Thursday, February 23, 2006
The "Romance" Of Science
So, Tuesday night I am watching NOVA. I don't do that so much anymore because it has become more policy and philosophy than it actual science, but this one was on a really cool subject - neutrinos.
The first 85% of the show was great - it was a good, if occassionally unusually silly (using dancing actors to depict the interaction of sub-nuclear particles), layman's presentation of the source of the the idea of neutrinos, the experiemental search to find them, the discovery of their "oscillation" and it's implication that they have mass, and the fact that a massive neutrino turns the so-called "standard model" on its head.
But the last 15% of the show was nothing short of nauseating. They started looking at the implications of this discovery. The biggest is in astrophysics. A massive neutrino implies sufficient mass in the universe that it will not expand infinitely, but will reach some point of maximal expansion where gravity will overcome the forces of "the big bang" and the universe will start to collapse on itself. Thus there is not only a beginning of time, but an end. But, did they talk about that? - Oh no!
No - they had to go on about how the models now replacing the Standard Model indicate that all matter is the result of neutrino interaction. Not worrying about where the neutrinos come from, they are willing to proclaim humanity itself "The grandchildren of neutrinos." What a bunch of romantic nonsense.
It dawned on me that the faithless scientist is in love with his work a little too much. They certainly speak of it in romantic, occassionaly even erotic, terms. Why is that?
Well, for one thing, it's immensely dull. One of the scientists featured in the show had operated the same neutrino detector for 25 years! Folks that's a dull, mechanistic job done in a cave! The other guy sat at his desk and shoved equations around! Think about that dinner conversation, "Honey, today I figured out that chewing this meat emits 10 to the 12th power electron neutrinos!" -- "That's nice dear, the plumbing's broke."
They have to fantasize romantically about what they do just to keep themselves human. Honestly, I've done these things on a small scale at different times in my life and you'll go nuts if you don't project some romantic notions of some sort into it.
Secondly, you have to sell what you are doing to the public. The show had to include that romantic visualization stuff with the dancers, otherwise, people would have tuned out in numbers far more massive than usually ignores NOVA. These guys are dependent on the public for funding, so they have to romance the public to make money.
Finally, and most importantly though, they romance their work because they have no Lord to love. It dawned on me while watching that show that the "battle between science and faith" is a vicous circle. Scientists love their work becaue they have no one else to love. We, the faithful, condemn them for that, pushing them away instead of embracing them and matters turn from love to worship. And so it goes, he said borrowing from Kurt Vonnegut.
Maybe the way for Christianity to overcome the godless tyranny of science is not through apologetics, but through romance? Clearly the scientist has the same basic need to that completely human expression that the rest of us do. I don't know if we ever can argue them into the Kingdom, but I am confident we can love them there.
Related Tags: science, faith, Christianity, NOVA, neutrinos, romance, apologetics, love
The first 85% of the show was great - it was a good, if occassionally unusually silly (using dancing actors to depict the interaction of sub-nuclear particles), layman's presentation of the source of the the idea of neutrinos, the experiemental search to find them, the discovery of their "oscillation" and it's implication that they have mass, and the fact that a massive neutrino turns the so-called "standard model" on its head.
But the last 15% of the show was nothing short of nauseating. They started looking at the implications of this discovery. The biggest is in astrophysics. A massive neutrino implies sufficient mass in the universe that it will not expand infinitely, but will reach some point of maximal expansion where gravity will overcome the forces of "the big bang" and the universe will start to collapse on itself. Thus there is not only a beginning of time, but an end. But, did they talk about that? - Oh no!
No - they had to go on about how the models now replacing the Standard Model indicate that all matter is the result of neutrino interaction. Not worrying about where the neutrinos come from, they are willing to proclaim humanity itself "The grandchildren of neutrinos." What a bunch of romantic nonsense.
It dawned on me that the faithless scientist is in love with his work a little too much. They certainly speak of it in romantic, occassionaly even erotic, terms. Why is that?
Well, for one thing, it's immensely dull. One of the scientists featured in the show had operated the same neutrino detector for 25 years! Folks that's a dull, mechanistic job done in a cave! The other guy sat at his desk and shoved equations around! Think about that dinner conversation, "Honey, today I figured out that chewing this meat emits 10 to the 12th power electron neutrinos!" -- "That's nice dear, the plumbing's broke."
They have to fantasize romantically about what they do just to keep themselves human. Honestly, I've done these things on a small scale at different times in my life and you'll go nuts if you don't project some romantic notions of some sort into it.
Secondly, you have to sell what you are doing to the public. The show had to include that romantic visualization stuff with the dancers, otherwise, people would have tuned out in numbers far more massive than usually ignores NOVA. These guys are dependent on the public for funding, so they have to romance the public to make money.
Finally, and most importantly though, they romance their work because they have no Lord to love. It dawned on me while watching that show that the "battle between science and faith" is a vicous circle. Scientists love their work becaue they have no one else to love. We, the faithful, condemn them for that, pushing them away instead of embracing them and matters turn from love to worship. And so it goes, he said borrowing from Kurt Vonnegut.
Maybe the way for Christianity to overcome the godless tyranny of science is not through apologetics, but through romance? Clearly the scientist has the same basic need to that completely human expression that the rest of us do. I don't know if we ever can argue them into the Kingdom, but I am confident we can love them there.
Related Tags: science, faith, Christianity, NOVA, neutrinos, romance, apologetics, love
