2. Why Ask Why?

In the previous post we presented 13 bold statements that together indicate a spiritual revolution well underway in the world of science. This week we clarify one of the limitations of the scientific method.

Scientism Myth: The laws of nature explain natural phenomena.
Science Fact: The laws of nature do not explain anything, they only describe.

Popular culture has this notion of “G-d of the gaps.” That is, wherever there is a gap in our knowledge of nature, that is where we need some explanation, call it G-d. Thus, as we learn more about nature, the scientists’ realm purportedly gets bigger and bigger while the ‘divine’ realm gets smaller and smaller. Eventually, the argument goes, science figures everything out and the religious are left with improtant questions like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In otherwords G-d is an irrelevant crutch for feeble minded people that need some kind of explanation for things while scientists figure out what is really going on.

This is the view of popular culture, but popular culture does not reflect too deeply into the subject of natural law. For if it did, it may come up with another perspective entirely.

Students of science know what natural law is: A mathematic formulation that describes the relationships between phenomena. This is a very good thing. Without these equations that map out what’s going on in the world we would be without plastic and cars and phones and airplanes and ipods. We wouldn’t understand global warming or market trends or molecules or medicine.

But students of science also understand, or should in any case, what natural law does not do. It doesn’t explain why things are the way they are. It doesn’t explain why the grass is green or the sky is blue or why there are such things as sky and grass in the first place.

Ask a biologist why grass is green and s/he may describe for you at length the mechanisms of photosynthesis, the structure of chlorophyll, the energy states required for oxidative phosphorylation, the reflection of unusable wavelengths of light, the chemistry of retinal stimulation, and the neural pathways to the visual cortex. At the end you may even be satisfied, unless you happen to remember that the question was not how grass is green or even how we perceive it to be green but rather why grass is green.

Moreover, it’s not only that science has not discovered the answer yet but will in the future. Rather these are things that science can never know, because these are not the questions with which science deals.

Unfortunately, science education does not train the scientist in what he cannot know or anything else pertaining to the philosophy of science. It provides the tools and the current set of beliefs and says get to work, leaving questions of purpose, meaning and ultimate cause in the foggy background, always tantalizing and stimulating the scientfic quest without ever finding out at all.

As for where those answers lie, that’s another question.