Monday, May 12, 2008
Overreaching Science Metaphors
National Geographic looks at new particle accelerator being built in Europe and the search for the Higgs boson. The title to the piece is QUITE provocative but it references only a few paragraphs buried deep in the article:
See, there is nothing whatsoever god-like about a frigging boson, and once we do find the thing, there will be another question - "Where did it come from?" and off we will go chasing that question. Science, by its nature, is limited to the material and eventually it will reach a limit, for it can never explain how something comes from nothing, because science cannot examine nothing.
So why the insistence on calling this something like "the God Particle." Note that key passage in there about "journalists, who know a good name for a particle when they hear one" - I think therein lies a big hint. Big science needs big money, big money only comes for governments, which means big science needs public exposure, so, if the journalists like it....
And the religious community kind of likes the "competition" because the more press the "debate" gets the more donations they receive as well.
So, what's the beef? The whole thing is a distraction, that's the problem. Instead of doing science, or doing religion, they are doing PR and distorting both science and religion in the process.
Now, the whole thing is probably unavoidable, but it is a crying shame. And of course, the whole thing is probably overlaid with all sorts of psychological complications. Every physicist like Lederman that I have ever met, if you could get that far enough into their psyche, had some story somewhere where some religious person had been truly ugly to them. Likewise, most religious people that I know that deride science as "The Great Satan," or some such, likely failed science, embarrassingly so, in school. Thus neither side is able to puncture the appearance of true believership they have built up around themselves, because it is an essential part of their self-image.
This is why I always come back to the fact that Jesus Christ transforms and transcends. Only the supernatural could come into this hopeless mess and bring about real change. All we as the church has to do, is figure out how to be genuine channels of the supernatural.
Tough challenge - are you up to it?
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By smashing pieces of matter together, creating energies and temperatures not seen since the universe's earliest moments, the LHC could reveal the particles and forces that wrote the rules for everything that followed. It could help answer one of the most basic questions for any sentient being in our universe: What is this place?I find this fascinating - I have never met Leon Lederman, but I have met a lot of physicists that get the same sort of "kick" out of treading on religious toes.
There's one puzzle piece in particular that physicists hope to pick out of the debris from the LHC's high-energy collisions. Some call it the God particle.
The first thing you learn when you ask scientists about the God particle is that it's bad form to call it that. The particle was named a few years back by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman, who has a knack for turning a phrase. Naturally the moniker took root among journalists, who know a good name for a particle when they hear one (it beats the heck out of the muon or the Z-boson).
See, there is nothing whatsoever god-like about a frigging boson, and once we do find the thing, there will be another question - "Where did it come from?" and off we will go chasing that question. Science, by its nature, is limited to the material and eventually it will reach a limit, for it can never explain how something comes from nothing, because science cannot examine nothing.
So why the insistence on calling this something like "the God Particle." Note that key passage in there about "journalists, who know a good name for a particle when they hear one" - I think therein lies a big hint. Big science needs big money, big money only comes for governments, which means big science needs public exposure, so, if the journalists like it....
And the religious community kind of likes the "competition" because the more press the "debate" gets the more donations they receive as well.
So, what's the beef? The whole thing is a distraction, that's the problem. Instead of doing science, or doing religion, they are doing PR and distorting both science and religion in the process.
Now, the whole thing is probably unavoidable, but it is a crying shame. And of course, the whole thing is probably overlaid with all sorts of psychological complications. Every physicist like Lederman that I have ever met, if you could get that far enough into their psyche, had some story somewhere where some religious person had been truly ugly to them. Likewise, most religious people that I know that deride science as "The Great Satan," or some such, likely failed science, embarrassingly so, in school. Thus neither side is able to puncture the appearance of true believership they have built up around themselves, because it is an essential part of their self-image.
This is why I always come back to the fact that Jesus Christ transforms and transcends. Only the supernatural could come into this hopeless mess and bring about real change. All we as the church has to do, is figure out how to be genuine channels of the supernatural.
Tough challenge - are you up to it?
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