Can we add a new item to the list of “open” origin questions — the origin of novelty in nature?
When you boil it all down, what science studies is change, or instances of novelty, in the natural world. Change as a natural process can be studied without having to know “why” change happens in the first place. Origin questions tend to get you into the prickly thicket of “Why?” questions. But science does not need to ask such questions to do its job. One just takes it for granted that change, novelty is somehow necessary in the natural world; no further inquiry need be made. The scientist’s job is to study change as it appears, not explain “Why?” it is a fundamental feature of the natural world.
And this is similar to the case of Darwinian evolution theory. The theory doesn’t require knowledge of the origin of biological life in order to study life as a changing process. In other words, the theory takes it for granted that life already exists; and then tells you how it “speciates” (changes over time, the source of biological novelty and diversity).
Science seems divided on the issue of origin questions. Some scientists believe that the solution to such questions is obtainable by means of the scientific method, and that it’s just a matter of time before their answers are “scientifically” revealed. Others won’t touch such problems with a ten-foot pole; because to speak of “origins” is, to their way of thinking, just a way to smuggle the notion of “creator” into the scientific debate. And this is strictly impermissible.
George V. Coyne, S.J., an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, thinks such matters go straight to the heart of what science is and what it can do. The key criterion goes to “what is meant by ‘origins’ and what is meant by ‘creation.’”
The key to understanding the difference between creation and origins is the notion of change…. Changes in nature are the object of study for the natural sciences. From pure energy to matter, from hydrogen to hydrocarbons, from giant molecular clouds to star clusters, from single cells to organs, from amino acids to the human brain — these are all objects of investigation for the natural sciences. They all require an existing entity which changes. The natural sciences do not deal with the issue of existing at all; they deal with existing in a specific way and the changes in nature, which bring about specific ways of existing.A little later on, Coyne continues: “In our discourse on beginnings we find it necessary to speak in a temporal framework. The creator is considered to be prior to what is created, but the priority is actually not temporal. The relationship is metaphysical, not temporal. To be created out of nothing does not mean that the creature is first nothing and then something. It means that the creature has a dependent existence.” [Ibid., p. 11]Creation, on the other hand, speaks to the very existence of whatever exists. It does not speak to change. Creation does not deal with the chain of events which bring about a specific kind of being. It deals with the source of being of whatever exists. It does not address the evolution of one kind of being from another. To create, therefore, is not to work on or with some already existing material. Creation is not, therefore, a cause in the usual sense of the word. Or, if you wish, creation is the complete cause of all things. Such a complete causing is precisely what the act of creation is. Thus, to create is to give existence to whatever exists in a specific way. To create does not mean to take “nothing” and make “something” out of it, in the sense of changing it from not being to being. To exist means to depend upon a source of existence. So, creation is not exclusively, not even primarily, some distant event; to create is the continual, complete causing of the existence of whatever is.
So there can, in principle, be no necessary conflict between the doctrine of creation and any scientific explanation of origins. The natural sciences seek to account for change and the origins of change. Whether the changes described are biological or cosmological, have a beginning or not, are unending or temporally finite, they remain processes. Creation accounts for the existence of things, not for changes in things. So, given that something exists, how did life originate from this something is a scientific question. Why there is something rather than nothing is not a scientific question. — “Evolution and Intelligent Design,” Divine Action and Natural Selection: Science, Faith, and Evolution, Singapore:World Scientific, 2009, p. 9f.
In these last remarks, Coyne touches on our old friend, the law of cause and effect, which in the universe of sense perception ever moves along the arrow of time from past, to present, to future. Thus causes must come first in the temporal order; their effects follow later on. This perception of the normal “flow” of things is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that the very idea of “inverse-causality” is senseless, even reprehensible, to many people today, including many scientists.
It goes without saying that the law of cause and effect is intrinsic to the scientific method. And yet, if the observation of the great philosopher David Hume is to be taken seriously, science has reason to be troubled about the “firmness” of our ideas regarding causality. For it seems to me Hume was right: We never actually see a cause at work. The only thing we think we know is that one thing follows upon another. In short, by the time we notice the effect, the cause has already receded into the past; i.e., it is not then a direct observable; and we never saw “what it did” to effect a particular outcome, because we were completely unaware of it until the outcome occurred. In fact, the same thing could be said of the effect: We notice it by taking “measurements”; but by the time the measurement has been taken, the effect is already in the past, too.
In saying this, Hume was drawing attention to the fact that accounts of causation never can come by direct observation, but only by means of an exercise of human judgment — a completely different faculty of the human mind than sense perception.
And then steps in the great philosopher Immanuel Kant, who observed that human sense perception is physically structured in such a way that all we can really say about “direct observation” is that it can capture only the outward, or surface appearance of things, but can never grasp the observed thing as it is “in itself.” This formulation draws the sharp distinction between “appearance” and the actual reality of which the appearance is merely the “reflection,” as “registered in the brain” of an observer at a particular point in space and time. Again, we are in effect thrown back on judgment, since direct sensory perception provides insufficient data for a more complete understanding of the entity concerned.
Well, these would seem to be the really “deep problems” for science. Notice that it’s philosophers who have pointed them out. Which is why I consider as total nonsense arguments holding that science and theology/philosophy are somehow mutually-exclusive knowledge domains or “magisteria” whose paths should never cross. Or worse, that one of the magisteria is “true” and the other “false,” one always right, the other always wrong. If you take a look at the history of science, or of human culture more generally, you will find that the two knowledge domains have been cross-fertilizing for well over two millennia by now…. To the mutual benefit of each.
In closing, let me add an amusing story. You and I both appreciate Robert Jastrow’s famous comment about the scientists, painstakingly struggling up the mountain peak of Knowledge, and finally making it all the way up to the summit — only to find a band of theologians who had been waiting for them, sitting there for centuries.
Well, Richard Gordon, Department of Radiology, University of Manitoba, has written an uproariously funny “new ending” for that parable:
…who have been sitting there for centuries… killing each other and their descendents in the name of God. But the scientist and his comrades, who although they had also argued for centuries, formed together a single world effort at understanding the universe. They then convinced the younger theologians to descend the mountain and consider whether science itself might provide a way to bring an end to their mutual slaughter. In exchange, the scientists had to broaden their view, and start working on some of the tougher problems they had previously fobbed off on religion. [Op. cit., “Preface 3,” p. xlix]Oh, the joys of the “observer problem!” Noble scientists! Blood-thirsty theologians! LOLOL! (Richard Dawkins, call your office....)
People can only see what they can see from where they stand. But at the same time, if the universe is an intelligible order (which I’m convinced it is), then direct observation only gets you so far; and there are limits to rational speculation….
I did appreciate Gordon in effect admitting that maybe, just maybe, “scientists had to broaden their view.”
Thank you ever so much for writing, and your kind words of support, dearest sister in Christ!
Thanks for the pings. I’ve been following even though I’ve been too busy to post much.
Likewise, man's ability to reason is limited. His inability to comprehend a thing nor more invalidates it than it would for an amoeba not to be able to comprehend high energy particle physics.
It is particularly absurd when men (e.g. Dawkins remark above) think they can measure God.
betty wrote: The theory doesn’t require knowledge of the origin of biological life in order to study life as a changing process. In other words, the theory takes it for granted that life already exists; and then tells you how it “speciates” (changes over time, the source of biological novelty and diversity).
Spirited: There in a nutshell, is the ancient pagan(and modern) creation-mythos.
In their book, ‘The Hiram Key,’ evolutionary materialists Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas explain that ancient Egyptians, “believed that matter had always existed; to them it was illogical to think of a god making something out of absolutely nothing. Their view was that the world began when order came out of chaos, and that ever since there has been a battle between the forces of organization and disorder. (There was) a creative force within (chaos) that commanded order to begin. This latent power which was within the substance of the chaos did not know it existed; it was a probability...within the randomness of disorder.”
Paganism is like a coin whose two sides are materialism and pantheism, which itself subdivides into materialist-pantheism and idealistic-pantheism. The former is the pantheism of the Ionians and Stoics for example, while the latter is for example, Buddhist. All variants are types of animism (hylozoism), which speaks of an immanent life-force existing throughout nature. Pantheism generally (but not always) anthropomorphizes the force. Materialism on the other hand, is a more highly refined animism which most generally speaks of the life-force in terms of energy. The Egyptian Pharoah’s were materialists of this sort.
Karl Marx’s dialectical materialism and apocalyptic history are really nothing more than animism in disguise.
Hegel’s dialectics are also animism, but of the ideal variety.
Nietzsche was also an animist of the ideal variant.
Darwinism is also animism, but disguised as ‘science.’ The ineffable forces within Chance, Natural Selection, and Probability are examples of animism (hylozoism).
The evolutionary materialist must denounce the spiritual attributes of mind, reason, and conscience because hylozoism states that these properties belong to dialectical matter.
Modernitys’ Pied Piper, Evolutionary Humanism, entranced its followers with impossible visions of something new and better. It called this wonderful vision Progress. But Truth reveals the ugly lie: Progress, as it turns out, really means regress-—a turning back to paganism and its superstitions.