Professor Liu Huajie, in his essay “Preaching the Gospel and Doing Popular Science” (http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/485ea879010002nu), makes an interesting comparison between science communication and religious communication.
My feeling is this: just as religion is not necessarily something loathsome, to say that scientific activity is similar to religious activity, or even that science in a certain sense has become a kind of religion, is not necessarily meant to demean science. If one were truly to spread science with the attitude of preaching the gospel, that devotion would be worthy of respect. However, just as superstition in religion is similar, many “believers” in science are merely “superstitiously” believing in science in a condition of lacking “understanding.” It is much like much secular religious propaganda: relying on flaunting “benefits” such as “curing illness and warding off disaster” to spread the faith, while the faithful themselves go burning incense and bowing to Buddha only out of utilitarian motives like “seeking promotion and getting rich.” That is not true faith, and it is not true “preaching the gospel.” True religion inspires people’s inner longing for the sacred through moral transformation, attracts them to convert from the heart, and urges them to practice their faith through a life of goodness. Much scientific communication today is only similar to “spreading superstition” — relying on the ostentatious display of science’s “power”: “Look! How effective it is, how successful, how capable it is of curing disease and strengthening the body, how able it is to resist disasters, how great the material benefits it can bring…” In a certain sense, this kind of science communication is even worse than preaching the gospel.
However, “spreading science like a good believer” is not easy; the fact is that faith in science is hard to replace religion.
True religion can provide a spiritual home for devout believers. By spiritual home, I mean placing the ultimate meaning of life in faith in the sacred; such faith makes people feel full and satisfied, and lets life, however many hardships it may contain, always remain filled with “hope.”
Science can indeed also become a home for the highest “hope” in life, but this is more so for scientists.
The true “scientific spirit” originates in ancient Greek philosophy. Plato said: “We should trace the divine cause in all things, in order that we may lead the blessed life which our nature demands.” (“Timaeus,” 69A) Aristotle said: “All those sciences which embrace this essential end are superior to those which are partially so. The end is, in the case of each thing, one thing’s particular good, and in general the best good in the whole of nature. Therefore all these ends must belong to one science—that which investigates the first principles and causes of things; for the good, that is, the end, is one of the causes.” (“Metaphysics,” 982b10ff.) For the ancient Greek philosophers, the emotion that impelled scientific inquiry and the emotion that pursued the ultimate and the sacred were one and the same.
Among modern great scientists, the desire for knowledge and a sense of the sacred remain linked together. Einstein said: “One can hardly find among the deeper sort of scientific minds one without a religious feeling of his own.” (“The Religious Spirit of Science,” in Collected Works of Einstein, vol. 1, p. 67)
Einstein further said: “Anyone who has experienced intense scientific work of this sort gains a profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence. Through understanding he achieves a far-reaching emancipation from the fetters of one’s own desires and wishes, and so comes to view with humility that grandeur of reason embodied in existence, which is inaccessible to us in its profundity.” (“Science and Religion,” in Collected Works of Einstein, vol. 1, p. 73)
Poincaré said: “A scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.” (cited in Roger Newton, What Is Scientific Truth?, p. 227)
Schrödinger put it even better: “I was born into this situation—without knowing whence I came, or whither I am going, or even who I am. This is my condition, and it is yours too, each one of you. Every human being is in this situation, and always will be. This reality gives me no answers. We eagerly want to know where we came from and where we are going, but the only thing we can observe is this environment we find ourselves in. That is why we so urgently and with all our might seek answers. This is science, scholarship, and knowledge; this is the true source of all human spiritual striving.” (“Nature and the Ancient Greeks,” pp. 96–97)
These greatest of scientists all invested scientific inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge with sacred significance; in their work, scientists placed their religious feelings. Their moral nobility and the joy of their lives often also sprang from that religious-like attachment to the beauty of nature, and in their pursuit of truth and supreme beauty they found fulfillment.
However, for most people, is this enough to be satisfying? After all, science is a profoundly specialized undertaking, and the vast majority of people simply do not have the conditions to devote themselves to scientific inquiry.
Scientists are pursuing truth, but what, in the end, are ordinary people’s lives pursuing? How can the lives of ordinary people all feel that they have something to pursue, something to be satisfied by? How can harsh truths be reconciled with everyday ethics and morality? — That worldview of finding fulfillment in the pursuit of truth is possible for great scientists; but how can ordinary people all be enabled to pursue happiness? How can ordinary people be persuaded to adopt an ethical way of life? Clearly, science and reason are not enough for human civilization as a whole. Philosophy, art, and religion cannot be fused into one with science, yet they always have reason to exist independently of science. They do not demand to stand above science, nor do they accept science standing above them. They only ask to complement science, so as to help satisfy humanity’s longing for “meaning,” just as, in a great scientist, the scientific spirit of rigorous rationality coexists and complements the religious attachment that pursues and believes in the beauty of nature.
I will soon be writing a midterm paper for the course “How to Understand Religion,” and at that time I may discuss more of what has been mentioned here.
March 25, 2006
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
Leave a Reply