POSSIBILITIES OF COOPERATION

It is from dissatisfaction with both religion and rationalism that the new idea of cooperation emerges.

A. A lot of old intellectual rubbish is still extent; and sometimes the crudest arguments impress the sophisticated.

Some religious writers try to show that some wise old sages may sound Freudian; that the taboos of Leviticus are hygienic, etc. The critics of this kind of intellectual rubbish fall into a trap when they expose the old sages as unFreudian fools, and when they explode all alleged connection between Leviticus and modern hygiene. For all this belongs to the quarrel between science and religion of the middle of the nineteenth century. Inasmuch as religious doctrines were concerned with matters of fact, they were often significant precursors to present-day doctrines, but one must take it for granted that they are now superseded. Religion now claims only historical respectability for some of its old doctrines, but no more; it does not claim that any of them is true. Contrary to the eighteenth-century mood, present-day scientists and, to a greater degree, present-day historians of science, often show sympathy toward such claims for historical respectability. In the wake of religious cultural historians such as Arthur Edward Waite, of medievalists like Huizinga, and, above all, of the illustrious historian of medieval science, Pierre Duhem, practically all historians of science today agree that, superstitious as astrology and alchemy surely are, in the Middle Ages they were part and parcel of learning, and as such belong to the history of science proper. Erroneous as biblical medicine may be, it was no worse (perhaps better) than all its competitiors at the time it was recorded; hence, it deserves our appreciation. Here we see a tremendous shift in the rationalist attitude toward old religious doctrines: as a result of a historical perspective, the attitude has become less contemptuous and more tolerant and even respectful toward old errors.

Does this improve the relation between the religious and rationalist today?

B. The shocking fact for the rationalist is not that some religious doctrines are now respected as once reasonable but now superseded; but rather that some scientific doctrines are now in exactly the same category of respected as once reasonable, but now superseded. When scientific theories can be superseded, it is no longer feasible for the rationalistic advocates of science to hold religious theories in contempt for the same reason. The gospels are not gospel-true, but neither are the books of Newton. Any scientist who denies the last sentence should be told to read Newton in order to shake his dogmatism. No doubt, there is a matter of degree here - explicable by the fact that the Bible is older than Newton’s Opticks. From a historical perspective there may be little difference in validity between the doctrines of science and of religion of one given period; in some cases the two doctrines are identical (Aristotle). What the one hostile to science forgets is that theories can be superseded only when they go with claims for ultimate truth; he often stresses that in some sense scientific theories have not been superseded, as when they go with claims for useful application and when they are somehow absorbed in newer theories. In this sense theories cannot be superseded, but in this sense theories are not as rational as they were once claimed to be. The aspects of science that cannot be superseded, namely, usefulness and incorporation into later views, have never caused any hostility or clash with religion; the clash concerns aspects or interpretations of science - its claim for final theoretical knowledge - in which science definitely can be superseded. The classical claim was that scientific theories are absolutely true, that Newton’s theory is the last word in mechanics, that Newton has achieved what the gospels failed to achieve.

Some religious thinkers stress that Newtonian mechanics or Daltonian chemistry have been superseded, though they were once claimed to be the undeniable literal truth, the demonstrated last word.

These religious thinkers stress that such claims are no longer made, and their memory deliberately obliterated. It seems, then, that these religious thinkers are debunking science. It looks as if, in revenge for the scientist’s debunking of religion, now the religious are debunking science. But this is a very gross error. We are not speaking here of irra- tionalists rejoicing in the inability of the rationalists to keep believing in what only yesterday they were claiming to be the dictates of reason. We are speaking here of scientists who yesterday were themselves such rationalists; who were disappointed in their rationalistic view of science; who subsequently ceased viewing scientific theories as the dictates of reason and who started to see in them more technology than enlightenment; who are returning to their church or synagogue.

And so, it is not that the religious are now debunking science; it is not tit for tat. The religious scientists, who seemingly debunk science by reminding us of old defunct promises, are sophisticated leaders of sophisticated communities; they debunk the old rationalist view of science, not science itself; they are moved by a sense of disappointment, not of hostility. Hence, they come to religion, at least in part, from science and old-fashioned rationalism.

C. We can now see what kind of enlightenment religion is offering; how that enlightenment can be claimed to be complementary to, but not competing with, science. What religion offers is intellectual commitment; faith in certain doctrines which are not amenable to scientific treatment, and which can be adhered to safely. Empirical facts and metaphysical doctrines are permanent. Scientific doctrines as doctrines proper, and religious doctrines which can clash with science, are both highly transitory and should be totally dispensed with. This, I contend, is the view now endorsed by the religious scientists who are the religious avant-garde; and though unacceptable, it is a very serious view and merits close examination.

This view is, in a definite sense, quite existentialist; but it is already fully articulated in the works of Pierre Duhem, the philosopher and historian of science of the period of the crisis in physics, the link between the Newtonian and the post-Newtonian era. He was a philosopher’s philosopher and a historian’s historian. He did not gain much recognition in his day. Just now he is becoming popular enough to be the leader of the twentieth-century intellectual avant-garde. Very soon he will be superseded, and then his doctrines may become accepted by the vulgar.

VII.

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Source: Agassi Joseph. Science in Flux. Springer,1975. — 559 p.. 1975

POSSIBILITIES OF COOPERATION

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