Science is awesome

Here is a short talk on why I think science is so awesome

Here is a draft of a book chapter, exploring similar themes. I welcome comments.

Questions to evaluate technologies

How do we evaluate the benefits and costs of technologies? Neil Postman spent a lifetime wrestling with such questions. In a talk given in 1998, he considered five things we need to know about technological change. Postman's enduring influence and relevance are marked by the fact that these five things featured in a column in The Washington Post, "Is the Internet Evil?" by Christine Emba, published in 2018.

Below, I summarise the five ideas from Postman's talk and provide questions (in italics) we should ask about any technology, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI).

1. All technological change is a trade-off. 

"the greater the wonders of a technology, the greater will be its negative consequences" 

Don't just ask the question "What will a new technology do?" Also ask, "What will a new technology undo?"

"a sophisticated perspective on technological change includes one’s being skeptical of Utopian and Messianic visions drawn by those who have no sense of history or of the precarious balances on which culture depends."

Through adoption of the technology, what will we lose, individually and as a society?

2. The advantages and disadvantages of a new technology are never distributed evenly among the population.

Who will benefit? Who will be harmed? 

Winners will try to persuade losers that they will benefit as well.

Benefits and harms can relate to employment, finances, social status, health, and political power.

3.  Embedded in every technology are powerful ideas. 

"These ideas are often hidden from our view because they are of a somewhat abstract nature. But this should not be taken to mean that they do not have practical consequences."

"The telegraphic person values speed, not introspection. The television person values immediacy, not history... the computer person values information, not knowledge, certainly not wisdom." 

"The medium is the message."

 What ideas are embedded in the technology?

How does it make us use our minds and bodies?

How does it affect our personal relationships and social cohesion?

4. Technological change is not additive; it is ecological. It changes everything.

"The consequences of technological change are always vast, often unpredictable and largely irreversible."

The entrepreneurs who started the television industry "did not mean to turn political discourse into a form of entertainment."

The consequences can be social, economic, political, environmental, religious, and health-related.

What are the unintended consequences of the technology?

5. When a technology becomes mythic, it is always dangerous because it is then accepted as it is, and is therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control.

"...our enthusiasm for technology can turn into a form of idolatry and our belief in its beneficence can be a false absolute. The best way to view technology is as a strange intruder, to remember that technology is not part of God’s plan but a product of human creativity and hubris, and that its capacity for good or evil rests entirely on human awareness of what it does for us and to us."

How does the technology lead to idolatry? Do people worship it, its creators, or its owners?

Finally,

Do we use the technology or does the technology use us? 

In different words, will we shape our lives to fit the requirements of the technology, rather than have our values shape our use of the technology?

Facing my pride and my prejudice

I used to think of Jane Austen as a writer of soppy romance novels, which have since been adapted into popular movies and TV series. I had watched some but had never read the novels. I thought of it as "chick lit" that has stood the test of time. Well, my pride and prejudice deceived me! In our extended family book club, we have been reading Pride and Prejudice. I now see that Austen uses romance as a backdrop for biting social satire,  insights into human folly, and the development of virtue.

This is illustrated in the following quotation, considered to be key to the novel. The heroine Elizabeth Bennett becomes aware of her own lack of virtue.

 "She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."

        Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 36.

Austen's narrative beautifully illustrates two important truths: we are social beings, and money significantly influences many aspects of our lives. On one level, we may think these are fairly obvious truths. However, we need Austen to show their profundity, depth and subtlety. In Austen's time and context, these truths played out in specific ways that may seem alien to us. Nevertheless, they are still true today.

We are social beings

Being children of the Enlightenment and living in a culture of individualism, we love to believe that we are rugged independent individuals who can do as we please. An important and controversial question in sociology is the relationship between personal agency and social structure. How does the latter constrain the former?

The moral philosopher, Alasdair MacIntyre, wrote in After Virtue:

“We enter upon a stage which we did not design and we find ourselves part of an action that was not of our making. Each of us being a main character in his own drama plays subordinate parts in the dramas of others, and each drama constrains the others.”  

[This important book is discussed more below.]

We desire social relations and sometimes enjoy them. We may crave social affirmation in the form of status and acclaim. We fear social censure.

Pride and Prejudice is a story about social relations. All the characters, regardless of their wealth, seem to do is socialise. It is an endless stream of balls, dinners, visits, and parlour games.

People are judged based on their wealth, family heritage, property, dress, physical appearance, social etiquette, conversational skills, moral character, musical performance, ... What a burden! Furthermore, these judgements may be made hastily and with prejudice, particularly towards those of a different social class.

The moral failure of one family member may forever condemn others to social censure.

The picture is the British ten-pound note, featuring Jane Austen, issued in 2017, and the subject of some controversy. I find it ironic that Austen's image is now on currency, given that money features so significantly in her novels.

The power of money

In Pride and Prejudice, money defines social status and the suitability of potential marriage partners. The famous opening sentences of the novel capture this.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."

However, the power of money goes beyond this. It shapes attitudes, anxieties, and action. The value of a person is equated with their monetary wealth. The potential future lack of money creates anxiety. Potential financial windfalls motivate action, including manipulation. Money is used to solve problems, such as Wickham eloping with the young Lydia Bennett.

Again, our context today is different from Pride and Prejudice. In marriage, money plays less of a role, but not an insignificant one. On the other hand, money shapes politics, religion, and education profoundly. Perhaps more than Austen's era. 

The Economist recently had a nice article, How Jane Austen revealed the economic basis of society: Some unacknowledged truths about money

John Dickson's podcast Undeceptions has a wonderful episode on Jane Austen. Interestingly, Dickson reveals that the title of his podcast, Undeceptions, was inspired by a C.S. Lewis essay on Jane Austen.

The episode includes a discussion of Alasdair MacIntyre and After Virtue.  For perspective, according to Wikipedia, this work 

"is one of the most important works of Anglophone moral and political philosophy in the 20th century.^[3] "

In it, MacIntyre pays homage to Jane Austen as providing the narrative form needed to resolve the modern problems that he identifies, such as morality being rooted in emotivism and subjectivity.

“C.S. Lewis saw in her an essentially Christian writer. It is her uniting of Christian and Aristotelian themes in a determinate social context that makes Jane Austen the last great effective imaginative voice of the tradition of thought about, and practice of, the virtues which I have tried to identify.”

Finally, Why Cornel West loves Jane Austen 

"Cornel West views "Sistah Jane" as a radical revisionary whose promotion of courageous truth-speaking amid a tragicomic theater of humanity challenges us to change society by changing ourselves, by cultivating simple but now revolutionary virtues." 

I thank my daughter for bringing to my attention that Cornel West is an Austen fan.

Science, technology, and ethics

The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has stimulated discussions about its potential value and dangers. Before engaging in discussions about AI specifically, it is worth making some general observations about the relationship between science, technology, and ethics.

In the discussion that follows, you might consider how it relates to concrete examples such as screwdrivers, guns, washing machines, cars, smartphones, or AI. They vary greatly in their capability, impact, scope of application, and interaction with our humanity.

Science is not technology. Science and engineering are different academic disciplines. Science and technology are distinct, albeit interrelated, entities. Science is concerned with gaining an understanding of how the material world works. Technologies are tools, machines, and devices that may make human life easier or better. Note that deciding what is "better" is a subjective judgement and involves human values.

Scientific knowledge is neither necessary nor sufficient for the development of technology. Steam engines were developed before the science of thermodynamics, which describes how they work. Nicolas Tesla was a brilliant inventor. But many of his beliefs about the science of electromagnetism were wrong. Large Language Models (LLMs) work extremely well, but we have a poor understanding of why. On the flip side, scientists and engineers file endless patents for possible new technologies that never come to fruition. We understand the science behind how a quantum computer will work, but building a useful one remains elusive.

Scientific understanding sometimes leads to improvements in existing technology and the development of new technologies. However, there is no guaranteed connection. Sometimes tinkering is enough. Scientists commonly use the prospect of new technologies (and the associated potential economic benefits) in their arguments for the public funding of their research. Consequently, they and the government agencies that fund them may be reluctant to acknowledge that the science-technology link is not as strong as sometimes claimed.

Technology shows that science works. There are laws of nature. Nature acts in predictable and repeatable ways. Thousands of planes fly safely every day. Most phones will probably work for years. If most of the laws of physics were wrong, a lot of technology would not work. The power of technology should inspire awe and wonder at the way the world works, our ability to understand it, and to manipulate it.

Is a technology intrinsically neutral, good, or evil?  

For any technology, you may encounter people advocating one of these moral perspectives. 

Neutral. A technology itself does not do anything. It has no morality. Only people have morality. They can choose to use the technology for good or evil.

Good. By definition, technology makes human life easier or better. Furthermore, history shows this. Consider the significant improvements in human health and prosperity that have come with more and more technology. The creation of technology also reflects human creativity and the desire to improve the lives of others.

Evil. Given humans' propensity for greed, violence, and domination, it is inevitable that any technology will be used eventually by some people for destructive purposes.

To illustrate the moral ambiguity associated with scientific research, consider the Harvard organic chemist, Louis Fieser. He discovered both antimalarial drugs that have saved countless lives and napalm, used in chemical warfare.

The neutral position is helpful if it leads us to focus discussions on good and evil ways a specific technology is used or might be used. It is unhelpful if it is used to avoid ethical discussions.

Most technologies have good and bad uses. The extent to which some uses are good or bad varies greatly between technologies. We also need to evaluate the likelihood of good or bad outcomes, often unanticipated. The impacts of a technology are multifaceted. They include health, environmental, social, economic, and political impacts.

Our view of humanity shapes our view of technology

Those with a positive view of humanity tend to also be positive about technology. They are optimistic about people's ability to choose to use a technology for their own good and that of others. Any problems can be minimised or solved.

However, if you think people have a propensity for greed, abuse, addiction, and deception, you will be wary about technology.

A Christian perspective on humanity affirms both the goodness and depravity of humanity. We are made in the image of God and have the potential for creativity, personal agency, and benevolence. On the other hand, we are sinful and broken and the potential for evil. This is a dialectic. Different Christians and traditions have differing views of just how good or evil we are.

The Enlightenment worldview matters

Several beliefs characteristic of the Enlightenment lead to a positive and optimistic view of technology and to opposition to placing limits on its use.

Optimism in Progress.

All problems are solvable in principle.

Humans are emancipated and autonomous individuals.

The history of the impact of technology suggests we should question these claims.

Negative consequences of technology should not be used to criticise science. Science did not create these problems. Humans created them as a result of choices about how to use the technology.

In future posts, I hope to discuss questions we should ask about technologies and then use them to consider AI.

Problematic translations of book titles

There is a world of difference between "A Christian view of science" and "The Christian view of science." The latter implies that there is only one possible view. However, publishers love The rather than A in book titles.

It turns out that translators do too. In Territories of Science and Religion, Peter Harrison discussed how the translated title of John Calvin's most influential work changed with time, reflecting underlying shifts in views about what Christianity was. 

unlike English, Latin has no article—no “a” or “the.” Accordingly, when rendering expressions such as “vera religion” or “christiana religio” into English, translators had to decide on the basis of context whether to add an article or not. As we have seen, such decisions can make a crucial difference, for the connotations of “true religion” and “christian religion” are rather different from those of “the true religion” and “the Christian religion.” The former can mean something like “genuine piety” and “Christlike piety” and are thus consistent with the idea of religion as an interior quality. Addition of the definite article, however, is suggestive of a system of belief.

 The translation history of Protestant Reformer John Calvin’s classic Institutio Christianae Religionis (1536) gives a good indication both of the importance of the definite article and of changing understandings of religion in the seventeenth century. Calvin’s work was intended as a manual for the inculcation of Christian piety, although this fact is disguised by the modern practice of rendering the title in English as The Institutes of the Christian Religion. The title page of the first English edition by Thomas Norton bears the more faithful “The Institution of Christian religion” (1561). The definite article is placed before “Christian” in the 1762 Glasgow edition: “The Institution of the Christian religion.” And the now familiar “Institutes” appears for the first time in John Allen’s 1813 edition: “The Institutes of the Christian religion.” 

The modern rendering is suggestive of an entity “the Christian religion” that is constituted by its propositional contents—“the institutes.” These connotations were completely absent from the original title. Calvin himself confirms this by declaring in the preface his intention “to furnish a kind of rudiments, by which those who feel some interest in religion might be trained to true godliness.”

Problematic translations of book titles continue today. Here are more examples.

"The Presence of the Kingdom'' is a wonderful book by Jacques Ellul. The title of the original French edition was Présence au monde moderne: Problèmes de la civilisation post-chrétienne. The literal translation is "Presence in the Modern World: Problems of Post-Christian Civilization''. I wonder if something is being lost in the English title.

A similar concern applies to Ellul's book, La Technique. The English edition has the title "The Technological Society.''
L.M. Sacasas states

Ellul defined Technique (la technique) as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” It was an expansive term meant to describe far more than what we ordinarily think of as technology, even when we use that term in the widest sense.

In the next two examples, the English titles are not problematic but have a different sense from the original German. The first took away something, and the second added something.

In 1955, Hans Urs von Balthasar  published Das Betrachtende Gebet, "Contemplative Prayer"). The English edition has the title Prayer.

The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, had the title Nachfolge, which translates literally as "succession" or "following".

My best blog posts from 2025?

Best wishes for the New Year!

Here is a list of the posts that I wrote last year that I hope get the most interest.

 My articles on theology and science. I put together links to all the articles I have written over the last 25 years.

Participating in the greatest story ever told. This is review of Eat this Book, by Eugene Peterson.

A heartfelt reckoning with Australia's history of colonialism, racism, and Whiteness. This year was the beginning of my engagement with Stan Grant.

Living and Dying for your Country. This was a review of Patriot by Alexei Navalny, the late Russian opposition leader.

Science, Humanity, and Jesus. This is a talk I gave at Theology on Tap in Brisbane.

Genesis, Science, and Jesus. A short talk by John Dickson that was part of an episode of his podcast, Undeceptions.

In Praise of Papua New Guinea