Paul Davies: Taking Science on Faith

[Felix the Cat]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

SCIENCE, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term “doubting Thomas” well illustrates the difference. In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.

The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do?

When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour.

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality.

Although scientists have long had an inclination to shrug aside such questions concerning the source of the laws of physics, the mood has now shifted considerably. Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.

The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.

In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

[Angler]

Most of these arguments are rather old and have been dealt with elsewhere.

Science does run up against Hume's Problem of Induction, but apart from the faith needed to clear that hurdle -- the faith that nature works in a more or less orderly fashion -- science carefully avoids reliance on faith, instead making judgments based on evidence and rationality. The results have been spectacularly successful, taking man from living in caves to traveling to the moon in spacecraft.

Religion is entirely different. Religion makes claims that rely on faith to an extent far beyond what is necessary to get past Hume's Problem of Induction. Essentially, religion creates unverified "knowledge" out of the blue or based on mere legend, then clings to that knowledge with the sole justification of "faith." Belief in anything can be justified on faith as long as no one can disprove it. And even when something believed on faith is disproved (e.g., YEC), some will still believe it.

In short, any comparison between religion and science is just silly. Again, science uses faith only to the minimum extent possible -- and even then it's hardly blind faith, but faith in a principle that has NEVER been shown to be false in spite of millennia of informal and formal testing (that the universe is predictable and orderly). Religion relies on faith for almost all of its important claims and has NEVER been verified in any meaningful sense.

Regarding the origin of the laws of physics, those laws may simply be self-existent, or they may have emerged from even more fundamental and basic "proto-laws" that are self-existent. We simply don't know yet, and we may never know. That is not a justification for adopting a "God of the gaps." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps) And if there is a God or gods, he or they may be completely impersonal, amoral, or even evil. Again, we simply don't know.

Davies also brings up the "fine-tuning" argument. How does he know that life is not fine-tuned for the laws of physics, rather than the other way around? Perhaps if the laws of physics were different, life as we know it wouldn't exist; but maybe an entirely different form of life would have emerged. These are unanswered questions.

Humans continue to pick pebbles at a boundless ocean, and many are impatient for answers. This is what gave rise to religion in the first place: man's psychological need for understanding. But resorting to a "God of the gaps" is not the answer; it can only provide false satisfaction. What is wrong with simply being honest and admitting, "We don't know"?

[Petr]

In short, any comparison between religion and science is just silly.
Only an uncritical science-worshipper could even make such a comment.


Petr

[Angler]

Only an uncritical science-worshipper could even make such a comment.Thank you for another content-free reply.

[Niko Bellic]

There's another layer to this. Most people aren't scientists, and have to have some faith that scientists are being honest, or at least making honest mistakes. Science as presented to the masses through the newsmedia has the power to move opinion on public policy. I'm including everything from global warming to "race is just skin color". Scientists are easily influenced by money, power, and professional prestige.

[Angler]

There's another layer to this. Most people aren't scientists, and have to have some faith that scientists are being honest, or at least making honest mistakes.This is true, and not only of non-scientists. No individual scientist can hope to be an expert -- or even very knowledgeable -- in every area of science. The typical biologist will know almost nothing about digital signal processing, and the typical particle physicist will know little about polymer chemistry. There's just too much information out there, and it takes many years of intensive study to gain a good grounding in even a single area of science.

Nevertheless, there is reason to trust scientific experts in areas outside of one's own area of knowledge when a consensus has been reached by those experts. The scientific community is worldwide and crosses wide geographical, cultural, linguistic, religious, and philosophical boundaries. When such a diverse community has reached a consensus on a subject, it would take a major leap of imagination -- paranoia, in fact -- to believe that their consensus was the result of a conspiracy.

There are researchers who are biased and (occasionally) dishonest, just like in any other endeavor. Some have "pet theories." But no individual scientist's position is ever the last word. Take someone like Linus Pauling, for instance. Few scientists are of his stature. Yet in spite of his mammoth contributions to knowledge, his (presumably honest) claim about the ability of vitamin C to prevent colds was repeatedly tested and found lacking. Similarly, many other famous scientists made blunders in their careers (e.g., Einstein), and those blunders were quickly pointed out by others. Nothing is ever considered a "fact" in science until it has been tested and confirmed to an extremely high degree.

The system is self-correcting because, while it rewards those who discover new ideas that stand up to intense scrutiny, it also rewards those who point out well-established errors. Rest assured, if anyone came up with a correction to Einstein's relativistic mechanics (just as the latter is a correction to Newton's mechanics), he would win a Nobel prize after enough experimental confirmation.

Science as presented to the masses through the newsmedia has the power to move opinion on public policy. I'm including everything from global warming to "race is just skin color".A scientific consensus is what one should look for. I'm not an expert on global warming or climate in general, but there does seem to be a scientific consensus on the subject:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

I see no reason not to trust these findings. As stated above, it would take a huge stretch of the imagination to believe in a conspiracy involving all these associations representing millions of experts from countries around the planet.

As for race being merely the color of one's skin, few reputable scientists really believe that. Modern medicine fully acknowledges that certain physiological characteristics (e.g., the risk of acquiring certain health conditions) vary by race. When it comes to psychological characteristics many psychologists have evident bias. The evidence that, for example, blacks tend to have lower IQs than whites is not in dispute, but only the interpretation of that evidence. Some unresolved questions about the nature of the brain and intelligence have provided the politically-correct crowd with this interpretive elbow room. Nevertheless, there is certainly no scientific consensus that the races are all psychologically equal -- many experts (e.g., Arthur Jensen) state just the opposite.

Scientists are easily influenced by money, power, and professional prestige.Certainly -- but again, the scientific community presents those rewards most richly not to those who merely repeat what is known, but to those who discover and innovate. No scientist gets fame or any other reward by defending evolution to other scientists. But if a scientist could disprove evolution, then he would become very famous indeed.

Scientists are actually rather underpaid relative to the amount of education and training it takes to become one (especially at the Ph.D. level). My experience is that most scientists entered their fields because of genuine intellectual interest. In more than a few cases there's a desire for prestige as well. But in any case, no one can just walk into science and expect to receive accolades. A great deal of creative work has to be done, and it has to survive the intense scrutiny of the entire research community in one's specialty before any rewards will be offered.