The New Convergence

This article, from Wired, is about a recent change in scientific thinking about the existence of God. The author suggests that while the 70s were an epoch of unbridled scientific triumphalism, current thinking emphasizes the spiritual components of human existence and the intelligence of the natural world.

These kinds of articles are so frustrating. All of these concepts -- science, religion, spirituality -- beg for interrogation. The issue is not that science beats religion, or religion evades science, but rather that the very consciousness of an epistemic tension between science and religion is a culturally and historically specific conundrum.

biologist Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, insists that "a lot of scientists really don't know what they are missing by not exploring their spiritual feelings."

But duh. The very possibility of the experience of "spiritual" feelings is itself the proper object of investigation. How is it possible for man to have feelings that he labels 'spiritual' at the exclusion of all other labels, especially 'scientific.'? 'Spiritual-and-not-scientific' feelings have not always and in all places existed, so there must exist some history and some cultural conditions that explain the comprehensibility of these terms in our age.

My frustration with scientists who address issues such as these is that they often ignore the fact that disciplines like philosophy and anthropology have been developing sophisticated analyses of these problems for many years. A serious engagement with the work of Foucault, Barthes, Geertz, et. al, would allow scientists to phrase these questions at the proper level of logical and rhetorical sophistication. The success of a book like Higher Superstition, which catalogs the errors of scientific fact and interpretation made by the science studies folks, makes me yearn for a counterpart that catalogs the errors of fact and reasoning carried out by scientists in their often ill-informed forays into the terrain of anthropologists and philosophers.

I wish C.P. Snow's essay on The Two Cultures was available online, because it's a useful starting point in understanding this damaging rift between disciplines. But it's not, so go to your libraries and check it out.
posted by neel master at 1:38 AM