372 - Science, Theology and Einstein

Science, Theology and Einstein
By Iain Paul
New York, Oxford, 1982.148 pp. $13.95.

This, the third volume to appear in the series, "Theology and Scientific Culture," edited by Thomas F. Torrance, is a succinct statement of modern scientific understanding from an Einsteinian point of view. The book is an effort by the author, who has advanced degrees in both physics and theology, to explain a proper understanding of modern science over against the all too popular but misguided understanding of science by many Christians and theologians.

Although it is patently true that certain technological procedures which have exploited science are dangerous to the extreme, scientists themselves, as exemplified by Einstein, have been aware of life's fragility and have long since regretted the over-technicalization of it. Thus, rather than attempting to take the world into their own hands and revolutionize existence according to their own standards, scientists are an extremely conservative and protective lot.

Paul argues, therefore, that instead of questioning the value of science, the use of which is unpredictable, what is needed is a revaluation of the technical uses of scientific knowledge. Likewise, rather than attempting to halt science or be over-pessimistic about our technological future, Christians would be well advised both to see scientific thinking as a proper response of humankind to God's creation and to understand a "liberated technology" as a means to the proper end for humankind.

The question is, "Why think scientifically?" The answer demands a clear notion of what scientific thinking is, and for this Paul depends upon Einstein, "the skilled guide." Contrary to the idea that science is a monolithic structure, Paul notes that there is no such thing as the scientific method. Rather, science is a "complex endeavor" in which advances are made [and here Paul, like Thomas Kuhn, follows Michael Polanyi] when old theories reach a crisis. New theories arise which show both the merits and the limitations of the old, and old concepts are seen from a "higher level." In the endeavor, there is both a "need to believe," as well as a "will to search," which is given impetus by a longing for understanding and a belief in the "harmony of the world." Rather than eternal theories, there is hope, commitment, and tenacity which blossom in the absence of certainty.

Science, as Einstein said on several occasions, "is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking." Scientists, in fact, are more akin to poets than they are to hard-headed rationalists. Their concepts are free creations of the human mind with a relationship to posterior constructions which end in experience.

Science, then, is a program of faith. Like all other systems of human thought, it may fall prey to illusion. However, "the cumulative, corporate nature of public science communicates to individual scientists

373 - Science, Theology and Einstein

through the intuitive relation its received intimations of the rationality of the universe." The procedure enables the scientist both to "relate to the mystery of reality as individual scientists" and to "perform effectively as members of the scientific community."

Rather than science and theology being opposed to one another, the scientific community resembles the church in several respects. Both transcend cultural and temporal differences. "Their members live in hope, are justified by faith, and are known by the fruits of their labors." Hence, in contradistinction to concocting their own subjective systems, sometimes using "culled scientific ideas," theologians would do well to learn from the "regulative and conservative roles of scientific thinking," the kind of thinking which, according to Einstein, supplies the "hygiene in the sphere of the mind." Instead of subjecting unsuspecting persons to speculative devices, such as Bultmann with his program of demythologization based as it is on false presuppositions about both science and the "scientific world-view," Paul would advise theologians to learn from the natural scientists. Rather than reaching conclusions by concentrating on individualistic subjective notions, natural scientists exercise the freedom of inquiry and glimpse new horizons by subordinating their critical facilities to the natural order. While not neglecting epistemological considerations, for the scientists these must take a secondary position to the "intuitive relation" by which "facts" are discerned.

Paul's book is an excellent explication of Einsteinian science within a short compass with implications for theological thinking. There are, however, three rather basic questions which may be addressed to it. The first regards the relationship of science and technology. Not only is the line between science and technology blurred at best, but the doing of modern science without technology is quite unthinkable. Both science and technology flow from humanity's and nature's ambiguous fallenredemptive state. Since technology can either enhance or destroy nature and humankind, it would seem that science, which is integral to technology, must also be subject to critique and regulation.

The second question has to do with abstracting "fact" from the epistemological complex which is brought into play in the process of discovery. Although "facts" are not predictable from epistemological systems, each "fact" carries with it what might be called a "tacit epistemological systematic" which the discovery of the "fact" brings to articulation and by means of which the "fact" is justified. The new epistemology, then, explains, encompasses, and supersedes the old in the same way that new theories explain, encompass, and supersede old ones. The old "facts" are then either re-interpreted or dropped along with the epistemological systems by which they had been supported and understood. Thus "facts," all of which are "theory-laden," are as much a result of the creativity of scientific thinking as are the heuristic leaps which lead to their discovery.

The third question revolves around the "rationality of the universe" outside of the observer. The harmony and rationality of the universe as a

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working hypothesis is quite necessary for scientific investigation. This presupposed rationality may be questionable as a proper understanding of present reality, however, not only because it has been challenged by Werner Heisenberg's "non-determinacy relation" but, perhaps of equal importance, because it may be seen as contrary to our understanding of nature from a theological point of view. If nature, including human nature is indeed fallen, a characteristic of that "fallenness" may be a basic "disharmony" or "irrationality" at the heart of things. If so, a part of our redemptive activity vis-a-vis nature may be the articulation of a rationality which nature does not have apart from us or apart from the redemptive activity of humanity for the whole of creation. Science, then, constitutes our tentative, though partially reliable knowledge of our imperfect and perhaps even non-harmonious and non-rational world.

Harold P. Nebelsick
Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
Louisville, Kentucky