The limits of science: will it explain everything? - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The limits of science: will it explain everything?

Dr. Ard Louis

Department of Physics

University of Oxford

Slide2

We share 15% of our genes with E. coli

“ “ 25% “ “ “ “ yeast “ “ 50% “ “ “ “ flies “ “ 70% “ “ “ “ frogs “ “ 98% “ “ “ “ chimps

what makes us different?

Slide3

Biological self-assembly

http://www.npn.jst.go.jp/ Keiichi Namba, Osaka Biological systems self-assemble (they make themselves)Can we understand?Can we emulate? (Nanotechnology)

Slide4

Virus self-assembly

Self-assembled from identical subunits (capsomers).

viruses

Slide5

“computer virus” self-assembly

Monte-Carlo simulations: stochastic optimisationhttp://www-thphys.physics.ox.ac.uk/user/IainJohnson/

Computer viruses?

Slide6

Self-assembly with legos?

Slide7

Science is fun!

Slide8

Science is fun!

Slide9

Will we one day understand how the flagellum assembles or evolves? – yes -Will science explain everything? – lets see -

Will science explain everything?

Slide10

Outline

Does

science

have

limits

?

Bible

and “

science

as

customs

of

creator

”

Scientific

method

and

tapestry

arguments

Questions

beyond

science

?

Slide11

Science without limits?

Scientists, with their implicit trust in reductionism, are privileged to be at the summit of knowledge, and to see further into truth than any of their contemporaries... there is no reason to expect that science cannot deal with any aspect of existence... Science, in contrast to religion, opens up the great questions of being to rational discussion ... reductionist science is omnicompetent ... science has never encountered a barrier that it has not surmounted or that we can at least reasonably suppose it has the power to surmount.... I do not consider that there is any corner of the real universe or the mental universe that is shielded from [science's] glare"

Prof. Peter Atkins

Oxford U

Slide12

Science without limits?

“ …although poets may aspire to understanding, their talents are more akin to entertaining self- deception. Philosophers too, I am afraid, have contributed to the understanding of the universe little more than poets ... I long for immortality, but I know that my only hope of achieving it is through science and medicine, not through sentiment and its subsets, art and theology" --The Frontiers of Scientific Vision, Ed. J Cornwell. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995

Prof. Peter Atkins

Oxford U

Slide13

Limits of Science?

“ That there is indeed a limit upon science is made very likely by the existence of questions that science cannot answer and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer. These are the questions that children ask – the “ultimate questions” of Karl Popper. I have in such questions as:How did everything begin?What are we all here for? What is the point of living?”“ It is not to science, therefore but to metaphysics, imaginative literature or religion that we must turn for answers to questions having to do with first and last things.”-- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987))

Sir Peter Medawar

1915-1987

Slide14

Limits of Science?

Science is a great and glorious enterprise - the most successful, I argue, that human beings have ever engaged in. To reproach it for its inability to answer all the questions we should like to put to it is no more sensible than to reproach a railway locomotive for not flying or, in general, not performing any other operation for which it was not designed. -- Sir Peter Medawar, The Limits of Science, (Oxford University Press, Oxford (1987))

Sir Peter Medawar

1915-1987

Limits are not a sign of weakness

Slide15

Oxford men disagree on: How do I obtain reliable knowledge about the world?

v.s

.

Slide16

www.testoffaith.com/

Book

including

Dr Francis Collins

,

Prof. Alister McGrath

,

Dr Ard Louis

,

Dr Jennifer Wiseman

,

Prof. Bill Newsome

,

Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne

,

Rev Dr Alasdair Coles

,

Dr Deborah B. Haarsma

,

Prof. Rosalind Picard

,

Prof. John Bryant

--S

tudy

guide

--

DVD

Slide17

Making

Sense

–

clip

from

‘Test of Faith’

–

also

at

http://

www.youtube.com/thetestoffaith

Slide18

Outline

Does

science

have

limits

?

Bible

and “

science

as

customs

of

creator

”

Scientific

method

and

tapestry

arguments

Questions

beyond

science

?

Slide19

Christ as creator and sustainer

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were

created:

things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;

all things were created by him and for him.

17 He is before all things,

and in him all things hold together

.

Col 1:15-17

Slide20

God created and sustains

“

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

” Gen 1:1

“

For by him [Christ] all things were created … and in him all things hold together

” Col 1:

16,17

“

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory … sustaining all things by his powerful word

” Heb 1:

3

“

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and

honor

and power, for you created all things and by your will they existed and were created

”, Rev 4:11

Slide21

Biblical language of creation

He makes springs pour water into ravines;

it flows between the mountains;

the wild donkeys quench their thirst

Psalm 104: 10,11 (praising God’s creation)

"Do you

hunt the prey

for the lioness and satisfy the hunger of the lions when they crouch in their dens or lie in wait in a thicket? Who

provides food

for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food? Job 38:39-41

For behold, he who forms the mountains and

creates (

bara

’)

the wind

, and declares to man what is his thought, who makes the morning darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name! Amos 4:13

“Natural” processes are described both as divine and non-divine actions

2 perspectives on the same natural world

Slide22

‘Science’ studies the “Customs of the Creator”

If God were to stop “sustaining all things” the world would stop existingDonald MacKay, The Clockwork Image, IVP (1974)“An act of God is so marvelous that only the daily doing takes off the admiration” John Donne (Eighty Sermons, #22 published in 1640)“Miracles” are not God “intervening in the laws of nature”: they are God working in less customary ways

I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him.

--Johannes

Kepler

:

1571-1630

Slide23

Science and miracles

The New Testament mainly uses 3 Greek words for “Miracle” • teras, a ‘wonder’ • dunamis, a manifestation of power • semeion, a sign. The word teras (wonder) is almost always used together with one of the two other words.

Zie

ook

: A.A. Louis: “

De

lange

schaduw

van David Hume:

wonderen

en

wetenschap

”, in “

Omhoog

Kijken

in

Platland

”, (ten Have 2007), eds. C. Dekker et al.

Slide24

Newton and the planets

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent being.”Sir Isaac Newton

Slide25

Newton and the planets

18th century

Orrery

from a London coffee house, used to show the perfection of the orbits, which reflect God’s perfection

Slide26

Leibnitz objects

“For, as Leibniz objected, if God had to remedy the defects of his creation, this was surely to demean his craftmanship”John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion, CUP 1991, p147

Slide27

Immediatism: Leibniz objects

“And I hold, that when God works miracles, he does not do it in order to supply the wants of nature, but those of grace. Whoever thinks otherwise, must needs have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God”

Slide28

Laplace and Napoleon

Mécanique Céleste (1799-1825)Napoleon: Why have you not mentioned the creator?"Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.”

Slide29

Chaos and the planets

Our understanding of the Solar System has been revolutionized

over the past decade

by the finding that the orbits of the planets are inherently chaotic. In extreme cases, chaotic motions can change the relative positions of the planets around stars, and even eject a planet from a system.

The role of chaotic resonances in the Solar System,

N. Murray and M. Holman, Nature 410, 773-779 (12 April

2001

)

Slide30

What does the Bible say about nature?

God sustains the universe

Language of God’s action

Miracles vs. “customs of the creator”

God created the universe

Genesis 1-3 – polemic structured prose, not a journalistic account.

God’s creation is good.

Bible is not a science textbook

E.g. John Calvin, Augustine, etc….

Slide31

Outline

Does

science

have

limits

?

Bible

and “

science

as

customs

of

creator

”

Scientific

method

and

tapestry

arguments

Questions

beyond

science

?

Slide32

The scientific method …

Slide33

Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

+

Schrödinger equation (Quantum Mechanics)

Energy-Momentum (Special Relativity)

=

Dirac Equation (1928)

Electrons

Positrons (antimatter) discovered 1932

Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

,

a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve, E. Wigner (1960)

See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998);

Quantum Mechanics + Relativity = antimatter

Paul Dirac

1902-1984

Slide34

Unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics

“The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve”--Eugene Wigner, “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics” Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics, vol. 13, No. I (February 1960).

E. Wigner

1902-1995

See also: “The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem”, Mark Steiner HUP (1998)

Slide35

Golemizations

The meaning of an experimental result does not, then, depend on the care with which it is designed and carried out, it depends upon what people are ready to believe.

The Golem: what you should know about scienceHarry Collins and Trevor Pinch (CUP 1993)

1887

Michaelson

Moreley

experiment: no

aether

wind

1905 Einstein explains this with special relativity

1933 Dayton Miller and others redo experiment and do measure

aether

wind – but physicists still believe in relativity

Slide36

Tapestry arguments

Science is a tapestry -- you can pick at a few strings, but that doesn’t break the whole clothIn this case: antimatter, hyperfine splitting, etc…The Golemization of Relativity, David Mermin, Physics Today 49, p11 April 1996 SCIENCE WARS ….

.

N. David Mermin

Cornell U

Slide37

Science and Beauty

A Scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living

.

Henri Poincaré 1854 – 1912

Dirac:

the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations.

Slide38

Mathematical arguments in biology

“To them [Biologists], experimental evidence, fallible as it might be, provided a far surer avenue to truth than did mathematical reasoning. .... Their implicit assumption seemed to be: How could one know one’s assumptions were correct? Where, in a purely deductive argument, was there room for the surprises that nature might offer, for mechanisms that might depart altogether from those imagined in our initial assumptions? Indeed for some biologists, the gap between empirical and logical necessity loomed so large as to make the latter seem effectively irrelevant.Evelyn Fox Keller, in “Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines, HUP, (2002)

You can’t ask those kinds of questions!!!!(Biologist to AAL at “Protein-Protein Interaction Conf”, June 2004)“Where are the equations” -- a physicist might ask

“

A Clash of Two Cultures”, Nature 445, 603 (2007)

E. Fox Keller

MIT

Slide39

Tapestry arguments

Basic scientific principles are shared across fields

But what is considered “necessary” or “sufficient” for a (self-organised) tapestry varies from field to field (often unwritten)

E.g. the status of mathematical arguments in physics and biology

Cultural iceberg, above and below waterline

evidence: grant or paper review

demarkation problems

mathematics->physics-> chemistry->biology->medicine-> psychology -> sociology -> anthropology

Different cultures -- different levels of description

Accuracy sometimes at the cost of imposing limits

Slide40

Outline

Does

science

have

limits

?

Bible

and “

science

as

customs

of

creator

”

Scientific

method

and

tapestry

arguments

Questions

beyond

science

?

Popper’s

ultimate

questions

:

How did everything begin?

What are we all here for?

What is the point of living?

Slide41

Popper’s ultimate questions

It is important to realize that science does not make assertions about ultimate questions – about the riddles of existence, or about man’s task in the world ….. The fact that science cannot make any pronouncements about ethical principles has been misinterpreted as indicating that there are no such principles while in fact the search for truth presupposes ethics. -- Karl Popper, Dialectica 32:342 (1978)

Karl Popper

1902-1994

Slide42

Key Metaphysical assumptions for science

Uniformity

Rationality

Intelligibility

Applicability of mathematics

Science has deeply Christian roots, e.g.

A. North Whitehead, Stanley Jaki; R. Hooykaas;

Slide43

Only alternative to science is irrationality?

“The most important questions in life are not susceptible to solution by the scientific method”

Bill Newsome

Stanford U.

Monument to

irrationality?

A

side

–

Bill is the first religious believer quoted in this talk

Slide44

Leap of Faith?

"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”http://richarddawkins.net/articles/89

Richard Dawkins

Oxford U

if it doesn’t submit itself to empirical testing, then it is just a matter of opinion, and opinion can not be trusted

Slide45

Looking under a lamppost

[

This

] argument is like the drunk who insisted on looking for his lost car keys only under the streetlight on the grounds that the light was better there. In fact, it would to the drunk one better: it would insist that because the keys would be hard to find in the dark, they must be under the light.

Alvin PlantingaNotre Dame U

Slide46

Questions of value

What is the value of a human life?chemist – value of the elements? physiologist – size of your brainpsychologist – how smart you areanthropologist – how the community values youeconomist – how much economic value you produce

Does life have intrinsic value?

G

et

Gosler

article

on

this

Slide47

Deriving an ought from an is

when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not.D. Hume in “A Treatise of Human Nature”

David Hume(1711-1776)

Slide48

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfect

a swimming pool

enough fat to make

10 bars of soap

Slide49

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfect

a swimming pool

enough fat to make

10

bars of soap

Slide50

Nothing Buttery

enough P for 2000 matches

humans are collections of chemicals:

enough Fe for 1 nail

enough Cl to disinfect

a swimming pool

enough fat to make

0.1 bars of soap

Slide51

Dawkins on being human

"The individual organism ... is not fundamental to life, but something that emerges when genes, which at the beginning of evolution were separate, warring entities, gang together in co-operative groups as `selfish co-operators’. The individual organism is not exactly an illusion. It is too concrete for that. But it is a secondary, derived phenomenon, cobbled together as a consequence of the actions of fundamentally separate, even warring agents.” Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, (Penguin, London, 1998) p 308.

Prof. Richard Dawkins (Oxford)

Slide52

Gene language

[Genes] swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence.

[Genes] are trapped in huge colonies, locked inside highly intelligent beings, moulded by the outside world, communicating with it by complex processes, through which, blindly, as if by magic, function emerges. They are in you and me; we are the system that allows their code to be read; and their preservation is totally dependent on the joy that we experience in reproducing ourselves. We are the ultimate rationale for their existence.

Denis Noble --

The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (OUP 2006)

Richard Dawkins --The Selfish Gene (1976)

v.s

.

Slide53

Mechanism v.s. Meaning (type errors)

why is the water boiling?

Slide54

Materialism is not self-consistent

For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true… And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. -J.B.S. Haldane, “When I am Dead “

J.B.S. Haldane

1882-1964

Slide55

Materialism is not self-consistent

Epicurus: “He who says that all things happen of necessity cannot criticize another who says that not all things happen of necessity. For he has to admit that the assertion also happens of necessity. (here it is an argument against determinism, but is linked to the argument against materialism)

Epicurus 341 – 270 BC

Karl Popper (the self and its brain)I do not claim that I have refuted materialism. But I think that I have shown that materialsm has no right to claim that it can be supported by rational argument – argument that is rational by logical principles. Materialism may be true, but it is incompatible with rationalism

Slide56

In matters of values, meaning, and purpose, science has all the answers, except the interesting ones.F. Ayala in Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion. (2007)

Francisco J. Ayala

UC Irvine

Science on values, meaning purpose

Slide57

Natural Theology:Extracting meaning and purpose from science?

History of Natural theology:Pascal - Paley – Newman – Barth …..The fundamental thesis of the book is that if nature is to disclose the transcendent, it must be "seen" or "read" in certain specific ways -- ways that are not themselves necessarily mandated by nature itself. It is argued that Christian theology provides a schema or interpretative framework by which nature may be "seen" in a way that enables and authorizes it to connect with the transcendent. --- A. McGrath about "the Open Secret"

Addressing

their

remarks

to

nonbelievers

… to prove God’s existence through the works of nature … is to give them reason to believe that the proofs of our religion are weak indeed …. It is an astounding fact that no canonical writer has ever made use of Nature to prove God. --

Blaise

Pascal

Slide58

Reformed Epistemology and “Evidentialism”

Alvin PlantingaNicholas WoltersdorfWilliam AlstonGeorge Mavrodes

Kelly James Clark

calls

this

book

“

Plantinga

for

dummies

”

Slide59

Tapestry arguments and persuaded faith

.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen-

not only because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, (1942).

Why

do I believe in Jesus Christ?tapestry arguments:MoralityBeautyFine tuning?-Bible-Resurrection-Life and teachings of Jesus Christ - Experience of God in myself and friends

Gosler

quote

Slide60

Brute facts: in the beginning God?

If we are to understand the nature of reality, we have only two possible starting points: either the

brute fact of the physical world

or the brute fact of a divine will and purpose behind that physical world John Polkinghorne, Serious Talk: Science and Religion in Dialogue, (1995).

John Polkinghorne

Cambridge U

Slide61

The fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing … We should … acknowledge our foundation in nothingness and feel awe at the marvellous fact that we have a chance to participate briefly in this incredible sunburst that interrupts without reason the reign of non-being

Quentin

SmithWestern Michigan U

B

rute

facts

: In the

beginning

nothing

?

Slide62

Brute facts and Natural Theology

BeautyMoralityRationality, Uniformity, bases for modern scienceIntelligibility (unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics)Fine tuning

Brute

fact

of

physical

world

or

a

divine

will

and

purpose

behind

it

?

Slide63

If the [fine structure constant] were changed by 1%, the sun would immediately explode -- Prof. Max Tegmark, MIT

Fine Tuning of physical constants: Goldilocks Enigma … why just right?

“

The universe is the way it is, because we are here” – Prof. Stephen Hawking, Cambridge U

Just Six Numbers Sir Martin Rees (2000)

The Goldilocks Enigma: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life ...

Paul Davies (2006)

Slide64

We are made of stardust He C through a resonance

“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics .. and biology”His atheism was “deeply shaken”

Sir Fred Hoyle, Cambridge U

Slide65

Here are a few popular books I recommend :

Francis Collins, "

The Language of God

"

An honest and easy to read account of how Francis Collins, formerly head of the human genome project and currently director of the National Institutes of Health, came to believe in God, and how he squares his science with his faith.  

Alister McGrath,

"Dawkins' God: Genes, Memes and the Meaning of Life"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawkin%27s_God

McGrath, a prolific theologian with a PhD in biophysics, gives a thoughtful response to Richard Dawkins' arguments against the existence of God.

John Polkinghorne, "

Quarks, Chaos and Christianity

"

A classic introduction to questions on the interface between science and faith by Sir John Polkingorne, a former professor of theoretical physics at Cambridge.  Also a good starting point to Polkinhorne's work.

Ernest Lucas – “Cam we believe Genesis today”

Tim Keller,  "

The Reason for God

"

Whereas the other books on this list focus more on science/faith dialogue, here Tim Keller gives a good introduction to a broader set of arguments for the existence of God and the rationality of Christian faith. 

Websites

I recommend:

www.faraday-institute.org

    -- The Cambridge University based Faraday Institute for Science and Religion has a treasure trove of excellent online material

www.biologos.org

  -- An organisation set up by Francis Collins to help counter the  shrill public discourse on science and faith with a more thoughtful and reasoned dialogue.

www.

testoffaith

.com -

- a website with loads of resources for churches, linked to a documentary that Bill Newsome (Stanford) and I participated in.

Slide66

Tapestry arguments and faith

BibleResurrectionLife and teachings of Jesus Christ Just a great teacher?

Slide67

Tapestry arguments for Bible

I have been reading poems, romances, vision literature, legends and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know none of them are like this. Of his [gospel] text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage .. or else, some unknown [ancient] writer .. without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern novelistic, realistic narrative.

C.S. Lewis

1898-1963

Slide68

Resurrection

N.T. Wright

Slide69

N.T. Wright on Resurrection

Slide70

As human beings, we are groping for knowledge and understanding of the strange universe into which we are born. We have many ways of understanding, of which science is only one …. Science is a particular bunch of tools that have been conspicuously successful for understanding and manipulating the material universe. Religion is another bunch of tools, giving us hints of a mental or spiritual universe that transcends the material universe.

F. Dyson “religion from the outside”, the New York Review, June 22, 2006 4-8

Freeman Dyson

Princeton

Slide71

O

ther

religions

F

ewer

points

P

oint

about

rationality

P

re-empt

questions

about

proof

W

hat

about

multiple

religious

views?

Q

’s

about

origins

Slide72

Michaelson-Morley and Aether

Slide73

Michaelson-Morley and Aether

published 1887

Einstein 1905Dayton Miller and others did measure aether wind see 1933 review

why did the community largely ignore Miller?

Slide74

Michaelson-Morley and Aether

published 1887

Einstein 1905

Dayton Miller and others did measure aether wind see 1933 review

The meaning of an experimental result does not, then, depend on the care with which it is designed and carried out, it depends upon what people are ready to believe.

The Golem: what you should know about science

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch (CUP 1993

)