The Success and Failure of Modern Science

The invention of logic and deduction by the Greeks is generally regarded as a watershed in western civilization. Less appreciated is how it retarded the discovery of science. Although the Greeks, like the Indians and Chinese, had made many astounding scientific discoveries, they never made the leap to the scientific method.

Throughout the medieval period, scholars held Aristotle and Ptolemy in near reverence and logical deduction was almost the exclusive tool of intellectual inquiry culminating with the Scholastics. Although the components of the scientific method were in long development, they did not really come together until around the 16th century. Methodological science would have to wait more than a millennium. Then human discovery and knowledge practically exploded.

Science, in its essence, is a marriage of logic and empiricism. There was no science so long as the former held primacy over the later. It did not occur to medieval scholars to test their logical deductions against observations and adjust them accordingly. The success and adoration of logic retarded the discovery of science.

Today we see something similar in the success of science. Scientists are disproportionately atheist, either formally or functionally. And most atheists base their convictions on science.

The success of science has crowded out faith and religion.

But faith, properly understood, is an essential ingredient of life. Science, itself, relies on faith and atheists can rightly be said to have placed their faith in the progress of science. Belief in science and materialism is not scientific.

Because we live in an uncertain world in which we are presented with choices that cannot await certainty we must speculate about the unknown in order to make the best decision that we can. We rely on our senses and on the knowledge of others including those who came before us.

Unlike science, religion is a philosophy that openly deals with the great unknowns, the big questions of life. Religion speculates. But it does so in a formal, methodological manner. Typically, atheists fail to appreciate religion because they imagine it to be in competition with science offering alternative explanations of the world.

The problem is that when religion is denied formally it doesn't go away, it simply hides. Scientism, the blind faith in science, rests on an unacknowledged faith in knowability of universe. The refusal to acknowledge the speculative nature of scientism places it outside the realm of reason. It becomes just another superstition.

Refusing to acknowledge the role of religion is not just dishonest, it is intellectually stunting.

Who knows what great discoveries away the proper integration of science and religion.