The Genius and Faith of Faraday and Maxwell

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-genius-and-faith-of-faraday-and-maxwell

by drjohnson • 12 years ago

91 78 12 years ago

thenewatlantis.com

dcre2• 12 years ago

Great article. Most scientists today probably don't think much about the religious roots of their pursuit of truth.

judah3• 12 years ago

I'm a religious guy who loves science and technology, and I greatly appreciated this article.

Men of faith need not be anti-science, indeed, many great men of science were men of faith. And not by an incidental flaw in their minds, as the article puts it, but as a driver and strengthener of their science.

In the last 100 years especially, religious people have grown anti-science, largely because we see science growing increasingly atheistic. Others feel threatened by evolution, as if natural selection undermines the existence of God.

I am working in my own religious circles to counteract that and to bring back a love of science and a love of knowledge back to my own Christian circles.

In the meantime, articles like this one are helpful to dispel the modern notion that one cannot be religious and still love knowledge and science.

jacquesm5• 12 years ago

You will have to take into account the times when these men lived and what was known back then vs what is known today and to acknowledge that you live today.

I'm happy that you're doing what you're doing but ultimately religion is very un-scientific, which is one of the root causes why religious people tend to view science as atheistic. Those are flip sides of the same coin.

It's very well possible to do good science whilst being religious. At the same time it is very well possible to do good science whilst being an atheist. Science as an institution does not care where the incremental steps towards the truth comes from, as long as those steps are reproducible.

Assigning correlation between religion and the ability to do science seems a bit strange, as if if Maxwell would have been an atheist he would not have been able to make the discoveries that he did. I don't buy that, but maybe someone could do a double-blind test by staffing labs in the same disciplines with devout Christians (Catholics, Protestants, Church-of-England or whatever denominations you can find enough scientists from) and similar labs with just atheists. Then maybe we could draw the kind of conclusion the article wishes for us to make.

Until then I'm fine with letting people believe whatever they want and taking the fruits of their progress whatever their belief was when they did their work.

judah3• 12 years ago

Religion speaks of something beyond measure, and this is a reason some perceive religion as unscientific.

Atheism too speaks of something that can't be measured: the certain non-existence of the thing every human culture has sensed, longed for, believed in some form or another since the beginning of humanity.

Science itself is full of things that can't be measured. The Fermi Paradox and the Great Filter are examples of this: we theorize about why earth -- despite 100 billion-billion other planets like it -- appears to contain the only life in the universe. The theories include those of super-intelligent life beyond our measure, which really isn't that far intellectually from the idea of God.

The article does not claim Christians are better scientists than atheists. Rather, it corrects the idea that these thinkers' religion was an incidental primitive flaw in an otherwise great mind, when in fact, these men's insights into and pioneering in their scientific fields were driven by philosophical commitments to the divine origin of the universe.

etse2• 12 years ago

"Science as an institution does not care where the incremental steps towards the truth comes from, as long as those steps are reproducible."

I am very skeptical of that. The scientific community is susceptible to politics and social competition, at least as any other community. Reproducing results (real science) is hard work and the reality of it is that scientists are entitled to unsupported beliefs, but may find it difficult/tempting to misuse their achievements or stature to champion those beliefs.

"ultimately religion is very un-scientific"

This is a provocative statement that would be interesting to hear more on.

Retra2• 12 years ago

One cannot be the best possible scientist while maintaining a state of confusion as to what makes statements about reality true or not. Nor can you make the best possible decisions when you deny the means by which science evaluates which decisions are correct.

Kalium7• 12 years ago

In the last 100 years especially, religious people have grown anti-science, largely because we see science growing increasingly atheistic.

If I may have a moment? I want to discuss this comment. For a very long time, many people rooted their faith in mystery. Nobody knows how the weather works, therefore God does it. That sort of thinking was very commonplace.

Science has always been "atheistic" in that God has never been a coherent part of any scientific system. It's difficult to account for an uncontrollable and omnipotent force, after all. Nothing there has changed in centuries. What has changed in that science has advanced enough to pull away the mysteries that used to be attributed to God.

Ever hear the phrase "God of the gaps"? For a lot of people, that was - and is - how they understand God. Anything they didn't understand, that was God. Science was just something those rich eggheads did.

Over time, it became possible to see the material world in which we live as comprised of matter and energy that are governed by natural laws. It was no longer necessary to see God in everything you didn't understand. The human body wasn't divinely created in its current form, we're the product of millennia of evolution.

To a great many people, whose primary understanding of divinity is that of a God of the gaps, knowledge and faith are fundamentally incompatible. If they acquired knowledge, the unknowns on which their faith rests will vanish and their faith be shaken.

I suppose this is a very long-winded way of saying that I don't perceive science as becoming more atheistic over time. I perceive religion as being in a slow, painful retreat from territory it never should have occupied.

arethuza• 12 years ago

“Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end to divine things.” - Hippocrates.

cscurmudgeon8• 12 years ago

"God of the gaps" is one big straw man argument. Lots of religious philosophies don't even have a place for God directly acting in the world.

Evolution is again a straw man argument. Lots of religions accept it.

Ever hear of Gödel's rigorous ontological argument?

http://mally.stanford.edu/Papers/ontological-computational.p...

Science is the not end of it all. Science rests on logic and rational thought.

What would be the scientific experiment for validating the scientific method?

My point is that arguing against simple-minded religious folks is easy.

But nobody has come up with any serious objections to arguments like those coming from Kurt Gödel and the like.

I am not holding my breath! :)

A_COMPUTER• 12 years ago

In my opinion the difference between then and now is that now you have a contingent of scientists that actively promote the position that you cannot simultaneously be both religious and a scientist. I understand the positive goals they are trying to achieve, but I don't think they are considering the ways it can be counterproductive to their cause. I don't think you can do anything about fundamentalist Christians, but I wonder how many people were pushed into fundamentalism because something less extreme was still treated with utter contempt.

dcre2• 12 years ago

I appreciate the clarity with which you've articulated your understanding of religion, but I disagree with almost everything you've said. Since the disagreement is not really about facts, but rather attitude or orientation, it might be pretty hard for me get you to see it from my perspective, but I'll try.

Here's the main idea: you see a fundamental gap between science and religion that in the past simply did not exist.

Ever hear the phrase "God of the gaps"? For a lot of people, that was - and is - how they understand God.

This may be true of many people today, but it is an essentially modern understanding of God that cannot have been held by anyone before the Renaissance. Before the scientific worldview existed, there simply were no gaps for God to reside in. What did God mean to people then?

Richard Tarnas's The Passion of the Western Mind[1] is a wonderful intellectual history of the West starting from the Greeks. You would probably find it interesting. It traces some of the philosophical roots of Christianity back into Greek thought, and it traces the philosophical roots of your modern worldview back into Christian thought.

And before you dismiss me as a religious weirdo, I am a lifelong atheist who has studied a lot of math and physics.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Passion-Western-Mind-Understanding...

yawboakye5• 12 years ago

What's fascinating about the progress of science is the discovery of hidden laws that govern our universe. Discovering how the weather works doesn't mean it arrived by accident. We both know that laws don't and have never had creatorial powers. Governing laws are defined by a creator before/during creation, and are discovered through observation. So the laws of the weather, among others, were waiting to be discovered. But they must have been set by someone.

pdevr• 12 years ago

Michael Faraday worked as an assistant to Sir Humphry Davy for some time. He used to travel along with Sir Davy and his wife. During these travels, it is said that Davy's wife used to treat Faraday shabbily, because he came from a lower economic class. Faraday was hurt so bad that he wanted to leave it all and go back.

Good for us that he endured and chose to stay on.

gjm11• 12 years ago

The author evidently wants us to take away the idea that Maxwell's and Faraday's religious positions were causes of their scientific success. But nothing in the article (so it seems to me) actually suggests any such thing; the great majority of it is simply observing that Maxwell and Faraday were both (1) very good scientists and (2) devout Christians. Which, indeed, they were, but that's a far cry from saying -- as the author does at the end of the article, on the basis of pretty much no evidence at all -- "These men’s insights into physics were made possible by their religious commitments".

The author claims that belief in God "encouraged analogy as an explanatory strategy" and "encouraged the idea of conservation as a fundamental unifying principle". You might think, from this, that Faraday or Maxwell had actually written something to support this. "What the Creator does in one domain, we may expect to find him doing in another", or "As all things are sustained in existence by Eternal Perfection, so we should find that certain of their qualities remain unchanging through time". But in fact he cites nothing from either scientist along such lines. The few connections he finds them actually making between their scientific and religious beliefs and attitudes are of quite a different sort (e.g., Maxwell suggesting that if all molecules have identical properties, this suggests they're manufactured by someone).

One quite frequently encounters works like this one, arguing that religion somehow provides a particularly congenial basis for science to flourish. I would find them more plausible if I ever encountered a single one whose research and writing weren't funded by the Templeton Foundation.

(Not because there's anything very terrible about the Templeton Foundation. But because if everyone they fund argues for this position and no one else does, it does slightly call into question what's going on. Not necessarily anything dishonest, but it's at least possible that the only reason we hear such ideas so often is that when the Templeton Foundation finds someone expressing them it reaches into its deep pockets and buys them a megaphone.)

scottlocklin2• 12 years ago

You really need to google Robert Grosseteste and the invention of the scientific method.

One of the most surprising things about my scientific career was the over representation of devout religious men in the highest levels of the hard sciences. Medium low levels; not so much.

CamperBob26• 12 years ago

And you really need to Google "selection bias." If you weren't devoutly religious, you didn't get the support from society you needed to do science.

Keeping this unfortunate state of affairs from happening again is becoming a very serious problem, even in the twenty-first century.

Meanwhile, nobody credits Newton's passions for alchemy and astrology for his insights -- only his Christianity.

conistonwater2• 12 years ago

Let's not forget, as the author does, that not being a devout Christian was really quite dangerous (and not just career-wise) for much of the time, including 19th century. If you accept that being a Christian was not really much of a personal choice, then being a Christian also loses quite a lot of weight in Christian apologia illustrated with religious scientists of old.

obstinate• 12 years ago

Yep. At that time, P(good scientist|christian) and P(good scientist) would be roughly equal, since P(christian) was ~100%. So it is hard to learn anything about the influence of Christianity on being a good scientist during this time period.

m_coder• 12 years ago

For the bulk of scientists in this day I cannot speak however, Faraday's religious position was not a comfortable moving along with the rest of society in order to advance his career. He truly did believe in Jesus and that influenced his private life as a result. For example, he attended the Sandeman church where he was a deacon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Faraday

etse2• 12 years ago

Somewhat tangential thoughts...

Being a devout Christian does seem quite dangerous career-wise today. I was going to conclude that being a devout Christian in the sciences today seems to "not really be much of a personal choice", but actually I think there is some room for it. There seems to be little freedom to avoid being a closet Christian if you are in biology and would like to not have to guess if you would have colleagues who support your work. On the other hand, astronomers and physicists seem to be friendlier to the devout Christians in their respective fields.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

Are they unfriendly towards devout Christians, or are they unfriendly towards loud, proselytizing Christians who constantly try to tie their religion into everything they do?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I strongly doubt that regular churchgoers who don't shove it in other people's faces have any trouble. Some Christians love to whine about oppression but it's almost always a case of "I want to shove this in everybody's face, and I demand that they sit there and take it."

justin66• 12 years ago

Being a devout Christian does seem quite dangerous career-wise today.

When does it even come up?

m_mueller• 12 years ago

I think this depends on what you mean by 'devout'. If you mean it in the mostly American Evangelical sense, then yes, it might severely hamper your scientific career since you will be less open minded about your topics of study. If you look at modern Catholics and many European Evangelics, this is not really the case. Interpreting the bible as a moral guide rather than a presentation of facts makes a big difference. If this weren't the case, you wouldn't see so many physicists and mathematicians to be religious.

dang2• 12 years ago

Are you sure about the 19th century? What dangers do you mean?

There were still social conventions in 19th century England demanding lip service to religion, but I don't have the impression that they demanded devoutness (which is an inner condition and not something that can be enforced in any case), nor that they still put intellectuals in physical danger.

As with social conventions nowadays, people could usually tell who the true believers were as opposed to who was merely following the what-you-can't-say rules. So I'm not sure that devoutness (if Faraday and Maxwell actually were devout) loses as much signal value as you suggest.

conistonwater2• 12 years ago

Pretty sure. My understanding is that it was not socially acceptable to be atheist until quite recently. I'm not sure I meant physical danger, though. Ostracism is dangerous enough, there are plenty of ways to hurt people and influence their choices in life other than beating them up with a stick.

There were still social conventions in 19th century England demanding lip service to religion...

Why isn't this an outrageous infringement on somebody else's freedom? And why should we discount its effect on who rose to the top and who didn't?

We know generally there can be many detrimental psychological effects on people coming from their social circumstances. These effects were presumably the same a few centuries ago, just much less well documented.

... people could usually tell who the true believers were as opposed to who was merely following the what-you-can't-say rules

I wouldn't be so sure. First, I'm not sure I can tell myself who's paying lip service these days, I'm just assuming no one is because I would consider it unnecessary. Second, when people read about historical figures, the accounts are really quite filtered: if someone was paying lip service back then and you read what was said about them or what they said in public themselves, how can you be sure these days what was lip service back then and what wasn't?

The author of the article is absolutely certain it wasn't lip service for these two scientists. I'm saying this kind of evidence isn't even remotely enough.

jacquesm5• 12 years ago

The big confrontation between religion and science happened over evolutionary theory in 1874. The Scopes trial was in 1925.

As for the present: it is said that it is impossible to be both a declared atheist and the President of the USA at the same time today, so there are some careers in which religion factors in heavily even now. And those in turn influence the scientific world directly, see the troubles with stem cell research in the recent past.

tokenadult3• 12 years ago

Having grown up reading a certain amount of that kind of Christian apologetics embedded in historical accounts of science, I think I have to mention something here that may be of interest to other readers who have read a lot of the same kind of thing. My childhood best friend is someone I met in two successive summer science programs (1968 and 1969) for gifted students arranged by our public school district. He was a very devout follower of a very evangelical denomination, certainly one of the most devout Christians in our school. (I was a church-going Christian child when I met him, and rather devout myself, but he helped me turn it up to eleven in being dedicated to what I was learning in church and Sunday school.)

He has pursued a very successful career as an electrical engineer in safety-critical industries such as aviation and medical device manufacturing. I actually skewed my studies to doing formal church work, missing out on a lot of the hard science courses my friend took during his university and postgraduate studies. Along the way, we each had to individually discover that the "creation science" we heard about in church has no firm scientific basis, and these days when I see friends here on Hacker News posting from a background similar to the background I grew up with, I gently remind them to refer to the multiple lines of evidence for macroevolution[1] so that at least we have common ground here on Hacker News to discuss biomedical research and other aspects of biological science. "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,"[2] so it is very regrettable when we have discussions here without checking the facts about evolution first.

AFTER EDIT: Huh, I see I am still in my edit time limit here as I expand this comment to note that there is evidently strong disagreement with my comment here. Because there is a lack of replies here, I don't know what prompts the disagreement. I hope there is no disagreement here that the great weight of scientific evidence shows that biological evolution is a true phenomenon,[3] and I hope that everyone participating here is aware that not everyone receives factually correct information about evolution.[4]

Feel free to let me know what you really think about what I have written in this comment. I can't learn from you if you won't speak up. Speaking up with evidence is the way to convince thoughtful people that your ideas are correct. Oh, and happy new year to everyone here.

[1] http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

[2] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/10/2/l_102_01.html

http://biologie-lernprogramme.de/daten/programme/js/homologe...

http://www.nabt.org/websites/institution/?p=92

[3] http://www.nas.edu/evolution/TheoryOrFact.html

http://jerrycoyne.uchicago.edu/

http://jerrycoyne.uchicago.edu/excerpt.html

[4] http://ncse.com/polls-evolution

http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intel...

http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/public-opinion-on-religio...

http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/section-5-views-on-re...

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/08/13/opinion/willful-ignorance-...

ScottBurson• 12 years ago

I'm not sure the downvoters have even taken the time to understand what you're saying. Have an upvote.

noonespecial• 12 years ago

have an upvote from me too.

But I think what people might be doing is driving this comment to the bottom because actual debates on religious beliefs usually go badly on internet forums in general. Without collapsible comments, such things have a tendency to blow up a thread.

I've heard that it was considered extremely impolite to discuss politics or religion in public in the 1800's. I wish that were a little more true today.

tokenadult3• 12 years ago

Well, I thought I was mostly discussing science, especially with the first two footnotes (and in light of how these issues usually come up on Hacker News), but I appreciate your thoughts on how the comment was interpreted by other readers.

gregfjohnson• 12 years ago

I greatly enjoyed and appreciated this article. Thanks to the person who posted it. As with all things human, there is a wide diversity of expressions of Christian belief. The thing that stood out most for me in this article was the human depth, compassion, and wisdom of Faraday and Maxwell. There is a vein of Christianity today (as ever) that is wise, mature, sane, and thoughtful. There is also, of course, a type of Christianity today that is none of these things. Generally, it seems that the most vocal are the least mature. One averts one's eyes with sadness and pain at the many vocal displays intellectually trivial Christianity. All too often, immature proponents of atheism and materialism delight in heaping contempt and ridicule on this sort of Christianity, as though it were the whole of Christianity. It is indeed a humbling experience to be a believing member of a community that is the object of such frequent, intense, and painful contempt and hatred. The experienced intimidation is such that it fills me with dread even to make a comment in this forum. However, I would note that the uppermost echelons of science and engineering are not without a non-trivial representation of people of active and profound religious belief, even today. (This constitutes a sort of existence proof; "there exists at least one leading scientist who is also a person of active religious faith.") Personally, I am stellar neither as a scientist nor as a Catholic, but they are the twin foundations of my being. My faith motivated me to make a momentous decision, and devote the remainder of my career to the alleviation of human suffering insofar as I am able; I have the privilege of developing embedded software that runs ventilators for neonatal intensive care and other applications.

michaelsbradley• 12 years ago

Andrew Kassebaum has written a couple of articles on the role that men of faith have had in the development and spread of the physical sciences:

Scientific Geniuses and Their Jesuit Collaborators

http://www.strangenotions.com/scientific-geniuses-and-their-...

How Catholic Missionaries Brought Science to China

http://www.strangenotions.com/how-catholic-missionaries-brou...

He's also writing a massive, probably multi-volume work on the same broad subject, but I suspect it won't be published online and may take him years to complete (it's a side project!). I look forward to reading it if and when it's finally published.

The Genius and Faith of Faraday and Maxwell

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