In Defense of Science
Fisher, D. W.
IN DEFENSE OF SCIENCE By D. W. FISHER A REMARKABLE feature of so scientific an age as the one in which we live, is the fact that so many people fall down when they start to say what the true...
...While faith does not play the part in science it is sometimes said to play, it does play some other part...
...A scientist who really is on the firing line of discovery, often is convinced that there is a law in the facts with which he is dealing, even though at the moment the facts do not point to any law, or else point dead against it...
...But this is a meagre admission, compared to what a fideistic writer like Dr...
...In a recent article Dr...
...Fosdick almost hits the mark in another particular...
...On the contrary, it often runs beyond the evidence, and often is held in spite of the evidence...
...A real scientist certainly never goes so far as to seize on some special article of scientific doctrine by faith, and then tell other people or even himself that it is a law of nature...
...As a young naturalist, Darwin extracted the idea of the mutation of species out of the intellectual atmosphere of his day—the idea was familiar to many people, and had been familiar to his grandfather...
...It is a mistake to say, as is said sometimes, that this faith merely rests on observed facts...
...The idea looks plausible...
...As he put it, he "had at last got a theory by which to work...
...And, in fact, there is no great mystery about the actual steps of his procedure...
...The minute he does that, he is doing the one thing a real scientist never does...
...As it happens, we know something about the way in which Newton did reach the view that his idea was a law of nature...
...And this transition would reveal nothing to support the notion that faith is the organ of the mind by which a scientist deals with a thing like gravitation...
...Just as Newton arrived at one gravitational formula by an act of mathematical analysis, so, in recent years, Einstein has arrived at a slightly different formula by a slightly different act of analysis...
...Fosdick suggests...
...It conceivably may be that he was in a measure mistaken...
...Some years afterward, a new measurement of the size of the earth, made by a French astronomer named Picard, came into his hands...
...And there is equally little basis for the suggestion that Einstein assented to his idea of gravitation through faith...
...The only way he can ever grasp a thing is by some act of intellectual apprehension...
...And, in the interest of a respectable idea of science, it is of real importance to determine what this part is...
...He first conceived the notion in the year 1665—the year in which he was forced, by the Great Plague, to leave Cambridge...
...A man may assent to an idea by faith, but he cannot grasp it in that manner...
...A scientist does start from a faith or conviction, as Professor A. N. Whitehead recently pointed out in his book, Science and the Modern World...
...It is one thing to say that by faith Newton held that there was some law of nature...
...Now on the face of it, it must be plain that the great physicist never grasped all this by faith, but that he grasped it by some other operation of the mind...
...an act which no one hitherto had had the genius to carry out...
...While Newton did not assent to the idea of gravitation by faith, and much less grasp it by faith, he did, in fact, assent to something else by faith...
...And in the case of Newton, it is especially obvious that an act of intellectual apprehension was going on...
...Newton, in fact, laid hold of the theory of universal gravitation, not by an act of faith, but by a very complicated act of mathematical inference...
...He does not believe precisely that he is justified in saying his idea is true...
...some law of nature...
...It is necessary to concede that Dr...
...As one can see easily in the case of Newton, a scientist may have more than a mere faith that some idea is a law of nature-— he may have a fairly tenacious faith that his own idea will turn out in the end to be a law of nature...
...It may be that in the end he came to believe his theory...
...This may happen to anyone, but it very frequently happens to Christian apologists...
...And it is hardly fair to any scientist to say that he proceeds by a method of faith...
...but he believes he is justified in trying to find out whether or not his idea is true...
...But I doubt that he ever goes further by means of faith...
...They brought back evidence which strongly indicated the conclusion that Einstein's formula was a better statement of gravitation than Newton's...
...Then, during his five-year voyage on the Beagle, he noticed a number of facts which appeared to confirm the idea of mutation in a striking manner...
...It may be that in the end he came to think, not merely that his theory might be a law of nature, but that it was a law of nature...
...Consider for a moment what he actually grasped...
...As Darwin expressed it himself, the thing he seized on was the idea of the origin of species by means of natural selection...
...it looks probable...
...Fosdick's views does not hit the mark exactly, he hits something in the neighborhood of the mark...
...It is still worse to say that it was by faith that Darwin assented to this idea...
...The work of Darwin brings out the same fact about faith and science...
...What he did do was to wait some twenty years after the idea had first occurred to him before he gave it to the public...
...And it is obvious that the organ of the mind they employed in this investigation was sense observation, and not faith...
...Now it must be plain to anyone with a slight grasp of psychology that Darwin seized on this notion, not by an act of faith, but by a rather complicated act of intellectual apprehension...
...Indeed, if we take a strict view of human psychology, we are justified in saying that no man ever grasped anything at all by faith...
...And I am led to suggest here some defense, not of reason in religion, but of reason in science...
...In fact, the peculiar merit of Newton lay, not in grasping the mere idea of gravitation, but in grasping the idea that the same force of gravitation which pulls an apple toward the earth, pulls the moon toward the earth and keeps her to her orbit, and also pulls the planets toward the sun and keeps them to their several orbits...
...But he did not jump to the conclusion that his idea was correct...
...Harry Emerson Fosdick, for example, suggests, not that there is reason in religion, but that there is practically nothing but faith in science...
...It is especially absurd to say January 20, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 291 that Newton grasped the several hundred pages of definitions, axioms, propositions, and corollaries in the Principia by faith...
...We might pursue gravitation further, and pass from the idea of Newton to the idea of Einstein...
...He himself hardly can be said to have done much to test it, but other people have undertaken to test the new notion...
...There is no basis at all for the suggestion that Einstein grasped his gravitational formula by faith...
...He did not proceed like a man moved by faith, any more than Newton did in similar circumstances...
...Now ail such talk as this is a serious indictment to bring against science and great men of science...
...Using this, Newton saw that his formula brought out results which agree with the known facts about the behavior of the earth and the moon...
...Anyone who says that Darwin seized on the idea of evolution by faith, says something which is partly meaningless, and partly misleading...
...And finally, as he explains, while reading Malthus's essay on Population one day, he seized on the idea that the mutation of species was caused by natural selection, or what was afterward termed the survival of the fittest...
...A man who weighs his words will hesitate to maintain that Sir Isaac Newton grasped the idea of gravitation by faith...
...But it is harHIy fair to Darwin to suggest that he seized on his theory by faith...
...It is a different thing, and a much more debatable thing, to say that by faith Newton held that his own particular idea of gravitation was a law of nature...
...Several years ago, some of them journeyed to Africa and South America, and there turned their telescopes toward the stars, in order to find out, under conditions favorable to observation, precisely what happened to light when it passed close to the sun...
...But this only means that he has the sort of faith in it that leads him to spend years checking the idea against the evidence...
...During this time, as well as afterward, he checked his theory in a very painstaking manner against the evidence he was able to collect from the world of plants and animals...
...But, while a man of Dr...
...And, of course, he did nothing of the sort...
...He starts from a faith that there is some order of nature...
...A great creative scientist often has faith in his idea in this sense of the term...
...He says, for instance, that "by faith Newton grasped the idea of gravitation," and "by faith Darwin seized on" the idea of evolution...
...on the contrary, it is plain that he grasped it by an exceedingly abstruse branch of reasoning, which mathematicians call tensor * calculus...
...IN DEFENSE OF SCIENCE By D. W. FISHER A REMARKABLE feature of so scientific an age as the one in which we live, is the fact that so many people fall down when they start to say what the true essence of scientific method is...
...He may hold by faith that there is some law of nature...
...It took Newton about twenty years to deduce the consequences from his idea of universal gravitation, and to test them with reference to the facts then known about the members of the solar system...
...In fact, he put the idea aside for a time—he found that it led to inferences about the moon which did not agree with the observed motion of the satellite...
...But it is nonsense to suggest that it was by faith that Darwin got hold of this idea about the change of species...
...He may even hold in this manner that the idea which has just entered his head may turn out to be a law of nature...
...A faith that there is an order of nature, and that the human mind is able to grasp it, is the foundation of all progress in natural knowledge...
Vol. 3 • January 1926 • No. 11
