Why does science matter?

Although it’s really my last post that prompted this one, I am admittedly returning to something I’ve blogged about before. It was a while ago, so I won’t take it personally if you can’t remember what those particular posts were about. I’ll try not to repeat any of the specifics here as you can obviously go back and read them (eg here and here). But having opined about why theology matters (about which I know relatively little), it seemed only fair to reflect on what I spent most of my adult life working in.

However, there are a couple of issues we have to deal with first. Although it’s common to talk about “science” as though it is a single institution, it really isn’t. There is no single body that polices a rule book, and the reality is that there is no single agreed definition or set of rules. There is also no single agreed scientific method. It used to be thought that a single recipe for doing good science might be either discoverable or definable, and that a single, coherent method could be established. And of course the philosophers got busy trying to cook one up. But with due respect to the likes of Francis Bacon, John Locke, William Whewell, Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, none of them really produced anything that you could pull off a shelf, apply to a problem and obtain a “scientific answer”. Indeed the most many of them managed was an attempt at describing what scientists actually did. This is an interesting exercise in its own right. Mind you, it has always seemed to me that they were overly infatuated with physics, from which they drew many of their key examples. If of course science is just one thing, and there is a single method, then why not start with an area of science that seems to have delivered. Perhaps this explains why “big physics” is often reported in the media and is supported by such massive sums of public money (over the last decade the UK has invested an average of £152M per year in CERN alone). Biology has usually suffered in comparison. The philosophers didn’t seem to like biology that much, it was maybe too wet and messy.

It’s odd, but all this philosophical effort, individually and cumulatively, has had relatively little impact on the activities of scientists themselves. By and large they just got on doing “it”, and apparently quite successfully. It looked like there might be a common core of things that were a good idea, things like collecting evidence, forming tentative explanations, and then testing these rather than just blithely accepting and asserting them. But single, codified, rigorous method? Not really. Occasionally, individual scientists were influenced by reading about what they were supposed to be doing in the writings of one or more of the aforementioned philosophers or thinkers (many of whom were not themselves scientists). They might try to construe their activities in the sort of terms they had read about. But this all tended to be rather post-hoc. Suspiciously, such accounts tended to crop up in books written at the end of careers, as though they were a relatively recent discovery.

Now this all may be a good or a bad thing. But part of the problem is that relatively few pure science degrees (particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world) provide a rigorous introduction to the intellectual procedures involved in science. There are lots of lectures, lots of learning about great previous experiments, occasional attempt to repeat them and so on. Such degrees are certainly fact-packed (and very often great fun too – mine was!). But as to the principles of how your thinking was supposed to operate, one was rather expected to simply imbibe or intuit this. To be fair, this is a criticism that has so often made, that in many degree programmes today there may be an optional module in the philosophy of science. But it is rarely a key component of the education of a young scientist. And this has the disturbing consequence of a highly skilled but philosophically unsophisticated workforce.

None of this means that science (in its various forms) has been generally unsuccessful; clearly it hasn’t. But one unwelcome effect has been the unfortunate inability of many of us scientists (and I include myself in this) to helpfully articulate why science has been successful, what its product has enabled, and why this all matters. What we often end up with is hubristic, triumphalist babble that can sometimes seem  more like paternalistic propaganda. Scientists do all have skin in the game of course, because many of us earn our money from the scientific enterprise. And the source of that money is very often hard-pushed taxpayers, and in the case of the health and clinical sciences, patients. When we try to explain what we’re up to and why it matters, we can sometimes sound rather as though we’re saying that you should simply trust us (and keep paying us) because we know what’s best, and it would be far too complicated to explain to you.

Now there is a sense in which this is true. These days the technical details are often complicated, and a degree of trust is required. But the problem is that because we have not articulated well enough or often enough how science works (in its various forms), trust is now rather lacking. This is illustrated by the range of responses to the undoubted success of the vaccines developed to combat the COVID19 pandemic. The mRNA vaccines that have been so successful are the product of a completely new approach to vaccine development that emerged from years of patient and largely unheralded basic science, working out the details of what goes on in cells at a molecular level. The speed at which this led to highly effective vaccines coming into use and saving lives was unprecedented. And yet, all over the world there is significant resistance to their use and a marked reluctance to their uptake.  

Part of the problem is that science doesn’t exist within a bubble. The “modern” world that science both grew up in and helped to shape, has now morphed into a very different context. Intellectual authority is now a weakness and trust has been undermined. We now have facts, duly established by tried and tested procedures (technical and intellectual) duelling in the media with alt-facts (opinion, suspicion and assertion dressed up as facts). And the individualism that stemmed from the same revolution that gave rise to modern science, means everyone is an expert who has to understand the evidence, even when everyone really isn’t an expert and really can’t weigh the evidence in an appropriate way.

Science really is the best way we have to generate certain types of reliable information of critical importance. It cannot answer any and all questions, but it has and can answer some really important ones. At the edges of course, there is scope for debate as to what is and what is not an appropriate question that can be answered scientifically. Over-claiming, often by prominent scientists, or putting down other approaches in non-scientific domains (like theology among others) has done science no favours. But make no mistake – science has mattered in the past, is making a big impact now, and will be needed in the future. It will continue to matter - bigtime.

Why does theology matter?

It struck me the other day that this was a question I really should have an answer to, even if it is only an answer to the related question of why theology matters to me. After all I’ve now shelled out hard cash to actually do a master’s degree in theology – begs the question as to why. The answer could be as simple as I’ve decided to study something that for a complex of reasons is of interest to me. I could be studying trees or trains, but it just happens to be theology. So it matters in the sense and to the extent that any other hobby might matter But I’m a lazy hobbyist. While I could have just read a pile of books on my own over the next couple of years, I need the externally imposed discipline of an academic structure to make me actually do it. The last bit is true as it happens. I probably do need a bit of imposed discipline because of my innate indolence. And if I actually got round to hobby theology reading, it would in all likelihood be easy and familiar stuff. There’s certainly lots of fluffy pop theology out there to be read. But it has to matter more than this I think. I’m not at a stage in this life where I have the time to bumble around wandering off into stuff.

But before answering why it matters, it might be worth working out what “it” is. Normally these days in polite society, the word theology is qualified. While linguistically it is simply a word which means the “ology” of God (or the study of “theos”), that simply begs further questions. Some maintain that on that basis theology is the study of nothing. But for most of history this has been a minority view; the idea of studying God is not, at least at first blush, ridiculous.

In my corner of the world, for a long time (or at least a couple of thousand years), the God in view was well recognized, if inevitably only dimly understood. He was the God revealed in the Bible, and to a lesser extent in all the stuff the Bible claimed He was responsible for. This was and is a lot of stuff, because it is literally everything that exists. So everyone was clear that this God was the subject matter of the discipline of theology. Indeed for some time those centres of “higher” learning we call universities were places where people beavered away in just one discipline – theology. But things have changed. Not only is there no consensus as to whether there is a God, but even among those who agree that there is, there is no consensus as to who He is, or in which ways He (or she/it/them) may be known and studied. Hence the need to qualify theology with other words like Christian, Biblical, Islamic etc. And because theology is usually conceived of as an academic discipline, and in the modern academy one has to specialize, the word is usually further qualified by terms like historical, pastoral, systematic etc.

That all said, for me it’s quite easy to cut through a lot of this apparent and largely unhelpful complexity. As any reader of this blog will be able to work out quite quickly (particularly if you read my profile) I’m a Christian. So already the question as to whether there is a God or not is answered. Not only is there a God, but He has revealed Himself ultimately in the person of Jesus and throughout history in the Bible. I know this because I know Him. That’s kind of the point. So it’s this God whose words and ways I want to spend the next couple of years studying in more depth and detail than I’ve been able to up to this point. While I see no need to qualify the word theology, to be helpful and for the sake of clarity, I mean Christian and Biblical Theology. This still leaves open lots of different avenues to explore. God’s revealing of Himself in history has been dynamic not static, and it has been primarily relational not propositional (although appropriate propositions are important). So how ideas about Him have developed in the history covered by the Bible, as He has progressively revealed Himself (He didn’t just dump all the information we could cope with in one dollop), is an important thing to study, as is how thinking about that revelation has itself developed is important. This God and claims and ideas about Him have greatly affected individuals and communities in history and continue to do so today; this is important for understanding today’s world. How people have responded to this God, thus revealed, and how we should respond, is also something worth contemplating. For these reasons and many more besides, spending time in theological study does indeed matter. And it’s not all about observing effects on other people.

Who God is, and what He says, is not just worth studying in terms of their effects on others. All of this is not external to me such that I am able to be a detached observer. I already know from science that there is no such thing as completely independent and objective experimentation in which I as observer merely observe. This is even more the case in theology. After all I am called to love this God whom I am seeking to study with all of my heart, soul and mind (Matthew 22:37). As I do that I’m to be “transformed” by the “renewing of my mind” (Rom 12:2). At the very least this implies change for me as I study. It is true that all learning implies change, although only in some cases will this be externally observable (changes in observable attitudes and behaviours). But that cannot be the case here. And in the case of theology, such change should not just be for my personal benefit, but for the benefit of others, in the particular faith community that I identify with (usually called a “church”).

So, doing theology will (should) bring about change. It would be odd to embark on a course of action that one expects to bring about bad change, so you won’t be surprised to learn that I think this will be good change. And if it is good, and it is big (whatever big means in this context), then it will matter at least to me. If it is good and big and in some way brings benefits to others, then it will matter even more.  

Logically, the atheists could be right, in which case I’m simply delusional. If I am, then at least I am in a large and distinguished company. But I don’t think I am (delusional that is). We shall see.