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I often encounter religious skeptics who declare that, unlike theists, they live in \u201cthe fact-based universe\u201d \u2014 as if there exists only one such place and as if they hold a monopoly on reason and objective fact.\u00a0 And they commonly point to science as not only a paradigm for knowing \u201cjust the facts, ma\u2018am,\u201d but as the ideal or even as the only genuinely valid avenue to knowledge or \u2014 a rather distinct concept, though its distinctness sometimes goes unrecognized \u2014 as the only body of genuine, reliable knowledge in and of existence.<\/p>\n
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Now, they themselves don\u2019t really believe any such thing.\u00a0 They routinely and unavoidably act on the basis of knowledge that they have not derived through anything remotely like \u201cscience.\u201d\u00a0 When their mothers call them to dinner, they usually come.\u00a0 No scientific experimentation has led them to do so.\u00a0 When they detect an object hurtling through the air toward their heads, they duck.\u00a0 They don\u2019t conduct an experiment first.\u00a0 They don\u2019t typically perform DNA tests to confirm their relationships to their mothers and their fathers and their siblings.\u00a0 They don\u2019t require a geological survey or an inventory of the local caribou population or access to a radio telescope before accepting the proposition that Paris is the capital of France or that the American Civil War involved conflict between the Union and the Confederacy over the period between 1861 and 1865.\u00a0 Few people demand archaeological proof that Interstate Highway 5 (I-5) runs from the U.S. border with Mexico to the U.S. border with Canada, connecting San Diego to Los Angeles, and then passing through California\u2019s Central Valley to Sacramento, and from Sacramento on to Portland and Seattle.\u00a0 Does anybody expect microbiological evidence when told that there\u2019s mold on a piece of fruit?\u00a0 If you see somebody smash into your car that\u2019s parked out by the sidewalk, do you consult with scientists about whether it actually happened?<\/p>\n
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So the dichotomous, black and white distinction between scientific knowledge and, well, non<\/em>-knowledge \u2014 that is, everything that isn\u2019t science \u2014 is not only specious and simplistic, it\u2019s a distinction that absolutely nobody really follows or believes in.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But it also simply isn\u2019t the fact that science rests on simple, straightforward facts, and never goes beyond<\/em> simple, straightforward facts.\u00a0 Many examples of this could be given (e.g., Albert Einstein\u2019s idea of the curvature of spacetime, which famously waited several years for experimental confirmation).\u00a0 I\u2019ll confine myself, though, to some examples drawn from\u00a0Richard Panek, The 4 Percent Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality<\/em> (Boston and New York: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n In this passage, Panek describes the state of cosmology in the mid-1960s, when two rival theories competed for dominance.\u00a0 Our universe, it was recognized, was expanding.\u00a0 Was that the result of an initial explosion, which would imply a cosmos of steadily decreasing density?\u00a0 Or, alternatively, was matter continually appearing, such that cosmic density would remain constant?\u00a0 I grew up with that rivalry, and, although it was essentially resolved in the mid-60s,\u00a0 it took a while for that resolution to percolate down to the masses (including me):<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n You could feel the shift, if you were an astronomer or physicist.\u00a0 Both the Steady State and Big Bang interpretations had relied not just on math and observations but on speculation.\u00a0 They were modern counterparts to Copernicus\u2019s attempt to save the appearances; they were theories in need of evidence.\u00a0 And just as Galileo, with the aid of the telescope, had detected the celestial phenomena that decided between an Earth-centered and a Sun-centered cosmos, forcing us to reconceive the universe, so radio astronomers, with the aid of a new kind of telescope, were now detecting the evidence that decided between the Steady State and Big Bang cosmologies, necessitating a further reconception of the universe.\u00a0 <\/strong>(24)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The next comment mentions Michael S. Turner, the\u00a0Bruce V. and Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics\u00a0 and the Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago, and director emeritus of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics there, as well as the late Richard Feynman (1918-1988) of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics and who is often ranked among the greatest physicists of all time:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But Feynman had taught Turner that sometimes you didn\u2019t need to do the math first.\u00a0 Instead, you needed to trust your intuition.\u00a0 To leap to a conclusion first.\u00a0 To imagine what the universe might be, and then go back and do the math until, with luck, it matched.<\/strong>\u00a0 (123)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And it isn\u2019t only Richard Feynman who held that attitude:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n What was [the cosmological theory or concept of] inflation . . . if not an exercise in a Feynman kind of faith?\u00a0 Cosmologists in the early 1980s had leaped to a conclusion, embracing inflation simply because it explained and solved so much, and then they had gone back and labored to make the math work.\u00a0 And they\u2019d succeeded.\u00a0<\/strong> (131-132)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Or consider this, regarding the\u00a0Canadian-American\u00a0astrophysicist, astronomer, and theoretical\u00a0cosmologist Jim Peebles, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics and who\u00a0 is currently the Albert Einstein Professor of Science, Emeritus, at\u00a0Princeton University:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When he thought about physics, he divided its practitioners into classicists and romantics.\u00a0 The classicists were inventive but followed the rules; the romantics were respectful of the rules but followed their intuition.\u00a0<\/strong> (169)<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I was greatly saddened to learn, earlier today, of the death of Lord\u00a0Jonathan Henry Sacks, a great and good man who served as\u00a0Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013, but who was also an author and an intellectual whose influence extended far beyond the borders of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth and well beyond the Jewish community.\u00a0 He was diagnosed with cancer (for the third time) in October 2020, and he passed away on 7 November 2020.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Not very long ago, however, on 17 September 2020, shortly before his diagnosis \u2014 I wonder, particularly given the constraints imposed by the current coronavirus pandemic, whether this might not have been his last public lecture \u2014\u00a0Rabbi Dr. Sir Jonathan Sacks delivered the 2020-2021 Truman G. Madsen Distinguished Lecture for the Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMorality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n As might have been expected, it\u2019s a thoughtful and insightful lecture.\u00a0 And some will be pleased to hear Rabbi Sacks\u2019s very kind prefatory words about Brigham Young University and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> at the beginning.\u00a0 Please give it a few minutes.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The host for the lecture is Paul S. Edwards<\/a>, director of the Wheatley Institution.\u00a0 For what little it\u2019s worth, too, I got a kick out of who it was that offered the invocation.\u00a0 Jenet Jacob Erickson<\/a> grew up in our ward, at least partially, and not very far at all from our house, but she has managed to overcome that initial obstacle and has gone on to a successful life of valuable accomplishment.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 I often encounter religious skeptics who declare that, unlike theists, they live in \u201cthe fact-based universe\u201d \u2014 as if there exists only one such place and as if they hold a monopoly on reason and objective fact.\u00a0 And they commonly point to science as not only a paradigm for knowing \u201cjust the facts, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n