Modern Natural Science and Empirical Rationality

In an attempt to gather a general overview of the history of the conflict between science and religion, we could say that the central point, and Agazzi would agree, lies in the birth of modern natural science and its method.

There is no place for this distinction in a classical account of science (Sanguineti 2002). Galileo’s approach, instead, altogether renounces the possibil­ity of uncovering the essence of physical things, and remains satisfied with the knowledge of some empirical properties adequately understood in terms of math­ematical functions.

For the first time in an explicit way, Galileo states that - at least in the case of objects of nature (‘natural substances’) - the pretence to answer the Socratic question is always in vain and illusory; ‘testing the essence’ is a task which he renounces, limiting himself to a more humble yet approachable goal - that is, the knowledge of ‘some properties’ (affezi- oni) of the natural things or, as we would say today, an accurate ascertainment of how some natural phenomena carry on (Agazzi 1974: 10).^[179]

Some authors, like William Wallace, tried to show that the Galilean and Newtonian physical-mathematical discoveries might be translated into an Aristotelian syllogis­tic account of science as displayed in the Posterior Analytics (Wallace 1983, 115­143).

Agazzi rightly remarks that Galileo follows an empirical method without con­cerning himself with pursuing essences, inaugurating the modern detachment of physics from philosophy. In doing so, Galileo was in a certain sense anticipat­ing the times. His method is scientific in a modern sense, but two centuries were to pass before a clear distinction between experimental physics and philosophy would be reached. The ideal of a deductive science grounded in the intuition of essential properties still lingered in the classical account of rational mechan­ics. Agazzi is fully aware of the epistemological problems (phenomenalism) that emerge from the new methodology in physics (Agazzi 1974: 3-32). The problem of essence and substance in the new physical configuration in some sense justifies Kant’s efforts to interpret the new science in a transcendental (idealistic) way.

The conflict with religion, at least at the epistemological level, appears when­ever modern natural science is seen as a kind of scientific research that must exclude any illusion of intellectually attaining the realm of something that extends beyond matter, matter here being understood as a reality characterized by empirical properties whose intrinsic lawlikeness could be made an object of science. Aristotle looked continuously in his ontological endeavours for separate substances (separated from matter), which in other terms are the purely immate­rial substances—such as separate intelligences, and above all God as transcend­ent Intelligence moving the cyclic universe.

Thus far, I have highlighted Agazzi’s claim that a major occasion for atheism was modern empirical natural science, which is understood according to a rigor­ous positivistic closure when the moment arrived to establish the new scientific method. Historically speaking this was largely successful, a new normative stand­ard for scientific operations, a standard purified—such was the pretence, though never fully satisfied—from all immaterial additions (called metaphysical or super­natural). This was mainly the task of logical neopositivism (the Vienna Circle).

The claim was that only empirical terms (i.e. referring to observable properties) are fitting elements that might integrate existential statements and keep in check unobservable hypotheses likewise referring to existent objects in order to explain their spatio-temporal properties and relations. Within these constraints, one can build a universe of discourse, or a special ontology constituted by objects, proper­ties and relations, which is in turn the object of natural science, and more precisely the object that defines it as such.^[180] The whole of this universe of discourse is by definition the field of objectivity of a given science (Agazzi 1974, 1981, 1983, 2014).

Agazzi and other non materialistic philosophers (Maritain 1932) maintained that this particular physical objectivity originates from the selective or abstracting operation of the mind that encapsulates an intellectual vision of the world within certain parameters, more or less like our senses perceive sensible objects from a certain point of view (light, sound, etc.).

Positivists and materialists, instead, take this abstraction to be the only fruitful way to study natural objects and, consequently, to create technical objects. Indeed, only the physical Galilean approach enables us to physically intervene in nature, to produce changes according to its own laws. Empirical and experimental science, then, is the necessary condition for developing technology. It is no wonder that technical progress in Western civilization is due to this approach, unattainable by philosophical speculations about nature qua nature. It is likewise no wonder that nothing can be established by experimental views and techniques, as Agazzi often claims, when trying to discover what values might guide humans in their use of technology.

Modern science as we know it was born from a kind of restriction of our ration­ality. The decision to remain confined within the sensible realm of the universe transforms what is partial into something assumed to be the whole, yet this should be understood with an awareness of its partiality. People working in this area—sci­entists, professors, students—acquire an empirical scientific habit (habit in the Aristotelian sense), forgetting that their vision is partial, unconsciously treating science as philosophy, and in this sense accepting it as a kind of complete world- view.^[181] This attitude can be called scientism, a form of reductionism.^[182]

Reductionism, lurking at all times, has been refuted with many proofs in the field of science, yet it survives in a residual way, though perhaps less consciously, whenever one claims that the totality of problems subject to human reason should be reduced to those which the sciences can properly address. Thus, scientism is the most radical form of reductionism inasmuch as it is not capable of eliminating the need of problematizing the whole, but it thinks that the whole is identical with an horizon which is actually partial, despite how vast it might seem (Agazzi 2007: 94).

This restriction is not supported by any evidence. It is a choice, perhaps emerg­ing from a materialistic faith, or just from habit and routine, but not from rational knowledge. It renders an impression that anything alleged to exist out of the empirical worldview is incompatible with science (for example, human freedom, self-consciousness, values, the human person, and most certainly God). The rea­sons invoked according to this empirical closure beg the question. If one believes that nothing exists outside the realm of the empirical, the concrete reason for this is only a decision to remain closed within self-imposed empirical limitations. Thus, the epistemological empirical choice is consonant with ontological material­ism or naturalism (which is today’s name for materialism), the former being the basis for the latter.

The problem I address in this section is that of the root of the modern con­flicts between science and religion according to Agazzi. I tried to assess up to what point the new empirical, or experimental, method typical of modern science may be considered a systematic source of this conflict, and something that ultimately is an occasion for atheism. The conclusion is that this is true only if one takes up this method as necessarily closed or detached from the metaphysical perspective.

Within this framework, it is possible to single out particular areas of conflict, as Agazzi does with respect to the Galileo affair and evolutionism. The specific conflict surrounding Galileo is historically important, but from a theoretical point of view, today it appears more as a misunderstanding—theological and exegeti- cal—than a systematic problem, as Agazzi rightly suggests. Galileo’s judges were surprisingly obtuse in linking a particular cosmology to Christian faith, namely to the Scriptures.

The problem of evolution is much more serious in that it touches upon ori- gins—namely, the origin of the universe, of life and of man. When pursued, this topic naturally suggests a global view of nature and a certain doom, opening up to the question of sense, which is typically philosophical.

Rather than being an isolated conflict, the general overview of nature emerg­ing today from the whole of the natural sciences, and particularly biology (includ­ing evolutionary theories, neurobiology, bio-computational approaches, ethology, etc.), offers a framework which already belongs to the popular understanding of nature in our scientific culture, and one that in some way defies the theological account of divine creation. This overview is philosophical in the broad sense of the word. This synoptic panorama must be carefully studied, and it is not impossible to insert it into the Christian picture of a universe created by God in which human persons hold a very special place due to their reason and freedom.

Perhaps many people today do not care too much about epistemological restric­tions, but in doing so they fail to capture the possible metaphysical implications in natural sciences. So the crux of the conflict between science and religion is simply reduced to the question about the need, rather than the possibility, of acknowledg­ing a realm of existential being beyond matter, namely the spirit (the human spir­itual dimension, or human soul) and God.

This need has collapsed for some persons for practical reasons. As Agazzi observes, human beings traditionally turned to God in order to obtain material security and spiritual relief, but many of these needs seem to be satisfied by mod­ern technological and scientific achievements (medicine, economy, neurobiology, psychology) (Agazzi 1983: 122-124). So the sense of our dependence on God and of our impotence to solve our great problems has decreased on account of this new era of technical progress.

While people of a time long past had the impression that recourse to God was necessary to solve their problems, science seems today to exonerate them from this need (Agazzi 1983: 123).

But a more careful analysis of the human situation in our contemporary world does not confirm the claim that science affords a solution to all human problems. The impression of not needing God is ambiguous. In the absence of God as a transcendent and personal being, people tend to replace him with some absolute dimension of life which in turn becomes the object of faith (science, nature, man himself). They thereby run the risk of being disappointed, which is often the gate­way for depression and nihilism (Agazzi 1969: 178).

Neither the religious dimension nor the problems to which it responds can be suppressed.

If people are no longer able to find the answers to their problems in a positive historically determined religion, they will look for it elsewhere, for instance, in various ideologies which, in that moment, accomplish for them the role of the ‘faith that saves’, the religious faith (Agazzi 1983: 162-163).

Summarizing the points made in the previous pages:

1. The historical root of the conflict between science and religion lies, accord­ing to Agazzi, in the new experimental methodology of modern natural science when this method is taken as closed and precludes by definition (and decision) all possibility of knowing existential relevant truths. This decision is formally present in logical positivism, wherein God seems to be scientifically excluded.

2. It can be shown that this is a route which leads to self-refutation. The empirical way of perceiving things is partial. Taking this partial and abstract view as complete is the very definition of scientism, which is a kind of reductionism. Scientism is logically inconsistent. Philosophy, beyond the empirical closure, is not eliminable.^[184]

3. However, the overall worldview emerging from natural sciences today is nev­ertheless impressive. Due to an overwhelming practical (technological) dimen­sion linked to that worldview, which efficaciously deals with many human needs, many people today think that there is no need for God, nor religion, or that God is a pious invention subject to a scientific explanation (perhaps with recourse to psychology or neuroscience).

4. The last point (n. 3) easily overlooks the logical limitations of science and techno-science (n. 2). Of course, there are many other limits—anthropological, ethical, ecological, even physical—which I have not considered in these pages. In any event, when one presents a philosophical proposal that attempts to go beyond natural science and technology and reach a more metaphysical level— hence, open to the human spirit and to God—he immediately finds himself in conflict, according to the difficulties mentioned in n. 1. In more practical terms, people (scientists, professors, etc.) who on a daily basis deal with pure scien­tific conceptual instruments lack the conceptual instruments to deal with the immaterial, even if in some occasion they do feel the need of going beyond matter in order to speak of something immaterial. They only know scientific ontology, and all other ontology appears to them as inappropriate and awkward.

I would like to add a further historical point that contributed to the modern conflict between science and religion. Toward the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Enlightenment and Positivism promoted a strong confidence in the power of pure reason—in first place in philosophy, later in science—and spread a hostile attitude towards religious faith. Modern atheism based on science owes much of its exist­ence to this historical trend. Many contemporary “scientific” atheists—such as D. Dennett, R. Dawkins or J.P. Changeux—today propose to return to the spirit of Enlightenment. But even in post-modern ideologies—ecologism and other anti­science movements, for example—one is prohibited from revisiting belief in God as Absolute even though, paradoxically, this belief for the above mentioned Dennett, Dawkins and Changeux seems akin to rationalism.^[185]

Not everyone shares this view. Many scientists, movements and cultural initia­tives are convinced of the real compatibility between modern science—for instance evolutionary biology or neuroscience—and the belief in God as Creator of the universe, though some matters that raise theological questions, for example the problem of evil, cannot easily be passed over and require rational explanations, as is traditionally done in the philosophy of God and in theology. I do not here have in mind American creationism or the theory of the intelligent design, which in many aspects are problematic both in their religious claims as well as in their accounts of natural science. I am instead thinking of many authors who are simul­taneously believers and scientists, for example Francis Collins,^[186] creator of the BioLogos Foundation that deals with various issues concerning the harmony between science and religion. Many prominent modern scientists, from Galileo’s time up to the present century, were believers in God (and sometimes were also religious persons), such as Newton, Kepler, Maxwell, Planck, Heisenberg, Mendel, Pasteur, Lemaitre, Sherrington, Eccles, Ayala, and others.

There is no historical link between atheism or philosophical positivism and the great scientific discoveries in the modern history of science. The authors men­tioned above did not perceive a particular difficulty in being believers and sci­entists, and being both coherently, for they did not share the “empirical closure” elaborated by some philosophers of science. Many of them felt the need for God as a transcendent being in order to ultimately explain the existence of our universe and its amazing and profound order and complexity. This feeling was due to a natural and implicit “metaphysical” inference from the physical order extended to some superior Intelligence, reason or personal spirit who could be thought of as the ultimate source of all that exists—namely, of mankind and the universe, when rightly seen as not self-sufficient in their contingent existence. Even if they were educated in a religious creed, which facilitates the perception of the invisible pres­ence of God in creation, they could not fail to intellectually understand this as a matter of rational faith.

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