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A Reminder

Henry Kissinger is still not in jail.

Russ Newsom, via email

Apologies to Science

I am writing in reply to the March 2nd Babylon Unwound column concerning intelligent design and science. I am a professional scientist. My academic training is in theoretical physics, and I have had a long and successful career as a medical physicist, developing theoretical models to improve the calculation of radiation dose for use in cancer treatment planning. I also love ETS! and support it financially. I subscribe to quite a few progressive and Left periodicals, but ETS! is the one which I most look forward to reading.

Furthermore, I am highly sympathetic to the goal of this new column, of fusing spirituality and politics. I think that socialists have been quite wrong in the past to ignore the spiritual side of people's lives, treating religion as a part of the enemy. Thus, as both a political activist and a scientist, I have read this first installment of this column with considerable interest. Unfortunately, what I have just read betrays no comprehension of the methodology and role of science. Rather, it simply trashes science.

"The fact that Evolutionary Biologists are still arguing with Protestant Reactionaries....is a powerful refutation of the whole evolutionary concept. If Darwinist biologists can't evolve, then who can?" Does this make any sense? Whether the theory of evolution (as continually improved through additional scientific research, of course) is scientifically correct has nothing to do with whether it is accepted by "Protestant Reactionaries", or anyone else for that matter. Why should biologists be expected to "evolve" away from the science which they have been developing? And the claim that "science has fallen into disrepute" is meaningful mainly to those who prefer to ignore science for ideological (religious) or economic reasons (e.g., concerning global warming).

So Science "has itself evolved into a religion", with biologists wasting time trying to refute creationism because Science holds an ancient grudge against reactionary Christianity? It wouldn't be that creationism is attacked by scientists because it is anti-intellectual and anti-scientific, without any justification in rational thought? Science by its nature is never wrong, for science is nothing more than the rational systematization of observed phenomena, which can (and necessarily must) be tested in the physical world. To say that science has evolved into a religion - which invokes blind faith in the stead of rigorous rational testing - is to completely ignore the methodology of science. If some theory which purports to be science isn't susceptible to, and in agreement with, such testing, then it simply isn't science.

"At some point science will have to address the fundamental question of origins, i.e. produce the god-equation, if for no other reason than that most of the world's people believe in a creator-being." Again, this statement shows no understanding of the nature of science. Science is not a magic wand (the "Wand of Knowledge"?) which can simply be applied to whatever questions humans are concerned with. Science is limited to providing answers which can be verified in the physical world, so it should be no surprise that there are questions which lie outside its purview. (And to insist that science extend itself beyond such limitations is to try to turn science into a religion, which no true scientist would do.)

Interesting enough, however, I have recently come across an answer provided by science to the question of what is the purpose of life: in a published article, a biologist responded that each species has as its purpose the indefinite reproduction of its own DNA (and nothing more). Such an answer probably won't appeal to the religiously inclined, who may want to argue that there is "something more", but this answer does demonstrate the extent to which science can be applied to such questions. Whether or not one wants to believe that there is "something more", science here has provided an answer to this question which is based on the most recent advances in scientific knowledge. No more should be expected of science.

Dave Jette, via email