Understanding and control

I’ve just been rewatching Light Fantastic, a history of the human understanding of light by Simon Schaffer that was broadcast on BBC4 over Christmas. Mostly, it’s a very nice, clear documentary covering thoughts and ideas from the ancient greeks right up to the present day, showing both how our understanding has changed and how those changes have affected society.
However, there is a thread running through parts of the programmes that irks me – the perennial idea that science and religion are somehow enemies; that science shows that there is no god simply because it offers a model of the world. First off, I’d like to distinguish between the Church and belief in God – although I’m a believer in God, I have my doubts about the church!
The more serious issue is this odd one about science (and I speak as someone who took a science education through university and now works in science journals). In particular, Schaffer said that, thanks to science, people now have a much better understanding of the world than they used to – the study of light has led to an understanding of stars, the earth and life itself that is far better than our forefathers had. Unfortunately, I don’t think that this is true, for two reasons. First, “people” these days do not have a better understanding than they used to. Most people don’t understand stellar evolution, the physics of radio waves or the structure of living cells. They are, however, far more aware that there is vast realm of human knowledge about which they are ignorant. And this is not a spreading of knowledge but a concentration of power in the hands of a new group of people – the scientists and those who provide them with money.
Second, I believe that this does our forefathers a disservice. Most people had a very good understanding of the world – they knew about weather, about food, about life and death. They understood the things that were important; and the rest (about which we are now so proud) was simply not on their map, whether they were rich or poor, clever or stupid. They weren’t less intelligent or less aware – it was just that there were distinctions that hadn’t been made yet and so were simply not available to think about.
What I mean is that people in those days understood the world that they knew far better than people do now – largely because the world that needed understanding was far smaller. In those days, the knowledge was guarded by the church, which often reacted badly when challenged. Nowadays, the knowledge is hoarded by corporations and governments, which react just as badly when challenged as the church once did. Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 3:37pm on 17 January 2005
Category: Faith, Musing, Science