The scientific meta-narrative [View all]
Many of the questions I have been asked to address deal with the difference between the thought behind science and the thought behind religion. The following is an attempt to look at the way we come at this matter from different perspectives. To put down science because it does not use the methodology of religion is fallacious. So is the converse. Religion does not use the methodology of science. But that does not disallow it.
One of the compelling lessons to be learned from the post-modernists is that no system or perspective, which claims to explain everything, is legitimate. These “meta-narratives” always leave segments of society believing that they have all the answers to everything. Historically, when religion in general or a single religion in particular, assumes total control of knowledge and authority, civilization not only grinds to a halt but also regresses. Meta-narratives are always incomplete and flawed. Religion, however, is not the only culprit. The common meta-narrative of our age is “scientism.” The laws of nature as we know them are not only incomplete, but are also circumscribed by conjecture. However, to assume that science or the scientific method is the final reality eliminating from all discourse any other value, purpose or way to understand life, is the era’s basic meta-narrative. And that is where our culture currently finds itself.
How did we come to this societal conclusion? To understand the problem we need to go back to the 17th century and Rene Descartes. While still a dedicated Christian, with a profound faith in God, Descartes began to see that the control of life by the religious establishment and its thought processes stifled all other ways to understand reality. He studied mathematics, physics and what he called “the great book of the world.” Eventually he concluded that the only reality was the processes of the mind—indeed the mind was the totality of both meaning and being. He concluded that he was no more and no less than what he thought. “I think, therefore I am.” Only those things the human mind can deduce from an observation of the natural world have any legitimacy. Thus the burgeoning discipline called science became “scientism”—the meta-narrative that dominates us today. While Descartes contribution to the intellectual world has rarely been excelled, the most direct result of his work has been the trading of one meta-narrative for another. Now, “science is my shepherd, I shall not want.” So rationality means, ‘scientific absolutism,’ and to say that some person or discipline is not rational and therefore cannot legitimately enter any intellectual conversation, is to buy the absolute nature of the Cartesian model.
While religion must incorporate the Cartesian synthesis, it does not assert that it is the only reality. We are not just what our minds produce. There is purpose, beauty, meaning, values and the mystery that exist beyond scientism. These realities are not opposed to the scientific model, but only stand along side it as a way to understand the meaning of life.
One of Descartes’ most profound observations was that everything that cannot be proved—rationally and scientifically—should be doubted. When someone says, “I have facts and all you have is faith,” he/she has taken Descartes' doubt model as the whole truth. This is compared to the Socratic model which says that doubt is always the beginning of wisdom. In education one proceeds either from the deductive reasoning of Descartes or the inductive reasoning of the Greeks. The point is that each must exist beside the other as partners. Neither can be a meta-narrative, which explains everything. Faith in that which cannot be rationally proved, has its own legitimacy.
The other great challenge to the Cartesian rationalism is empiricism, (John Locke as the prime example) which holds that all knowledge is derived from experience. One believes in love, for instance, not because of a rational perspective, but because one has experienced it. God is not an entity to be proved, but an experience to be delighted in. Compassion is not good because it bends to the laws of nature but because one simply had been the object of compassion offered by another. Science also relies on an empirical analysis, but is not totally captured by it. There is room for those things which are never rationally produced even by the greatest minds. Beauty is not a provable reality. Beauty is validated only by experience.
Perhaps our culture is so totally caught up in the Cartesian synthesis we find it impossible to realize that this just appears to be our total reality. It is so much part of us we cannot even realize its ubiquitous reality. Ask a fish what water is, and it will say, “What’s water?”
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