Why science is as science does—and why it matters

Science is a subject many people keep at arm’s length. Perhaps they have little interest in science. Or are uncomfortable with a perceived conflict between science and faith. Or maybe they have other priorities. Yet, science exerts big impacts on our lives, including our faith lives. Consider when Mass attendance was suspended because of the COVID-19 virus , Pope Francis’ emphasis on climate change and the environment, prominent scientists telling us this is a God-less universe, and artificial intelligence (AI) advancing at a breakneck pace.

Science is at its best when it is disinterested (no personal stake in an outcome), experimental rather than practical, joyously engaged, and when it questions. Unfortunately, we have witnessed the effects on policy and society when those qualities are lacking. People are inclined to accept what society tells them science has concluded, even more so in the midst of a crisis. To adopt different views, especially in today’s interconnected world, can invite ridicule, scorn, dismissal. Ironically, thoughtfully challenging the consensus of the scientific community has often led to advancements in science.

Have scientists ever been perfectly disinterested? No, yet physicist Paul Dirac expounded theories that when first proposed—the Dirac equation is considered by many to be the most beautiful equation in all of physics!—were considered to be outrageous by contemporary titans of physics. As to Dirac’s idea that the universe consists of both normal matter and antimatter (electrons and positrons as an example), physicist Suzie Sheehy writes in The Matter of Everything:

Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli, one of the pioneers of quantum theory (the study of the smallest things in the universe and their influence on everything else), called it ‘nonsense’ and Neils Bohr was ‘completely incredulous.’ Werner Heisenberg, a German theoretical physicist who created much of quantum mechanics, including the uncertainty principle, stated in 1928 that ‘the saddest chapter of modern physics is and remains the Dirac theory.’

The last thing a self-interested physicist would have done is what Paul Dirac did.

Have scientists ever been perfectly impractical? No, yet Ernest Rutherford, called “the father of nuclear physics” and a consummate experimenter, immersed himself for years in identifying the structure of the atom, work that enabled future scientists and engineers to build all kinds of things.

Have scientists ever been motivated purely by the joy of the work? Hardly, yet Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, at their best, came close. How about questioning the consensus? My graduate advisor presented subtly flawed data about water or wastewater and challenged his students to identify why the data wasn’t reliable. Getting called to the front of the class for a Dr. Etzel inquisition on data reliability wasn’t fun, but it taught us about the need to question and verify before forging ahead with a design.

Inherent in these qualities—disinterest, experiment, the joy of the work, and questioning—is that science, as with every other human pursuit, has its area of competence, just as the areas of a circle, triangle, and rectangle are defined by unique equations. While the area of a small triangle may be encompassed by a larger circle (geometry within the broader field of mathematics, for example), nothing outside the area of a geometrical shape can be encompassed by it.

Thus, when scientists, no matter how prominent or popular, pontificate on policy, politics, philosophy, religion, they are ranging outside their area of competence and have no more authority than anyone else.

During COVID-19’s darkest days, prominent scientists and policymakers insisted the only reasonable explanation for the virus’ origin was a naturally occurring agent, such as a bat. Behind the scenes, however, we have since learned that those prominent scientists weren’t so sure. In the early pandemic years, scientists who challenged the prevailing conclusion, the natural agent conclusion, were ridiculed or sidelined. Today, many organizations and institutions believe the most likely explanation for the origin of the COVID-19 virus was sloppy experimentation at the Wuhan, China lab. Though we cannot say for sure—and, therefore, should not—prominent scientists, policymakers, and the media should not have shut down debate on this subject because actions and responses ought to rely on what we learn from events. Thus, disinterested science also suffered during those tragic years.

Earth’s water quality, air quality, and habitats, once front and center in our environmental consciousness, have been swallowed up by climate change. In the meantime, evidence demonstrates that in nations with public engagement and citizen empowerment, water, air, and habitats have improved by leaps and bounds—the Great Lakes, Detroit River; Thames, Rhine, and Seine rivers in Europe. Smog over Los Angeles is next to nothing in comparison to the 1960s. In 1932, author Stuart Palmer wrote, “He rubbed his eyes, half-blinded by the thick falling flakes of sooty precipitate that passes for snow in Manhattan.” Not anymore.

Why, then, so many warnings about “toxic chemicals” in our drinking water or the Great Lakes? Because we can now detect these chemicals at amounts a million or a billion times less than in the 1960s and 70s; detection alone no longer signifies danger. Today, detection of a pollutant requires confirmation of the amount, which then requires context—the amount in relation to harmful amounts. Noteworthy evidence of this drastic improvement in water quality is the number of sensitive species that have returned to the Detroit River and many other waterways where people are engaged and empowered.

To read or hear the great majority of perspectives on the universe, one would think that science has disproved the existence of a Creator, when most of what physics has learned about the origin and stability of the universe in the 20th century suggests that a universe conducive to stars, and planets with life, was extremely unlikely in comparison to unstable outcomes. New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions from Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, by Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, SJ, describes why our universe was so unlikely to exist. Not only should we ask why this universe began in the first place, but also why a universe stable enough to produce stars, planets, and life—on one planet at least—proceeded from the initiating event.

While 20th- and 21st-century physics hasn’t demonstrated the existence of a Creator—thus, the necessity for an informed faith—one could say that never in history has scientific evidence more strongly pointed to a Creator, to the extent that many physicists now seek to explain our extremely low-probability-universe by postulating an infinite number of universes (the multiverse) to explain our own unlikely universe.

Artificial intelligence is here and now, and AI will be “generative,” that is, capable of generating convincing text, videos, “news”, using a mass of deep-learning models, in every field, in the not-too-distant future. Too many today still believe AI is a novelty—not so. In a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, titled “This AI Expert Advises the White House, Google, JPMorgan, and Corporate America,” Christopher Mims states: “(Ethan) Mollick (professor at University of Pennsylvania Wharton School) is generally upbeat about the future of AI—a self-described ‘rational optimist.’ He’s insistent that now is the time for people in every field to engage deeply with it, while they still have the power to shape the nascent general-purpose technology that will someday affect every aspect of our society.

In the article, Ethan Mollick says, “There is not a single large-scale general purpose technology that does not have upsides and downsides, and part of my message has been that we have agency (opportunity) right now, to call certain things out as being bad… And we need to be doing that.” A bad thing would include justifying any decision or action, no matter how inhuman, by ascribing it to “authoritative” AI, thereby relieving people of culpability for the outcome.

As necessary as it was for the Church to engage Rome in the first century; as necessary as it was for the Church to engage emperors, kings, and chiefs in the Middle Ages; as necessary as it was for the Church to engage ideologies that sought to replace Christianity in recent centuries, today’s Church should engage science in a manner that is respectful and encouraging of scientific inquiry, while challenging “science” that purports to possess more knowledge and authority than warranted by the evidence.

When anyone, including scientists, conclude that truth and beauty are solely in the subjective eye of the beholder, such a conviction is likely to affect their work. Robust debates and referencing ethical guardrails, about what science knows, knows imperfectly, and doesn’t know—about subjects such as the COVID-19 virus, climate change and the environment, the universe, AI, and many other subjects—is the essence of true science. Before adding its oars to the galley of today’s scientific consensus, the Church should confirm we are rowing in the right direction.