Broad scientific interests
Beyond my own immediate scientific research interests, I have always been interested in the broader implications of Science. To some people Science is an object of endless fascination and excitement, one of the greatest cultural achievements of the human race. To others, however, Science is a source of deep unease. They are fearful of the technologies it has spawned: of their effects on the environment, of the dangers they may sometimes present to human life itself, of their unforeseen and uncontrollable social consequences. To many people, of even greater concern are the possible implications of Science for the meaning of human existence, for mankind's view of itself, and for man's significance on this planet and in the universe as a whole.
Are these concerns justified? If we decide to sign up to the scientific world-view, just what is it that we are committing ourselves to? To begin with what does Science tell us about how the world came to be the way it is? How did the physical universe which we see displayed around us on any clear night, with its countless billions of stars and galaxies, extending to unthinkably remote distances, come into being? How, on one otherwise unremarkable star, did a planet form with equable temperatures, ample liquid water, and an atmosphere of benign gases? How, on this planet, did there emerge life forms and ecosystems that in the extraordinary variety of their nature, and the complexity of their interactions, make the merely physical universe seem by comparison to be a thing of simplicity?
Science makes the bold and amazing claim that in large part it can answer these questions. It does not claim to explain why there should be a universe in the first place, or why it should have just this particular set of physical laws and these particular values of the fundamental physical constants. What Science says is that given that the physical universe does exist, then on the basis of astronomical evidence, and by invoking the physical laws which careful observation and experiment have revealed to operate, and using the measured values of various fundamental properties of matter and energy, it is possible to infer the character of a very much simpler state from which the universe began in the very distant past, and explain how it developed from that very simple condition to the enormously rich and complex state in which we now find it to be. Physical, geological and biological evidence allows us to trace out a plausible sequence from the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, through stars, planets, microbes, invertebrates, fishes, reptiles, mammals, primates all the way up to Homo sapiens. Amongst religious believers, this is a problem to Creationists, who insist on a literal interpretation of the Old Testament, but not to most mainstream Christians.
On the other hand, what Science, in the form of quantum mechanics, tells us about the nature of physical reality down at the level of individual molecules, atoms, subatomic particles namely that strict causality no longer operates, objects dont have any precise location in space, and that single photons, electrons and even molecules seem to pass simultaneously through two physically separate slits, is certainly a great puzzle to all of us. It is only to old-fashioned materialists, wedded to a simple mechanical view of reality, however, that this is a problem.
What does Science have to tell us about conscious reality what goes on in our minds? Despite all the advances in neuroscience, the fact remains that we have absolutely no idea why associated with the human brain - there should exist such a thing as conscious thought. If this is a problem it is mainly to those reductive materialists who assume that every phenomenon must be entirely explicable in physicochemical terms. Consciousness is likely to be a thorn in their side indefinitely into the future.
How about science and environmentalism? Unfortunately there has developed an anti-scientific mood in some parts of the environmental movement: a tendency to demonize science, and the technologies to which it has given rise, as the source of all the problems which beset the human environment. Since our very real environmental problems can only be solved by using science, the anti-science movement is a serious environmental threat in its own right, one which must vigorously be resisted. The careless use of scientific discoveries has certainly contributed to our environmental problems, but environmental problems arise inevitably out of the activities of mankind, especially where people occur in large numbers, and were evident in the historical record long before science came along. The anti-scientific bias of some within the environmental movement is a worry because it may delude some people into thinking that our environmental problems can be solved without the help of science.
What about the accusation that to accept the scientific world view makes it impossible to retain any belief in the meaning or purpose of human existence? If you accept Science, are you allowed to believe in God? Science cannot adjudicate between theism and atheism, so the answer is yes. But what scientists can reasonably do is to urge that any metaphysical theories concerning the nature of Existence should at least be consistent with the picture of physical and biological reality that scientific investigation over the centuries has so painstakingly built up. It is only for those religious believers at the fundamentalist ends of Christianity, Judaism and Islam that this is likely to be a problem.
These and a variety of related issues, I discuss at length in a recently published book -
Science and Certainty, John T.O. Kirk, (2007) 262pp. (CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne)