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| Understanding Scientific Reality |
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 In many ways, understanding
scientific reality has many of the same cautions as understanding Biblical reality. A modern addition to the Articles
of Faith ought to be that we believe science, as far as it is translated correctly. Regardless of the
current eminence of any scholar, they are human, and just as subject to error as the next man. One of my favorite
stories involves the controversy over the Piltdown man, which was purported to be the skull of the "missing
link" between ape and man. At a meeting of the August and scholarly anthropologists trying to discern whether
or not the skull was a fraud, a fistfight broke out in an attempt to settle the issue. The "reality"
was much easier. Examination of the skull showed file marks where the jaw joined the skull. It was an obvious fraud.
Rather than examine it, however, the esteemed scholars fell to blows.The modern division between science and religion is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was Thomas Aquinas who ultimately separated the conceptual realms of science and religion into what he called Nature and Grace. Soon the division became a schism, and it became possible to speak of one without the other. Man began to render unto Caesar that which was Caesar's, and unto God that which was God's. With our current nearly total divorce of religion and science, it is frequently thought that they are natural opponents, each trying to explain the reality of the other. In the words of Gerard Piel, "Science is a rich mine of facts that has a tougher consistency and more utility than Revelation." (Piel, 1961, p. 69). This "mine of facts" with a "tougher consistency" (Piel, 1961, p. 69) is now generally accepted as the arbiter of reality. The irony is that most scientists understand that their search for the facts of the universe is on-going. The theories espoused today are frequently those debunked tomorrow. While science and scientific methodology have undeniably lead to advances in our perception of reality, they still fall short of defining that reality. For example, Newtonian physics provided a powerful tool to explain portions of reality. It worked very well for a large amount of the observable universe. However, the more we examined the universe, the more inconsistent it was with Newton's theories. Einstein's universe answered some of the new questions, but continued observation has raised even more. In many ways, we find ourselves in the same fix as the world at the time of Columbus. We have our equivalents of thinking the world is flat, and only time and more discovery will show us the error of our ways. Of course there is every reason to take science seriously. It is a powerful paradigm for understanding our world, and the details of that observable world are constantly being refined. Science is no more and no less than a method of understanding. It is an important tool for our comprehension of reality - or at least that part of reality on which science can operate. |
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| by Brant Gardner. Copyright 1998 |
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