One thing that is wrong with the essay is that science is not the only way in which we know important things, either as individuals or as a society, and some of the things that have been incorporated under the rubric "science" more properly belong in a revived category of "natural history", for example, paleontology. We use philology, historiography, literary and art history, the system of law, journalism, and other things to find out things with greater or lesser confidence. But more than that, we use philosophy to consider the relations among these various modes of investigation, and to adjudicate their proper domains. In fact, the author was not properly speaking as a scientist, but as a philosopher, and his postulate of homogeneity was not properly derived from science, but philosophy.
Now, philosophy may question whether science is capable of giving a complete account of all phenomena (in principle, of course). All science can do is claim that it can, but, in fact, that is a matter of faith. If science cannot give us a complete account of all phenomena, what are the sorts of questions which might be undecideable by science, given its protocols? Well, for example, science cannot address the issue of whether there is an implicit meaning or structure to the universe, since it assumes physical causation and randomness in the first place, and therefore would always beg the question.
Now, the big question taken up by the essay is this: is contemporary science creating more or less confidence that it will be able to offer a comprehensive account for all phenomena, one that renders religion, or, more properly, theological speculation, superfluous? The author says yes, but it is a scrappy, defensive demonstration, and merely shows that science itself will not clearly support religion, which we already knew, because, after all, it is programmed not to. Actually, I have no confidence, reading his essay, that he even understands the point of contention, which is that science is beginning to push the limits of its assumptions as explanatory tools. Also, most religious people are not fundamentalist, and do not purely rely upon revelation for supposed truth, much less for a comprehensive morality, so I do not think he understands religion very well.......... |
