The sixteen and seventeenth century in the West took a splendid opportunity left them by thinkers such as Shakespeare and Roger Bacon and squandered much. The Enlightenment did great good, but also made assumptions such as scientism and chronological snobbery. The snobbery was the most harmful as the thinkers themselves asserted they were “enlightened” compared to a “dark age” that came before them. This cut them off from valuable intellectual resources from the past. Francis Bacon was particularly guilty of confusing his philosophy with science (scientism) and having an exalted view of his own place in history. Baconian philosophy of science crippled Western European thinking unnecessarily, clouding what was really splendid about the progress of the period.
In response to this thesis (informal overview here), Dr. Eric Holloway has written a guest post asserting that a theory of intelligent design could solve some of these problems. Dr. Eric Holloway received a solid grounding in classical education at the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University. Eric continued schooling to complete a MSc in Computer Science at the Air Force Institute of Technology and a PhD in Computer Engineering at Baylor University.
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Imagine giving your friend a good book filled with beautiful pictures
and stories. Instead of reading it, the friend begins to count the
letters, and make theories about which letters predict which pictures
will come next, and analyze the types of ink used to print the pages.
This does not make sense. Why doesn’t he just read the book?
Now the same friend provides you with a collection of fascinating
rocks. The rocks glimmer in the sun, and cast radiant shadows around
the room. Such mysterious rocks seem to mean something, to light up
their surrounding with a spiritual glow. Yet try as you might, you
cannot decipher the meaning of the rocks. You are also slightly
disappointed when your friend says his dog dug them up in his
backyard, and gives a somewhat interesting, long explanation of the
geological processes that created the rocks.
The first perspective is that of the medieval ages, marked by the
voluminous philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. The worldview of that time was
that God makes Himself known with physical manifestations of His glory
in nature, like a beautiful stain glass window that lights up when the
sun shines through. The cosmos are an orderly whole, where we each
have our part to play on the stage of history, dancing to the divine
music of perfect justice and love.
But, the intricate tapestry begins to unravel. An expanding view of
the globe, major diseases and wars, and internal criticisms leads to a
breakdown of the Thomistic system. Francis Bacon, the father of
modern science, grows impatient with the monks philosophizing and
debating. Demanding results, Bacon recommends carefully dissecting
nature’s mysteries to heal the world’s suffering, instead of wondering
about the meaning of it all. And thus was born the modern scientific
age, where meaning is like the story of the luminous rock: it is only
ax subjective illusion.
Today, Bacon’s view is the dominant view, so much so that we take it
for granted. Science and technology have led to a revolution in
health, wealth and material happiness throughout the world. In the
space of a few centuries it has lifted the majority of the earth’s
booming population out of poverty. The rigorous vision of Bacon,
spoken with the precision of math, has given us the gift of the gods,
but it leaves us with a sense that we have lost something which we
cannot find again.
To understand what has happened, in a way you can feel, try this
exercise. Write your name over and over repeatedly. After about 20
times, the letters will no longer form a word in your mind. They will
look arbitrary and lose their meaning. Rationally, you tell yourself
the letters refer to you. But the emotional connection is gone and
the thoughts seem hollow. In the same way, the incredible amassing of
scientific facts we have today has made the world lose its meaning.
This sense of emptiness is felt even in science, which is at a loss to
explain its own success.
The core reason for the aimlessness is because the building blocks of
science are inert. They are like legos in a box. You cannot shake
the box of legos and expect a spaceship to fall out. In the same way,
mathematical proof and physical evidence cannot explain why things are
the way they are, nor their own reason for being. They cannot explain
“why.” Yet, at the same time, the very inability of science to speak
for itself says something of interest.
In medieval language this missing “why” is termed form and function.
Neither form nor function can emerge from atoms in motion; they cannot
emerge from shaking the lego box. This can be proven mathematically.
Technically, what we call “information” is known as mutual
information, and is subject to Leonid Levin’s law of information
non-increase. The law of information non-increase proves mutual
information cannot be created by natural processes. Thus, matter
without an organizing force is formless and void. And, without
impartation of form into matter, there is no information.
Since matter cannot form itself, information must come from a external
source. And this insight is the fundamental insight of the
intelligent design movement. Consequently, the reason we see meaning
in the universe is precisely because the universe has been given
meaning. Information is a new pair of glasses that corrects Bacon’s
vision, and helps us again follow along the path that winds back
through the medieval monasteries of Thomas Aquinas.
But, after hearing this Bacon will say, “it all sounds quite nice, but
how is it useful? Meaning doesn’t feed children or cure cancer.” The
answer to Bacon’s question is illustrated with the story of the book
at the beginning. If we approach the natural world as if it were
arbitrarily put together, then we miss many clues that can help us to
understand and use it better.
We are seeing the scientific importance of meaning now with the ENCODE
project. Previously, scientists believed that since the human genome
was produced by evolution, most of it would be random junk. However,
the ENCODE project has shown the majority of the human genome is
functional and useful. Now that we understand the genome is full of
meaning, we will be better able to decode how it works and programs
our body. So, contrary to Bacon, looking at the human genome as
meaningful can help us improve our lives. The other point is that
everything that science studies is meaningful information.
The benefit of seeing meaning in the genome raises the further
question, how would science change if we assumed the rest of the world
is designed and meaningful? Furthermore, what does science have to
say about the creators of meaning, such as humans? For one thing,
since matter cannot create meaning, meaning creators must be more than
matter. And being more than matter, human beings must be more
valuable than any material good. So, through the lense of
information, science can indeed peer beyond the physical world.
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