Science Always Wins

When it comes to knowledge of the physical world, science always wins. That doesn’t mean that science is always right. Sometimes it is wrong, but science is always open to new information and changes with increased knowledge of the physical world. 

Science has clearly won in many past disputes with widespread traditional Christian beliefs.

1) Science won in the dispute over the age of the earth. The date 4004 B.C. was at the top of the first page of the Bible I had when I was a boy. That was considered to be the date the world was created as depicted in the first two chapters of Genesis.

In spite of a few “young-earthers” still around, most modern people, including most Christians, readily acknowledge the age of the earth as being far, far older than 6,027 years. Science unquestionably won that dispute.

2) Science also won the dispute over the shape and centrality of the earth. Hardly anyone takes the claims of “flat-earthers” seriously; they are treated as a curiosity (as in this article on the LiveScience website).

And despite the persecution of Giordano Bruno (1548~1600) and Galileo (1564~1642), does anyone today (other than perhaps some flat-earthers) affirm the Ptolemaic view that Earth is the center of the universe? Science undeniably won again.

3) Science is winning the dispute over the biological evolution of humans. Partly because of the literal interpretation of the creation story/stories of Genesis, joined with the belief in a “young” earth, traditional Christians long opposed the theory of the biological evolution of homo sapiens.

According to the latest figures I could find, nearly all scientists (97%) say humans and other living things have evolved over time. That is far higher than the percentage of the general public who “believe” in evolution. But the latter will continue to shrink, and science will again be the obvious “winner.”

Science is also winning contemporary disputes as well. Consider just a couple of examples.

1) It will soon be two years since vaccinations for covid-19 began to be used by the general public, but there is a sizeable segment of the population that has spurned the vaccinations. In the U.S., about one-fifth of the population is still completely unvaccinated and fewer than 70% are “fully” vaccinated.

In spite of all the “scientific” tests and precautions taken, many have accepted non-scientific “myths” to discredit the “facts” (see this website, for example) and to refuse vaccination. But science has won this dispute also: there is ample evidence that vaccinations greatly reduced covid-19 deaths.

2) One of the most prevalent, and serious, ongoing disputes currently is regarding global warming. According to this NASA.gov website, “There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.” 97% of scientists believe this.

But, the general public’s views are quite different: according to Pew Research only 57% see global warming as a serious problem, and among Republicans that falls to 25% (compared to 83% of Democrats). However, eventually science will certainly win this debate also. Science always wins.**

When it comes to questions of Why? though, science doesn’t have the answer. As I said at the beginning, science wins in matters pertaining to knowledge of the physical world. But there is a “metaphysical” world as well.

The latter deals with reality “beyond” the physical world that can be known by the senses, which is all science can deal with. Science can only examine/explain the nature of what can be seen, measured, and explored by the senses.

“Metaphysics” deals with questions about why there is something rather than nothing, and with matters of meaning and value. This is the world of the three “transcendental” values of truth, beauty, and goodness. And there, science/scientists qua science/scientists have nothing to say.

These values can only be explored by philosophy and/or religion, not by science. So while it is true that science always wins in matters pertaining to the physical world, science isn’t even a player in the more important “game” of life, which is linked to reality beyond, as well as of, this physical world.

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** See this related 2017 article, “Climate change deniers, science always wins in the end,” on The Hill’s website. And for the few of you who want to think more, and more deeply, about this matter, I highly recommend the following article in the December 2022 issue of BioScience: “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency 2022.”

Celebrating Einstein (and Pi Day)

This Thursday will be March 14, which, since it can be written as 3.14, has also become known as Pi Day (sometimes represented by a pie). But did you know that Einstein was born on Pi Day 140 years ago? He was, and with that in mind, I am posting this to celebrate his life and legacy. 

Einstein’s Brief Bio

Albert Einstein was born in the German Empire on March 14, 1879. Even though the Einstein family were non-observant Jews, young Albert attended a Catholic elementary school for three years until the age of eight.

In 1896, Einstein renounced his German citizenship to avoid military service and enrolled in a Zurich, Switzerland, university. He graduated in 1900 and the following year he acquired Swiss citizenship. In 1906 he received his doctorate from the University of Zurich.

The year before finishing his doctorate, Einstein made a series of discoveries that altered the course of modern science. Those discoveries were embodied in his theory of special relativity, best known by a simple, elegant equation: E = mc².

Einstein’s theory of general relativity was confirmed 100 years ago, in November 1919, during a total eclipse of the sun. Three years later, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theory—and became world-famous.

Shortly after the Nazis seized power in 1933, Einstein emigrated from Germany to the U.S., where he became a member of Princeton University’s Institute of Advanced Study—and he remained there until his death in 1955.

Even though Einstein was involved in the development of the atomic bomb, as a lifelong pacifist he was an outspoken advocate of nuclear control and world peace. As early as 1930 he declared, “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only come by understanding.”

(Einstein’s thoughts on peace can be found in Einstein on Peace, the 2017 version of which is available on Kindle for just a few dollars.)

Einstein’s God

Krista Tippett is a journalist and author. Beginning in 2003 she conducted discussions on public radio related to the theme “Speaking of Faith”—and then in 2010 the name of her program was changed to, and has remained, “On Being.”

Einstein’s God (2010) is the title of Tippett’s second book, and it is based on interviews with 13 people, and those interviews are said to be “conversations about science and the human spirit.”

The first chapter of Tippett’s book, and the only one explicitly about Einstein, contains material from the author’s interviews with Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies, two noted physicists.

Davies (b. 1946) points out that while Einstein did not believe in a personal God, as he clearly stated, he was a deist and was fond of using the word “God.” Here is one of Einstein’s most-cited quotations: “God does not play dice with the universe.”

(Einstein made that statement to express his antipathy to quantum physics and its indeterminism.)

Einstein on Science and Religion

According to Davies, Einstein believed “in a rational world order, and he expressed what he sometimes called a ‘cosmic religious feeling,’ a sense of awe, a sense of admiration at the intellectual ingenuity of the universe” (Tippett, p. 34).

At a 1940 conference on science, philosophy, and religion, Einstein asserted (see here) that there were “strong reciprocal relationships between science and religion.” Further, “science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding”—and that “source of feeling . . .  springs from the sphere of religion.”

Einstein then memorably stated that the interdependency of science and religion may be expressed by the following image: