A Post-Christian Ireland? || Science and Post-Christian Ireland

Science and Post-Christian IrelandAuthor(s): David McConnellSource: The Irish Review (1986-), No. 27, A Post-Christian Ireland? (Summer, 2001), pp. 40-47Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29736016 .

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Science and Post-Christian Ireland

DAVID McCONNELL

Ihave

been asked to comment on how natural science might be expected to influence the way in which our society will develop in what has been

called'post-Christian Ireland'.This is a tall order but I think it is worthwhile

having a go at it, even knowing that any short essay on this subject will

inevitably be scratching the surface, and it may appear disjointed. I am inter?

ested in looking behind the obvious and asking how people might relate to

scientific knowledge of the natural world at a deep level, and how science

might be allied with the humanities in forging a new basis for living. I sense

that there is a wonderful opportunity for science to pervade Irish culture in

a way which might enrich people's lives and help them to feel more at

home in this extraordinary but perplexing world. I am however not san?

guine that science will sit easily in the Ireland of the times which lie ahead,

except in a superficial way, and I offer a few thoughts on how we might avoid this superficiality. In addressing the relationship between science and

religion in Ireland, I will be referring mostly to Christianity and only to

natural science.

There are three elements in this dance: religion, science and Ireland. The

first sees itself in decline, the second is believed to be in the ascendancy, and

the third is the place in which these two great systems of belief may be

thought of, for our parochial purposes, as dancing round each other. The

evidence from the decline of emigration and the increase of immigration are

the two things which tell us clearly that Ireland is a much more contented

place than it was even ten years ago. But the change for the better seems to

have been quite sudden so we should not be complacent ? the upward mov?

ing curves of wealth and employment could just as easily turn down. In any case there is much unfinished business, with a large number of people

40 McCONNELL, 'Science and Post-Christian Ireland', Irish Review 27 (2001)



excluded from the civil society and an even larger number who are wary if

not anxious about the future. Some of people's behaviour causes widespread

anxiety and even repulsion; there is still terrible poverty in the inner cities, at

the back of small towns and on small farms. Too many young people do not

get a decent chance to avoid illiteracy, drugs, violence, crime and jail. In the

dance of science and religion what can science offer to the people of this

country, those who have made it materially and those who conspicuously have failed to do so? And as religion declines further can science help to fill

the cultural, even the moral void?

Science and religion share a common objective of explaining the puzzles of the natural world to man. For example, both science and religion have

sought to explain the origin of the universe and the origin of life. Both

have had ideas about the place of man in the universe and the relationship of the earth to the universe. Both offer explanations about the nature of the

mind or soul or spirit, and of course what happens after death. They have

so often been at loggerheads (with science usually prevailing) that it is

understandable that people think of religion being replaced by science. Sci?

ence and religion differ essentially in the way they acquire knowledge, science ever changing by the scientific method which is a communal

enterprise, religion by conservative tradition, private contemplation and

personal experience. Science has produced tools which have shaped and

misshaped our material world. Religion has sought to provide spiritual

guidance and moral order though some would see its efforts as misguided and somtimes simply wrong.

It may be helpful to have a picture of the state of modern science before

we investigate whether and how it might be helpful to us in Ireland. Science

is, first and foremost, global, in a way which can only be matched by a few

other human enterprises in the cultural sphere, for example music (which is

important) and sport (which is less so). Religion, in contrast, is a parochial matter, in which a person's affiliation is not only decided at birth, but for the

most part it is fixed by birth. There is one science and a multitude of reli?

gions. The contrast could not be greater. As Pasteur said,'Science knows no

boundaries because it is a light which illuminates the world.' It is the same

in Beijing as it is in Ballydehob. Scientists work with one method of

enquiry, they are interested broadly-speaking in the same set of problems, and if a solution is found somewhere and confirmed to be true there, it will

be true anywhere else. A scientist who qualifies in Ireland has knowledge, which will be listened to, may be understood and possibly admired by his or

her colleagues in the same discipline, anywhere in the world. The scientific

community is united by a vast body of established facts and theories, and an

ever changing but shared set of challenges, which are being addressed by an

McCONNELL, 'Science and Post-Christian Ireland', Irish Review 27 (2001) 41



agreed set of procedures. There are no nagging doubts about how the scien?

tist goes to work. There is a procedure for work which was well established

in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and polished in the twentieth. It

has many practical difficulties (for example those related to commercializa?

tion, gender balance, funding and career structure) but the goals, philosophy and work ethic adopted by the international scientific community are not

controversial within that community. Some sociologists disagree. The second quality of science to be acknowledged is its success. Few

things in a room in which the reader sits have been untouched by twenti?

eth-century science. Isaiah Berlin noted two contrasting factors that 'above

all, have shaped human history in the twentieth-century'. He wrote, 'One

is the development of the natural sciences and technology, certainly the

greatest success story of our time.'The other, he noted,'consists in the great

ideological storms that have altered the lives of virtually all mankind'. He

was thinking of the 'totalitarian tyrannies', and of course these would not

have emerged, or if they had they would neither have prospered nor

spread, without the science which gave us the awesome and awful technol?

ogy of modern warfare. For our purposes I simply want to emphasize that a

great student of the humanities has paid high tribute to the achievements

of science.

Another great humanist, Karl Popper is a favourite philosopher for scien?

tists, not only because he understood and appreciated the achievements of

science and scientists, but he went further and drew lessons from science for

the more general conduct of human affairs. He appreciated the communal

nature of science; the community of scientists world-wide was the ever

changing jury which decided from time to time whether a scientific obser?

vation or theory was 'true' for the time being. He was impressed that

scientists published their observations at intermediate stages in their research

so bringing their colleagues and competitors up-to-date. Patents, which are

much maligned, have the same effect of revealing knowledge to competi? tors. Popper saw science as a quasi-democratic process and emphasized that

democracy shared many qualities with the scientific method. In contrast

many religions are unchanging and some seem intellectually totalitarian.

Science is undoubtedly gathering pace and quality. It has revealed more

and deeper knowledge in this last century than in all historical time. There is

a case that science stands apart as the only field of human cultural endeavour

to have grown in power and stature in the last century such that its earlier

achievements have been dwarfed. We cannot say that the creations of twen?

tieth-century music, art, literature, philosophy or architecture have eclipsed the works of previous centuries. Neither can modern science take anything

away from the science of Euclid or Hamilton or Darwin. But science,




through the sheer scale and range of subject, the litany of extraordinary dis?

coveries and the variety of styles of twentieth-century science, has acquired unthinkable richness. So many discoveries have been made to rival and

exceed those of ancient Greece or Renaissance Europe or nineteenth-cen?

tury Europe, that commentators such as Berlin and Popper are happy to

recognize and admire the intellectual vigour which has fuelled twentieth

century science. It seems that science with all its flaws, including the

insufferable cockiness of some of its advocates, is indeed in the intellectual

driving seat. For the most part scientists no longer fear religion and can be

reasonably confident (pace the eco-terrorists and a few other extremists) that

they will not lose their lives for publishing the results of their research.

There is however a worry that the boot is on the other foot.

Let us look for a moment at some of the achievements of twentieth-cen?

tury science. In biology, it has been the century of genetics, and I will

confine myself to a few comments about genetics where discoveries bear on

the nature of man. Genetics came almost literally from nowhere in 1900,

hitting the front in 1957 with the publication of the structure of DNA.

Geneticists have just completed the first draft of the human genome

sequence. This is the full genetic code of a human being and we will spend much of the next century finding out what the code really means. In partic? ular we will use the code to help to decipher the way the brain works as an

electrochemical machine 'in health and disease'. We will fill in the details of

the molecular and cellular mechanisms by which the one celled embryo

grows into a baby and then into adulthood and then dies, ashes to ashes, dust

to dust, all more or less coded in the genes which are tuned by interaction

with the environment. The theory of evolution has been verified yet again, this time by use of the molecular clock. The clock has been used to show

that the common ancestor of man and the chimps lived about two million

years ago. Man is a chimp who speaks a complex language, but we do not

yet know how a few human genes have given us the capacity for language and all that this skill implies for the understanding of the human mind. Man

and chimps are closer to each other genetically than horses are to zebras, but

what a difference!

At the moment the evidence suggests that all modern men are descend?

ed from a common ancestral group of hominids which lived about

150,000 years ago. Homo sapiens and homo neanderthalensis co-existed in

Europe until about 20,000 years ago, when the Neanderthals became

extinct. DNA analysis shows that the Neanderthals were probably a differ?

ent species; that is, they did not interbreed with homo sapiens, although they

may have been genetically close enough to do so. One tantalizing question is whether they were able to speak a complex language. How would we




have treated a different species of Homo if it had survived into the

twentieth-century?

The success of science, open to change, unified and international, has

been built on a rational method of enquiry which insists that any claims

must be independently verified by many other competent scientists. Pop?

per argued that the scientific method should be applied to other human

endeavours ? this seems obvious and I am pleased at the current interest in

'evidence-based medicine' as one example. The method depends crucially on the idea of objective, repetitive verification of material evidence. The

demise of religion is partly caused by people asking 'what is the evidence

for this or that proposal?' Over and over again the religious assertions about

the natural world, which in the past caused the common man to be fearful, have been unsustainable for lack of evidence. The recent comments by the

Papacy to the effect that the theory of evolution has a serious status show a

huge gulf between science and religion. The modern response of some but

not all churches, has been that religion does not concern the material

world, but some other world, a revealed world which we can all open our

minds to.

As Ireland becomes more educated in science it will surely become less

religious, but there are three great dangers in this. First, many of the bene?

fits of religion may be lost, for example the personal solace which many

people find in being religious. Religion has important roles to play but I

regret to say that I believe that it will steadily decline unless the philosoph? ical basis is substantially reformed. My second concern is that the science

may not be understood. My third is that in a poorly educated society, sci?

ence may replace religion not as a source of knowledge but as a source of

fear, and an anti-science may develop as a reaction to the apparent domi?

nance of science.

For me the key question for science in post-Christian Ireland is whether

it will be able to develop here in a way which gains the respect and confi?

dence of the general population. This is a huge task and it is a task which

has not been completed anywhere. One third of the US states have stan?

dards for the teaching of biology which exclude, minimise or bowdlerize

the theory of evolution. The historian Wolfgang Fruhwald, now the head of

the von Humboldt Foundation, has pointed to the 'science anxiety' which

is sweeping Germany and indeed Europe. From my perspective it is mani?

fest in the irrational reaction to genetic engineering. Fruhwald is

concerned that 'a fundamentalist anti-science (has come) into existence in

many parts of the world (and) could finally destroy the basis for human

life'.This is a global view by a humanist who knows the perils posed by the

growth of the world's population, famines, the AIDS epidemic, the BSE




epidemic, global warming, nuclear arsenals, the disappearance of the ozone

layer, the impending energy shortage and so forth. It is true that without

science none of these perils would have emerged, so science is seen as part of the problem. Scientists retort, correctly in my view, that we produce

knowledge which will emerge anyway, and which can be used or abused.

Of course, science is an essential part of the solution, but if Fruhwald is

right it may not be able to participate; 'science anxiety' may persist and

'anti-science' may become entrenched.

So what should we do in Ireland to get the best out of science? In brief, I hope that science will pervade Irish society in a way which allows virtu?

ally everyone to feel that they are 'scientific'. In the best outcome everyone will feel that they are an integral part of the scientific community even if

they are not and never have been scientists. I would hope that all people would feel that being scientific is part of being a human being in the

twenty-first century.

Now let me be clear about what I mean by 'being scientific'. The key to

being a scientist is the scientific method, which I have outlined above. I am

aware that I have portrayed the scientific method in a simple way, but that is

the essence of day-to-day, humdrum, non-Kuhnian science. I would like all

students at school to be taught science in a way which allows them to under?

stand the scientific method. Science is much more than a collection of facts

and theories; it is the way these have been assembled. As I sometimes say to

my students when I start a course: I want to tell you about how we found

out the way the world is. In other words I am setting out to tell you the

questions asked, the kinds of experiments, the results and interpretation of

the experiments. I want you to know how scientists (whom I name) in cer?

tain places (which I name) at certain times (which I give), made certain

discoveries, which were later confirmed or not confirmed.

Students, even at school, should learn about the international communi?

ty of scientists, the way science is published and the way the international

community resolves scientific disputes. Students, without ever seeing the

evidence, need to have a sense of why every reputable biologist accepts the

theory of evolution, and why every reputable physicist accepts the theory of relativity. If a person knows how the scientific method works in practice,

they will know why they should have confidence in statements which

come from authoritative figures working in fields which the person does

not understand. Most physicists accept the theory of evolution and most

biologists accept the theory of relativity, not because they have studied the

fields but because they know other competent scientists have done so.

When a controversy within science bursts prematurely onto the public

stage, the lay educated observer should be able to distinguish between the




opinion of a committee of the Royal Society and that of a single scientist

who has made sensational claims.

One way of acquiring confidence in the scientific method is through the

history of science. In itself the history of science is often much more acces?

sible and interesting to many people than science itself. I often take up a

copy of Greek Science (1953) by Benjamin Farrington, an Irish classicist, which has beautiful illustrations of Greek scientific genius at work. Perhaps an Irish pupil would take more easily to Euclid after reading Farrington.

The study of the history of science might be augmented through reading fiction, biography and autobiography. Students could not only study the

central ideas of astronomy but also read John Banville 's Copernicus and

Kepler. In summary, science should be a major part of the school curricu?

lum ? all students should study the history and philosophy of science for

the Leaving Certificate.

I have an English translation oiLe Ph?nom?ne Humain {The Phenomenon of

Man), first published by the French Jesuit biologist, Teilhard de Chardin, in

1947. De Chardin was a passionate believer in evolution and believed that

everything about man could and should be investigated scientifically. He had

been prevented by the Jesuits from teaching and he was 'exiled' to China

where he did some excellent work on fossils ? in fact he was a member of

the expedition which unearthed Peking Man (an example of Homo erec

tus). Some of his manuscripts, which were left to a friend, could not be

published until after his death. De Chardin was driven by reason and a search

for both scientific and religious truth. He was a close friend of Julian Huxley, the eminent humanist, zoologist and popularizer of the theory of evolution

and author of Evolution, the Modern Synthesis in 1942, who was Director

General of UNESCO from 1946-48. Huxley wrote the Introduction to the

English edition of The Phenomenon of Man (1959). He concluded:

We, mankind, contain the possibilities of the earth's immense future, and

we can realise more and more of them on condition that we increase

our knowledge and our love. That, it seems to me is the distillation of

'The Phenomenon of Man'.

De Chardin for his part in his Preface says this:

Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and

religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole.

We need more alliances of the kind epitomized by de Chardin and Huxley. It should be clear that science, devoted to a particular kind of truth, can

be trusted in its efforts to describe the natural world. I mentioned that

evolution is a fact, but I also need to say in passing that it permeates all




science from cosmology to psychology. It follows that culture is a product of

evolution, first only biological, and later on the evolutionary ladder, it

became partly cultural. Biology tells us that we can make sense of man, and

all his inventions of World Three including God, 'in the context of evolu?

tion'. Science needs allies, who will absorb it, understand it and propagate it.

I imagine that many sermons might deal with scientific discoveries. I hope the allies will be willing and able to participate in the private and public reg? ulation of the use of scientific knowledge within a sound moral order for the

betterment of man. Otherwise the practice of science, in the form of tech?

nology, will destroy mankind. I have wondered whether religion can be

reformed in such a way that once again it encompasses scientific knowledge? Can religion participate with science (and all other branches of knowledge) in a new description of a humanist God as a source of moral order? Can Jesus the man take over where God left off?




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