THE END of SCIENCE? NOT LIKELY Tom Flynn

people. You just have to love them. we recognize a power that is helping “causes.” Ultimately, his conclusion You have to give love without any us to do it.” Lacking that belief in a in this lecture is that we need to live conditions at all. .” “power,” Hare nevertheless regards in the present. Hare is not a dogmatic socialist, these people trying to clear up soci- There is for Hare a deep value but a socialist in the sense of one who ety’s worst problems as “heroes for in the theatrical experience, since needs a blueprint for society and for our age.” it is “one of the few places where social improvement and social under- In his lecture “When Shall We people of dissimilar views and back- standing. His attitude to religion is Live?” given before an audience part- grounds may come together and, in best seen in his play Racing Demons ly composed of a range of clerics, their shared response to what they and his Eric Symes Abbott Memorial he expresses much doubt about the see, find what they do and do not lecture at Westminster Abbey (1996). Christian faith. He doubts a god, who hold in common. I would define a Racing Demons is one of a trilogy of requires suffering and prayer as part good play as one which enables these plays dealing with British society, one of the human lot, but he believes in acts of discovery. A good play, in the on the legal system, one on the polit- the sense of a nonmaterialist, “spir- truest sense, ventilates democracy.” ical system, and one on the Anglican itual” aspect of life. He points to He had earlier written of the aims church. In interviews with clergy- the behavior of Pius XII in not con- of a dramatist, who can “put peoples men which he did to gain background demning the Nazis as a great failure sufferings in a historical context” and information he expressed admiration of twentieth-century Christianity. He give a sense of the forces of history for the poorly paid inner-city clergy- draws a conclusion from that pope’s that “will be those strange uneasy men who want to bandage the wounds behavior, suggesting, “We can only factors that make a place here and of society. He asked one such clergy- understand it when we realize evil is nowhere else, make a time now and man if he and his colleagues are any always done by people who believe no other time.” In this he succeeds different from humanists or social there is some cause more important astutely and humanistically in doing workers and received the reply: “No. than human decency.” This could in his large body of plays. fi But we have more energy. Because apply to political as well as religious What Remains to Be Discovered as THE END OF SCIENCE? NOT LIKELY “an event that cannot be ignored.”) Maddox started sketching his book in 1995, so he appears not to have Tom Flynn conceived it primarily as a reply to Horgan. That is just as well; Horgan’s What Remains to be Discovered: Mapping the Secrets of the Universe, silly thesis never merited a rebuttal as the Origins of Life, and the Future of the Human Race, by John masterful as this. Maddox (New York: Martin Kessler Books/The Free Press, 1998, ISBN Maddox’s last book came out in 0-684--82292-X) xiv + 434 pp., cloth $26.00. 1974. He isn’t as prolific as Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, or Stephen Jay Gould. Nonetheless, s this tumultuous century clos- former editor of the respected British Maddox deserves to be ranked among es, it’s popular to announce the journal Nature; like history, science those great science popularizers. What A end of things. In 1989 Francis will continue. In a magisterial but Remains to Be Discovered is nothing Fukuyama proclaimed the end of his- accessible book, Maddox surveys the less than breathtaking in scope. In tory.1 History continued undeterred. state of every major branch of science turn, Maddox scrutinizes astronomy, In 1996, John Horgan, formerly of at the end of the twentieth century and cosmology, molecular biology, cogni- Scientific American, declared “the end reports that fundamental mysteries tive research, and computer science— of science.” Horgan argued that sci- still abound. Along the way, without and writes authoritatively about all of ence has solved all the big problems. ever stopping to say so, he demolishes them. For him, the scientific enter- Now it faces a declining future of Horgan’s thesis and reveals Horgan prise is like unscrewing one of those filling in details and adjusting to its for the rash grandstander many sci- Russian dolls with a series of smaller diminishing rate of return. entists already thought him to be. In dolls inside; each major discovery Nonsense, says Sir John Maddox, Maddox’s words, “Science, far from raises a new universe of questions being at an end, has a long agenda that could not previously have been Tom Flynn is Senior Editor of FREE ahead of it.” (In an ironic touch, asked, or even imagined. If a similar INQUIRY and Special Projects Director Horgan appears on the dust jacket book had been written at the end of the of the Center for Inquiry International. of the hardbound edition, blurbing last century, he points out, the author 65 fi fall 1999 might have considered many funda- must gird for action on the largest scale achievement this book represents. If mental questions in chemistry, atomic to counter global warming, to respond you have time to read just one book on theory, and cosmology settled. No one to the threat of meteoric impacts, the prospects of science at century’s could have predicted the new mys- and perhaps to manipulate the human end, put Horgan’s The End of Science teries Einstein and later the quantum genome against inherent instabilities back on the shelf and read What theorists would reveal. For the same that may lurk in its makeup. (In light Remains to Be Discovered. fi reason, Maddox acknowledges that of the last point, it is odd that he favors theism & Theism is a debate on his census of mysteries cannot pretend legislation to bar research into human the existence of God between to predict what scientists will wrestle cloning.) Maddox is strongly skeptical A an atheist (J. J. C. Smart) and with in the century to come. No doubt of black holes, to which he ascribes a many of them “will be occupied with “dubious status” while complaining Notes questions we do not yet have the wit that their very concept poses “serious 1. His 1989 article of that title in The to ask.” difficulties of a philosophical charac- National Interest became his book The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Maddox is an independent thinker, ter.” In his partisanship on this issue, The Free Press, 1992). and from time to time he sets aside Maddox comes as close as he ever 2. The End of Science: Facing the the enumeration of mysteries to put does to misreporting a current scien- Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Helix, 1996). forward his own agenda. He believes tific consensus. future scientists and technologists But that detracts little from the for theism. ATHEIST VS. THEIST Smart begins the debate, which is the sixth in a series titled “Great Debates in Philosophy.” He makes an important Norm R. Allen, Jr. distinction between the “new teleology” and the “old teleology.” The latter posits Atheism & Theism, by J.J.C. Smart and J.J. Haldane (Oxford, U.K.: a great designer of the universe, but the Blackwell Publishers, Inc., ISBN 0-385--47818-6) 234 pp., paper former is based upon the natural laws of $25.95. the universe according to modern phys- ics and cosmology. Moreover, Smart discusses heuristic “as if” talk among scientists, which many theists believe implies the existence of God. For exam- ple, a biologist might ask, “What is the a theist (J. J. Haldane). Smart is realists” who “hold, in opposition to purpose of T-cells?” without implying Emeritus Professor at the Australian current trends, that there is a world that a T-cell may be compared to a National University. Haldane is independent of human thought and human-made object. He also notes that, Professor of Philosophy at the Uni- language which may yet be known while many contemporary theoretical versity of St. Andrews and Director of through observation, hypothesis, and physicists have awe-inspired theistic the Centre for Philosophy and Public reflection” (p. 5). Though Haldane emotions, theism must be intellectually Affairs there. On page three of the rejects philosophical naturalism, he justifiable. Introduction they write: “Our debate insists that theistic claims are amena- Smart argues that pantheists and is defined by the core of monotheism ble to rational assessment, and that “near pantheists” have much in com- supplemented to some extent by the God can be known through the use of mon with atheists. He believes that the historical and theological claims of reason. Indeed, he contends that the only significant difference between Christianity.” tradition of Western theism requires atheists and pantheists is that panthe- Haldane is a Roman Catholic, one to believe that God’s existence ists have a strong emotion toward the believes in angels, and uses the can be known, yet “he makes no universe, whereas atheists supposedly Aristotelian-cum Thomistic tradition, claim to have provided, or to be able do not. In Smart’s view, ontologically, while avoiding fideism (the idea that to provide, on his own account, an atheists and pantheists are the same.

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