The American Crisis: Origins-
The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma
Parts 5 & 6
Journal Entry #23
Much is spoken today about the power of science, and rightly. It is awesome. But little is said about the inherent limitations of science, and both sides of the coin need equal scrutiny. –Vannevar Bush

One of the severest tests of a scientific mind is to discern the limits of the legitimate application of scientific methods. –James Clerk Maxwell
-quotes are from The Relevance of Physics, Stanley Jaki, Ph D Physics; Benedictine monk. cf. Journal Entry #16.

If science stands opposed to religion, it is not because of anything contained in either the premises or the conclusions of the great scientific theories…Confident assertions by scientists that…they have demonstrated that God does not exist have nothing to do with science, and even less to do with God’s existence. –The Devil’s Delusion; Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions; xiv; David Berlinski, Ph D Mathematics.

Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.” –Job 38: 1-4.

The Failure of Modern Science and Our Historical Dilemma

Part 5
There can be little argument that Western Civilization has by any measure enjoyed abundant and valuable gains through the cultivation of reason, scientific experimentation and industry. The advancements made in the history of scientific research are nothing short of spectacular. And as science has been the impetus to seemingly unbounded industrial and technological progress, it is not unreasonable to say the history of science is a singular one of unparalleled intellectual achievement. Through the strict observance of the techniques born of empirical-rationalism, modern science has derived its strength, flexibility and reach.

Merely witness the difference between the United States as a fledgling association of provincial and primarily agrarian colonies in 1789, and the considerable position it occupied and the power it wielded in 1969- a span of merely 180 years- when it projected its national will through military force to the other side of the planet in Southeast Asia, as America opposed the extension of the Marxist ideology of North Vietnam and its formidable sponsors, Soviet Russia and the Peoples Republic of China.

And this while it simultaneously engaged in the most impressive scientific, industrial and engineering feat in the history of any and all civilizations: the placing of human beings- along with their native atmosphere- upon a foreign and inhospitable planetary body, far removed in space from Earth. Aside from the question of the effectiveness, or even the desirability of these national efforts, such achievements clearly and undeniably bespeak the existence of a most advanced scientific, industrial and technological cultural base.

A momentous- and most revealing- step taken along this road to scientific advancement is described in the extremely lucid work, Oxford History of the Twentieth Century, as John Maddox explains in the fourth chapter, "The Expansion of Knowledge":

“In the twentieth century, the mechanism of life itself has been explained in terms of physics and chemistry. That is the significance of the proposal, by James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick in April 1953, of what proved to be a correct atomic structure of the chemical material called DNA...Not since Copernicus, in 1545, put the sun rather than the earth at the centre of the solar system has a discovery so profoundly changed peoples' conception of the place they occupy in the world.”*

Now what has been said here is certainly true enough, and it is not an unreasonable analogy to which Mr. Maddox has resorted, associating the functioning of DNA with that of a working machine, as it represents "an assembly of moving parts" and assumes the role of an "agency or means by which an effect is produced or a purpose is accomplished", in this case to extend genetic inheritance with each generation. At a more profound level, however, a great deal more is being asserted here which speaks directly to the content of the modern political and social ideologies which we have now come to identify with total war. Even more so as Mr. Maddox extends the analogy further, as he refers also to the "mechanism of consciousness".

Philosophically, the idea of mechanism proceeds from that doctrine developed by the French philosopher and mathematician, Rene Descartes (1596-1650), by which he sought to eliminate from scientific explanations the scholastic concept of "real qualities" in the physical objects of the universe, and rely on a more unambiguous foundation of "quantitative analysis" in the process of scientific investigation. Such a trend in western thought represents a significant departure from the ideas of medieval philosophy and certain hypotheses of classical Aristotelian physics. While such a development proved indispensable and immensely beneficial to the progress of modern scientific inquiry and the empirical-rationalism which lay at the heart of the European Enlightenment, there was also inherent in this mechanistic worldview a most profound danger.

As scientific thought increasingly compared the universe to some sort of mechanical model, everything within it similarly came to be regarded as an assembly of moving parts- material parts- by which various self-sustaining effects and purposes are accomplished. What began as a useful intellectual method for acquiring positive knowledge of the universe and its contents, became over time a habit of mind first and thereafter a very exclusive worldview. That is, a specific and distinct definition of the universe and its contents that excluded everything but a strictly material interpretation.

Part 6
The emerging danger in this materialist worldview arose as science shifted in this comparative method from the quite rational (and defensible) position that all the existing things observable- and measurable- in the universe are material objects, to the irrational (because it’s indefensible) position which presumes all the existing things in the universe are material objects. It is a subtle but profound shift in outlook, born of the practical, day-to-day needs of scientific investigation to account for the things and processes of nature within identifiable material limits. Also, by virtue of the vast, all-encompassing scale of the material universe, and the extent of the intellectual penetration of it, it is understandable, if not quite justifiable, that a strict material outlook should grow in stature; from merely a method to a virtual article of faith.

Consequently, we should expect to see such a material outlook permeating the statements of most working scientists. For example, Dr. Carl Sagan- an otherwise sound and distinguished astronomical scientist- affirmed in one of his last written works; “Again, we know a great deal about the existence and properties of matter. If a given phenomenon can already be plausibly understood in terms of matter and energy, why should we hypothesize that something else- something for which there is as yet no other good evidence- is responsible?”** If Dr. Sagan had conceived his question less rhetorically, he might have recognized the empirical necessity of admitting to his readership the distinct possibility that the existence of matter may very well imply, or indeed, require more than strictly material properties.

Beyond that, we find reflected in the statement of this accomplished scientist evidence of the fundamental features of a strict materialism: the sufficiency of matter- and its variant form, energy- to adequately define the phenomena of the universe. Moreover, we see at bottom that subtle but extremely potent, though unspoken, assumption supporting the practice of a thoroughgoing materialism: the identification of existence with matter. To a small degree this is a practical and legitimate identification, for most would agree objects like our moon or that particular star materially exist.

What requires further elaboration, however, is the degree of this identification of matter with existence. Is it a complete or merely a partial correspondence? We know all material things exist, but are all existing things material? What appears crucial to the continued usefulness of the materialist worldview in all areas of the physical sciences, therefore, is the quite necessary clarification the community of scientists has yet to establish: whether or not the two phenomena, matter and existence, are really one and the same- or, identical.

In other words, are all the objects within the class of existence, also contained in the class of matter? Are the two classes coextensive? Or is the class of existence possessed of objects both within and outside the boundaries of the class of matter?

If it is the case that the class of existence includes things beyond the class of matter as well as within it, then are those nonmaterial existing things- though indefinable scientifically- nevertheless understandable by the human intellect via empirical-rationalism? And beyond rendering them understandable, could empirical-rationalism determine the relevance of this nonmaterial realm to the material order with which we are most familiar? If Professor Sagan’s view of the issue is to be considered representative, modern science simply disregards the entire subject, though the very legitimacy of human reason- and the utility of science- hang in the balance.

Because all material things in the universe are existing things, are we entitled to presume that all existing things in the universe are material things? Scientists have simply ignored the empirical necessity- to say nothing of the profound importance- of answering the question, notwithstanding the fact that the answer may or may not support the theory of evolution. As a result, scientific reasoning has become increasingly inaccurate and tenuous, if not completely unreliable. Why should this be? Logically, if science cannot define what exists, then neither can science speak to what doesn’t exist. Eventually, the two become confused.

Consequently, it is problematic whether modern science continues to represent an intellectual exercise which offers tentative approximations of truth. If not, scientific thought will certainly become arbitrary and, along with it, the entirety of human thought. This fact bears heavily upon the stability and longevity of human society and government; and human freedom.

Notes
*Edited by Michael Howard & Wm. Roger Louis, The Oxford History of The Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press Inc., 1998) 35. Italics are mine.
**Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World; Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997) 301. Italics are mine.

Montag