Science

I’m now going to focus this site on science and faith. My particular area of interest is biology, more specifically evolution and ecology. Don’t expect too much insight on physics or biochemistry here. Not that those aren’t great. They’re just not my cup of tea.

In many ways, I’m seeking a limited audience. If my goal was Christians who hate evolution I’m sure I could gain a huge (and rabid) following overnight. If my goal was agnostic or aethist biologists, I would broaden my audience substantially. I am a Christian. I want to be a scientist (and should begin grad school towards that goal this spring). For some time now, I’ve lived my life caught between these two groups that are often at odds with each other. I’m opening up Ocellated to these two groups. If you’re a Christian who’s never had an open mind or given much critical thought to science, I invite you to start. You may learn some things that surprise you. If you’re a scientist (or science minded) and have long ago dismissed all Christians as quacks, I hope I can make you question some of those beliefs.

This journey won’t be easy. Regrettably, I’m going to make some people mad along the way. In fact, it’s probably safe to say that someone reading this right now is already upset. The truth of the matter is that I can’t run away from the things I believe. I won’t apologize for believing in them either. My faith is a wonderful and central part of my life, while the lens of a scientist is a beautiful way to view the natural world around us. I’m doubly blessed in this way.

The time has come though for me to start talking about these issues. In particular, I think science (at least my branch of it) has come under attack by many Christians despite the insistence of some that it’s the other way around. I hope to provide a small voice of sanity.

I suppose that a good place to start this discussion is a brief overview about what science is. While there’s no one perfect definition, here are some things that I think all scientists would agree on.

Hypotheses and Theories

Science is based on observation of the natural world. From this observation, scientists make hypotheses. A hypothesis is an explanation that might be accurate, an educated guess if you will, that allows a scientist to investigate further. Any good hypothesis has to be falsifiable — that is it must have a way of being proven wrong. If a hypothesis has no way of being proven wrong, it’s really not science. From hypotheses, conclusions are drawn. Either the hypothesis is shown to be correct, the hypothesis is modified based on new data or the results of experiments, or the hypothesis is proven false.

From hypotheses, theories arise. A theory is a much broader generalization of how the natural world works. It generally covers a wide array of natural phenomena and has been confirmed by repeated observations and experiments. A scientific theory can only be proven false, never true.

I can think of two criteria that scientists seek when accepting or adopting theories. Good theories unify seemingly disparate areas of study, and they frequently make excellent predictions. Scientists are a very pragmatic group, and the acceptance of a theory largely depends upon its power to explain and predict.

Can you prove it false?

The idea of falsifiability comes from the philosopher of science Karl Popper. He had a famous argument dealing with swans. You’re walking down the street one day and see a white swan. From this, you can conclude that at least one swan is white. Say you took this a step further and hypothesized that all swans are white however. In order to prove this hypothesis true, you would need to examine every swan on earth, an impossible task. Not only that, you’d need to travel back in time, and indefinitely into the future, to examine every swan that had ever lived and every swan that would live. Then and only then could you conclude that your hypothesis is true. In order to prove your hypothesis false however, you’d only need to find a single black swan. That’s the idea of falsifiability, and any hypothesis or theory that can’t be falsified is not considered scientific.

Science is a communal activity

“If I have seen further,” wrote Issac Newton, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Scientists build upon the work of those who have come before them to further investigate their fields of study. In the same way, scientists also police themselves. Nothing makes a scientist more famous that overturning the status quo, and thus there is a high degree of motivation to both get your research right the first time and to look over the shoulder of other scientists in your field. In this way, science has the ability to be self correcting and can weed out ideas that do not stand up to critical evaluation.

A wonderful example of this type of science correcting itself can be found in Newton’s theories of physics, and Einstein who came after him. For over 200 years, Newton’s ideas defined how we understood the principles of mass, gravity, inertia, etc. Einstein basically came along and showed that while Newton’s ideas were accurate to a point, they could not explain things at extremely high speeds (like approaching the speed of light). Though there was resistance at first, Einstein’s theories had better power to explain and predict than did Newton’s. We’ve also known for some time that problems exist with Einstein’s theories. Like Newton, Einstein has discovered a large piece of the puzzle, if not the whole picture.

Science seeks natural explanations

Another practice of science is that it seeks natural, rather than supernatural, explanations for the observations it makes. Scientists do not seek to explain observable phenomena as a result of God, the Easter Bunny, Allah, etc. Thus a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist and an atheist can all use the methods of science to investigate the world they live in, each contributing to the process. Seeking only natural explanations has naturally come under attack by many Christians, rather unfairly I think. I will deal specifically with this issue tomorrow, when I explore my faith and it’s interplay with science.