Science Again

...But when-as has just happened-"a physicist in charge of the sound laboratory of the United States Bureau of Standards, in an address before the Science Forum of the Electrical Society," steps quite outside his proper place as a research worker and utters unprovable assertions which are and only can be his purely personal opinions, in which he denies the presence or the influence of anything supernatural in human life, then we find his wild and whirling language printed on the first page of the New York Times (January 9, 1930...

...It is even given a two-column heading, so that no one shall miss it...

...Such a mood, of course, is fundamentally old-fashioned...

...Nobody in his proper senses would accuse the editors of the New York Times of being biased against religion...

...but as newspapers are usually half a generation behind the development of important thought, they go on complacently ministering to a mood which among really intelligent people is decidedly out of fashion...

...Such an explosion, apparently, if it happens in a laboratory is news...

...When many of the greatest physicists in the world have reached the point of openly declaring that scientific researches have brought science to the point where, in order to be true to its own mission of searching after truth it can only say that there is Something behind all phenomena, of which phenomena are only signs or symbols, it makes the instructed modern person smile to see such old-fashioned explosions of the materialistic temper being regarded as important news...

...If some professional theologian in some minor seminary or sectarian college declares in a sermon or lecture that spiritual, and therefore purely supernatural forces, are at the ultimate roots of all physical phenomena, that does not seem to be news-unless, of course, he happens to say something of the sort during a sensational controversy like the Dayton evolution trial...

...but such an attitude is far from uncommon among the lesser men...

...SCIENCE AGAIN WHAT has been erroneously called the conflict between science and religion is unnecessarily kept alive, as many other human quarrels unfortunately are, not by any necessary antagonism in principle between the things themselves, but rather because of the lack of loyalty to their own first principles on the part of the followers either of religion or of science...

...On the other hand, it is deplorably true that too often we find among persons who consider themselves typical scientists, many mischievous persons whose dogmatic expressions of their materialism, which are unsupported on scientific grounds, and which are purely their personal prejudices, lead them to assume positions and to utter pontifical statements which are just as provocative of resentment as anything ever said by the most violent or ignorant of religious fundamentalists...

...Happily it is quite true that you rarely find the real leaders of science behaving in this fashion...

...Thus, when we find religious believers so blindly bigoted that they look upon even the most strictly honest investigations of the phenomena of life as necessarily dangerous to religious faith, and as a consequence condemn scientists in a lump as being enemies of religion, it is scarcely to be wondered at that many scientists themselves sometimes fail to distinguish between such blind zealots and the really representative class of religious people who not only do not share the stupid distrust exhibited by narrow-minded believers, but who sincerely respect science and hold its authentic votaries in high honor...

...which mood causes them to regard as important anything which throws doubt or which attacks faith in the supernatural...

...yet their action seems to us to prove that there is a prevalent mood in public opinion, which secular editors cater to because their news sense is aware of its presence, and which is shared by a great proportion of the public...

...It would not particularly matter, perhaps, were it not for a further unfortunate fact, namely, that the press is far too prone to give the personal theorizing and the prejudiced dogmatizing of these lesser lights of science an importance quite out of proportion to their scientific value...