A Big Issue for Education

Probably as a subsequent of some conferences like the one from 1999 having as subject the relation between science and religion, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has issued a resolution (http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml):

       Recognizing that the “intelligent design theory” represents a challenge to the quality of science education, the Board of Directors of the AAAS unanimously adopts the following resolution:

       Whereas, ID proponents claim that contemporary evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining the origin of the diversity of living organisms;

       Whereas, to date, the ID movement has failed to offer credible scientific evidence to support their claim that ID undermines the current scientifically accepted theory of evolution;

        Whereas, the ID movement has not proposed a scientific means of testing its claims;

         Therefore Be It Resolved, that the lack of scientific warrant for so-called “intelligent design theory” makes it improper to include as a part of science education;

          Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS urges citizens across the nation to oppose the establishment of policies that would permit the teaching of “intelligent design theory” as a part of the science curricula of the public schools;

           Therefore Be It Further Resolved, that AAAS calls upon its members to assist those engaged in overseeing science education policy to understand the nature of science, the content of contemporary evolutionary theory and the inappropriateness of “intelligent design theory” as subject matter for science education;

             Therefore Be Further It Resolved, that AAAS encourages its affiliated societies to endorse this resolution and to communicate their support to appropriate parties at the federal, state and local levels of the government.

                Approved by the AAAS Board of Directors on 10/18/02

 With due changing of expression this resolution inherits all of the characteristics of church decrees against scientific conclusions of the centuries past. Here, however, the church didn’t participate but as a regular participant expressing an opinion which, by the way, was not too convincing once the verdict was issued as it was.

We should say that the AAAS did a good thing to recommending elimination of the “intelligent design” from curricula, however not because “it lacks scientific warrant” but because it is ill-posed. One cannot see why the church accepted such a challenge, and participated to discussion, in the first place, for the word “design” is of purely human extraction, and the man should not allow himself the license of judging God by human standards unless, of course, he understands correctly those standards – which is obviously not the case altogether. The only moment where the term design may be applied is indeed that of the Creation, as usually agreed upon when arguing on the subject. For this the science has multiple scenarios, while the religion has only one: that given by the Bible. However, when discussing the subject, the religion accepts, like by default, a scientific scenario, and tries to reject it. There is no chance at all in this enterprise!

It seems to us that the word design does not apply to Creation at all. Let’s discuss two of its main aspects:

            (1) First, what we understand by design is a material synthesis serving to a purpose. Most of us agree, and the word of Bible confirms it, that under this heading the Creation is indeed a design. Its materials are clearly declared by the Bible – heaven, earth, bigger light, smaller light, etc – and the purpose seems to be  the man. What is usually challenged from scientific point of view is the order of their creation, which is unnatural according to science. Therefore, if we agree that the “design” concept is scientific, the Creation as described by the Bible is not a design. In cases where there is a meaningful dialog at all, at this point the religion usually accepts the momentary scenario proposed by science – whatever this might happen to be – and tries to find cracks in it in the same way of argument, without relying on the Bible anymore. Why, one may ask, the science doesn’t accept the Bible scenario and try to find a crack in it. Like: is there any logical fault in the scenario described in the Bible?

            (2) Secondly, a synthesis would require a pre-established plan – a blueprint so to speak – and even though the Bible does not mention anywhere such a thing, the science declares – and the religion duly accepts – that such a plan existed. This is the whole point of argument: the religion says that it existed indeed, and chooses for arguments facts that seem to reflect this existence, usually by a certain harmony of Creation, while the science says that such a plan could not exist, and chooses for argument facts that seem to point that we live in a random world. There are, of course plenty of facts for both sides of argument, so it never stops.

Rarely, if ever, can one find an honest opinion that reveals the true nature of the problem. At the conference that helped issuing the above resolution, the honest word we are talking about was that of the great physicist Steven Weinberg. This must have had greatly weighted in the balance of arguments. Professor Weinberg concludes his argument with the words:

No Constructive Dialogue

In an e-mail message from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I learned that the aim of this conference is to have a constructive dialog between science and religion. I am all in favor of a dialog between science and religion, but not a constructive dialog. Religion has done some good in the world, but on balance its effects on our lives have been awful. This is much too big a question to be argued here, so I’ll just have to state my own opinion: with or without religion, good people would tend to behave well and bad people would do evil things, but the peculiar contribution of religion throughout history has been to allow good people do evil things. One of the great achievements of science has been, not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious – the example of John Polkinghorne shows that this is not impossible – but at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. (Our Italics)

It is hard to argue against this opinion, mostly with the italicized parts, and we guess nobody will indeed argue. The issue at hand is that religion is actually politics – it serves the society not the individual. Professor Weinberg has, in his argument, not only the common sense not to mix the issues, but actually to set the true problem:

This is a question that everyone will have to answer for themselves. Being a physicist is no help with questions like this, so I have to speak from my own experience. My life has been remarkably happy, probably in the upper 99.99 percentile of human happiness, but even I have seen a mother die painfully of cancer, a father’s personality destroyed by Alzheimer’s disease, and scores of second and third cousins murdered in the Holocaust. Signs of a benevolent designer are pretty well hidden.

That’s it: the physicists have no saying in this matter! This is a social problem, while the one addressed by physicists occurs at individual level: the relation between man and Universe. Likewise, if it is to consider the relation between man and God this is never revealed socially, but individually. There are even less accomplished holy men than scientists, exactly for the reasons so aptly listed by Professor Weinberg, and this is the problem. It is very hard to obtain a statement from accomplished scientists, for they are comfortable living with the uncertainties of science, just as much as they are uncomfortable living with the certainties of social life. By the same token it is very hard to obtain a statement from an accomplished holy man, for he is comfortable living with certainties of life, just as much as he is uncomfortable living with the uncertainties of science. The more accomplished the deeper thinkers and the more comfortable they are with the certainties or uncertainties, depending on the individual. Professor Weinberg is a striking confirmation of this adage.

The religion has to cease to discuss such issues, for it is no more than it always was: politics. It is a manner of justifying the annihilation of competition within human race, and this is the highest point of argument of Professor Weinberg, with which no one should argue. The issue must start not from religion, but from the individual relation God-Man. This requires an individual level of accomplishment equivalent to that of our distinguished physicist. For, the average man is most disadvantaged: as an individual cannot live with uncertainties of science just as he cannot live with certainties of life. This was, and still is, precisely the reason why everything comes to the social life, politics and annihilation of alterity.

By the way of example, one cannot imagine that an average man inhabiting this planet would be comfortable with a natural philosophy of the sort the physicists use, and revealed for instance by the words of Professor Weinberg from the following excerpt:

There is one constant whose value does seem remarkably well adjusted in our favor. It is the energy density of empty space, also known as the cosmological constant. It could have any value, but from first principles one would guess that this constant should be very large – much too large to allow matter to clump together in the early universe, which is the first step in forming galaxies and stars and planets and people. It’s too early to tell if this is a real problem, or if there is some fundamental principle that explains why the cosmological constant must be this small.

Then again, nobody ever holds that this is the truth, but mostly that it’s always “too early” to assert the truth. And yet, there are generations of physicists, eager to climb the social ladder with the help of science, and they are not interested at all in the formal question of truth. For them the cosmological constant is just a constant among others. One postulates it and the consequences can then ensue by mathematical development with the help of a host of some other assumptions that lie to the basis of a certain theory: the density of matter in the Universe, the existence of space-time, the metric nature of the space-time, etc. None of these assumptions are ever backed up by observations – we mean observations on the meaning of which everybody agrees – but they are, however, at some moment in the development of science, promoted to the rank of laws of nature. One can rightfully wonder then what are the laws of Nature about which the physicists are always talking? Are they these pure axiomatic conventions? Are they something deeper which the academic institutions cannot teach?

A young and talented physicist, E. P. J. de Haas, once expressed in his web page a remarkable truth related not specifically to the issue of cosmological constant, but to an issue of identical nature, regarding the speculations on the structure of matter:

The physicists who defend themselves by saying that quarks aren’t real but positivistic constructs of the mind, with the sole intention to connect the observable, are forgetting the functioning of the human mind, especially in the social context of education. Pupils and students start their lives in an Aristotelian like realist philosophy because that is the most common sense way to look at things and to interpret the stories of parents and schoolmasters. Adolescents learn to believe their teachers and to accept the reality of what is written in their schoolbooks. When we teach them in our science classes that stuff is made of molecules, molecules are made of atoms, atoms in their turn consist of electrons and nuclei, nuclei of protons and neutrons, protons and neutrons of quarks, we imprint a view of what really is in their absorptive minds. If education will continue to do so for decades, half the world will believe that quarks really exist. Education can turn the biggest nonsense into common sense reality, by sheer force of authority and repetitive indoctrination. So education can make quarks as real for one as it makes God real for the other. Once we start talking of quarks in our science classes, we make them part of reality, even if the positivist scientists who invented and used them claim a different view. (Our Italics)

Education! It can do marvels. In this sense the AAAS did a great job by recommending what they recommended. Then again, who is to judge what is to be eliminated from the life of a man? It is distressing that this became a social problem which, in past centuries, would easily slip into coercion. It is also sad that the science cannot address anymore to human senses the way in which the entertainment industry does for instance, in order that the individual should be able to choose what is right for his/her life, like one chooses the artistic productions that best match one’s soul. So, it just happens that a scientist grows by education and recommendations of the nature of resolution above, issued implicitly or explicitly by the normal-scientific community.

This is the community which, as the great physicist Trevor Marshall says, is the guardian protecting the true science from pseudo science. Method of protection?! The problem solving! We quote:

Indeed, it would be all too easy to caricature the normal-scientific community as one which recognizes only the internal (dynamical) variables, both of the physical systems they study and of the closed community they themselves inhabit; they would, according to this caricature, be equally blind to the stochastic environmental variables of the physical system, and to their own wider scientific duties.

The above is a caricature because, as Kuhn (in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, A/N) emphasizes, no significant paradigm shift ever occurs, except as a product of the problem-solving process. To borrow, for a moment, from the political language, we can easily discern, within the authority structure erected to protect normal from pseudo science, both conservative and liberal elements. While the conservatives place their emphasis on protecting science, the liberals are prepared to accept “orderly” changes of paradigm. In practice the latter attitude implies a readiness to consider even “revolutionary” proposals, provided they can be shown to originate in problem-solving activity. Hence, as in politics, there is ample space within which the budding revolutionary can operate, provided he understands the rules of the reformist authorities.

But I really mean understand! In science, as in politics, there is the revolutionary who thinks the reformist constitution is a charade, and who therefore does not have the patience to learn the rules of the game, still less the ethics which lie behind them. He will probably be the first to cry “censorship” and “repression” when he fails to find a ready public to hear his ideas.

Most of us grew up in the “recommendation” that the science is the expression of the truth, that truth independent of any endorsement of a human nature, that truth which, according to Moses Maimonides

… does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world disagrees with it.

Well, ever since the science seems no more controllable by the senses from which it issued centuries ago, it seems that we have to abandon this view. The modern times are dominated by the production of truth, and this, according to Ernst Becker succumbs to the same laws of overproductions like every human product:

The man of knowledge in our time is bowed down under a burden he never imagined he would ever have: the overproduction of truth that cannot be consumed. For centuries man lived in the belief that truth was slim and elusive and once he found it the troubles of mankind would be over. And here we are in the closing decades of the 20^th century, choking on truth. There has been so much brilliant writing, so many genial discoveries, so vast an extension and elaboration of these discoveries – yet the mind is silent as the world spins on its age-old demonic career.

Thus, even the problem-solving criterion of Marshall’s normal-scientific community is biased by the very fact that the problem is created “scientifically”, by the human fantasy not by human necessity. It is then clear why the scientist needs a public ready to hear his ideas. The problem is: does this serve the truth? And this is really the answer that must concern those who target the issues of modern education. For, the scientists never ceased to consider their science as expressing the truth of Moses Maimonides, utterly disregarding Ernst Becker’s observation, and this is the result of education.