Words, texts and their mattering….

I like words. Sometimes it’s just the sound of individual words that I’m drawn to (like ‘flibbertigibbet’). You may well have your own favourites. But more often it’s words strung into sentences, usually with the aim of communicating something. Hence I’m sitting here typing. And, presumably, that’s why you’re sitting where you are, reading. You like words too. Mind you, spoken words and written words are not identical (I don’t know what ‘flibbertigibbet’ sounds like inside your head). But they do serve the same sort of purposes, the main one being to communicate meaning. But meaning is a word, and slippery one too. Linguists, philosophers, theologians and scientists have all tacked the issue of what meaning “is”, and have not always arrived at compatible definitions. Some have therefore concluded that there is no such thing as meaning. But that would seem to subvert the whole business of communicating with one another, something humans have actually been doing for a very long time, and with a fairly high degree of success (an observation I’ve commented on before). And it is a view that is, basically, self-refuting.

But what this does highlight is that in using words, whether as a sender or receiver, thought and care are often required. When precision is needed, we can usually achieve it. It does complicate matters and tends to slow communication down. And sometimes we can all get a bit impatient with this. But there is something here that is familiar from many areas of life and behaviour - a speed accuracy trade-off. So when I’m speaking quickly, without much thought, the precision I am communicating with is reduced. A similar thing happens when I sit down at a keyboard and with little thought I just begin to type. Stringing words together isn’t particularly difficult. But stringing them together coherently is a different matter. And of course prior to the words are the concepts that the words are supposed to convey. If I haven’t given these much thought, then prior to the lack of clarity in the words, will be a lack of clarity in the thoughts. The net effect will be ambiguity and uncertainty. This is sometimes a thoughtful intention, but that is probably the exception rather than the rule, and carries its own meaning.

On the other side of the communication process, the same sort of considerations must apply. A whole series of processes are going on in your head right now. Some of them are fairly low-level and not under your control (at least to any great extent) – things like resolving the words on the screen you’re looking at so they are clear enough to read, or extracting meaning from individual words. But at a higher level, implicitly or explicitly, you will have to decide how much work you’re going to put into understanding what I’ve written. If you’re not particularly interested, you will probably merely skim the text, perhaps alighting on the odd word here or there, following the narrative or the argument (such as it is) at a superficial level. If I were to write something obviously crazy at this point (like “raspberry”) you might notice. But then again you might not (in which case the entire point of what I’ve just written will be lost on you!). But if I’ve succeeded in catching your attention, and you’re interested in the meaning of meaning, or the meaning of words, or the business of communication, you’ll be working to understand both what is written and what is meant. That will take time on your part, time that you could have spent doing something else. That implies a price that you either will, or will not be prepared to pay.

To be sure, there are lots of reasons why you might not want to pay a particularly high price to extract the meaning from this particular text. It is after all, merely a blog post, one of many on this blog (this is #152), and there are of course many blogs (plus books, magazines etc). But we all have an innate idea that some texts are much more important than others. And with these we have a sense that it will pay to do the work. And there are those texts which claim (or are claimed) to be potentially life changing (not something I’d claim for my blog I hasten to add). If you are persuaded that this is the case, the words (and the sentences and paragraphs they make up) will matter a lot and you’ll want to do the work to get at the meaning. While such claims may be spurious, Benjamin Franklin (among others), he of “Give me 26 lead soldiers and I will conquer the world” certainly thought that words could matter.

Part of the human condition is that our time and resources are finite, so choices have to made. Given the slipperiness of words, the question arises as to how best to spend our finite resources. Because we know that some words matter more than others we direct variable degrees of attention towards the text of adverts, comic strips, headlines in tabloid newspapers and captions on TikTok compared to those in a textbook we need to study to pass an exam or a philosophy book making an argument that we really want to get to the bottom of. Experience, our own and that of others, can also be a guide. Where we know that others have claimed to find particular words truly transformative (sometimes transformations we ourselves may have witnessed), these will be the ones we really want to pay attention to and work at to understand.

There is a particular text in mind (of course). It is one of the most critically scrutinised in history. It has been pilloried and banned in some jurisdictions. It has been lauded and literally worshipped in others. This wide range of responses and attitudes itself is evidence (of a sort) that here is something worth exposing oneself to, reading, reflecting on and responding to. Given the range of reactions to it, and conflicting claims about it, it is clearly likely to have its complexities. This can’t all be down to the vagaries of the readers and hearers of it. So it is likely that work will indeed be required. But at least there is a prima facie case that here indeed are words that should be encountered first hand, as opposed to depending on second-hand, necessarily filtered accounts of it. And there does appear to be a coherent core meaning that both historically and now millions have extracted from it (as well as some crazy conclusions and consequently crazy behaviour).

If the Bible is what it and many of its previous readers have claimed, then here are words that matter. And perhaps they matter more than anything else.

Life in the pandemic XXV The touching faith of atheists…….

Atheism, in its various forms, has a very old and in some quarters a cherished history. It’s a history that many modern-day atheists seem to be ignorant of, something I discussed a while ago. As you may have gathered, I am not an atheist. But I’m interested in the views of folk who are. I admit that this is partly out of curiosity. As the views and ideas of most atheists (at least the ones who have thought about it) are different to my way of thinking, it’s hardly surprising that they evoke curiosity. There’s also the possibility that there is something fundamental they’ve noticed that I’ve missed. And I suppose the writer of Ecclesiastes could have been wrong; something “new under the sun” could crop up that finally demonstrates, once and for all, that there can be no God. This seems unlikely (although I would say that), but for the sake of friendly interaction I’m prepared to accept this as a logical possibility.

It was in this spirit that I was interested to read an atheist writing about atheism. John Gray’s “Seven Types of Atheism” is readable, entertaining and short (only 150-odd pages in my 2019 Penguin paperback). I don’t suppose all atheists will agree with either his classification or his analysis, but neither do I think anyone will accuse him of rampant misrepresentation. In particular, he in no way writes as a theist critic. He remains quite content with his own atheist position, which he identifies as being closest to a couple of the categories he describes. It is worth noting a the outset that there is a close resemblance between what Grey writes and the thrust of Tom Holland’s “Dominion” (discussed  briefly here). It is terrifically hard to drive out the intellectual and cultural effects of 2000 years of Christian monotheism (and before that Jewish monotheism) and start thinking from (or to) a genuinely different position. It is a big task to find new concepts not dependant on the same foundations as the repudiated system, even if such a thing is possible. This was something that Nietzsche cottoned on to, but apparently not so many others before or since. In his early chapters Grey insists that this leads to a sort of lazy atheism that essentially maintains categories that actually need God, but simply swapping Him for someone or something else. Gray accuses secular humanists of doing this, swapping God for humanity, and then not noticing that the resulting system doesn’t work. Apart from anything else, Gray thinks that this is doomed to fail because humanity doesn’t exist as a single, functional entity; it is a myth inherited from monotheism: “’Humanity’ is not going to turn itself into God, because ‘humanity’ does not exist”. His point is that all we really see is lots of individual human beings with “intractable enmities and divisions”, not a single organism capable of fulfilling God’s role.

But time and again Gray also throws up interesting little insights into the sayings and doings of important atheist thinkers. Many of them seem to be stark examples of what is alluded to in a quotation often attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “ When men chose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing. They then become capable of believing in anything.” For example, Grey calls Henry Sidgwick “one of the greatest 19^th century minds”. But having lost his faith, he hoped science would supply him with the meaning he now felt he lacked. Bizarrely, he eventually turned to psychical research, and Grey quotes him as telling a friend later in life  “As I look back …. I see little but wasted hours”. Nietzsche was prepared to put his faith in a few exception human beings, “supermen” who could “will into being the meaning God had once secured”. Grey’s main point is that even arguing that the redemption of humanity by such “supermen” was required or could be accomplished, demonstrated that Nietzsche continued to be held captive by Christian concepts he so deeply despised and had declared dead. But it’s been a while now since Nietzsche’s scheme. No sign of his “supermen”.

Grey is also fairly severe on the idea of the inevitable human progress so beloved of many scientifically minded atheists over the last couple of centuries. This appears to be one of their supreme acts of faith. But as he points out, no-one can really agree what constitutes progress or what it might mean in the future. And there is precious little evidence of overall net progress for the mass of humanity. You might think that this surely goes too far. After all, in technology hasn’t the invention and growth of the internet brought tremendous benefits? I can sit on my sofa and book my next holiday or order my dinner. I can find the answer (or at least an answer) to almost any question using my smartphone. But then this same technology has brought new problems and crises not conceived of previously, like the rise of  social media persecution (which has already cost lives) and the cyber world as a new venue for crime and warfare. But in medicine, haven’t we eradicated some of humanity’s most serious disease? The obvious retort is yes, but oh the irony. Here was are in a global pandemic in which the old scourges have been replaced by a new one, with more around the corner aided and abetted by modern human behaviour. Faith in the progress of humanity (even if you think “it” exists) is touching, but hardly evidenced based!

Grey assembles a bewildering cast of characters with no interest in the God of the Bible, and often resolutely dedicated to denigrating and disproving Christianity as anything more than a fable, and quite possibly a dangerous fable at that. Some were aggressive in their denunciations, some more muted and less evangelical. Many I suspect would be bemused by Christianity’s continuing ability to attract adherents, and its continuing ability to play any a role in thought and intellectual discourse.

Grey quotes Schopenhauer as writing in 1851: “A religion which has at its foundation a single event …. has so feeble a foundation that it cannot possibly survive.” Such faith. Touching. But sorry Arthur, misplaced.

A chasm … that cannot be bridged?

These days, not being a cosmologist, materials scientist or molecular biologist, the only bits of “Nature” I read with any expectation of understanding are the editorial, news and comments sections (although this blog post points to an exception). Commenting on a planned meeting between a group of families affected by Huntington’s disease and the Pope, the following sentence from this week’s editorial caught my eye: “There is a chasm between religion and science that cannot be bridged”. And it was further stated that it is the Vatican’s traditional philosophy that “the scientific method cannot deliver the full truth about the world” (Nature Editorial, 18^th May 2017, 545:265). Hmm. Where to start?

Let’s start with the assertion of the existence of this unbridgeable chasm. Note that it is an assertion rather than the conclusion of a carefully constructed argument, or a hypothesis supported by any kind of evidence. It is not an assertion that would be have been supported by pioneers like Kepler, Newton, Boyle or Faraday or for that matter contemporary scientists such as Francis Collins, John Gurdon or Bill Newsome (do a web search on the names if they’re unfamiliar). Now of course all of these folk could be just plain wrong. The fact that they are likely to reject a proposition does not make it untrue. But with all due respect to the Nature leader writer who asserted the existence of the chasm in the first place, she (or he), while having a background in science is unlikely to have the experience and insight of those listed above. For my own part, I don’t claim any great insight either. But I am a scientist and I don’t accept that such a chasm either must exist, or does exist in any meaningful way.

What is probably rearing its head here is the conflict metaphor for the relationship between science and religion. This is the notion that science and religion compete for the same explanatory territory, but do so in fundamentally different ways, with different conclusions and therefore inevitable conflict. It’s a fight with a winner and a loser. Actually, some claim that the fight concluded some time ago, with science the clear winner, and the obscurantist forces of religion decisively routed and driven from the field. These notions, while they have been around for a while, are more recent than you might think.  Colin Russel, the historian of science, argues that the conflict metaphor was pushed as part of deliberate campaign by the likes of T.H Huxley in the second half of the 19^th Century (see Russell's excellent “Cross-currents” for a discussion). Huxley, along with a relatively small group of fellow belligerents interpreted the history of science up to that point as a fight with religion; since then others have happily promulgated the same view. But both in Huxley’s own day, and today, this was only one way to see the relationship between religion and science.

Science has actually often attracted those who are committed to God’s revelation in His book (the Bible), who also wish to study his handiwork in the created order using science as a tool. There are occasionally tensions between the two, but by and large the book of God’s words, and the book of God’s works complement each other. Indeed there is often an interplay between the two. And where the tensions look more like contradictions, these are often to do with the fallibility of our science or our theology. Interestingly, from the outside, the tensions often look a lot worse than they are. So an atheist scientist, with no great interest in Scripture, might misquote and misapply Scripture to claim a major problem where none exists. It is equally possible to conceive of scientifically uneducated and uninterested believers claiming that some scientific discovery has to be rejected because of an apparent contradiction with the Bible. In both cases, a proper understanding of both the Scripture and the Science often dissolves the “contradiction”. So where is the chasm? There isn’t one.

Occasionally those who are scientists and believers (while I mainly mean Christian believers, the same applies to others) are accused of thinking in one way in the lab and in another way at worship and of keeping these two areas of thought separate.  And I don’t deny that I’ve come across this phenomenon, although not for a while, and not usually on the part of professional scientists. But it’s neither necessary, nor is it particularly healthy; and I reckon this it’s not sustainable in the longer term. I’m the same person whether I’m trying to work out why we get multimodal distributions of fast eye movement latency (the subject of a paper that I hope will appear soon) or why Jonah so misunderstood the God who called him to go and preach in Nineveh. Rationality is required in both cases to make progress. If pushed, and you asked me which of these two puzzles is most important to me, I’d say the later. But for the following reason:  science is what I do; my faith is about who I am. As a professional scientist, one day I’ll retire and put away my eye tracker. But I won’t be retiring as a Christian. This is why my faith (by which I mean the content of belief rather than the act of believing) is more important to me than my science. And the science is for now; faith is for eternity.

This brings me to one of the important distinctions between science and (Christian) faith. John Polkinghorne (originally a particle physicist, but who then trained for the ministry and became a theologian) wrote “Many scientists are both wistful and wary in their attitude towards religion. They can see that science’s story is not sufficient by itself to give a satisfying account of the multi-layered reality of the world (Theology in the Context of Science, p84)”. Science’s success stems from carving off bits of the universe that it can get to grips with. But it is a mistake to insist that this is all there is, or that this is the only kind of stuff that matters. It’s folly to believe that scientific explanations are the only ones that a true or valid. While a pigment chemist and colour psychophysicist could legitimately tell you a lot of interesting things about the Mona Lisa, that’s not all there is to say on the subject. And not all of the pertinent information you would need to “understand” the Mona Lisa  is scientific information.

So it’s not just the Vatican that thinks that the scientific method can’t deliver the “full truth” about the world. There are many scientists, including many non-religious ones, who believe this too. Certainly, this one does.  

What is a scientist and why does it matter?

Questions are often easier to ask than to answer. So, before trying to answer this particular question, why is it worth trying to answer? Well, science is still generally seen as a good thing, and a useful way of finding things out. And scientists tend to be regarded as speaking with some authority. But this brings with it a couple of dangers.

The first is the propensity of scientists to speak outwith their area of expertise. I can speak with some authority on a number of fairly obscure topics. With all modesty, I know a thing or two about what modifies saccade latency (told you they were obscure). However, I have been known to express opinions on a range of other issues. How seriously should you take these? While I am entitled to a polite hearing and a civil response, my views should carry no more weight than yours outwith my areas of expertise and experience. If I were an economist, and we were discussing the economic implications of Brexit, then you might pay more attention (although apparently not). But if I’m an expert in eye movement control?

Science seems to have a lingering and subtle authority that has a certain cultural influence. Advertisers know this and often present their claims in a pseudoscientific way. So they will be made by a bespectacled, white-coated, grey-haired boffin. Or reference will be made to something that sounds like a scientific experiment that has been run, the results of which can inform your purchasing decision. Subtle biases are being evoked. It is probably true that these effects might be waning. And there does seem to be an anti-expert, pro-ignorance spirit abroad. This spectre was raised by President Obama in his Rutgers commencement speech recently, a speech that also specifically mentioned the merits of science. Never-the-less, if there is even a lingering authority, then those who speak as scientists will benefit from this. Time to try and answer that question.

You might think that a scientist is simply someone who has a degree with science in the title (in the UK someone with “BSc” after their name). And yet, with the advent of mass higher education, there are many thousands of science graduates who have no real practical experience of science. They’ve read about it, they’ve been exposed to some practical scientific skills, they’ve maybe learned how to review other peoples’ science. But this is some way short of actually doing science and being a scientist. And one of the real weaknesses of science education, at least in the western world, is that it is quite possible to do a science degree and at no point step back and consider what science actually is. What is “the scientific method”? Is there such a thing? Is there only one? How does one do a real experiment, as opposed to a prepared laboratory practical? A science degree should provide a basic level of scientific literacy. An understanding that might see through bogus science-type claims in the media and elsewhere. And this is useful. But can the holder really speak for science with any authority?

What about one level up, the “masters” level? Here there are various degree-types. Many of them are highly vocational in nature, preparing the student for specific tasks or careers. No harm in that. But does this qualify the holder as an expert in “science”? Interestingly, again in many of these programmes, there is no attempt to look more generally at science and how it works. Just as interesting, those that only examine the history and practice of science, are by definition not science at all. The next level up is the PhD, still the basic professional qualification in, at least, academic science. This involves doing science, and (ideally) becoming the initiator as well as the practitioner of the science concerned. So, it should involve all those elements of hypothesis generation, testing, falsification, discovery and confirmation. But this apparent breadth of experience comes at the cost of specialization. So most of the activity will probably all be concentrated on a tiny sliver of the broad endeavour that is science more generally. Specialization is a problem when making claims about science in general, as opposed to one little bit of it. I can talk for days about eye movement, but you can easily trip me up by getting me to hold forth on whether those Italian neutrinos really did go faster than the speed of light (I don't think they did)!

I suppose what I’m arguing is that we should all be very wary when we hear anyone claiming general authority to speak on behalf of “science”. In the apologetic arena, this applies equally to those speaking for or against propositions concerning the existence of God, the reliability of the Gospels and the rest. There’s no replacement for careful listening and critical thought. Factor in the specific expertise where it is relevant. So, of the discussion is about the age of rocks, you might want to give weight to a geologist. Be careful of course if they stray into the issue of when the book of Daniel was written.

There is also one place where many of these issues come together to annoy. This is in the final chapter of many popular science books written by senior scientists. The temptation is to bamboozle the reader with lots of brilliant science, both that of the author, and that of the author’s scientific heroes. Fine so far. Indeed, it’s often important and inspiring stuff. But having built up a degree of credibility and authority in the reader’s mind, often a final chapter will be slipped in that grinds various metaphysical axes well outwith the expertise of the writer. The author is, of course, entitled to hold and express such views. But what is really being perpetrated is a bit of con, whether conscious or unconscious. The hope is that the authority built up in the first part of the book, will spill over into the other stuff.

Of course, most of what I’ve been discussing has nothing to do with my area of expertise. So, you’ll have to judge for yourself whether I’m making sense.