Doing justice to Big Questions, especially about evolution.

 

This article will give you some insights into my own journey as a student and teacher.  It has one main message to teachers and those involved in education in the science and religion field, a plea that, had my own teachers heard and responded to it, would have significantly improved my own educational experience.

My plea is this: don't allow the teaching and learning experience for our current students become reduced to a box-ticking exercise in delivering lesson objectives, in the mad rush to complete the examination syllabus.  Put another way, don't tolerate a style of teaching that relies so much on existing published resources that our students are robbed of the proper sense of amazement that ought to permeate their discoveries about the history of the only life we know of, found on this one tiny rock, in a layby of one galaxy, in a universe of galaxies.  It is not your fault that engendering 'a proper sense of amazement' isn't specified in the programme of study.  But I put it to you that it is your duty to deliver it, as best as you can.

And to put it yet another way, which might help us when teaching:  Let's avoid allowing an educational narrative that deals with a set of small questions hold us back from appreciating and properly grappling with the big questions in (and beyond) the areas of the curriculum that underpin the science-religion dialogue.  As I look back on my own experience as a student, and the reasons that my journey as a learner in this area took some of the directions that it did, I now identify this crucial error.  I was, I now very clearly understand, deeply frustrated by the overall experience I had as a student, because whatever big ideas were supposedly included in the curriculum, especially evolution, my teachers did not adequately and directly address them (very much).  (You should realise that my student days were completed before the National Curriculum was implemented in 1991: I began my career as a science teacher having learned the new 17 Attainment Targets for Science during Initial Teacher Training.  So my own experience in the 1980s was in the context of less determination of the learning experience, and that freedom was not necessarily well used.)   

I'd like you to forgive me in that I have not said 'Please' in any of the previous three paragraphs.  I did also suggest an expectation of 'duty'.  I am saying that it is vital that our students have an educational experience that acknowledges that knowledge matters- it inevitably has implications with meaning.  Now government guidelines through the DFE are very clear that students should be equipped to live and work in an increasingly technological world. So the science we teach is to be delivered to all with that wider purpose in mind. But teachers are known by their students for nurturing particular passions, which is often a cause for humour in the classroom. I suggest that more science teachers in particular should also be known for encouraging their students to consider the intricacies and complexities of the natural world as they learn in science, actively preventing them from being squeezed into a utilitarian mould of education that values learning objectives to be delivered to the detriment of facilitating a sense of wonder and amazement about what they are learning.  If you are reading this as a Primary specialist, you may be less concerned about this than I am in the Secondary phase.  It was a rare classroom of young students that did not have at least one child who wore their encyclopaedic knowledge of dinosaurs on their sleeve- I hope this is still true.  Dinosaurs jump out of the pages of the most fusty and old-fashioned library book to grab the imagination of children with both arms- especially the flailing and laughable limbs of the Tyrannosaurs!  That seven year old does not need to be told that learning about fossils should be an imaginative shortcut to fun.  It may be that more than a few professionals began their journey into science and science teaching from such experiences.  The photo of Paul Williams below, with the life-sized model of a Jurassic era ammonite he made for a BBC TV documentary rather gives away that such wonderment can last a lifetime and sustain careers.

I am absolutely not setting up a false choice here between an efficiently designed and timed science scheme of work that properly equips our students for a thorough experience of the curriculum in preparation for their GCSE examinations, that turns out to be boring, or a fun-filled learning experience that, regrettably, does not meet our full professional obligations.  It may be that, despite several reviews since 1991, the current curriculum and exam syllabi are unbalanced in some respects, perhaps overburdened with knowledge content at the expense of more opportunities for skills acquisition, and all this may well easily lead to pressure to concentrate teaching into an overly dry experience. That concern can be tackled elsewhere. My argument here is that pressure must be significantly resisted in this topic area.  This is because this knowledge generates possibilities for profound meaning.  Knowledge about evolution matters.  Of all the Big Questions we might come across in our educational experience, evolution must surely be amongst the biggest.  This is firstly because it is a/the big idea in science, not just in Biology, but extends to the production of all the chemical elements in stars, and cosmology generally.  And by necessity, evolution has implications for the Big Questions we have about ourselves, our values and our sense of meaning.

I suggest that it is no accident that the author of the 1973 paper, 'Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,' Theodosius Dobzhansky, identified as an Eastern Orthodox Christian and continued to write on theological themes at the climax of his career as a geneticist.  We may or may not agree with the assertion of his title, or the details of his argument (I do agree with him, on both counts), but Dobzhansky helps us make the case that how we think we and everything else came to be has implications for many other Big Questions we have about our lives and the cultures we are forming.  

Many of my own teachers, at school and at university, exercised their right to hold back from engaging in metaphysical questions.  I tried to take a genetics lecturer to task over this position, and am grateful to her to this day for tolerating my impertinence.  Other teachers were less professional and rather more dismissive.  As I have tried to show earlier in this blog, these positions may well be choices that we ought to respect, but they are not necessarily part of being a professional scientist or of a scientifically informed worldview.  The boundaries of science should be understood to be open to dialogue with other disciplines, engaging with questions that cross disciplinary boundaries.  Those of us who are believers, and I am chiefly addressing Christian believers (though other friends may sympathise with these views), should expect to be challenged to give positive reasons for our intellectual positions, and to do so with integrity as professional educators, as qualified graduates in (a) science discipline(s), and certainly also in terms of practicing our faith.  To be clear, this never means proselytising, which is unprofessional and illegal.  But students quite reasonably ask me, in lessons, "How can you be a scientist and believe in God, and specifically as a Christian?"  And I can give answers which are educative, briefly giving evidenced opinions within proper bounds of freedom of speech and respecting religious viewpoints, under the heading of protected characteristics.  This blog is exploring what good educative answers might be, so our students think as better scholars of science and also RE, aside from their personal judgements of their teacher.

To focus specifically on our science teaching, I am saying that since the DFE curriculum specifications for science are so brief in this area that there is a risk- is danger too strong a word?- that teaching will not engage students' thinking and appreciation of the topic as much as could and should be the case.  Here are the relevant passages from the 2014 policy document:

 .  

Science programmes of study: key stage 4. National curriculum in England. December 2014. 

Students should be helped to understand how, through the ideas of biology, the complex and diverse phenomena of the natural world can be described in terms of a number of key ideas which are of universal application, and which can be illustrated in the separate topics set out below. These ideas include:...  • evolution occurs by the process of natural selection and accounts both for biodiversity and how organisms are all related to varying degrees.  

Students should be taught about:...

    Evolution, inheritance and variation:

• the process of natural selection leading to evolution 

• the evidence for evolution 

[In Chemistry:] Earth and atmospheric science: 

• evidence for composition and evolution of the Earth’s atmosphere since its formation  

[In Physics:] Students should be helped to understand how, through the ideas of physics, the complex and diverse phenomena of the natural world can be described in terms of a number of key ideas which are of universal application and which can be illustrated in the separate topics ... These ideas include: 

• the concept of cause and effect in explaining such links as those between ... changes in atomic nuclei and radioactive emissions 

[which help us to understand...] the main features of the solar system.

So we can see that there is sufficient direction to show that science students at KS4 should be taught that evolution is an overarching theory that draws on evidence and reasoning from all three main science disciplines.  Good teaching will make these links specific, perhaps like this.  "The solar system only exists in its present form because several cycles of stellar evolution have taken place over more than 13 billion years of deep time, forming the elements from which our sun and planets are now formed.  Radioactive decay gives us sufficient data to establish that the earth is old enough for there to have been enough time for life to evolve from its first beginnings into the many forms we see today, as well as others that are now extinct.  Past life and geological processes have transformed the earth's atmosphere in many different ways over 4 billion years, and the recent changes caused by humans are continuous with these phenomena."  

I wonder if such a narrative is found in the texts and resources used in your classrooms, or is that rather more joined up than is your general experience?  If not found in printed resources, do you give such a joined up account yourself?  I've also hinted at some 'How science works' points, suggesting that although we don't know exactly how old everything is, the scientific observations that experts have made and published and reviewed have been generally agreed to give an acceptable overview of history at the planetary, solar and cosmic scales.  I left a space to return and comment that while there is accepted evidence for the evolution of modern species from prior ones, the primordial origin of life is a very much harder question to interrogate.  

A fantastic life-sized reconstruction of a 1.8-2.5m Creteaceous ammonite at the Hauff Museum of the Prehistoric World, in Holzmaden, Germany.

We should really try to help our students to understand just how challenging it is to find out about the early history of our planet, and especially of life on Earth more than a few thousand years ago.  Just as with the rest of the science curriculum, there is very little teaching about the history of discovery- how scientific knowledge took important steps forward.  Even when this does happen, such as teaching younger students about Mary Anning and her ground-breaking work on fossils at Lyme Regis (see what I did there...), we tend not to tell students what intelligent people thought before the big discovery was made, or the new idea was accepted.  There are science-and-religion implications here which we might reach out for in future planning.  We don't have enough teaching time, you cry.  I agree, but perhaps we can help each other more.

I said I was frustrated, and that I remain concerned about the basic quality of the teaching we deliver in this topic area as a general rule.  I'll be specific and perhaps guilty of over-generalising, though I don't think I am.

If the lesson schedule is tight, and our classes are mixed ability and facing imminent exam deadlines, what might likely happen in KS4 biology classes?  In an effort to ensure that students are prepared for their assessments, teaching and learning activities focus on the skills and knowledge required for the exams.  That means natural selection and evidence for evolution (probably related to adaptations) will be the main points of focus.  Now it might be easy to forget how challenging many students find the ideas about selection (both natural and artificial) to be.  The literacy skills demanded of students to compose a paragraph-length answer about changes in types of peppered moths on tree trunks are considerable.  

So it is likely that teachers will tend to avoid spending much time on the Big Picture of evolution, giving any significant coverage to the history of life on earth in all its diversity and complexity.  Instead of discussing the origins of life and recalling forgotten facts about dinosaurs, our students only write about moths on polluted dirty tree trunks and perhaps why Lamarck was wrong about giraffes stretching their necks.  All well and good, but a far cry from significant engagement with wider questions about evolution, or possible implications of these.  The National Curriculum specification is only considered at the smallest scale- changes in one species, seen in the (near) present day.  

Then the concluding statement might be made, that all we have to do is scale up this species-level narrative to the larger scale and voila!  There we are: 'From Goo to You by way of the Zoo!

Ammonite Biostratigraphy of the Cretaceous—An Overview.  See references.

GCSE Textbooks will not present detailed data like that shown above, or offer any engagement with the significant differences in scientific method and processes that must apply in testing evolutionary hypotheses.  Palaeontology and related topics are really interdisciplinary exercises, which we might discuss with our students in terms of science and history. You can't do empirical experiments on the past.  Data can only be collected from what remains, which won't be a random sample of what was once alive.  Extrapolation beyond a data set is not advised in experimental science, but we have no choice when attempting to study earth history.  The present can be used to find keys to the past, but uniformitarianism can only explain so much.  We know that dramatic and cataclysmic events have taken place in earth's history.  We will hopefully tell our students that the differences in Peppered moth colouration or the phenotypes of Gregor Mendel's sweet peas are caused by single allele differences, but these genetic studies are at the extreme and most simplified end of the spectrum of testable investigations.  Change and stasis in whole populations is much harder to understand, and almost beyond practical boundaries to investigate*- now, with living populations, never mind in the fossil record.  So we are limited to partial and unrepresentative data in generating our explanatory theories, which must be held in an open hand, and understood to be even more tentative than in experimental science.

My complaint is this: that in the process of choosing materials that are suitable for the majority of students to engage with, and given the style of questions regularly selected by exam boards, the scope of stimulus for students in this topic is reduced to a very low level.  The communication skills demanded are still considerable to attain the highest grades, so my complaint is not about the maintenance of academic rigour as such.  However, the scope of questioning is highly constrained, only considering what might be termed cases of small scale or 'micro-evolution'.  I feel that this approach does our students a disservice.  The DFE National Curriculum documents do not limit the teaching and learning within any such narrow boundaries, but here, 'teaching to the test' (which is never a good basis for education) seems likely to result in a deliberate bias in the way our current scientific understanding of the concept of evolution is evidenced.

I wonder if this situation has arisen very directly because of the recent history of the science and religion debate, and especially in schools.  Is it because of arguments about whether evolution has really happened at the largest 'macro' scale that the examination boards and text book writers have brought in this approach as a means of avoiding/ minimising such potential criticism?

If there is any substance to my speculation, then that must surely be the basis for an argument to improve the quality of education we are designing and delivering.  If it is recognised that questions about evolution have a scope beyond that of empirical practice, and that there are aspects to questions about evolution that cross into other disciplines, then that should be an argument for better interdisciplinary thinking and teaching and learning.  

It is of course vital to acknowledge that there are two different matters at stake in the teaching of evolution.  First is the matter of what happened.  Is there good evidence, from a number of relevant fields of science, that evolution, the development of new species from previously existing species, has taken place and that this is the case universally for all animals and plants?  The National Curriculum statement is sound: the answer is Yes.

Secondly, there is the matter of mechanisms, and our understanding of them.  Is it the case that natural selection, analogous to artificial selection, is the best and prevailing theory currently accepted by science and scientists for the generation of new species? Yes it is, and so it should be taught, and taught as such.  

But it is the case that there is a very great deal that remains unknown and perhaps even unknowable about what happened, and how it happened.  Science education that only tells students what we do know, but does not admit to what we don't and cannot know is poor education.

There are also some long-standing questions that continue to vex the scientific community, and these are often the matters which attract unhelpful attention in the science and religion dialogue, or perhaps debate is the better word here.  Does the fossil record, now much more thoroughly researched and investigated than was the case in Darwin's day or even by 1960 (a century after 'On the Origin of Species'), show the gradual change of one species into another on a frequent basis?  No, it does not.  The picture below is much more the normal situation:

Evolution of ammonites of the families Craspeditidae and Polyptichitidae in the Arctic zoogeographical region in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous (Neocomian). (see references)

Palaeontological investigation finds that species appear more or less suddenly in the fossil record, exhibit some modest level of variation throughout time, and then disappear.  Diagrams like the one above for Jurassic and Cretaceous ammonites, a relatively common type of fossil that might be expected to give a more extensive insight into evolutionary changes, show rather that there are significant gaps between the phenotypes of the various species and families.  Such diagrams feature dotted lines indicating what is hypothesised but not evidenced.  Should this fact be allowed to give our students the idea that the theory of natural selection is not adequate for explaining evolutionary relationships and changes? No.  But need we claim that there is no need to be open to new evidence and theories that might add significantly to our understanding of what happens, in the general case, and how it happens? No!  I think that part of good science teaching is being open to these truths.  If it is felt that such an approach makes education vulnerable to exploitation by 'young earth creationism' or the like, then that should be taken as a prompt to develop better science teaching, not to shy away from teaching all of the key aspects of the big picture offered by an evolutionary understanding of the world, and that may well demand a more cross-disciplinary approach in the future.  This should go hand in hand with the desire to equip our society for living in a future shaped by cutting-edge technological and scientific developments.

For much of the history of the cosmos, there was simply a vast and expanding space with just a few types of elements thinly distributed amongst that vast space.  It was many billions of years before oxygen was formed, and water became possible as a compound.   For less than half of the time there has been a cosmos- because it did start from nothing, we now know- the solar system we live in has been in formation, and while it seems that life did, somehow, begin on earth not very long after it cooled sufficiently for liquid water to remain stable, that cellular life only slowly evolved into vertebrates and then primates.  Giant molluscs including the ammonites had their heyday in the ancient seas up to 85 million years ago.  Based on the limited though not inextensive evidence now collected by generations of palaeontologists, we can surmise what the world looked like around that time.

Artwork of reconstruction of a Jurassic sea featuring ammonites, from Museum Joanneum. See ref.

Such an imaginative evidence-based picture is the result of sound work in science, and it should be brought to the attention of our students.  But it tends not to be.  They only get to study material like this:

I hold that this is fine as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough!  School pupils should be given the opportunity to appreciate the developing understanding that we have of evolution on the grandest scale, in the style of the following:

The evolution of endothermy in archosauromorphs and synapsids from the Permian to the present day. (See Benton and Wu, 2002, in references)

Here we might hope to bring a synthesis of the concepts of classification that are delivered at KS3, the physiology of so-called warm and cold-blooded organisms, the mechanisms of decay and biomineralisation that pertain to fossilisation, and revisit the enthusiasm that at least some of our teenagers used to have for dinosaurs when they weren't ashamed to be enthusiastic and seven years old, and the other questions that they come up with that are less predictable, and probably don't fit so neatly into our disciplinary silos.  

One of the interdisciplinary issues will be information.  The figure above shows there was a spectacular diversification of lifeforms at the end of the Permian/ start of the Triassic, just as there was a great diversification of life at the Precambrian to Cambrian.  We should be able to demonstrate to our students that these phenomena may appear to pose great challenge to our current understanding, but that we also have reason to be confident that science will be equal to those challenges, whether in evolution, or immunology, or in neuroscience.  Understanding genetics, especially in the context of evolutionary history, is a task for science that will be greatly enhanced through collaboration with information technology and computing.  Honesty about what we don't yet know should lead to well-formed questions and hypotheses that mean science, and its disciplinary partners, will lead us to new discoveries and understanding in the future.  Some may object that I am trying to squeeze too much into the KS4 curriculum.  Let's have that debate.  I maintain that the present situation is that we have squeezed too much out.

I think we should get back to the Triassic and Jurassic and the rest, so that we can try to ensure things make more sense to our students.  By which I mean that we are engaging our students in teaching and learning that comes to understand better how science helps us to know about and understand the world, including this world in the distant past.  Such improvements should lead them to a better appreciation of the powers and limitations of good science done well, and also to appreciate the potential for interdisciplinary working to make better sense of the world we live in and are part of.

The Judeo-Christian claim is that the covenant God of the Hebrew Bible (and for Christians, also the New Testament, therefore one and the same God) is the God who made 'all creatures, great and small', in the words of Cecil Alexander's 1848 hymn that Primary school students might still hear from time to time.  It is surely reasonable that if science lessons are thought to have considered the concept of evolution in an adequate manner, accepting that curriculum time is limited, then we should at least ensure that our consideration of the data that evolution theory addresses should stretch well beyond Peppered Moths to embrace 'P'terodactyls and Mammoths and the rest.   Evolution is a very big and bold theory, and if we teach that more adequately, we open the possibility to also doing justice to the ensuing Biq Questions that stretch across the borders of Science.

Postscript: I consider Dobzhansky's 1973 article to be spectacularly good.  I find myself repeating many things that he says, remembering that he puts them extremely well.  I find it extraordinary that some 5 decades later, all that needs updating is the estimate of how many species currently exist on Earth- or at least until we kill them off.  Without saying so directly, he repeatedly puts one of the most significant questions to believers who try to make sense of evolution, but then fall to criticising the idea in principle: 'Is your God too small?'  See link at (3) below.

References and notes.

1.  https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/381380/Science_KS4_PoS_7_November_2014.pdf

2. https://www.geologyin.com/2021/10/giant-ammonites-once-thrived-on-both.html "This was a replica that we used to show how big ammonites could grow. Made of polystyrene; it squeaked as we rolled it down the beach at Lyme Regis."  Model made for a BBC documentary by Steve Leonard and Paul Williams. Explore Paul Williams www.IronAmmonitePhotography.com's photos on Flickr.

3. Dobzhansky, Th. (1973). "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (PDF). The American Biology Teacher. 35 (3): 125–129.

4. Ammonite model at the Museum of Natural History, Holzmaden.  https://pxhere.com/en/photo/552288     CC0 Public Domain.  Link to news article 2021 https://www.sci.news/paleontology/giant-ammonites-10129.html 

5. Ammonite Biostratigraphy of the Cretaceous—An Overview.  Jens Lehmann  First Online: 23 July 2015

 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-9633-0_15

* Unless you are going to join Peter and Rosemary Grant on a Galapagos Island for 25 years ringing every single one of generations of Darwin's finches and taking blood samples.  See The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner. 1994.  https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-beak-of-the-finch/summary 

6. Evolution of ammonites of the families Craspeditidae and Polyptichitidae in the Arctic zoogeographical region in the Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous (Neocomian). Public access.
A Mesozoic Ocean In The Arctic: Paleontological Evidence January 2002 Russian Geology and Geophysics 43(2):143-170 Authors: V. A. Zakharov Boris Shurygin A.A. Trofimuk N. I. Kurushin S. V. Meledina https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Evolution-of-ammonites-of-the-families-Craspeditidae-and-Polyptichitidae-in-the-Arctic_fig13_237466024

7. https://www.museum-joanneum.at/fileadmin//user_upload/Presse/Standorte/Dauerausstellung/Naturkundemuseum/Messner_02.jpg  Available from https://www.museum-joanneum.at/en/press/museum-sites/natural-history-museum

8. BBC Bitesize page with graphics of horse evolution, at  https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zthcwmn/revision/2 

9. FIGURE 7. The evolution of endothermy in archosauromorphs and synapsids from the Permian to the present day. In the analysis, ancestral states of resting metabolic rates, measured in mLO2h−1 g−0.67, are estimated at each branching point in the phylogeny and color-coded to indicate the level (note the logarithmic scale). Values for ectotherms are typically 1.0, with modern mammals having RMR values in the range 1.5–3.5, and modern birds, 8–12 mLO2h−1 g−0.67. Based on data in Legendre et al. (2016), with thanks to Lucas Legendre for the base image. Excerpted from online paper 'Triassic Revolution' by Michael J. Benton and Feixiang Wu Front. Earth Sci., 17 June 2022 Sec. Paleontology at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2022.899541/full

10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2l0BP1DM4U  This rendition by a very plumy choir is so old I can imagine that Cecil is singing soprano in it.  Rather a lot of the current Youtube versions now feature one or other of the recent melodies, but this is the proper one.  The principle of Survival of the Fittest seems to apply to hymn tunes as well as biological species- a point that Richard Dawkins made, is we take it that hymn tunes are memes.

What about claims in Christianity which are close to Scientific enquiry?

So far I have explored what science is as a discipline, and commented on the way that school science lessons typically only deal with some aspects of what the scientific method consists of. I've described the way in which Science is a search for knowledge about the natural world that gathers all its data from our human senses, enhanced by scientific instruments, and tried to make the case that there could be some real features of the cosmos that might not show up in this way.  I then gave some critical consideration to what we mean by scientific law, and why we need to consider that there could be phenomena that could, in principle, be real, but might be hard or impossible for scientists to investigate and describe in 'lawful' terms.  To exclaim sceptically, "That isn't scientific!," is simply to misunderstand what the discipline of Science is really able to do.

I rather hope that I won't have lost any of my professional colleagues so far in this journey, whether you agree that science could have a constructive relationship with religion or not.  At this point in my discussion it should be straightforward to agree that a good understanding of Science would make it possible to consider the claims of one religion or another and, after investigation, finally rule them out as being a complete fantasy.  (Teachers will be challenged in this case to decide how to show respect to students, their families and their communities without being as blunt/offensive as I've just been.  This situation must surely apply to me too, as, presumably, I in fact do think that the religious claims made by believers of other religions than my own are false and therefore fantastical.  Let's keep this for another time.)

Since I am a Christian and a teacher at Secondary level (mostly in Science), I now need to move on to deal with the more challenging and interesting case: I propose that Christianity does make claims that are partly about the real world, life and the universe in which we find it, even as recognised by Science.  The reason for this website/ blog is because my experience has been that many of the 'contributions' made in this area of culture over more than the last century have more often been arguments about inadequately communicated opinions rather than reasoned investigations into fields of study that have different standards for facts and the findings that follow from them.  As the judge might say to the lawyer, 'I find that your argument generates more heat than light!'  (Now this statement itself warrants examination- hold that thought!)

So having composed four posts on Science, it is time to move on to examine key claims of the Judeo-Christian religion in a similar manner.  There are many of these, so as in every educational setting, we must be selective.  Sometimes the curriculum helps with this, but in the science and religion dialogue, there is little guidance in the specifications, so teachers &/or their students may well make reference to textbooks or other materials that give an ill-informed and unfair perspective. We should listen to proper specialists and experts who will tell us if that selectivity is biased in a way that misrepresents.  [This is also a common debating strategy, called the straw man argument.  Instead of taking the opposition seriously, the debater makes up a distorted version that their opponent doesn't believe either.  Let me sum up an aggressive position against Christians like this: 'Christians don't use reason or take notice of Science; they just believe the unproven opinions of their priests, having blind faith in their teachers and 'holy' texts made up before we were blessed with Science.'] (I would argue, in general, that there is insufficient attention given to these matters in the curriculum, and that giving scanty coverage to important culturally sensitive questions is itself a bias.  I will extend that idea in a later post.)

One of the few areas of science where the scope for a dialogue with religious (Christian, in this case) views comes up is the place of the Earth in the Solar System.  A school textbook is likely to deal with this topic in just a few words, which necessarily means that the treatment will be brief and, most likely, blunt.  Typically, they say things like this: In the time of the Old Testament (say 800BC) the Jews believed the scriptural statements that said that the Earth does not move.  In 1615 Galileo presented evidence to the Catholic Church that showed that this was not true, just as Copernicus had suggested with his heliocentric theory, that the Earth orbits the Sun, and not the other way around.  The textbook author might then close with a statement that suggests that Galileo the scientist should be judged as victorious over the blind dogma of the Church.

[I intend to illustrate this section with accurate quotations from recent textbooks.]

Such a statement is of poor academic quality and certainly does not make for good education, as it doesn't do justice to the position of science or religion.  It certainly does not give teachers appropriate guidance in showing respect for students and their religious viewpoints.  

As I said above, this sort of oversimplified account amounts to a straw man argument (especially as I've not yet quoted primary sources!).  A full specialist treatment of the Galileo affair would not fit in the secondary school curriculum, though I will indicate in a later article what more could usefully be said about it beyond the remarks below.

Is it fair to state that the Hebrew texts assert that the Earth does not move?  This seems a reasonable judgement to reach.  It is a commonplace argument to say that Jews and Christians take the biblical texts as being authoritative and the main source of revelation from God to His people, considered as both Jews and as Christians.  For many believers, if one scriptural text makes an assertion, it is taken seriously, but if two texts say the same thing, then this is like underlining, or using luminous yellow highlighter.  Well here are seven examples, from the Old Testament books of 1 Samuel, 1 Chronicles, Job and four more from various Psalms:

• 1 Chronicles 16:30 Tremble before him, all the earth! The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
• Psalm 93:1 The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty; the LORD is robed in majesty and armed with strength; indeed, the world is established, firm and secure.
• Psalm 96:10 Say among the nations, “The LORD reigns.” The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; he will judge the peoples with equity.
• Psalm 104:5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
• Job 9:6 He shakes the earth from its place and makes its pillars tremble.
• Psalm 75:3 When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm
• 1 Samuel 2:8 “For the foundations (translated pillars in the ESV) of the earth are the LORD’s; on them he has set the world.

[as quoted from the NIV and collated at https://thewartburgwatch.com]

It seems pretty clear then that the claim that the Bible teaches that the earth/ world does not move, that is, that it is fixed in place, rests on firm scriptural foundations!  

It should not be surprising therefore that intelligent people who were born before the eras of sailing around the world, or flying round the world, or orbiting in a spacecraft, might mistakenly think that the earth doesn't move through space.  Our everyday experience of day and night is just the same as it was for the people who wrote the biblical texts about 2000-3000 years ago: we don't see the sun at night, but rather the wheeling stars, while on a cloudless day the sun appears to move in an elegant and steady arc across the sky from east to west.  We have no sensation of movement when we look up at the sky. Rather, it seems that the stars above are moving around us, and that the Sun is what is in motion, not the solid ground we are standing on, during the daytime.  So expecting a modern astronomically accurate description is unreasonable. We should perhaps be content that the Bible is repeatedly giving a poetically conceived view of the earth and the heavens, and attributing this steady state of affairs to the might of God.  

A further criticism could be levelled at the Hebrew texts.  The talk of 'foundations' and 'pillars' seems to make it plain that the biblical authors had adopted the world picture of their near neighbours in the Ancient Near East.  So the descriptions indicate that the ancient Hebrews thought that the world that God sovereignly maintains looks something like this:

[Note that such a diagram exists nowhere in the ancient world or discovered texts- this is a modern graphic creation based on the textual sources.  Perhaps this very fact further establishes that we moderns think differently to the ancients- so we shouldn't demand that they perform to our expectations.] 


So the problem could be stated like this. Jews and Christians claim that the Bible is authoritative in all important respects, and the scriptures that both hold with great seriousness to be the revelation of God (Who knows everything) baldly states in clear language that the earth that is the common home of us all through history does not move, and what is more, it is fixed on some sort of pillar-and-foundation system. Modern science now shows, even from as far back as Galileo's telescope observations, that the earth is not at all fixed at the centre of the universe. Therefore, two fatal conclusions must follow: the repeated claims in the biblical texts about the place of our planet in the solar system and the universe are demonstrably in error, both in terms of the shape and nature of our earth, and also in its motion around the Sun. Most significantly, the very claim that the scriptures are the inspired Word of an all-knowing Deity is shown to be ridiculous.


All at once therefore the science lesson presents the telescope observations that Galileo first made and have been repeated and extensively extended since achieving the twin ends of establishing the triumph of Science over the naïve and mistaken beliefs of such primitives; also over the religious obscurantism of human authorities that insisted on holding to such unreliable texts. It also, by the way, rubbishes the claim that God had originally inspired the texts, giving us 'God's eye view' of our true place in the cosmos, and what might happen to it in the future. All that the various Psalms and other texts had to say was really no different to the view of the world picture held by the Israelite's neighbours at the time the Hebrew Bible was conceived and written down. They clearly had no such access to a more reliable view of the world.


It might then be added that the Catholic Church at the time of Galileo had dogmatically adopted the Greek Ptolemaic theory of our solar system, that the earth is a sphere at the centre of our system, with the moon and other planets orbiting us, as the Sun also appears to do. So Galileo was fighting two considerable enemies- the false science of Ptolemy that the Church in Rome had accepted, along with the human-centred view of the cosmos as laid out in the Psalms and elsewhere in Holy Scripture.

By such references Galileo Galilei is made out to be the oppressed hero of Science, who cleverly assembled the technology of the telescope from manufactured optical lenses and then methodically collected vital observations to prove that Nicolas Copernicus' heliocentric theory gave a better fit with the astronomical evidence than Ptolemy's geocentric model.  Further, Galileo heroically stands up to the bigotry of the Pope and the Church authorities, despite being placed under permanent arrest and confined to his house for teaching in the public marketplace that the earth really does move.  But it is usually not mentioned that Galileo continued to confess his Christian faith, despite the treatment he received from the Church authorities.

So how might a modern day Christian who takes science and history seriously deal with this situation?  I suggest the following approach will assist in the design of a more satisfactory apologetic and a superior educational approach.

First, it must be conceded that it must be the case that Jews and Christians, in the past and even in the present day, did not and do not always hold rationally defensible positions on these topics.  However, much in the account of science has changed even very recently, and this will continue to be the case.  I've given examples in the earlier articles.  Scientists (good ones anyway) do not ridicule those who held views that turn out now to be disproven.  So it is shoddy for science teachers, science textbook authors or even practising scientists to ridicule others who had/have religious views that come under critique in the advance of scientific explanations and theories.  It is easy to have perfect hindsight...

So what of the status of the Bible as a source of knowledge?  Well, it depends what is implied by that sort of statement.

My fellow religionists are sometimes heard to make statements like the one above, or alternatives such as, 'The Bible speaks in every area, and in every area in which it speaks, it speaks the Truth.'  You may care to read the essay by Matthew Barrett at the Gospel Coalition website (reference below) which explores this sort of position.  But the crucial point is this: do the Bible's own claims about the revelatory insights provided by the inspired word of God, such as found in 1 Timothy 5, mean that we should expect the Bible to speak authoritatively about Science as well as our (potential) relationship with God and one another, as informed by the Christian religion?  I once accepted that hypothesis in the affirmative, 'in good faith' as you might say, but do so no longer, as I found that it didn't work out- a sound outcome of the exercise of both faith and science, I would suggest.  There is not agreement amongst Christians and their churches on this matter, but that is why I am writing this blog!  Knowledge of all kinds is progressing, and at pace, so there need not be special reason for alarm here.  Since matters of faith and values are at stake, we simply need to proceed with caution.

So what do I now think?  What would constitute a reasoned position for a Christian who is a Science Teacher to adopt, and thus to inform their classroom practice?

I would begin by saying that a sound position would be to accept that the biblical authors were very much informed by their 'everyday perspectives' on the world as they saw and lived in it. The earth is steady under our feet, as is the appearance of things that are the heavenly bodies: Sun, Moon and Stars (some of which we now understand as nearby planets in the same sort of orbit as we are) which all seem to be moving around us while we are not; as they had no other means of understanding them.  The scriptural statements don't say differently as that would appear to be nonsense, not meaningful revelation.  God accommodates to our human perspective.  Now that we know better, we are expected to be wise enough to accept this, rather than to accuse God of unreliability, deception or incompetence.  It is a regrettable fact that many believers in history past did not come to such a realisation, but that is not our concern.  Galileo's example of grace (at least in this case) is to be applauded.

Further, we do not have to accuse the Hebrews or early Christians of intellectual incompetence in making statements that are now accepted as inspired and now inscripturated that, we now realise, are scientifically inaccurate, misleading, ie plain wrong!  They certainly seem to have accepted the 'world picture' prevalent at the time that they shared with their cultural neighbours, and this is evidenced in the literary substance in which the scriptures are framed and formed.  We do not need to commit to a view of scriptural revelation, reliability and meaning that claims inerrancy in matters of science as well as in (particular matters of) religion.  Some may choose to, but this cannot be an acceptable basis for science teaching in the UK at this time. This author and this site aims to meet the requirements for better teaching and learning.

What is the positive position that can be adopted regarding the 'proof texts' quoted above?  What is the inspired claim of scripture, of the word of God as claimed by Christians (as well as Jews, in this regard)?  I suggest this: the world as we live on it has all the appearance of being fixed in the heavens.  Why is that? And how did it come to be so? Will it continue to be so?  Importantly and vitally:- because the God that the Bible says is the One True God created it to be so, and Who Providentially maintains it in such a state, for as long as the Deity deems it will continue to be so.  The weight of scriptural authority does not, therefore, rest on the claims of an immovable earth in the midst of the cosmos (though Pope Urban VIII evidently thought it was), nor is scriptural authority endorsing the common world picture held for centuries and millennia by all in the Ancient Near East.  What the scripture is asserting with all weight and seriousness is that our place in God's cosmos is assured by God, the God of covenant with God's created peoples.  Our position at the centre of God's attention, says the Bible, now that we understand more science, is solely a function of God's choosing, not the nature of planetary orbits or the particular locus of the earth in the solar system, galaxy or universe.

So I disagree with the view adopted by Matthew Barrett and others, and hold rather more closely to the quotation above attributed to the US President, Ronald Reagan.  But with the caveat that the 'problems' we should have in mind are those that the Bible should be properly understood to be addressing.  As Galileo quoted another Catholic authority in his lifetime:

I invoked the judge in my introduction who tells off the lawyer for generating heat rather than light in his attempt to show that his view is superior.  Why do we get 'hot under the collar' arguing about these things?  Because the implications matter to us as people, as human beings who practise Science, and who are also motivated to form cogent views about our status as creatures in the cosmos, people whose lives and relations would have meaning.  As our knowledge about the cosmos is increasing exponentially at this time, as our technological powers are blossoming and running away beyond our ability to control, even to the imperilling of our planet, we are still struggling to recalibrate our traditions and cultures of meaning.  It is right that we should engage with emotion and spirit in our dialogues about our nature and place in the world, and seek to integrate our religious understandings with the perspectives afforded by science.  There must be both heat and light- this is true enlightenment, a progress of human becoming, in which we can embrace difference and also educate with mutual respect.

In conclusion therefore, having carried out an analysis of Science and the Scientific Method, I have now started to consider how we should handle religious claims (specifically biblical, Judeo-Christian ones) that pertain to science-and-religion conversations. Others must decide if these points are more widely applicable.  I have suggested that teachers and their students need to get better at describing and explaining what Science is and how it should be understood, because there is need for improvement.  Now we have started the same process on the religion side of the dialogue, addressing some stereotypes and past bad practice, both by science authors/teachers and by many proponents of religion generally, and many Christians in particular.  I am making the case that through these exercises we will become better teachers, handling boundary issues in science and religion with more accuracy and professionalism.  I suggest that our cultures and communities will be enriched as future generations of students become so equipped.

PS. You may agree with me that we are still left with nagging questions about what the worldview of the Bible actually is.  This would lie somewhat beyond the scope of teaching science and religious education in UK secondary schools, but you may be interested in further exploring my own views at common or garden theologian.

1. Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/exploratorium/481758327  Heat Camera Exhibit (c) Exploratorium, www.exploratorium.edu  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)  [Note that this technology can be life-saving, as testified by this woman who noticed the early signs of breast cancer when she visited this science museum exhibit:  https://www.asiaone.com/world/woman-alerted-her-breast-cancer-museums-heat-cam-exhibit   Yes kids, visiting museums can save your life!!  Do read the article, and see if you can you spot an error in the story.]

2. https://www.abi.org/abi-journal/shakespeare-for-lawyers-more-heat-than-light

3. https://thewartburgwatch.com/2011/09/02/the-earth-is-fixed-and-the-sun-moves-real-christians-believe-it/

4. A P Dickin ANE world picture diagram at https://benbyerly.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/why-you-dont-really-read-the-bible-literally-the-cosmic-dome-and-contextualization/

5. Matthew Barrett's essay at https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/authority-inerrancy-scripture/

6. https://openclipart.org/detail/203633/geocentric-and-heliocentric-systems

7. https://www.siyavula.com/read/science/grade-7/relationship-of-the-sun-to-the-earth/18-relationship-of-the-sun-to-the-earth?id=toc-id-11

8. On accommodation: Denis O. Lamoureux, Evolution, Scripture and Nature Say Yes! (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016). p115

9. https://fourstringfarm.com/2013/02/12/the-path-of-the-sun/

10.  Galileo Galilei in his letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. Attributed to Cardinal Caesar Baronius.  Mentioned, for example, here https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/newsweek/science_of_god/heavens.htm   

"He is also famous for saying, in the context of the controversies about the work of Copernicus and Galileo, "The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."[3] This remark, which Baronius probably made in conversation with Galileo, was cited by the latter in his "Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina" (1615)." found at https://religion.fandom.com/wiki/Caesar_Baronius   Note 3 at this site references this pdf which says that there is no documentary evidence of the supposed conversation, but that it was never contested, https://www.oratoriosanfilippo.org/galileo-baronio-english.pdf 

Breaking the laws of Science?

 

  Stained Glass window design: "Science" in the lobby of Novosibirsk State University, 3400km East of Moscow.

A commonplace objection to the possibility of a constructive relationship between Science and Religion goes something like this.

Science deals with facts.  

Religion may be said to have its facts, but these 'facts' are of a different nature to the facts of Science. 

Science collects data from extensive experiments, that is, the data is empirically obtained, in an objective, impersonal, dispassionate manner.  Such experiments, investigating testable hypotheses about the natural world, will yield repeatable results.  And, importantly, it will not matter who does the experimenting and data gathering.  Anyone who has been properly trained can do the experiment, as described in the method of the investigation.  They will expect to gain similar outcomes with sufficient precision that, it could be safely assumed, their analysis will lead them to draw the same conclusions.  

The crucial claims of religion, on the other hand, are not these sorts of facts.  The claims of one or more particular witnesses of certain events that occurred at some point in the past are the product of the lives of individuals and communities, and they are more than social history.  Religious claims will extend to the meaning and significance of the lives and life events of particular people, and will also include claims about things that are absolutely not open to the methods of Science to investigate, even (most probably) at the time at which they originally occurred.  Taking Christianity (or Judaism and some others) in particular, religious claims are made about God's interactions with the world, with Nature, with the cosmos, even if (in some cases) no human involvement is proposed.  How could we know about such claims?  Through Revelation (the claim that the Divine has communicated by some means that (some) humans could understand), and through Tradition, the collected testimony of a Community, such as the Hebrew Bible or the Christian New Testament.  In short, all of these claims of fact, claims to being factual, depend on opinions that are accepted by the keepers of the tradition and passed on as being authoritative.  They cannot be investigated in the scientific sense.

Or, to sum up and to be blunt, religion is not about facts but (merely) opinions.  The person who claims that Science is superior might well point out that the events, words and deeds in question are not repeatable, and so less valid to be considered in the same terms as the facts of science.  They are particular to a person or community, not universally applicable.  They would indeed predict that the same circumstances, if somehow repeated to the exact detail, would not generate the same outcomes.  Now none of that is particularly problematic if the claims made are just about history.  But the important religious claims are more ambitious.  Phenomena are claimed that are not the regular results of science.  Things happen that are not normal.  Violently executed persons come back to life, the local food bank keeps giving out supplies without being restocked, metal axe heads and walking men float on water. (I've translated the claims of the resurrection, the feeding of the 5000, Elisha in 2 Kings 6, and Peter walking with Jesus on Lake Galilee into common language, for emphasis.)  The 'facts' of science are therefore argued with: death can be reversed, new materials can be made out of nothing, forces suddenly cease to operate in the fashion with which we have all been familiar through all of human history. 

In other words, the claims made by the religious are laughable because they break the laws of science.  These unusual events- you might want to call them miracles- are, by definition, anti-scientific, and therefore impossible.  Those who hold such beliefs, in spite of all their education and experience in common with everyone else, are being deliberately irrational.  We might have some respect for those in the past who took such claims seriously, as they knew no better, but those who persevere with such beliefs today warrant pity rather than respect.

You will notice that I have set out in some detail several other issues related to the question of 'breaking the laws of science' which require further investigation, but I won't do that now.  Here I will focus on the concept of law in science, and in the popular imagination, because of the part it plays in the science-religion dialogue.

The point is this.  The language being used conjures an analogy with our human rules and laws.  We have decided, and so we teach children, and everyone else, that certain things should be done, while others should not be done.  Cross when the light is green, stop when it's red.  And so on.  If you don't pay for the items before you leave the shop, expect to be arrested and fined.  If you break the law, which you should not, then you should expect unpleasant consequences, and an insistence that you conform to expectations in the future. 

Generally speaking, and quite properly, we accept this sort of reasoning about our life in the world.  This idea is extended to the behaviour of things in the natural world, other than that they don't get to choose.  If you drop a hammer, or a feather, they will fall to the ground.  Bread can be eaten to keep you alive, but there must be sufficient supply for each hungry mouth.  Water is also necessary for life, but cholera bacteria cause disease and death.  Hammers sink in water, but feathers float on it.

We know these things from experience, the collective experience of generations of observers, and the details and special cases have been tested by scientific investigation and experiment.  Dave Scott even went to the moon to check for us.  

If you let go of an object that isn't moving, it will fall.  This always happens, we agree.  And solid objects that are denser than water will sink.  Always.  The phenomena of nature are consistent, regular, and predictable.  If this doesn't happen, we (especially scientists) go looking for the reasons why.  Perhaps the wind blew the feather upwards.  Even static air slows falling feathers, but not falling hammers (much)- so Dave Scott sorted out that special case for us in the lunar vacuum.  If the falcon feather is still attached to the wing of the bird it grew on, then the flapping bird can fly upwards.  But when the falcon tucks in its wings in a 'stoop' it plummets to the ground like a stone.  

So the behaviour of falling and floating and sinking objects is lawful.  We say that when objects are dropped, they behave according to these laws.  It's what always happens.

But as I've hinted already, there is, potentially at least, a problem here.  Does the very well demonstrated fact that these phenomena are what usually takes place prevent exceptions?  Just because we say that there is a law that heavier-than-air objects plummet to the ground does not make the phenomenon any more certain. It is simply a statement of the regular case.  When we speak of lawful behaviour in science, what we need to be clear about is that we are simply describing what is generally the case.  Remember, if we are doing an investigation or experiment and we get an unusual result, an outlier, an anomaly, we would-be scientists disregard it as a matter of principle.  Our conclusions are based on repeatable data, from which the exceptions have been deliberately excluded.

This is not to undermine the cause of Science.  A good scientist will go back over such anomalous data points and further exercise their curiosity.  What's going on here then?!  Let's check that we've properly controlled all the other variables. Perhaps we missed one.  This is the strength of the peer review process.  Other experimenters who repeat the investigations published by others will be on the lookout for confounding factors that might prove to invalidate the claims of the original researcher.  Science is robust in this regard, both uncovering the innocent mistakes of some researchers, and even catching out fraudsters and liars - though not always as quickly as we might hope.

Nevertheless, there is still the possibility that the world is not as regular as we have come to accept, and therefore to assume that it is.  If our observations, much repeated and thoroughly tested as they may be, then become assumptions about how the world must be, we've stopped being scientists.  In Science, a 'law' is no more or less than this: a statement of what is generally the case.  Just calling it 'the law of gravity' changes nothing about what happens.  If an observer claims that a heavy object rose from the bed of a river and floated, or that a sick person immediately becomes well, or a dead one comes back to life, then we must think carefully about the possible implications.  Firstly, we shouldn't be quick to condemn religious claims.  The fact they are described as miracles emphasises the rationality of the claimants and of the subsequent reporters. "Yes, of course, we know this is unusual!"  By extension, we who hear these claims are not being asked to be gullible.  Since this is odd and strange and very much out of the ordinary you will have to use other means of judgement to decide whether to take such claims seriously.  Are we being presented with a religious claim with profound meaning that is underlined by the literary use of exaggeration?  Is there sleight of hand or magical illusion at play?  Is it mere fantasy presented as reality?  Or the questionable reporting of visions of a hypothetical invisible realm?  These and other possibilities could be explored by the thorough sceptic.  Which is what we all should be.  But very simply, in regard to our discussion about the nature of scientific law, the attitude of a professional scientist, and of Science as a discipline of knowledge about the world, should be one of openness to the possibility that just because such and such a thing usually happens does not mean that there might not be exceptions.  

Does it continue to make sense to speak in the shorthand of certain laws of science?  Absolutely, yes, as long as we understand that such language means that we are describing what usually happens, the phenomena as they normally occur.  The only danger is in misunderstanding the idea of lawfulness meaning that other scenarios are somehow forbidden.  That nature would be broken if something else happened.  Or that (a hypothetical) God was breaking God's own universe by making unnatural things happen within it, on a whim.  That scenario would then lead some to say that God was unreliable, capriciously changing the rules of the game in an irrational manner.  But this betrays the assumptions we might have made about what God being reliable should mean.  

We could stop here, but you might be dissatisfied unless I go on to say a bit more about theory as well as law.

It is the very basis of science that the cosmos, our world, our bodies and the stuff of our existence all behave predictably.  It is this assumption, that the world behaves in a regular and repeatable manner, that is at the very foundation of the scientific worldview.  By using the word assumption, you might think I am suggesting there is something to be suspicious about.  Now it may be that, say, 400 years ago, there might have been reasons to be suspicious.  Sure, some phenomena are regular enough, but so many others are not so regular. [Darwin had to manage without Mendel's genetics because of this.] Looking back, we might decide that some of the accounts and explanations given for the way the world works were more the stuff of creative speculation, if not outright superstition. [Consider how long it was before the cell theory of disease was accepted.] But the assumption of regularity in the world is now held with a high level of confidence.  This is because the discipline of Science has been doing more than simply collecting lots of data, and looking for regular patterns in it, such as the more A you have, the more B is produced.

Having been good empirical investigators, refusing to make assumptions about what the world is really like until investigating it properly, earlier scientists accumulated lots of results on which to then build ideas about how the world works.  Slowly but surely, by fits and starts, they worked out which variables were key in causing certain changes, and which were incidental.  Having identified the potential cause of a particular change, they were a vital step closer to identifying why changing A results in more B.  They were able to move on from simply describing patterns to offering explanations, from law to theory.  The pattern and law tells us what happens.  To begin with, there were no reasons for these events- to attempt to explain is to put forward a theory.  The more data we have that is compatible with the theory- the developing conception of 'how it works' - the stronger the theory becomes.

Not only that, but a developing scientific theory then gives rise to new predictions, and thus to new experiments.  The results of those experiments, combined with the earlier data and the ideas which were thus suggested either show the failure of the theory, the need to modify it in some way, or serve to confirm its explanatory power.  What began as a regular pattern in a small sample of data thus became a confirmed and general phenomenon- a law.  And the production of stronger and stronger theories which logically and rationally explain why the lawlike behaviour occurs then adds further support to our confidence that our claims to know what is going on and why it is going on are well founded. 

So the concept of scientific laws turns out to be significant and valid because the cosmos really is a regular place, where what happens today is very much like what happened yesterday, and will very likely be repeated tomorrow. 

Our general confidence in Science as a way of knowing about the world is also validated as we now have good explanations for very many of the regular patterns and phenomena we have studied, from the sub-microscopic scale to the cosmic scale, and everywhere in between.  As discussed in earlier posts, generations of scientists have now collected data on which to base their informed guesses about what the underlying mechanisms of nature might be at the relevant scales.  Those speculations gave rise to new predictions, which after further rounds of testing have left a secure body of ideas that continue to pass scrutiny.  Their explanatory ideas- what we now call theories- have so far proved adequate to not only explain the initial data but also prove fruitful at suggesting new experiments which generate further outcomes that are compatible with what came beforehand. 

And you may well see where this is taking us.  The discipline of Science has been developing for such a significant period of time now that it has diversified and divided into several branches.  But this division is not at all a separation: the theories developed in Physics are now seen to be extremely fruitful in Chemistry, and Cell Biology and Genetics now also are seen to depend on both the findings of Physics and Chemistry.  

So the assumption of regularity in the cosmos has been tested and scrutinised in all these ways.  Repeated observations and the collection of very large data sets continue to confirm that many phenomena occur with predictable regularity in many different settings, even to the far reaches of the visible universe, and down to molecular and atomic levels.  Explanatory theories have been developed, some or perhaps many of which proved inadequate to cover the majority of cases, but those that remain are fruitful in giving a rational account of events and phenomena across the full spectrum of subdisciplines in Science, from nuclear physics to palaeontology.  The cosmos is indeed lawful and those laws are seen to interconnect with consistency - as seen through the lens of Science.

Diagram from Wikipedia accessed 8.8.22

This Venn diagram of the relationship between data, description and explanation offers an important perspective.  The central portion where the two sets overlap identifies the data which empirical science seeks and collects.  The scientific method requires the proposal of testable predictions, which must generate repeatable data.  If such data is obtained, then firstly a 'law' may be formulated.  Secondly, an explanation can be suggested from which further predictions can be proposed.  

But this does not exhaust the possibilities of what may be real; the entire set of phenomena that might take place in the cosmos.  On the right are some descriptions of events that do not lead to repeated confirmatory measurements.  But they still happen and any of us might observe them.  They are not in the realm of happenings suitable for scientific investigation.

And on the left is another region of the 'theories' set which is outside of the region where repeated testing of a scientifically valid prediction could be carried out. Ideas about how the world works could be proposed, that are compatible with what we know from empirical science, but are not, in fact, scientifically testable.  Now strictly speaking, that ought to mean that such ideas are not scientific in any meaningful sense of the term, but as mentioned elsewhere, this is also normal for Science.  Theories are accepted as being scientific even if they are underdetermined.  Such steps of... imagination might later be proved right when methods are developed to test them, but until then, they are simply speculation.  As scientists, or as observers of practitioners of Science, we can be comfortable with this.

What I hope to have shown therefore is that we can live with contentment in this age that is very much shaped by Science and Technology, operating according to rational principles that are very much informed by the Scientific worldview.  We know a great deal about the world because of the Sciences, and, importantly, we understand a great deal about how it works.  Some of those theoretical ideas will doubtless change again in the future, as new discoveries require some theories to be changed beyond recognition.  Science does not offer the hope of complete knowing and understanding.  

But we should not be fooled by those who assert that our ambition should be for knowledge and explanation that is only obtained by means of doing Science.  "There is nothing but what our senses and measuring instruments give us the means to discover."  That is a hypothesis, and it may be true.  It may or may not be possible to test (aspects of it) scientifically.  But there could also be more to the cosmos than we can perceive by sense perception, whether enhanced or not by our scientific technologies.  Some might hope in vain for miracles that are, in fact, never going to take place because the cosmos/God does not behave that way.  Or perhaps such events are happening right in front of us, and we aren't paying attention.  Whichever of these possibilities is in fact the case, I hope to have shown that Science does not provide us the complete means to know about everything that there might be in the cosmos or about ourselves, or what any putative divinity might be up to.  And if there are any such phenomena, it is simply wrong to suggest that so-called laws of science are necessarily violated or broken.

'Miracles' seem to occur with great regularity in Star Trek, despite Scotty's protestations to Captain Kirk that he can't change the laws of physics in time to save the USS Enterprise and its crew from yet another fatal disaster.  In 'The Naked Time,' Scotty says he needs at least 30 minutes to make the necessary alterations, but succeeds in doing so in much less time.  This is just as well, as no episode ever lasts 30 minutes!  Is there something in the nature of humans that suggest that even in a modern world of science and advanced technology, we seem to think that we might break out of the limits of science?
Postscript: This in today's news, giving a dramatic example of the process of updating 'laws of physics': Scientists say they may have challenged one of Newton's fundamental laws of physics - the conservation of momentum "Ultimately, the principles of how a space's curvature can be harnessed for locomotion may allow spacecraft to navigate the highly curved space around a black hole," say the researchers. Tuesday 9 August 2022 13:55, UK

While in this exciting story, a century-old puzzle about the inner planets has been significantly resolved with the aid of a new scientific model.  The prevailing theories of the dynamics of the solar system suggest that the inner planets should orbit faster than they do, and this seemed to put a question mark against the laws of physics that 'ought' to apply.  Caltech Professor Paul Bellan's team have succeeded in creating a more complex model that brings together a wider range of scientific theories that generates predictions combining what else we know with this problem to finally give an adequate explanation.  Not only that, but the new model also serves to explain some other apparently unrelated phenomena about the behaviour of the sun. Successful models and theories are fruitful. Reported on 21 7 22

https://www.independent.co.uk/space/scientists-inner-solar-system-laws-physics-b2128460.html

1. Stained Glass "Science" in the lobby of NSU 0528.JPG   Stained-glass windows in Novosibirsk State University CC-BY-SA-4.0

Image Creator: Rayne Zaayman-Gallant / EMBL  Copyright: CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 © European Molecular Biology

2. https://moon.nasa.gov/resources/331/the-apollo-15-hammer-feather-drop/  

3. Gravity cartoon sourced from https://heterodoxology.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/law-of-gravity-enforced.jpg

4. Brian Diskin's cartoon from http://www.hutchk12.org/natphys/NSTA_Science101theorylaw.pdf

4. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scientific_law_versus_Scientific_theories.png

5. #Scotty:"I Can't Change The Laws of Physics" Star Trek:  The Naked Time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xD9qEdHFIE