Conclusion

End of Science: the death knell as sounded by the Royal Society (Part #7)

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Although this argument is entitled the End of Science, it is -- as pointed out with respect to any End of History -- a simplistic framing of the challenge. However science is itself guilty of just such simplicity in so readily promoting the belief in the End of Religion. -- when so many continue to find religion to be fundamentally of greater benefit when the fundamental value of science is considered questionable. Both science and religion are challenged by the encounter with such mindsets. Both have adopted simplistic modes of response that are an honour to neither of them.

More interesting understandings of "end" in that connection are those associated with the horizon effects of such topological paradoxes as the Moebius strip or the Klein bottle. A related understanding might derive from theories of socio-cultural cycles, such as that of Pitirim Sorokin (Social and Cultural Dynamics, 1957) -- given the approximately 800-year cycle seemingly indicated between 1210 and 2008. Otherwise perhaps to be recognized as a process of collective enantiodromia. History might indeed note the paradoxical irony of an "end of science" heralding the "end times" scenarios of religion -- whose methodology it had so strenuously disparaged.

The confrontation between science and religion over evolution offers curious contradictions in their respective attitudes to their own methodologies:

• Science sees its methodology as essentially defined by the survival of the fittest hypotheses. However it is confronted by religion which it has defined as being effectively "brain dead" -- and yet seemingly survives in its own way on its own terms, and successfully so, to a degree constituting a challenge to science in practice. Could this not be understood as exemplifying memetic evolution, if not that of Darwin's theory? Whether or not religion is to be framed by science as a form of coelacanth, improbably the latter still survives.
• Religion on the other hand holds to a fundamerntal belief in intelligent design. Is science not to be seen as exemplifying a manifestation of such design, however much it denies such a hypothesis -- as might be said to be the case with the many species that prey on each other?

The challenge for religion, as for science, is how any such methodology is to deal with what appears to oppose it. Is it possible that there may emerge a larger, healthier, dynamic truth in the complementarity of methodological truth and that which opposes its simplistic, dogmatic formulation in any historical period?

A conclusion might be that both sides do themselves a disservice in the manner in which the debate over intelligent design is undertaken -- but it is the scientists who should "know" better. The confusion relates to the tendency to treat theory as fact under many circumstances -- and therefore teaching becomes the teaching of what amounts to dogma. Under other circumstances, when pushed, all theories are admitted by scientists to be tentative and subject to further testing in the light of any new information.

The entry in Wikipedia on Evolution as theory and fact is very helpful in clarifying the distinctions between: Evolution as fact and theory and Evolution as fact not theory. The arguments of Glenn Branch and Eugenie C. Scott (The Latest Face of Creationism in the Classroom, Scientific American, January 2009, pp. 78-85) are necessarily more defensive -- perhaps as might have been those of religion in 1210 -- despite acknowledging the apparent merits of the wording of the controversial Louisiana Science Education Act (26 June 2008). This is concerned with creating and fostering an educational environment that "promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied". There is a certain irony to science being off-footed by religion on its own ground and with respect to its own "beliefs".

The current debate is not designed to enable critical thinkers of the future to distinguish between the enthusiastic assertions of science that evolution should be understood as a fact and its theoretical framework. This is exemplfied by the current celebration, in that special issue of Scientific American, of the Evolution of Evolution -- of "How Darwin's Theory Survivies, Thrives and Reshapes the World". It could well be argued that science has become as tricky as religion in dogmatically presenting its beliefs as fact -- and seeking to promote them by political means. It would seem, from an evolutionary perspective -- in memetic terms -- that religion also "survives, thrives and reshapes the world". Seemingly science has as yet to understand this form of evolution.

Will evolution be taught as now in 500 years? Or will it have been reframed as an instance within a wider framework -- as in the relation between Newtonian physics and relativity theory, etc? For all we know both evolution and intelligent design could be compatible within some such more complex framework -- after all physicists are very free with additional dimensions (beyond the comprehension of most) when it is convenient for an explanation. It is entirely unclear what will be the psychosocial implications of such complexity for the future. A recent indication of such possibilities is the study of Steve McIntosh (Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution: how the integral worldview is transforming politics, culture and spirituality, 2007).

The challenge of scientists to the intelligent design faction should be: welcome, disprove our theory and what evidence are you offering for yours? What explanatory power does yours offer? etc etc. Are you simply relying on appeals to authority -- and how do they compare with appeals to authority by science (teachers)? Scientists have wrong-footed themselves completely by avoiding recognition and teaching of science as a methodology -- just as religion is so framed to the satisfaction of others. Science has thereby been converted into a belief system which is being (badly) defended like a faith -- and taught like one. Consequently students are not allowed to give intelligent consideration to any other explanation/belief system -- and can only reject such when they encounter it, avoiding any understanding of the perspective from which it is held to have coherence.

Curiously it is religion, or less well recognized branches of theology, that points to subtler cognitive modes that might be said to be more open to the tremendous possibilities of an unknown future -- in total cognitive contrast to the closure exhibited by the Royal Society in 2008, or the Declaration of Paris in 1210.

This more fruitful cognitive posture is to be found in apophasis (as originally recognized by Aristotle) and apophatic theology -- in contrast with the kataphasis characteristic of both religion and science. Apophasis is the recognition that conceptual closure is appropriately to be avoided under certain circumstances -- notably with regard to the possible nature of divinity and even to any understanding of personal identity (Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity?, 2008). The modality favoured is what has been termed "unsaying", namely indicating what a phenomenon is not (Michael Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 1994) and avoiding premature closure (William Greenway, Chalcedonian reason and the demon of closure, Scottish Journal of Theology, 2004).

It is possible that the "new thinking" that will emerge "beyond science" could benefit from such recognition of its own methodological limitations -- rather than becoming locked, once again, into the forms of arrogance commonly characteristic of both religion and science. It is curious that science has trapped itself into premature closure despite the elegance of studies on the probabilistic theory of truth sensitive to both perspectives (V V Nalimov, Realms of the Unconscious: the enchanted frontier, 1982) as discussed elsewhere (Complementary Patterns of Meaningful Truth and the Interface between Alternative Variants, 2003).

The conceptual riches of science, and especially of mathematics, should enable simplistic notions such as the End of Science, the End of Religion or the End of History to be framed in new ways within a multidimensional space appropriate to the cognitive complexity with which humanity is faced. For it is in this space and its complex dynamic that "science" is seemingly moving "out of phase" -- as simplistic as this may be by comparison with a "setting sun".

It is ironic that it is at this very time that fundamental science is exploring the origins of the universe and its "dark matter" through activation of the CERN Large Hadron Collider -- characterized by the collision of particle beams travelling at light speeds in opposite directions. There is a case for the "conscience" of the future to recognize the degree of indulgence and denial in such initiatives -- when it is incapable of dealing with the collision of the opposing "cognitive beams" of science and religion other than through simplistic mutual demonization, as argued elsewhere (Dynamic Interrelationship of Symbols of Coherent Experiential Representation of Nonduality --DISCERN, 2008).

Institutional science has much to answer for in its total denial of responsibility for its total complicity in the development of ever more destructive weapons, the currently recognized unchecked exploitation of the complexity of the disastrous financial derivatives market, and "scientific whaling" -- especially given its inability to engender remedial alternatives for those who suffer in consequence (And When the Bombing Stops? Territorial conflict as a challenge to mathematicians, 2000). Part of the learning to be derived from the juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible modes of thought lies in deriving insight into the manner in which each defines its focus such as to exclude inconvenient issues for which it needs to be able to deny responsibility.

However, just as the Declaration of 1210 through the "Mother of Sciences" effectively sounded the birth of the scientific method, perhaps the initiative of the Royal Society in 2008 may be better celebrated as the birth of a new cognitive modality -- rather than as the regrettable passing of an old one.

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