Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life - Rilegato

Gould, Stephen Jay

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0345430093 ISBN 13: 9780345430090

Casa editrice: Ballantine Books, 2001

Riassunto

The nation's leading exponent of Darwinian evolution and author of such best-sellers as Wonderful Life disentangles the perennial tug-of-war between science and religion, expounding a simple principle allowing them to coexist productively.

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Informazioni sull?autore

The author of more than fifteen books, Stephen Jay Gould is also author of the longest-running contemporary series of scientific essays, which appears monthly in Natural History. He is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and professor of geology at Harvard; curator for invertebrate paleontology at the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology; and serves as the Vincent Astor Visiting Professor of Biology at New York University. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City.

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"People of good will wish to see science and religion at peace. . . . I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis; but I also do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict." So states internationally renowned evolutionist and bestselling author Stephen Jay Gould in the simple yet profound thesis of his brilliant new book.

Writing with bracing intelligence and elegant clarity, Gould sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance. Instead of choosing between science and religion, Gould asks, why not opt for a golden mean that accords dignity and distinction to each realm?

At the heart of Gould's penetrating argument is a lucid, contemporary principle he calls NOMA (for nonoverlapping magisteria)--a "blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution" that allows science and religion to coexist peacefully in a position of respectful noninterference. Science defines the natural world; religion, our moral world, in recognition of their separate spheres of influence.

In elaborating and exploring this thought-provoking concept, Gould delves into the history of science, sketching affecting portraits of scientists and moral leaders wrestling with matters of faith and reason. Stories of seminal figures such as Galileo, Darwin, and Thomas Henry Huxley make vivid his argument that individuals and cultures must cultivate both a life of the spirit and a life of rational inquiry in order to experience the fullness of being human.

In his bestselling books Wonderful Life, The Mismeasure of Man, and Questioning the Millennium, Gould has written on the abundance of marvels in human history and the natural world. In Rocks of Ages, Gould's passionate humanism, ethical discernment, and erudition are fused to create a dazzling gem of contemporary cultural philosophy. As the world's preeminent Darwinian theorist writes, "I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between . . . science and religion."

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

Excerpt

The disciple thomas makes three prominent appearances in the Gospel of John, each toembody an important moral or theological principle. Nonetheless, these three episodescohere in an interesting way that can help us to understand the different powers andprocedures of science and religion. We first meet Thomas in chapter 11. Lazarus hasdied, and Jesus wishes to return to Judaea in order to restore his dear friend tolife. But the disciples hesitate, reminding Jesus of the violent hostility that hadled to a stoning on his last visit. Jesus, in his customary manner, tells anambiguous little parable, ending with the firm conclusion that he will and must go toLazarus?and Thomas steps forth to break the deadlock and restore courage to thedisciples: "Then said Thomas . . . unto his fellowdisciples, Let us also go, that wemay die with him."

In the second incident (chapter 14), Jesus, at the Last Supper, states that he willbe betrayed, and must endure bodily death as a result. But he will go to a betterplace and will prepare the way for his disciples: "In my Father's house are manymansions ... I go to prepare a place for you." Thomas, now confused, asks Jesus:"Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?" Jesus respondsin one of the most familiar Bible passages: "I am the way, and the truth, and thelife: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me."

According to legend, Thomas led a brave life after the death of Jesus, extending thegospel all the way to India. The first two biblical incidents, cited above, alsodisplay his admirable qualities of bravery and faithful inquiry. Yet we know him bestby the third tale, and by an appended epithet of criticism?for he thus became theDoubting Thomas of our languages and traditions. In chapter 20, the resurrected Jesusappears first to Mary Magdalene, and then to all the disciples but the absent Thomas.The famous tale unfolds:

But Thomas was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said untohim, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in his handsthe print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust myhand into his side, I will not believe.

Jesus returns a week later to complete the moral tale of a brave and inquisitive man,led astray by doubt, but chastened and forgiven with a gentle but firm lesson for usall:

Then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst and said, Peace be untoyou. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reachhither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. AndThomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

(This last passage assumes great importance in traditional exegesis as representingthe first time that a disciple identifies Jesus as God. Trinitarians point toThomas's utterance as proof for the threefold nature of God as Father, Son, and HolyGhost at the same time. Unitarians must work their way around the literal meaning,arguing, for example, that Thomas had merely uttered an oath of astonishment, not anidentification.) In any case, Jesus' gentle rebuke conveys the moral punch line, andcaptures the fundamental difference between faith and science:

Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessedare they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

Thomas, in other words, passes his test because he accepted the evidence of hisobservations and then repented his previous skepticism. But his doubt signifiesweakness, for he should have known through faith and belief. The Gospel textemphasizes Thomas's failings through his exaggerated need to see both sets ofstigmata (hands and side), and use two senses (sight and touch) to assuage hisdoubts.

Mark Tansey, a contemporary artist who loves to represent the great moral andphilosophical lessons of Western history with modern metaphors painted inhyperrealistic style, beautifully epitomized the overly wrought character of Thomas'sdoubt. In 1986 he depicted a man who won't accept continental drift in general, oreven the reality of earthquakes in particular. An earthquake has fractured both aCalifornia road and the adjoining cliff, but the man still doubts. So he instructshis wife, at the wheel, to straddle the fault line with their car, while he gets outand thrusts his hand into the analogy of Christ's pierced side?the crack in theroad. Tansey titles this work Doubting Thomas.

I accept the moral of this tale for important principles under the magisterium ofethics and values. If you need to go through the basic argument, and to test theconsequences, each time anger tempts you to murder, then your fealty to the SixthCommandment is a fragile thing indeed. The steadfast, in such cases, are more blessed(and more to be trusted) than those who cavil and demand rationales each time.Blessed are they that have no such need, yet know the way of justice and decency. Inthis sense, Thomas deserved his chastening?while Jesus, through the firm gentlenessof his rebuke, becomes a great teacher.

But I cannot think of a statement more foreign to the norms of science?indeed moreunethical under this magisterium?than Jesus' celebrated chastisement of Thomas:"blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." A skeptical attitudetoward appeals based only on authority, combined with a demand for direct evidence(especially to support unusual claims), represents the first commandment of properscientific procedure.

Poor Doubting Thomas. At his crucial and eponymous moment, he acted in the mostadmirable way for one style of inquiry?but in the wrong magisterium. He espoused thekey principle of science while operating within the different magisterium of faith.

So if Thomas the Apostle defended the norms of science in the wrong magisterium offaith, let us consider another Thomas usually (but falsely) regarded as equallyincongruous in the other direction?as a man of dogmatic religion who improperlyinvaded the magisterium of science. The Reverend Thomas Burnet (1635-1715), althoughunknown outside professional circles today, wrote one of the most influential booksof the late seventeenth century?Telluris theoria sacra, or The Sacred Theory of theEarth, a work in four sections, with part one on the deluge of Noah, part two on thepreceding paradise, part three on the forthcoming "burning of the world," and partfour "concerning the new heavens and new earth," or paradise regained after theconflagration. This book not only became a "best-seller" in its own generation, butgained lasting fame as a primary inspiration (largely, but not entirely, incriticism) for two of the greatest and most comprehensive works of eighteenth-centuryintellectual history?the Scienza nuova (New Science) of Giambattista Vico in 1725, the foundation for historicalstudies of cultural anthropology, and the Histoire naturelle of Georges Buffon, thepreeminent compendium of the natural world, begun in 1749.

But modern scientists dismiss Burnet as either a silly fool or an evil force whotried to reimpose the unquestionable dogmas of scriptural authority upon the newpaths of honest science. The "standard" early history of geology, Archibald Geikie'sFounders of Geology (1905 edition) featured Burnet's book among the "monstrousdoctrines" that infected late-seventeenth-century science. One modern textbookdescribes Burnet's work as "a series of queer ideas about earth's development," whileanother dismisses the Sacred Theory as a "bizarre freak of pseudo-science."

Of course, Burnet did not operate as a modern scientist, but he faithfully followedthe norms of his time for proper residence within the magisterium of scientificinquiry. Burnet did begin by assuming that the Bible told a truthful story about thehistory of the earth, but he did not insist on literal accuracy. In fact, he lost hisprestigious position as private confessor to King William III for espousing anallegorical interpretation of creation as described in the Book of Genesis?for heargued that God's six "days" might represent periods of undetermined length, notliteral intervals of twenty-four hours or physical episodes of one full rotationabout an axis.

Burnet accepted the scriptural account as a rough description of actual events, buthe insisted upon one principle above all: the history of the earth cannot be regardedas adequately explained or properly interpreted until all events can be rendered asnecessary consequences of invariable natural laws, operating with the knowableregularity recently demonstrated for gravity and other key phenomena by his dearfriend Isaac Newton. Ironically, the most bizarre features of Burnet's particularaccount arise from his insistence upon natural law as the source and explanation ofall historical events in the earth's history?a difficult requirement given thepeculiar and cataclysmic character of several biblical tales, including universalfloods and fires.

Burnet begins, for example, by seeking a source for the water of Noah's flood. (Hegreatly underestimated the depth and extent of the earth's oceans, and thereforebelieved that present seas could not cover the mountains. "I can as soon believe," hewrote, "that a man could be drowned in his own spittle as that the world should bedeluged by the water in it.") But Burnet then rejects, as outside his chosenmagisterium of "natural" (i.e., scientific) explanation, the easiest and standardsolution of his age: that God simply made the extra water by miraculous creation. Formiracle, defined as divine suspension of natural law, must lie outside the compass ofscientific explanation. Invoking the story of Alexander and the Gordian Knot, Burnetrejected this "easy way" as destructive of any scientific account. (According tolegend, when Alexander the Great captured Gordium, the capital of Phrygia, heencountered a famous chariot, lashed to a pole with a knot of astonishing complexity.He who could untie the knot would conquer all Asia. So Alexander, using raw power to circumvent the rules of thegame, took his sword and severed the knot clean through. Some call it boldness; I,and apparently Burnet as well, call it anti-intellectualism.) Burnet wrote:

They say in short, that God Almighty created waters on purpose to make the deluge,and then annihilated them again when the deluge was to cease; and this, in a fewwords, is the whole account of the business. This is to cut the knot when we cannotloose it.

Instead, Burnet devised a wonderfully wacky theory about a perfectly sphericaloriginal earth with a smooth and solid crust of land covering a layer of water below(the natural and eventual source of Noah's flood). This crust gradually dries andcracks; waters rise through the cracks and form clouds; the rains arrive and seal thecracks; the pressure of water rising from below finally bursts through the crust,causing the deluge and producing the earth's present rough topography. Wacky indeed,but fully rendered by natural law, and therefore testable and subject to disproofunder the magisterium of science. Indeed, we have tested Burnet's ideas, found themboth false and bizarre, and expunged his name from our pantheon of scientific heroes.But if he had simply advocated a divine creation of water, such a conventional andnonoperational account could never have inspired Buffon, Vico, and a host of otherscholars.Burnet followed the common view of a remarkable group of men, devout theists all, whoset the foundations of modern science in late-seventeenth-century Britain?includingNewton, Halley, Boyle, Hooke, Ray, and Burnet himself. Invoking a convenient trope ofEnglish vocabulary, these scientists argued that God would permit no contradictionbetween his words (as recorded in scripture) and his works (the natural world). Thisprinciple, in itself, provides no rationale for science, and could even contradict mycentral claim for science and religion as distinct magisteria?for if works (thenatural world) must conform to words (the scriptural text), then doesn't sciencebecome conflated with, constrained by, and subservient to religion? Yes, under onepossible interpretation, but not as these men defined the concept. (Always look tonuance and actual utility, not to a first impression about an ambiguous phrase.) Godhad indeed created nature at some inception beyond the grasp of science; but he alsoestablished invariant laws to run the universe without interference forever after.(Surely omnipotence must operate by such a principle of perfection, and not byfrequent subsequent correction, i.e., by special miracle, to fix some unanticipatedbungle or wrinkle?to make extra water, for example, when human sin requiredpunishment.)

Thus, nature works by invariant laws subject to scientific explanation. The naturalworld cannot contradict scripture (for God, as author of both, cannot speak againsthimself). So?and now we come to the key point?if some contradiction seems to emergebetween a well-validated scientific result and a conventional reading of scripture,then we had better reconsider our exegesis, for the natural world does not lie, butwords can convey many meanings, some allegorical or metaphorical. (If science clearlyindicates an ancient world, then the "days" of creation must represent periods longerthan twenty-four hours.) In this crucial sense, the magisteria become separate, andscience holds sway over the factual character of the natural world. A scientist maybe pious and devout?as all these men were, with utmost sincerity?and still hold aconception of God (as an imperial clockwinder at time's beginning in this version ofNOMA) that leaves science entirely free in its own proper magisterium.

I choose Thomas Burnet to illustrate this central principle for three reasons: (1) hewas an ordained minister by primary profession (thereby illustrating NOMA if he trulykept these worlds distinct); (2) his theory has become an unfair source of ridiculeunder the fallacious notion that science must be at war with religion; and (3) heupheld the primacy of science in a particularly forceful way (and with even moreclarity than his friend Isaac Newton, as we shall see on page 87). Recognizing theprimacy of science in its proper magisterium, Burnet urges his readers not to asserta scriptural interpretation contrary to a scientific discovery, but to reexaminescripture instead?for science rules the magisterium of factual truth about nature:

'Tis a dangerous thing to engage the authority of scripture in disputes about thenatural world, in opposition to reason; lest time, which brings all things to light,should discover that to be evidently false which we had made scripture assert.

In a lovely passage equating an independent magisterium for science with a maximallyexalted concept of God, Burnet develops a striking metaphor for contrastingexplanations of the earth's destruction in Noah's flood: do we not have greateradmiration for a machine that performs all its appointed tasks (both regular andcatastrophic) by natural laws operating on a set of initial parts, than for a devicethat putters along well enough in a basic mode, but requires a special visit from itsinventor for anything more complex:

We think him a better artist that makes a clock that strikes regularly at every hourfrom the springs and wheels which he puts in the work, than he that so made his clockthat he must put his finger to it every hour to make it strike: and if one shouldcontrive a piece of clock-work so that it should beat all the hours, and make all itsmotions regularly for such a time, and that time being come, upon a signal given, ora spring touched, it should of its own accord fall all to pieces; would not this belooked upon as a piece of greater art, than if the workman came at that timeprefixed, and with a great hammer beat it into pieces?

As a professional clergyman and a leading scientist, Burnet practiced in bothmagisteria, and kept them separate. He allocated the entire natural world to science,but he also knew that this style of inquiry could not adjudicate issues beyond thepower of factual information to illuminate, and in realms where questions of naturallaw do not arise. Using an image from his own century (we would define the boundariesdifferently today), Burnet grants the entire history of the earth to science, butrecognizes that any time before the creation of matter, and any history after theLast Judgment, cannot be encompassed within the magisterium of natural knowledge:

Whatsoever concerns this sublunary world in the whole extent of its duration, fromthe Chaos to the last period, this I believe Providence hath made us capable tounderstand ... On either hand is Eternity, before the World and after, which iswithout [that is, outside of] our reach: But that little spot of ground that liesbetwixt those two great oceans, this we are to cultivate, this we are masters of,herein we are to exercise our thoughts [and] to understand.

I may be reading too much into Burnet's words, but do I not detect a preference, orat least a great fondness, for the factuality of science when, in the chronologicalnarrative of his Sacred Theory of the Earth, Burnet must bid adieu to reason as hisguide, as he passes from the factually knowable history of an earth fully governed bynatural law to a radically different future at the Last Judgment, when God willinstitute a new order, and can therefore only inform us (if at all) through therevelation of his words? Burnet speaks to the muse of science:

"Farewell then, dear friend, I must take another guide: and leave you here, as Mosesupon Mount Pisgah, only to look into that land, which you cannot enter. I acknowledgethe good service you have done, and what a faithful companion you have been, in along journey: from the beginning of the world to this hour ... We have travelledtogether through the dark regions of a first and second chaos: seen the world twiceshipwrecked. Neither water nor fire could separate us. But now you must give place toother guides."

I told this tale of two Thomases to sharpen the distinctions between two entirelydifferent but equally vital magisteria of our rich and complex lives?the two rocksof ages in my title. One must not assume that a book (the Bible in this case) or aday job (as a clergyman in this example) defines a magisterium. We must look insteadto the subject, the logic, and the particular arguments. Our goal of mutual respectrequires mutual understanding most of all. But I must complete this intuitive andparticular case for NOMA by telling another story?with a similar message, but fromthe moral side this time?before presenting the more formal argument in chapter 2.

Copyright © 1999 Stephen Jay Gould. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0-345-43009-3

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Ballantine Books
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0345430093
• ISBN 13: 9780345430090
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero edizione: 1
• Numero di pagine: 241
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile