On the proper starting-point for science

Science, it is important to keep in mind, is only a way of knowing. A pretty good way, to be sure, but not the only way.

Indeed, not only is science not the only way of knowing about the world and life, in some cases it may not even be the most reliable way of knowing. Especially if those who practice science as a way of knowing are not willing to admit that their method has some serious limitations.

Thanks to Jonah Lehrer for reminding us of this in the January, 2012, issue of Wired online. Mr. Lehrer reviews certain embarrassing failures of the scientific community, notably, in the production of new drugs over the past decade. He explains that researchers have been disappointed by thinking that all you have to do is keep reducing the human body down to its constituent parts, then describe the way those parts work, before developing drugs to fix just about anything.

But it turns out that the human system is just too complex for such reductionism, and drugs loudly trumpeted as cures for persistent conditions have been abandoned even before they reached the market.

And it’s not only in the development of new drugs that we’re being reminded of the limits of science. Mr. Lehrer explains, “There’s a fundamental mismatch between how the world works and how we think about the world.” Too often our preconceived notions about the way things ought to work simply turn out to be wrong. Mr. Lehrer notes, for example, that gene studies have also proven to work out other than what scientists predicted: “One study, for instance, analyzed 432 different claims of genetic links for various health risks that vary between men and women. Only one of these claims proved to be consistently replicable. Another meta review, meanwhile, looked at the 49 most-cited clinical research studies published between 1990 and 2003. Most of these were the culmination of years of careful work. Nevertheless, more than 40 percent of them were later shown to be either totally wrong or significantly incorrect.”

Mr. Lehrer summarizes, “The details always change, but the story remains the same: We think we understand how something works, how all those shards of fact fit together. But we don’t.”

The universe is much more mysterious than we think – or, at least, than certain members of the scientific community seem to think. The way scientists approach trying to understand the universe is defined by their “causal beliefs.” If those beliefs about what causes what under which conditions are wrong, then we’re going to get a lot wrong conclusions along the way in our studies: “For too long, we’ve pretend that the old problem of causality can be cured by our shiny new knowledge. If only we devote more resources to research or dissect the system at a more fundamental level or search for ever more subtle correlations, we can discover how it all works.”

But it doesn’t work out that way, because the universe is simply more complex – by far – than our finite minds can fathom. When it comes to understanding the world, Mr. Lehrer suggests that the place to begin in our thinking is by remembering that “It’s mystery all the way down.”

Which is precisely what God reminded Job when he began to demand more knowledge than was appropriate for his human condition: God made the world. God makes it work. God is infinitely wiser, more powerful, and more mysterious than we can even imagine.

The starting-point for science, in other words, must not be a posture of being convinced that we are able to figure it all out, to know and explain everything, so that we can then manipulate whatever we want for whatever purpose we choose.

The proper starting-point for science is one of awe and faith before the all-knowing, all-sovereign, and all-present God. From there the way of knowing about the world and life in it can then proceed along available avenues, not just the lab.

We do not expect secular scientists to embrace such a view. They have their own faith convictions which determine how they will approach their work, as Jonah Lehrer makes clear.

But for Christians working in the sciences, a posture of worship and wonder before the Creator/God and His cosmos, in tandem with those who work in other disciplines, using other ways of knowing about the world, makes good sense – and good science.