edited bv: ALBERT KIRSCH Boston University Boston, MaSSaCh~settS02215 ~
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Science, Society, and the Reformation J. Dudley Herron Purdue University, Lafayette. IN 47907
Edlor's Note: That science and religion have affectedeach other. there can be no dauM. But as science has come to daminate ow cultue, has ii developed an insliiulio~l similarity tothe religion which daminated earlier eras? Dudley Herron argues that it has and uses religlon as a
metapha in advocating a Reformation. not so much in science itself but in the teaching of science, so that it may bener become accessible to the laily and not remain the property of the few, win? the masses expected slmply to "go along." This paper was originally presented at the Sixth Biennial Conference an Chemicei Education, held at Rochester institute of Technology. Rochester. New Yark. June 22-26.1980.
Several people have used concepts from science to clarify relieious thoueht. dualitv of lieht and - . ex.. - . the narticle-wave . electrons as an analogy for a particular view of the Trinity. I t occurs to me that religious thought might illuminate certain issues in science just as scientific thought has illuminated certain ideas in relieion. Consider the Reformation, a period of conflict betweenthe church and society, and ourown age, a period of conflict between science and society. The Reformation involved a complex mix of social, economic, political and religious forces. What I describe is certainly an oversimplification, but I trust that simplification to make a point is pardonable. After the fall of the Roman Emnire. the Church a t Rome was the force that united Western ~ u r o b eAt . the height of its Dower. the Church shaned the Western world. and the clerev ... ;hared power with rhe'nol,ility, but by the fifteenth century there was wnsidrml~lediicontenr. As 1.ewis h i t z saw in the book, "The Protestant Reformation":
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The comprehensive dissatisfaction with formalChurch life was of the ardent lover. The formalism lareelv " .the disaooointment .. of ritual and relieious exercises. the routine externdimtion or ~" ~~.~ despiritualiralion o f r h c snernmmta, the pedantry and quibtBling of srhdnrtir theology, and the use of the ban . . . as an instrument for. . . priesrly dummatim, all uffmdeda genrration of men whose expectation and desires for spiritual nourishment were rising. ( 1 ) ~~
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The fifteenth century Christian was no more alienated toward the church than modern man is alienated toward science. Rather, it was the formalism that had evolved, the quibbling about points that were silly to the peasant, the pedantry of the clerics and the priestly domination that offended those who were later identified with the movement. The leaders of the Reformation sought to return Christianitv to the common oeonle who had been its founders. art in Luther (. rimed tl;a~personal faith rather than priests, sacraments. or good works could ensure salvation. The Bible and not the claimed Luther, was man's intallible guide to truth in faith. T o make the infallible guide accessible, he translated the Bible into German so that chose with education could read and interpret i t themselves.
560
Journal of Chemical Education
Many considered translation of scripture into thr vernncular dangerous be(ause of the danger that ignorant people mieht misunderstand subtle ideas.." iust as ~onularizatiunof' " science is often viewed today. Both are subject to misinterpretation-particularly by the unlearned. No doubt such fears are well founded. A visit to modern churches would reveal considerable variation in the way scripture is interpreted. One might reasonably conclude that some of those interpretations must he wrong-wen that they grow out of theological ignorance. However, in spite of rampant denominationalism and naive interpretation of religious &chings, chungt~shwuyht about by the neformatim rrsultd in a growrh of personal religious faith, within rhc Rumm Churih as well i s without. So what does this have to do with science? In my mind it has raised a uuestion: Is science todav a t a noint similar to that of ~ h r i s t i a t k tbefore ~ the ~ e f o r ~ a t i o nIf? so, what would a reformation of science be like? Unlike Christianity, the hirth of science is difficult to date. Galileo was born in 1564, Newton in 1642, John Dalton in 1766, and Charles Darwin in 1809. Even though these names are often associated with the beginnings . of modern science, the birthdates are relatively recent-just over 400 years ago compared to 1900 for the hirth of Christianity. Still, science has developed rapidly from its beginningto evolve a complex theoretical structure rivalling that of theology. Just as the theological arguments justifying the rituals of the pre-Reformation church were incomprehensible to the laity of that day, the theoretical arguments of modern science are incomprehensible to the laity of today. Science has become far too complex for ordinary people to understand, and an extensive cadre of clerics of varying rank have assumed responsibility for learnine the imnonderables and talkine to one another about them, occasionally telling others what to do. Unfortunatelv. ..the "others" of todav... like those of the fifteenth century, are not always willing to listen. Perhaps vou ohiect to mv referring to scientists as clerics. but to a iarge extent, scienEe is the religion of our age. When we face a crisis, such as a shortage of enerm, i t is not to God that we turn, but to science. when we w&an explanation of a mysterious event, we seek the explanation in science, rather than in relieion: the recent scientific examination of the Shroud of ~ L r i n ' i sa particularly pointed example. Todav. science rather than relieion is the nowerful force that shapes ihe Western world. I t is &e ~ a t i o n aAcademy l rather than the Vatican Council that issues proclamations which cause heads of state to pause. And. unfortunatelv, the leaders of the faith are often seen as po&pous, aloof, and pedantic even when they are held in awe. As in the days before the Reformation, it sometimes seems that the exacting language of the clerics serves more to separate the elite from the masses than to communicate ideas to those affected by those ideas. And there are signs of discontent: the June 16, 1980, &
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Chemical and Engmeering News article on appropriate technology provides recent evidence of that disenchantment with priestly science (2). Although faith in science remains strong, the public's inahility to acquire the fundamentals of that faith, and their growing distrust of those who interpret the sacred laws, may lead us to ask whether the time has come for another Reformation. If so, what would it be like? What did the first Reformation do, and how? What might a scientific Reformation bring? Perhaps more than anything else, the Reformation emancipated Christianity from the priests. Many Christians became convinced that they could approach God on their own-that thev could understand the Bible without an interoreter. Now it is perhaps important to note two things in this regard. First, the understanding arrived a t in this way was-and still isgenerally much simpler and less profound than the understandina of the clerics. Second, even thouah the central elements of the faith may have been understood and held with more conviction, the details were sometimes confused. Many of the things that had come to he central in the thinking of the religious experts were of little importance to common people. Perhaps a major reason for our inability to achieve scientific literacv todav lies in the kind of literacv we seek to achieve. Do wlinsistthat others see and appreciate the theological arguments that capture our fancy when there is a central faith that adequately satisfies their needs? For examole. the c o n c e ~of t an acid is certainlv a useful one and it finds-application & so many fields that we would not hesitate to teach it, hut why must we teach everyone about Arrhenius and Br6nsted and Lewis? I cannot imagine discussing natural phenomena without the concept of;qdihrium, but I am not at all sure that the technical skill oi calculating conrentrations of species in solutions of weak e~ectrol~tesis required for salvation. Neither am I convinced that a sophisticated discussion of theological arguments concerning the energy states of electrons is necessary for someone to appreciate the explanatory power of atomic theorv. What is necessary fur the scholarly priest is not appreciated by the laity, and when the vriest insists t h a ~it he ar,urwiated. hk simply'denies the laity access to the faith that-is appreciated. We simply must force ourselves to ask seriously, what is the essence of science that we would wrest from the experts and make available to everyone? Part of the "essence" of Christianity which came through the Reformation to common people was a set of values which we often refer to as Judeo-Christian ethics. Similarly, I would argue that understandable essentials from the body of science are the values of science. These were outlined in 1966 by the Educational Policies Commission of NEA in a booklet entitled "Educatlon and the S p ~ r iof t Science," and they were advocated then as the central purpose of education in a democratic society (3,4). In brief these values are 1) Longing to know and to understand 2) Questioning of all things 3) Search for data and their meaning 4) Demand for verification 5) Respect for logic 6) Consideration of premises 7) Consideration of Consequences
These are, I believe, the values of science, and they are values sorely needed by anyone attempting to live a sensible life in a complex, technological world. They are not values that are commonly held, and they are not the values we are teachine ~ ~ in colleees ~ ~ ~ ~ " ~and schools. Along with the values of science, we must communicate what 1 call apersonal faith in science hut what Arno Penzias, 1978 Nobel Laureate in physics, has called a feeling of comDetence. What we both mean is a helief that everyone is capable of understanding the natural world. This is not to say
that everyone has the background needed to comprehend all that is known; rather, i t is a belief that everyone is capable of acquiring that background if they choose to do so. Science is not something mysterious that is accessible only to an elite anymore than God is something mysterious that is accessible only to an elite. I n a apwch delivered at the 1980 mwting ut'the N~tional Scit:ncc'l'~arher~ Aiswiarim, I'ewias argued thar "one way to help develop feelings of competence~wouldbe to stop gratuitously defeatmg our students. Science is hard enough without putting in artificial barriers. . .without making it so difficult" (5). As we teach science today, and as science is presented to the general public, it is made amazing, esoteric, awe-inspiring, and recluires intellectual skills that some have not developed. whether by intent or by accident, most individuals are led to believe that only a few individuals have the special talents needed to understand these mysteries. In giving an example of how we intimidate those who come to strengthen their faith, Penzias both illustrates the problem and suggests the solution "I used to state Hubhle's law to an audience, relating it in
mathematical terms to the Big Bang Theory-and get people to nod their heads. Having heard it for the first time, most people didn't understand Hubhle's law but, ironically,felt that everyone around them did. Foitunately, someone finally said, 'I don't understsnd.'Now I get the same points across with physical models, like foot races and a rising dough filled with raisins. And I get something much better than polite nods: I get questions from the audience." (5) If we are to convince the puhlic that science is comprehensible. we must eet them to comnrehend some science-not " all science, just some science. What science? Well, it probably doesn't matter a great deal, hut the closer we get to issues that impinge on the lives of students, the more likely they are to attend long enough and intensely enough to comprehend. Penzias speaks of how artificial the textbook problems on friction can be and how little they actually tell us about real problems. To illustrate, he cites his heated arguments with other Ph.D. physicists on the subject of whether one should increase or decrease the ait in a tire in order to increase traction. He then suggests that students try to find the answer to this question or;nvestigate the reasons that half of the population seems to tie their shoelaces wrong, as a way to gain hetter understanding of science. I would endorse his suggestions. One of the more interesting teaching experiences that I have had was a 9th grade general science class that I helped teach almost twenty years ago. Nobody wanted to teach general science and nobody wanted to learn it, so we designed a new program. Every teacher with any science background taught one unit, and students rotated from minicourse to minicourse each grading period. In each unit we focused on the processes of science and selected content strictly on the basis of anticipated interest or student need. The cold war was real in 1961, so one unit was on Atomic Energy and Civil Defense. Using Geiger counters and radioactive sources supplied by civil defense, students measured radiation and investigated the shielding effects of various materials. They discussed the physical and physiological consequences of an atomic explosion and resulting radiation. They searched for data and their meaning; they were encouraged to use logic and to question the logic of others. They anneared interested and seemed to learn. .. Kitchen Chemistry and H011sehold Fnergy were two units. I taught a unit on The Physical Geology uf Woodford Co., Kentucky, nnt hecause it has the most interesting geology in the world. hut herause it was home. Students were fascinated when they found hundredsof fosiili in the limestone along the river and then wondered how the tossilsaot there, and n hy a particular fossil was found in one layer but not another. Volume 59
Number 7 July 1982
561
It was the Geophysical Year and the MoHole was being dug, so we talked about that, and Sputnik, and how one could possibly know the distance to the moon, much less get there! In the process we talked about things like parallax. In fact, we used parallax to measure the length of the science room and discussed how the same process could be used to measure the distance to the moon. We learned something about uncertainty in the process, and we developed a healthy skepticism concerning many numbers seen in print. We learned to estimate, and to appreciate the difference between lo2and loz0.But to me it is important that we were not studying uncertainty and exponents as a "topic"-as some fact or concept that was part of the curriculum to be mastered. Instead, it was a natural result of our longing to know and to understand how far it is to the moon. The best unit in our course was The Psychology and Physiology of Adolescence. I t was taught by the guidance counselor who happened to have his B.S. in biology, and it dealt with 9th grade students. Students were asked why they behaved as they did, why boys found it easier to think about girls than to think about the stamen and pistil in a lily, why some had grown 4 inches in a year and kept bumping their heads, while others were self-conscious about being so small, or why they now blushed about things that had not fazed them 2 years before. I do not recall iust how much theoretical material we included in our units. I know there was some, hut it seems to me that it was alwavs when it helned students understand what they had already observed, rather than to prepare them for somethine ..vet . to come. It came up when it seemed sensible to them rather rhan when it sermed sensil~leto us. It isdifficult to rrmemhrr that an idea that is simple to one steeped in theology may he incomprehensih~eto a layman. Altrr tx:ing immersed in science fur half or more of our lives, we are not very good at rememl~eringhow we thought as we began our sru(ly. Things that are simple and stra~ghtforward to us now are n~mplexm d difficult to those with a different background, I teach an education course for science and math students a t Purdue. One of the most instructive events in the course takes place when students teach mini lessons, and the math
562
Journal of Chemical Education
maiors are amazed at how ~ o o r l vthe science maiors follow the language of sets or read thk symbols used in modern algehra. Likewise, science majors find that terms like mole, equilibrium, reaction kinetics, and moment are not understood by the math majors. (The unfortunate part is that each group interprets this as evidence of the other's stupidity.) We are inclined to believe it is impossible to convey our ideas without our special language, without our ritual, without our formalism. We have despiritualized our sacraments. We are nedantic., we auibble over scholastic theolow. . "- . and we need a Reformation. Instead of insisting that the people come to us, the priests, on our terms, we need to spend more effort training country parsons who have developed the skill to translate scientific scripture into the language of the people. Perhaps Glenn Crosbv had such . people . in mind when he rerwnmended that we dr\,elq>a ( w i r s nfcoursei in chemistry t h;it (wuld ht' taken, understcod, and appreciated hy the poe~s, the political scientists, and the businessmajors in our schools. I think that Professor Croshy is right, but I think that the courses must he post-Reformation courses, and I'm not sure that those with traditional priestly training will teach such courses. Perhaps the parallel that I have drawn between science and religion is too strained. Perhaps a modern change in world view comparable to the older change that we call the Reformation is imoossible or imorooer. I do not know. What I do know is that science affects buriives more and more and there is little erowth in scientific literacv. I sense a erowine strain b e t ~ e e ~ t priesthood he and the peasants, a strain thatwill he relieved one wav or another. I hope that i t happens so that society reaps thk many benefits df science and deals ohjectively with the concomitant problems. Literature Cited (11 Spih, Lewis W.. "The Protestant Rcformstion..l Prentiee-Hall.EnglewwdCliffs. NJ. 1966, pp. 34.
121 Lepkowski. Wil.Chem. Enx. Neiue.58 i181.11-26 (19801. (31 "Education and theSpirit uiSeienee.(. EduestionalPulieiesCommiasionoffheNational Education Assuciation, Washingion, O.C. 1966. (&l Hermn. J. 0.. ThsSeience Toocher. 44 (31.30-31 11971). 151 Ponzias. Arno,Spooeh presented at the 19S0ConventionofNationalSciencoT~ach.rs Association, as quoted in The Science Teocher. 47 (51 1P-20 (19801.
(61 Sale, Kirkpatrick, Newnu~ek.95.12
118801.
