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What Value does Science have for the Spirit?

11/5/2019

Science gives us many useful things, but useful things are only ever for the sake of other, higher, things. By contrast, the arts give us culture, and religion gives us meaning. Richard Feynman [reading below] thinks that science allows the joyful imagination of things more marvelous than poetry, and seems to want to replace God by Nature as the object of our awe. But science can be used for harm, the joy is reserved only for specialists like Feynman, and are fuzzy images of black holes really a replacement for God? Damian Broderick [reading below] is aware of these sorts of problems, and thinks we need an erotics of science. So, can science give us more than just gadgets?—What value does science have for the spirit?

Richard Feynman, "The Value of Science"
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Damien Broderick, "The Erotics of Science"
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2 Comments

Joe M

22/5/2019 04:54:41 pm

Feyman thinks that science is of value in three ways, but each one comes with its doubts.

First, he says that it is a powerful tool, that it can produce something. This is familiar to everyone. But he knows that this is a double edged sword. If what we choose to produce is good, then the power to do so will also be good. If bad, bad. Broderick refers to feminists who look with horror at the new reproductive technologies which are all too effective in what they call "the masculine project of the domination and control of women." In any case, as Socrates noted a long time ago, this ambiguity actually implies that science in itself is neither good nor bad, and that it only becomes one or the other depending on what we use it for.

Second, Feynman says science is intellectually enjoyable, for those (scientists) who work in it, and for those (the public) who read and listen to it.

Well, not for all scientists. Being a theoretical physicist, Feynman was lucky. But, in the words of Australian novelist and former cancer researcher David Foster (also quoted by Broderick), most other scientists are just hacks who spend their days employing banal and repeatable procedures to join the dotted lines. Work in science involves specialization, with all the grind that is implied in having to deal with details (not just running tedious experiments, but professional politics, grant writing, etc) which will leave little time for the passion Feynman describes.

There is a different problem for the public. They are not burdened with details, to be sure, but that implies that they do not really understand the science in any great depth. Broderick points out that much of science is founded on daunting mathematics (though it would not need to be much above tenth grade to be daunting to most people), and even Feynman admits that his brief explanation of the chemical basis of memory will not elicit any sort of joyful experience in the average person. They both agree that science lacks poets. But would that be a solution? For poetry is not mathematics, and joy that might be elicited by a science-infused poetry will be different in kind from the joy that comes from the truer, mathematical, understanding of Nature.

Finally, Feynman says that science gives us a model of how tolerating doubt and ignorance can serve to make our lives better. He thinks that "doubt and discussion are essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar." This is the way science has made progress in discovering facts, and—the suggestion seems to be—this is the way we can make progress in discovering values.

He is half right. We had better tolerate doubt and ignorance, but not because doing so is part of making progress in knowing what is good and bad. Philosophers have been trying since the time of Socrates to apply logic to life, but they are no more closer to agreeing than they were at the start, and this means that they do not know what they are talking about. Rather, we had better tolerate doubt and ignorance because they seem to be inevitable, and, given this, no-one can have the right to tell another what to believe. There is a difference between justifying tolerance for the sake of truth, then, and justifying it out of respect for the other.

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28/10/2021 09:14:02 pm

Thank you! I hope to see more updates from you!

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