrupts it, and is itself divided into its own manifold heresies, by
the variety of its mutually repugnant sects. What indeed has Athens to do
with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the
Church? what between heretics and Christians?
On the Prescription of Heretics
YET – used Stoic arguments
Late Antiquity using Science Theologically
“It is by an abuse of language that a jar is said to be "empty"; for when it is empty
of any liquid it is none the less, even in this state, full, in the eyes of the experienced.
A proof of this is that a jar when put into a pool of water is not immediately filled,
but at first floats on the surface, because the air it contains helps to buoy up its rounded
sides; till at last the hand of the drawer of the water forces it down to the bottom, and,
when there, it takes in water by its neck; during which process it is shown not to have
been empty even before the water came; for there is the spectacle of a sort of combat
going on in the neck between the two elements, the water being forced by its weight
into the interior, and therefore streaming in; the imprisoned air on the other hand being
straitened for room by the gush of the water along the neck, and so rushing in the
contrary direction; thus the water is checked by the strong current of air, and gurgles
and bubbles against it.”
Gregory of Nyssa, “On the Soul and the Resurrection”,
translation from Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol V,
Christian Classics Ethereal Library, Calvin College (1999).
Islamic science and commentary
• Aristotelian translation
movement
– Ibn Rushd (Averroes)
(1126-1198)
Latin Kingdom
of Jerusalem
Constantinople
Sicily
Spain
Medieval Scholasticism
Formam primam corporalem, quam quidam corporeitatem vocant, lucem
esse arbitror. Lux enim per se in omnem partem se ipsam diffundit, ita ut a
puncto lucis sphaera lucis quamvis magna subito generetur, nisi obsistat
umbrosum. Corporeitas vero est, quam de necessitate consequitur
extensio materiae secundum tres dimensiones, cum tamen utraque,
corporeitas scilicet et materia, sit substantia in se ipsa simplex, omni
carens dimensione …
De luce – On Light, Robert Grosseteste
This is not principally about light…
It’s about the “stability of matter”…
A very real problem with atomism not
solved until quantum theory
A Medieval Big Bang Robert
Grosseteste
Cosmogeny
De Luce (c.1225)
“Light… at the beginning of time,
extended matter (which it could not
leave), drawing it out along with itself
into a mass the size of the worldmachine”
•Light extends matter down to a fundamental
limit of rarefaction (actually a ratio of L/M)
•When extended to the limit, matter becomes
“perfected” and re-radiates lumen
Renaissance
Some years ago word reached me concerning your proficiency, of which
everybody constantly spoke. At that time I began to have a very high regard
for you... For I had learned that you had not merely mastered the discoveries
of the ancient astronomers uncommonly well but had also formulated a new
cosmology. In it you maintain that the earth moves; that the sun occupies the
lowest, and thus the central, place in the universe... Therefore with the utmost
earnestness I entreat you, most learned sir, unless I inconvenience you, to
communicate this discovery of yours to scholars, and at the earliest possible
moment to send me your writings on the sphere of the universe together with
the tables and whatever else you have that is relevant to this subject ...
Cardinal Nikolaus von Schönberg,
Archbishop of Capua, 1536
Early Modern ‘enlightenment’
“God [is] the author of the universe, and the
free establisher of the laws of motion.”
–Physicist and chemist Robert Boyle,
“I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by
those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”
–Sir Isaac Newton
Modern ‘enlightenment’
Robert Brown, botanist
1829
Michael Faraday, chemist
1825
“… by enabling the mind to apply the
natural power through law, [science]
conveys the gifts of God to man.
Late Modern
Andrew White
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896),
John William Draper
History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874),
John Clement Whitcomb,
Henry Madison Morris (1961)
Science replaces God as a historical narrative
after the enlightenment?
“Those who have magnified more recent controversies about the
relations of science and religion, and who have projected them back
into historical time, simply perpetuate a historical myth. The myth of a
perennial conflict between science and religion is one to which no
historian of science would subscribe.”
–Former Oxford University Professor of Science and Religion Peter
Harrison.
The Pioneers of Quantum Mechanics
“Both religion and science require a
belief in God. For believers, God is in
the beginning, and for physicists He is
at the end of all considerations… To
the former He is the foundation, to the
latter, the crown of the edifice of every
generalized world view.”
Max Planck,
“The first gulp from the glass of
natural sciences will turn you into
an atheist, but at the bottom of
the glass God is waiting for you.”
Werner Heisenberg
“Those who say that the study of
science makes a man an atheist must
be rather silly.”
Max Born,
“The New Atheists”
There still remain four irreducible objections to religious faith:
that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos,..
manages to combine the maximum of servility with the
maximum of solipsism …
that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual
repression…
that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking
Christopher Hitchens
Do more research …. My task was to demonstrate that there was
enough reason to question the tradition of faith so that you could
not in good conscience turn your back on the available or
discoverable relevant facts..
Daniel Dennett
Geometries of Relationship
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Geometries of Relationship
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Geometries of Relationship
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Conflict
Independence
Dialogue
Integration
• Coherence
• Complementarity
When Science Meets Religion (2000) Ian Barbour
Concluding Remarks
• Science is at the heart of and part
of a Christian worldview
• There are many different framings
of the relationship of Science and
Religion – be aware!
• There are many ‘convenient
untruths’ on the history of Science
and Religion
• Removing the false opposition of
Science and Faith is going to be
important.