RELIGIOUS fundamentalists frequently inspire mockery or fear in the secular-minded for their reliance on faith and rejection of reason. In response, the fundamentalists argue that secularism is underpinned by a faith or world view far more groundless or arbitrary than their own. That faith may be said to be liberalism, democracy or progress, but, most commonly and most correctly, it is identified as science.
Science is indeed the faith, system, theory, methodology 鈥� choose your own term 鈥� that sustains liberal democratic secularism. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is the effectiveness of science, specifically as expressed through technology. Nobody prayed their way to the Pentium 4 chip or the Boeing 747. The second is the uniquely cumulative nature of scientific knowledge. Ethically we have not moved beyond Jesus Christ, artistically we have not moved beyond Titian, and politically we have not moved beyond Jefferson. Scientifically, however, we are moving forward all the time. Newton may be the greatest of all scientists but Einstein is more important now for the simple and unarguable reason that he knew more.
So the secularist may reply to the fundamentalist: 鈥淚 do indeed have a faith but, unlike yours, it works and gets better all the time.鈥� The fundamentalist may retort: 鈥淲e did pray our way to Pentium 4s; you were just deluded in thinking you could make them yourself.鈥� You may find his argument implausible, but it is at least complete. If God really does work in mysterious ways, then guiding us to the fabrication of silicon chips may well be one of them. He doesn鈥檛 necessarily have to restrict Himself to parting the Red Sea.
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At this point the secularist/scientist would be well advised to shut up, because almost anything he says to strengthen his position will topple him over into a fundamentalism of his own. For there is a scientific fundamentalism, too, and it is, in its way, just as dangerous as the religious version.
The secularist is on solid ground only when he says that science works 鈥� at least in achieving the aims to which it reasonably limits itself 鈥� and that it accumulates. The fatal extrapolation to make from this position is that it must, therefore, potentially be omnicompetent and omniscient. Scientific fundamentalism is the belief that the world is accessible to and ultimately controllable by human reason.
鈥淏elief in the possibility of human omniscience is not provable or refutable鈥�
This is a profoundly unscientific idea. It is neither provable nor refutable. Obviously it is a leap of faith to insist that human reason is capable of fully understanding the world. We seem to have some access to its workings, but it would be wildly premature to believe that the human brain is capable of comprehending all reality. The idea that it is up to such a task is an arguable hypothesis based on a very optimistic view of human rationality, but that is all.
Yet the belief in the possibility of human omniscience has been as strong in recent years as it was in the 1930s, when scientistic fantasists dreamed of a world run by a collection of hard-headed scientist-oligarchs. This is, in large part, a result of the successes of biology. Genetics offers the possibility of direct effects on our species in terms of disease, behaviour, life choices and so on. It offers, in short, precisely what previous disciplines like psychology and sociology have failed to deliver: an effective scientific analysis and intervention in the human world. Thus, via biology, the dream of omniscience has become the fantasy of omnicompetence. We could control the world and make people better, perhaps even perfect.
Philosophy and magic
Now obviously I know 鈥� and I need to make this very clear 鈥� that most scientists do not hold this view. Indeed, the majority would see that it is a view that gets in the way of good science and offends against one of the most obvious characteristics of all science, its provisionality. We know 鈥� or should know 鈥� that all contemporary science will be modified or overthrown by the science of the future. This is not to take the postmodern view that science is just one interpretation of the world among many others. Rather, it is simply to say that the scientific truth of one era may later come to be seen as no more than a rough approximation.
So there is a clear logical and equally clear practical and historical objection to what I have called scientific fundamentalism. Neither objection demeans science in any way, yet both tend to inspire apoplexy in the hard scientistic thinkers who have dominated recent discourse. Scientific fundamentalism is alive and well.
That scientific fundamentalism is dangerous should be evident to any serious thinker looking back on the 20th century. Fascism was an anti-Enlightenment creed, but its most lethal expression in Nazism was founded on science. Hitler鈥檚 Mein Kampf leaned on the biology of Ernst Haeckel, which, at the time, was perfectly respectable. Communism, an ideology that sprang directly from the scientific Enlightenment, was based on Marx鈥檚 conviction that a science of history had been discovered. The slaughter of the Jews, Stalin鈥檚 massacres and Mao鈥檚 deliberate starving of millions were all executed by people persuaded they were justified by scientific insights.
Of course, it might be said this was bad science. But that is no more of an excuse than saying the Spanish Inquisition was bad religion. In that case, people twisted benignly intended human value systems to evil ends. There is nothing whatsoever in science 鈥� and this should be shouted daily from the rooftops of every scientific institution 鈥� that makes it immune from such abuses.
Some scientists will dispute this, claiming that the values of open, objective enquiry, mutual criticism and protection of learning in the accumulated wisdom of science amount to an ethical system which, if applied to the world, would make it a better place, potentially protected from future horrors. This is not wrong, it is just fantastically utopian. Such values are not exclusive to science; they preceded it. Science sprang from philosophy, theology and even magic. The reason it became modern science at all was because of the direction these disciplines took in the course of the Renaissance. That these values worked so triumphantly in science is unarguable; that they have failed to work anywhere else is equally unarguable. The brief period of calm we currently enjoy in the west floats on the usual sea of war and genocide.
The human world is very different from the one seen through the telescope or in the test tube. To say it would be nice if it wasn鈥檛 is to say nothing. To say it should be and we can make it so is downright sinister 鈥� fundamentalist, in fact. But that is precisely what many scientistic thinkers, dazzled by the success of science, have been saying. The human world is perverse, complex, violent and utterly indecipherable. There is no science of history and no technology that will save us from the future. Scientific fundamentalism deludes us with dreams of competence; it expects too much of this world, just as religious fundamentalism expects too much of the next.
For the moment, the tide of hard scientism is ebbing, perhaps because people have grown bored with the frantic marketing of implausible claims and moved on. It will return, though. Human delusions are nothing if not robust.
