Science the New Source of Truth

Lecture

#1

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject:

Genre: Speech

Track: 01

Dictation Name: RR325A1

Location/Venue: ________

Year: _______

Our concern this hour will be with the teaching of science. Because science has so important a part in the modern world its place in the curriculum is especially important. It is important for us to understand what its place is and why it is so highly regarded in our time. It is a part of the curriculum today in most schools for two reasons: First, some sciences have had a major impact on the modern world, and second, modern man tends to believe that science rather than God is the basic source of truth. It’s important for us therefore in this hour to examine these two points.

On a subsequent occasion we will go into other aspects of science, but these two points are critical because unless we understand these aspects we will be teaching a science that is basically (facetious?).

First of all, the impact of science on the modern world. Well this very clearly varies from science to science. Some sciences have very little impact, others a great deal. Moreover a great deal of the impact of science, so called, is not an impact of the sciences properly but of hypothesis concerning science. Most obvious example is evolution. Evolution in the last hundred and twenty years has had a major impact. In fact, the impact of evolution goes back before the formulation of biological evolution by Darwin to Frideric Hagle a half a century of more earlier who formulated the general idea of cultural and physical evolution.

Most of the impact of science on the modern world is not the impact of actual scientific developments but of this theory. The theory of evolution is a religious faith. Now what are we going to do about that religious faith? Because is is a faith. It’s not provable, it begins with a basic presupposition and then says reality is thus and so. It violates known facts of science such as that there is no spontaneous generation, the second law of thermodynamics, and much more.

So things that science calls basic facts are violated by the theory, but the theory is still believed. All man’s thinking begins not with facts but with a basic faith. What a man says are the facts depends on what his faith is. Thus, if you are a liberal you have one set of facts are you view politic. If you are a conservative you have another set of facts.

The editor of the encyclopedia of chemistry has said, “We view the world in terms of paradigms.” We would call that a faith or a presupposition. And he goes on to say, “As we formulate a paradigm then our view of what constitutes a fact is different then it would be otherwise. Thus, for us, one set of facts exists; and for the evolutionist, another set of facts. For us everything is God created, there is no fact that is not God created. For the evolutionist, every fact is a brute fact, a meaningless fact, a product of blind chance which has somehow gained it’s present form and design but represents no design and no purpose.

Thus, before you have a fact you have a faith which tells you what that fact will be or what you can consider a fact. This is why you cannot argue across systems. Two philosophies, or two views of science, or two religions will be arguing at cross purposes. Unless you challenge the basic presupposition; their basic faith. As a result we do not replace evolution with the facts of science but with the doctrine of salvation. It’s a conflict between two doctrines, two faiths. Was the world made of brute facts or created facts? That’s the question.

And second we must say, indeed, some sciences have had a major impact on the modern world but they are not these sciences that have attracted attention with a great deal of theory. To cite an example: The most influential science perhaps in the modern world has been chemistry. We don’t think very often of chemistry but all our technology is directly or indirectly a product of chemistry. For example, the oil industry. Oil was discovered, chemists went to work to break down the oil into a variety of things. One of the byproducts of the work of chemists was gasoline; the problem with gasoline was there was no use for it. For years they were burning it up. Along came some inventors who began to develop some very simple horseless buggies - these were developed in terms of the known science, the steam engine. The chemist came along and said, look, we have a substance that we can use! Now we’ve got to develop something in the way of a motor that will utilize it.

If somebody had told you in 1900 that investment would be best in the area of the automobile industry you would have been skeptical. Otto Scott in his professional deals with this in a very interesting comment said, and I quote: “There is a lingering story about a young man who talked to an elderly financier at the time, approximately 1901 or so, regarding the expert’s opinion of the future of the horseless carriage. The financier began with the examination began with the limitations of these new uncertain vehicles in the context of general conditions. In order for them to travel, he said, they need a special trap. They get stuck in mud and snow and cannot operate over rough terrain. Therefore, new roads would have to be built everywhere!

At the same time, he continued, they can operate only a limited distance because their fuel is exhausted. Therefore these new roads also have to have fueling stations built every so many miles to meet that need; and since the horseless carriage is subject to frequent breakdowns such stations would also have to employ special crews to make repairs. In order to make the repairs the crews would have to stock spare parts, and in order to have spare parts special factories would have to be constructed with all their attendant equipment, personnel, and expense. Young man, he concluded, when I consider all the factors that would have to be put into place before the horseless carriage could become a common vehicle it would seem the world itself would have to be changed to meet the needs of such machines, I wonder that you bothered to inquire about their long range possibilities.

And least that’s very well put! Very logical. Except, of course, there were chemists at work. Vast amounts of gasoline that were just being burned up, and chemists, practical working chemists for various oil companies wanted to put it to work. They got together with the experimenters and horse carriages, and you know the results! All those impossible developments followed. That’s one example of what chemistry did.

Thus, if you were to write a history of science in the 20’th century really you’d have to say very little about Darwin except to mention the failures to prove his theories. Very little about all the geological speculations and paleontological speculations which (figure?) textbooks now! You would have to say a great deal about chemists and what chemists have done to create a vast variety of new things. Every one of us, in our homes, in our clothing, every day are utilizing things that chemists have developed. So it is important for us to keep science intelligently, because an intelligent understanding of science is very different from the kind of thing you get taught in the schools today. You hear next to nothing about chemistry when you get a degree of science, but it’s basic.

Our world is being changed moment by moment by more men working in laboratories and developing new things; consider the whole world of plastics. Consider what George Washington Carver did with the peanut, and the byproducts. Right now; the last time I was in Mississippi one of the problems there is with sweet potatoes and yams that they practically give them away. I wish we could get them here at a cheap price! But what are they doing? They’re beginning to experiment with what could be done with a sweet potato. What materials? And they’ll probably come up with something. In one area after another the chemist at work is revolutionizing our world.

Now this takes us to a third point. We must not confuse academic science with research science. Textbooks are written largely by professors. Professors love to exalt professors, so what do you get? A long history of theoretical science, page after page about Darwin and his influence, and everything that is described in these textbooks on the history of science and in science textbooks and in science teachings has had no effect on our world. Take away what the practical research scientist working for industrial corporations have done and the whole modern world disappears and you’re back to the horse and buggy. About the only thing that the professors have contributed to in a considerable amount was the atom bomb, and we could have done without that.

You see, our science teaching has been dominated by the university professors and their perspective, and it has exalted the academic scientist who is no scientist at all. He’s a teacher. In a limited number of cases he’s a researcher -- Lawrence Z. Berkeley with his atom smasher, and a few others. Most of them are primarily teachers not scientists. The overwhelming majority of scientists are today working for industrial corporations, but because of the academic orientation of things - whether it’s because of the Nobel Prize or the textbooks - they glorify the professors. This is not science.

This is why it’s important for you to know what’s going on in the world of industry. Consider all developments in the area of electricity. Professors had nothing to do with that. It was not even a scientist, it was an inventor: Edison. It was G.E. and other corporations, it was Nikolas Tesla. All these men have contributed a vast complex of things that have led to electricity which has revolutionized our world.

Someone someday should write a history of real science, not the professors, and then when you get a history of real science it’ll be something other than the atheism and the evolutionary theory and so on.

An interesting sidelight is the fact that when Doctor Walter Lammerts, who believes very strictly in six day creationism and is one of the top geneticists living now retired, set up the creation research society, he found that professors across the country - including those in Christian colleges - wanted no part of anything such as he had to offer. But he found that research scientists were more responsive. They had no use for all that theory that was taught in schools, they were practical men of science.

When Doctor Henry Moore wrote The Genesis Flood the professional geologists despised the book, and Christian periodicals to this day they’re attacking it. After all these years! But it is interesting that the largest society of geologists in the world, professional geologists connected with the oil industry, heard him in Houston and gave him a standing ovation because what he had to say about geology in The Genesis Flood jived with their working practical knowledge of the earth.

Now when you look at in textbooks is a history of science and theory of science that’s developed by the scientists and it’s not reality. It’s fiction. Until we can get a decent history of science and decent textbooks in the sciences you’re going to have to do some of the basic thinking and distinguish between academic professors, academic scientists or teachers of science, and the research scientists...the real ones.

Then fourth another factor which I’ll refer to in the person of Edison: the inventor. The inventor is not even a scientist, but his work is extremely important! The inventor is a handy man, a man who likes to try things, who is dealing with practical problems. After all, a disk which was bought by one of the major corporations of this country that has become basic to farming in this country was developed by a barber named Goble in Kingsburg, California. He watched the farmers working with their simple disks, and thought, there has to be a better way. But you’re never going to read about the Goble disk in textbooks! Or any of the other tools that have been developed by inventors.

By the way, one of the greatest ages of technology was the so called ‘Dark Ages’. When you had your frontier thinkers, according to William Carroll Bart, the early Christian thinkers, develop a tremendous world of new technology. Now to us some of it is very simple, but let me illustrate with one example. The horse collar. The Roman Empire had a problem when it came to moving freights they had only a limited amount they could move because every horse pulling a wagon or a chariot was pulling against its windpipe, and it could not pull much! When the horse collar was developed we were able therefore to break ground that had never been broken before; you were able to move weighty freight, and tremendous weights, that you would never have been able to move before.

There were a number of simple inventions like that that created a tremendous amount of progress, and these are the kinds of things that we need to recognize. There is an interesting study on some of these inventions by, I believe, William Pounds and White, Medieval Technology and Development. Very important book, the horse collar, and all variety of things that led to progress. The progress of the future is going to come not out of the universities but out of the industrial laboratories of major corporations, and this is why when the government begins to control so much of the research and the corporations and inhibits the amount of money that can go into development and research it is destroying our future. It is restricting it severely.

The inventor, thus, though not strictly speaking a scientist, is not regarded by research scientists as a scientist, but he has been tremendously important to the development of science. Thus when we study the impact of science on the modern world it is important for us to distinguish between theoretical academic science on the one hand and research science on the other. As a matter of fact, some of the best material you can get on the teaching of science can be had--could be had a few years ago, but with the tax situation is less available now, from some corporations.

A few years ago, and I imagine they still have it now, Disneyland, Westinghouse had a program on the wonderful world of progress...and another corporation had something on the atom.... Those are tremendous teaching instruments and I was glad to see that in a few cases Christian school teachers took their classes to Disneyland to take them through those exhibits; because here were corporations dealing with the potential as developed by research scientists.

Now to go into a second area. The fact that science is now regarded as the source of truth rather than the Bible. First of all we are told that science gives us verifiable truth through the experimental method. Now of course if this were true we would have to say that many of the sciences are not sciences. The experimental method applies to a very limited number of the sciences. We cannot have the experimental method in geology, or in paleontology, in astronomy, in astrophysics or many many other areas. So the idea that science gives us verifiable truth through the experimental method is ridiculous. If the experimental method is identified with science you’re going to have to eliminate most of the sciences as science. Moreover, the experimental method is not infallible; the experimental method is subject to the conditions set up for the experiment, the perspective of the experimenter, and the way he reads his conclusions. As a result many so called truths of experimental science are subsequently set aside. So we cannot deify the experimental method as a source of truth. It is a working but crude method of arriving at conclusions. It has been used and will continue to be used and progressively refined.

But it has a limited scope and it cannot replace scripture as the word of truth. Then we are told second that sciences are concerned with the physical world, and therefore they are concerned with reality, whereas Christianity is not really concerned with reality but with imaginary things. Now Van Til has commented on that in his introduction to systematic theology, and I’d like to quote his statement. It was exceptionally good, so I quote: “We should avoid the error of separating too sharply between science and religion, as is often done. The world of natural and historical fact with which science deals cannot be truly interpreted by anyone who is not a Christian anymore than can the world of spiritual things. Every statement about the physical universe implies in the last analyses some view about the spiritual realm. Scientists frequently say that in their statements they will limit themselves to the phenomenal world, that every assertion they made towards the phenomenal world involves an attitude towards the noumenal world. Even the mere assumption that anything can intelligently be asserted about the phenomenal world by itself presupposes its independence of God and as such is in effect a denial of him.” Unquote.

Hellenic civilization, Plato, Aristotle, and the others, saw reality as divided into two substances: mind and matter. Our modern world tends to see it as only one substance: matter. We cannot agree with either, as Christians, because we do not believe that the universe is made up of two alien substances and it is not a division between-- [short pause]

It is not a division between two substances but between two kinds of being. The uncreated being of God and the created being of the universe. So for us the reality of things is not mind or matter nor mind and matter but the creativeness of the universe. And as a result we are not in agreement with either the materialists or the idealists. The teaching of science must be biblically, theologically sound. For us, there is no truth apart from the Triune God. The presupposition of academic science today is that there is no truth and that the universe is a universe of chance. This kind of thinking is totally theological, because if these men were correct in their thinking they could not even affirm the doctrine of evolution. They would have to affirm total chance, they would have to affirm that devolution is as likely as evolution; but they insist only on evolution.

So that they are ascribing the order and the design of God to a process without admitting God. As a result, in the teaching of science we must begin with the fact of God. That God is sovereign, that the universe is created, and that the factuality thereof manifests the order and the structure God has given to it. [audio ends]