[Hazen] So I go to a wedding of this friend of mine.
He's kind of an engineer. He designs furniture for a living.
But he watches a lot of science television.
In the United States you got the Discovery Channel and you know
watches PBS, public broadcasting shows on television. He considers himself a bit of
an armchair scientists. He's always given me a bad time: "Hazen, you know,
you're a religion guy and I'm a science guy.
So over our friendship over the years he's repeating this little mantra and he's getting,
he's getting married. So he invites me and a few friends to his wedding and we go.
I remember it was at the reception
they were serving champagne and he and his new bride had had a few glasses. They
were
wandering around reading their guests and they finally walked up to the table
where I was,
sitting with some friends and he walks up to the table and says, "Hazen thanks for
comin'
to my wedding I'm so glad you're here.
We've had some great talks over the years, but I think it all boils down to
this:
you know, you're a religion guy, and me
I'm a science guy.
So I probably shouldn't have said this at his wedding.
But it just came out, "You know," I said, "Look, I said,
okay so is it wrong to torture babies for fun?" Strange question ask at a guys
wedding, right?
Well he's thinking about it because he knows, we've had enough
conversations where I've got a trick embedded in this somewhere.
And he's thinking about the trick. Well he delayed, and it didn't take a nano second
delay before his new bride is looking,
looking at him with great worry!
She's got a hold of his arm and she's looking up at him.
Then at me and at then at him and said, "Well tell the man it's wrong! Of course it's wrong. He knows
it's wrong."
He's still thinking about it and she's hitting him in the shoulder.
It was a disaster, but he,
he met with me months later and said, "You really had me in a pickle there."
Because I was thinking, "Look, if he's asking if I say 'Yes it's wrong to
torture babies for fun',
then I'm admitting that there is something I can know
about the universe that didn't arrive from science. He actually got the point I think.
It took the bride
punching in him in the arm to get through.
And so if I say no it's not wrong I'm a trouble with
my wife,
if I say yes I'm admitting something, some bit of
knowledge of the universe that did not derive from science.
What are these lines of demarcation? Where does science stop,
and other forms of knowledge pick up? [Craig] Well now I think as Jeff said, it's very
hard to draw
lines of demarcation that are not
blurry. In cosmology, for example, as you know,
Alex Vilenkin is referred to what he does and cosmology as
metaphysical cosmology. And I thought what a remarkable label.
Metaphysical Cosmology. Because it's on the very limits of science.
In fact one other area that I wanted to bring out to
piggy-back on what Jeff said is the other end of the universe:
Eschatology. The way the world will end. Eschatology is traditionally
a field theology right? How,
what will be the last things. Physical eschatology is now a domain of cosmology.
Cosmogony is the beginning of the universe, eschatology and they use that word
is the study of
how the universe will end. So this would be another example of where questions that
were once thought to be metaphysical
have now become scientific and are open to investigation. So the lines are blurry.
But to answer your question more directly: logical and mathematical truths
are not scientifically provable. They're presupposed by,
not provable by science. Ethical truths
that you mention, aesthetic truths, the beautiful
like 'the good' is not accessible by the scientific method.
Metaphysical truths like the reality of the external world
the reality the past, the presence of other minds.
These are metaphysical truths that cannot be proven or disproven
scientifically.
And ironically science itself. Science
is permeated, I think Jeff would agree, with
unprovable assumptions which are reasonable to
assume but they're not provable. For example, in the special theory of
relativity
the constancy of the one-way velocity of light
is simply an assumption or postulate of
the theory. We can measure the constancy of the round trip to velocity of light,
if it goes from A to B and back to A, that's always constant. We can measure that.
The assumption of the theory is that it doesn't go out at one velocity and come
back at another,
so that the round-trip velocity is always the same but in fact it's
going
one way at different rates, can't be proved
scientifically! That is simply an assumption in the theory so if you
adopt this view that you could only believe what could be scientifically
proven
boom out the window go special relativity along with lots of other
science.
[Zweerink ] And I would add to that,
I agree with your statements, and I would say
that the ability to distinguish between science and not
science,
people have tried to say okay this is what science is and we're gonna categorize
these kinds of scientists, you know, the reality of it is, as I understand,
how I do science when I go into the lab and when I'm working on things, is there is a
process I use
and as I adopt that process in
my particular discipline I am generally assured of getting good results and then I
have to go back and test and let other people do the same thing.
I find that general principle of love,
you take that and apply that to Scripture. We have to interpret what the
words of the text mean.
And there's a process by which people have developed
what these words means and then they go test it on other scripture.
If I try and break down 'What is science?'
it's very difficult. And it actually it's a process by
trying to investigate what is true and so I use that in other areas
rather than just you know what I'm doing in the lab.
[Hazen] At the foundation of modern science is a value system. You need to
test theories fairly and report results honestly
and clearly not a scientific idea. I mean people didn't
discover that by looking through a microscope or
doing a dig or something.
But it makes a lot of sense.