“the
truth will set you free”—John 8:32
“Science without religion is blind, religion without
science is lame.”—Albert Einstein
“There is no aspect of nature that does not have its
cunning duplicate in the mind of man”—Herman Melville
cxl.
Suppose
we have a hole within a slate,
A
photon from a source passes on through,
It
blackens a single grain on a film plate,
To
say it went through the hole would be true.
Several
photons pass through, we wait a bit,
And
quite a simple pattern we do see,
A
bright spot directly behind the slit,
Fading away as we move outwardly.
We
choose to add an additional slit,
The
photon seems to have a decision,
It
must choose one of them through which to fit,
For
photons are not allowed to fission.
But now there are fringes, common to
waves!
In this manner, can particles behave?
cxli.
What’s
seen is an interference pattern,
Which is common to every type of wave,
On
This is the way every wave does behave.
Though
you think particles blacken the spot,
Between
the source and plate light’s a wave,
As
to its whereabouts we can say not,
Such
is the way reality behaves.
These
ghostly facts are true of all matter,
Electrons
and protons and you and me,
We’re
empty waves seeking to matter,
Striving to comprehend reality.
God’s wavy winds
blow, consciousness is lit.
It makes up our minds, our minds make up
it.
(Poetry
written for Professor John Wheeler by Dr. McGucken
while studying physics at
Science, Religion, and
Meaning: Humility’s Gifts & The Western Canon
Despite
a contemporary tendency to view science and religion or science and the
humanities as disparate entities, or as C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures,” science and
religion find common ground as the fundamental sources of meaningful freedom in
the classical liberal tradition beheld in the Western Canon.
Although religious movements which hold bureaucracy more sacred than the
spirit of the Word and governments which strive to base themselves on
scientific, mechanistic models of state have sometimes opposed freedom and
eroded the individual’s natural rights, those societies which have embraced
both open scientific inquiry and the freedom of religious belief have both
prospered and been successful in protecting basic human rights. These latter
cultures have been humble before higher moral and scientific laws, and in
addition to vital meaning, this humility has bestowed civilization with the
fruits of science, religion, and freedom. This brief essay chronicles how the
virtue of humility has accompanied the wisest philosophers, poets, prophets,
scientists, and statesmen—the architects of meaning.
Humility
in science, theology, philosophy, and religion:
Francis Bacon once penned, “If a man will
begin with certainties, he will end with doubts; but if he will be content to
begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.”
The wisdom of these words, which reflect the humility which lies within
the scientific method, are also found in the Christ’s teachings, which tell us,
“Those who exalt themselves shall be humbled, while those who humble themselves
shall be exalted.” Benjamin Franklin, as
a renaissance man who succeeded in science, publishing, business, poetry, and statesmanship,
held as one of his most important precepts, “Humility: Imitate Jesus and
Socrates.”
The crux of the freedom-granting synthesis of
science and religion can be found within the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, wherein Thomas
Jefferson married the concept of Natural Law, an idea descended from John
Locke’s work and the Enlightenment which followed on the heels of the
scientific revolution, to the fundamental morality of the Judeo-Christian God,
inherited from the religious traditions the Pilgrims brought to the American
shores.
When in the Course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires
that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. . . .
He coupled his promotion of the right to play
a creative role in one’s own destiny with a faith in higher laws which were
“self-evident”:
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life,
Einstein echoed the freedom-granting marriage
of these scientific and religious sentiments when he stated,
the development of science and
of the creative activities of the spirit in general requires still another kind
of freedom, which may be characterized as inward freedom. It is this freedom of the spirit which
consists in the interdependence of thought from the restrictions of
authoritarian and social prejudices as well as from unphilosophical
routinizing and habit in general.
And though science requires a freedom of the
spirit to create, to create in a meaningful manner the spirit needs the
conceptual beacon of higher laws and absolutes—a sentiment echoed in Proverbs
25:28: “He that hath no rule over his
own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.” Also echoing this symbiotic relationship
between morality and freedom, Einstein states:
the highest principles for our
aspirations and judgements are given to us in the
Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It
is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very
inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and
valuations. If one were to take that
goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side,
one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the
individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of
all mankind. . . it is only to the individual that a
soul is given. And the high destiny of
the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any
other way.
Both science and religion in their exalted
forms vigilantly acknowledge the existence of higher laws, and these laws grant
the freedom to serve, rather than to rule.
These higher laws are forgiving, as a scientist who walks down many
wrong paths is not precluded from finding the right one, and the wisdom gained
while walking down the wrong paths often helps others find the right one more
easily. Such is the parallel nature of
the prodigal son in Christianity, where he who was once lost and is now found
is celebrated. In both science and
religion, meaning is ultimately apprehensible to the deep-souled
and honest.
It is our humility before the
scientific method and moral absolutes which we can only “reach very
inadequately” that has given rise to both the scientific method and democratic
republics. The classical idea of a perfect form of justice, coupled with man’s limited
abilities in grasping it, have infused our governmental institutions
with checks and balances. This lack of
personal certainty, combined with the humble acknowledgement of Nature’s and
God’s certain reality, provides the context for our freedom to speak, create,
and serve humanity as we pursue Justice in government and Truth in science and
religion. Our attempt to ascertain and
abide by the ultimate laws endows our lives with profound meaning, and American
freedom is founded upon John Adam’s observation that
History shows that those who have been humble
while attempting to ascertain the perfect forms of reality, both spiritual and
physical, have bestowed society and culture with its greatest gifts. Thus meaningful freedom has been born by, and
continues to thrive by, our humble practices of science and religion.
The
literary classics embrace the idea that it is prudent to allow humility to
inform our sense of science’s hard knowledge and religion’s spirituality. The Great Books approach the task of
artistically expressing the human condition with the fundamental belief in the
existence of higher, though sometimes unapprehendable,
laws. Hamlet, who has just seen his
father’s ghost, says to Horatio, “There is more in this heaven and
earth than is dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The greatest scientific and spiritual works exhort the reader to be
open, to search among myriad possibilities while seeking the correct
description of reality. Postmodernism
denies that correct descriptions of reality exist, leaving the seeker with
nothing but a fog of myriad possibilities, thereby divorcing philosophy from
its profounder meaning, literature from it’s deeper romance, and politics from
justice’s higher calling. Even those who
can see are no better off than the blind within a society deluged with
postmodern fog,
Much
of postmodernism can be traced to the misapplication of science in realms where
it can serve no purpose. Upon realizing
that spiritual and aesthetic sublimity cannot be scientifically proven, rather
than admitting that science has its limits, the ambitious postmodernists set
about deconstructing the Greats and instituting their own arbitrary political,
literary, and cultural realms. Most
usually these operators knew nothing of the scientific method, but only of the
general meanings of words and phrases like “Relativity,” and “Uncertainty
Principle.” They appointed themselves
psychologists and psychiatrists, and borrowing upon the hard science’s
authority, they set about razing the soul, which the hard sciences cannot
comprehend. They might reduce
Beethoven’s symphonies to the vibrations of air molecules, or the works of Shakespeare
to a biological proclivity to obtain fame and fortune, but such assessments
only demean and deconstruct the greater glory of the spirit.
Postmodern literature oft lacks the rhyme,
meter, structure, and meaning of the poetry penned by the natural craftsman who
were humble before beauty’s higher ideals, just as the societies which forsake
God, religion, and the existence of higher laws have oft lacked an enduring
moral structure, and thus a lasting nobility or higher significance. In its extreme versions, postmodernism, which stems from the inability of science to prove or account for
literary aesthetics, has as of late turned upon science, and denied the
existence of all objective realities, both scientific and spiritual. A purely political nature of humanity is thus
emphasized in postmodernism, just as it is in totalitarian systems. And as higher principles are denied, so is
the possibility for character, integrity, and freedom.
Classical
religious and literary tragedy illustrates the nobility of the higher spirit
against the backdrop of an indifferent or antagonistic universe. The Gospels and Plato’s Dialogues can both be
viewed to have tragic, yet sublime, endings.
Both Einstein’s insistence that, “The Lord does not play dice with the
universe,” and Ahab’s unrelenting quest to seek vengeance upon the White Whale
offer depictions of man’s nobility tainted with hubris. Bohr, who has so far proven to be right, told
Einstein to “stop telling God what to do,” and Melville’s Starbuck informed
Ahab that “seeking vengeance upon a dumb brute” was “not Christian.” But too, both Ahab and Einstein had faith in
the existence of perfect forms and higher laws, as did Jesus and Socrates, and
while their lives were perhaps unfulfilled upon this earth, the beauty which
floats in the wake of their humble quests is immense. God existed within their
spirits. All the noble souls—poets,
prophets, physicists, and philosophers—know what it means to be humble before
laws greater than themselves, and they often chronicle the ultimate tragedy of
those who stray from those moral truths—the loss of meaning. “The horror, the horror,” was how Conrad’s
Kurtz put it.
Great minds have often reflected upon the
complimentary aspects of the humble practices of both science and religion,
noting how science without religion is dull, and how religion without science
is blind. The Romantic poet John Keats
accused Newton of “unweaving the rainbow,” and William Blake often illuminated
science’s shortcomings when it came to romance and spiritual truths: “For Bacon
and Newton, sheath’d in dismal steel, their terrors
hang, Like iron scourges over Albion: reasonings like
vast serpents, fold around my limbs, bruising my minute articulations.” Alexander Pope saluted