The Prism and the Rainbow: A Christian Explains Why Evolution Is Not a Threat

5. The Nature of Science

31 An intelligent mind acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. proverbs 18:15 The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking. albert einstein T he Flat Earth Society and the Snake Handlers of Jolo represent two distinct but related problems. They are similar in that both groups have claimed that their beliefs are biblically based; they feel that they are following the scriptures as closely as they know how. But they are different because the problem provided by the Jolo snake dancers is not easily dealt with by science. In reality it has essentially nothing to do with science. It is, instead, a problem of biblical interpretation , historical scholarship, and literary analysis. The flat-earth question, however, is clearly and easily dealt with by the methods The Nature of Science 5 the prism and the rainbow 32 of science. Simply put: all measurements and observations we have made over the past couple of centuries point to a spherical earth. So what is science? My dictionary defines science as “the observation , identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.” You’ve probably heard that before. And I will not bore you by going into detail about the “scientific method,” the process of making observations, drawing a hypothesis , testing it, and moving onward, although it really is important. In fact, it’s critical, since it draws such a sharp line between what we know and what we think we might know about nature.1 The basic idea is that by applying the methods of science to the world around us we can develop better and better explanations for the causes of natural phenomena as time goes by.2 Progress made this way is sometimes painfully slow in coming. Observe some phenomenon, make your best hypothesis, test it, and move on. Science progresses little by little most of the time, with only occasional great leaps forward in our understanding of the natural world. But the results can be stunning, and I shudder to think where humanity would be without this gift. Without science we would not have penicillin, aspirin, the space shuttle, electric lights, cell phones, GPS technology, microscopes, open heart surgery, or the laptop computer I’m using to write this. Because of science, childbirth is now a relatively safe and joyous experience for most women rather than the life-threatening process it was a few generations ago. In many areas of the world, we no longer have to worry about losing our children to common childhood illnesses. If today’s medicine had been around in the 1950s, my oldest brother, who died shortly after birth from complications arising from preeclampsia, might have lived. Instant communication among world leaders now offers the potential for a better understanding of global issues, quick responses to worldwide disasters, and solutions for peace. Planets in our solar system (and even in other solar systems) are beginning to yield their secrets as we explore with satellites and rovers. The floor of the 33 The Nature of Science ocean, once thought to be lifeless and inaccessible, now provides us with exciting discoveries on a regular basis. And these advances barely scratch the surface of what science has revealed to us. Without science, our understanding of the world around us would be vastly reduced. Science is repeatable, meaning that if the same methods are applied and the same conditions hold, we should be able to obtain the same results today that we obtained yesterday. That’s an important point, and it also forms a clear distinction between scientific and nonscientific approaches (such as astrology) to understanding the world around us. This repeatability also allows us to make predictions and to test these predictions. Science is also “self-correcting” over the long haul, meaning that we continue to test and retest every idea, every hypothesis, every experimental finding, over and over. That doesn’t mean that we have all of the answers in hand now, but it does mean that we get closer to finding out the answers as time goes by. One of the quotes I used at the start of this chapter, by no less a thinker than Albert Einstein, is in fact a little misleading. Although the methods of science can be characterized as “a refinement of everyday thinking,” the results often take us far from what common sense might tell us. Often the findings...