Epilogue

Modern physics has been established only after a long struggle down the centuries from the time of the ancient Greeks to the present. It is the result of sustained efforts to understand the world around us. These efforts were and are influenced, inspired and sustained by many beliefs about the world. Some of these beliefs were false, and they prevented the birth of modern science; others were partially true and enabled some progress to be made, and finally there came the system of beliefs that made possible the birth of modern physics and ultimately the whole scientific and technological enterprise that has made our civilization possible. Many ancient civilizations such as those in Babylon, Egypt, China and India

achieved a high level of culture and with it an extensive empirical knowledge of the natural world from the properties of materials to the motions of the heavenly bodies. Their achievements were surpassed by those of ancient Greece, which was the scene of one of the most astonishing outpourings of genius in the history of mankind. In literature, architecture, theatre, philosophy and history their achievements were unparalleled, and the first steps were taken towards an understanding of the natural world. Some thought that the obvious complexity of the world could be understood in terms of the interactions of smaller and simpler entities, and Democritus formulated his atomic theory. This vision that all could be attributed to the motions of atoms in the void horrified Aristotle. If this is so, how can we account for our free actions, and with them our duties and responsibilities? So he postulated a world of purpose, and attributed the motions of even inanimate bodies to their purposeful striving to reach their natural place. He developed an allencompassing cosmology that accounted in a qualitative way for the whole natural world from inanimate matter, plants and animals to the sun, the moon the planets and the stars. In doing so he rescued purpose, but in the process put physics into a form that hindered its further development for two thousand years. The ancient Greeks also developed mathematics to a high degree, and many

centuries later this provided the language that is essential for modern physics. In addition, they had all the material necessities for the birth of science: a welldeveloped social structure, language, writing and mathematics, but they lacked many of the essential beliefs about the natural world that form the basis of modern science. Some were certainly present: Aristotle believed in an orderly world that could be understood by the human mind, although he was overoptimistic about how easy it is to intuit fundamental principles and undervalued both mathematics and the need for experiments. Other Greeks, such as Archimedes and Aristarchus, were embarked on studies of nature in a way that showed a true scientific spirit and could conceivably have initiated a continuing development leading to modern science. However, they lacked the

support of a society permeated with the set of beliefs underlying science and so this never took place. These beliefs were held by the Israelites, a small nomadic tribe surrounded

by the mighty empires of Babylon, Assyria and Egypt. These empires bowed down to a multitude of gods, but the Israelites worshipped the one true God who created heaven and earth, gave matter its properties and keeps it in being. The essential presuppositions of science, that matter is good, orderly, rational, contingent and open to the human mind, are all to be found in the Old Testament. In the absence of these beliefs modern science never developed in primitive societies or in any of the ancient civilizations. They certainly gained extensive empirical knowledge of the properties of materials and the movements of the heavenly bodies, but that knowledge was never locked into an allembracing structure governed by differential equations. The birth of Christ further ennobled matter and replaced the debilitating

cyclic time of previous civilizations by a linear time of purpose and progress. The Christological debates of the early centuries reinforced and extended our beliefs concerning the relations between God, man and the natural world. The early Christians were preoccupied with their survival in the hostile Roman Empire and subsequently in the chaos after its fall, so science did not develop in Europe in the first millennium. Meanwhile in the East the Muslim civilization arose, and inherited the work

of the ancient Greeks. The Qur’an provided many of the beliefs essential for science and important work was done in physics, astronomy and medicine. Islamic mathematicians also carried further the work of the Greeks. From the eighth to the fourteenth century Islamic science led the world, but in the following centuries it gradually declined. The basic reason was the dominance of the fundamentalist Asharite theologians who denied secondary causality and thus had a weakened sense of the inherent rationality of the natural world. This follows from their stress on the freedom of Allah, who decides what happens from event to event. A contributory cause is the emphasis of some Muslim theologians on the duty to seek only useful knowledge. So ultimately the Muslim civilization also failed to give birth to modern science. The birth of modern science finally took place in Europe in the High Middle

Ages when for the first time in history there was a civilization permeated by Christian beliefs. The new universities made possible wide-ranging and critical discussions of philosophical and scientific questions in the light of Christian theology. The writings of the Greeks became available, mainly through translations from Arabic to Latin made in Spain. Aristotle was held in high esteem, and his philosophical concepts were used by theologians to formulate Christian beliefs with ever-increasing precision. Nevertheless, they did not hesitate to reject any of Aristotle’s views that conflicted with Christian revelation, and this facilitated the development of modern physics. Science eventually came to maturity in the Renaissance and thereafter it became a selfsustaining enterprise. This is not to say that modern science could never have developed in the

absence of the Christian revelation, but in actual historical fact it did not. Science does not easily take root in non-Christian counties and it languishes

wherever Christianity is persecuted or ignored. The historical connection between modern science and Christian revelation does not, by itself, prove the truth of Christianity but, at the very least, it shows that they are in essential harmony. The great success of modern science, particularly of Newtonian dynamics,

once again led to the idea that the natural world is a giant mechanism that moves according to inexorable laws. As in Greek atomism there seems to be no place for the higher things that make life worth living, for duty and responsibility, praise and blame, hope and despair. Science, a most purposeful enterprise, seems to have abolished purpose. What was initially a methodological limitation was mistaken for an ontological conclusion, and the great medieval synthesis of theology, philosophy and science was forgotten. Once again there was a reaction, and this took many forms. Some pointed to

a range of phenomena that seem scientifically inexplicable as evidence of an unseen, spiritual world. Some sought a new set of beliefs in science itself while others denied objective truth and declared science to be just a matter of subjective opinion. Others again revolted against reason itself. There are many instances of events that seem to contradict the inexorable

laws of nature, such as those associated with spiritualism, psychokinesis, spoon-bending, thought transference and miracles. Scientists instinctively brush all these aside as so much nonsense, and indeed many of the reported events have been exposed as bogus or fraudulent. However, to believe absolutely in the uniformity of nature is just as credulous as to deny it. We just do not know. It is arrogant to deny that such things can happen, and the true scientific attitude is to subject them to meticulous investigation before reaching a conclusion. It is not easy to establish the truth about the natural world. Our observations

may be biased or untypical; our experiments may fail due to some unknown effect. Understanding of any phenomenon is only attained after a long series of false starts, blind alleys, blunders and misunderstandings. Scientific papers make no mention of this, but instead trace out a clear road from the beginning to the conclusion. Popular writers sometimes embellish the stories about scientific research, and it is hardly surprising that myths abound. The same experimental results can usually be interpreted in several ways, strongly influenced by various philosophical beliefs that are in no way required by the science itself. All that we can really rely on are the equations that give an approximate account of a limited range of phenomena. The accompanying stories may be true or partly true, but are often false and misleading. There are numerous examples of this, such as the denial of absolute space and time, the variation of mass with velocity, spooky action at a distance, the fuzzy quantum world and the world as an organism or as a machine. This certainly sensitizes us to the trickiness of arguments. We are often surprised when we compare our intuitions with experimental results. Sometimes this surprise is fully explained by a deeper mathematical analysis, but sometimes the results are an indication that a new theory is needed. The incomplete and uncertain knowledge provided by scientific research gives no ground for theological conclusions, and it is still less justifiable to see it as a new way to God. Thus to interpret the big bang

theory of the origin of the universe as evidence of creation, and hence of a creator, is to overstep the limits of science in an unacceptable way. At the very most, the discoveries of modern science can suggest questions about the meaning of it all, but the answers must be sought elsewhere. Another instructive example is provided by quantum mechanics, which is

widely used to support a whole range of beliefs going far beyond the actual formalism and the physics on which it is based. These include the activity of the mind of the observer when he collapses a wave function, the denial of causality, wave-particle duality and the belief in a fuzzy indeterminate world. All these are the result of a very simple error, namely to consider quantum mechanics as the final theory so that the wave function provides all that we can know about each individual system. Quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory: it does not and cannot provide the means to calculate many measurable physical phenomena. As soon as we recognize that quantum mechanics is essentially a statistical theory that applies to ensembles of similar systems, all the beliefs alleged to be implied by quantum mechanics are deprived of their foundations. It is vitally important to distinguish between the quantum world as described by quantum mechanics and the real world. Thus to conclude from the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that the world is fuzzy or to deny causality on the basis of radioactive decay is to mistake an inability to measure for an objective conclusion. Electrons are particles, and quantum mechanics enables us to calculate the probability distribution of their trajectories, which happens to follow a wave equation. The wave-particle duality is thus a category confusion. Quantum mechanics is but one step along a long road, an incomplete theory

that gives us some knowledge of an objectively existing world. The universe, which may be defined as the totality of consistently interacting things, is thus a completely determined system evolving through time following exact deterministic laws originally given to it by God. This does not deny our humanity, because we are more than just things; we have immortal souls. Modern science can certainly bring home to us more forcefully the incredibly

intricate structure of God’s creation. It may also suggest ideas and analogies that have some use in theology. But to suppose that it can supplant traditional theology or provide new theological understanding is a chimera. Modern science has certainly enlarged our vision of the world. Instead of the

cosy, man-centred world of Aristotle, we now have a vast number of huge galaxies flying away from a primeval explosion several billion years ago. In the spiral arm of one of these galaxies is the rather undistinguished star which we call the sun. This change of perspective inevitably changes the way we think of ourselves and may cause us to speak in a different way about our Christian beliefs, but it does not change in any way our fundamental convictions concerning the creation of everything by God, and the birth, death and resurrection of Christ.