What is True Science?

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Geremia

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Pope Pius IX and Pope Pius X condemned these propositions, respectively: Catholicism is compatible with modern civilization (Syllabus of Errors, 80.) and Catholicism is incompatible with true science (Lamentabili sane, 65.). Comparing these two condemnations, one infers that modern civilization and true science are not compatible. So, what is true science?
 
True Science, I don’t know what that is, for sure. I just know science. It’s a method for finding out about the physical universe. So far, nothing else we’ve tried has worked as well.

So we keep using it. “True Science” may not be the same thing; perhaps it’s the scienta that translates into “knowledge.” That would be a much broader and more comprehensive sort of understanding, that could also take in the supernatural.
 
Geremia said:
So, what is true science?
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Fides et Ratio 106 states:

Finally, I cannot fail to address a word to scientists, whose research offers an ever greater knowledge of the universe as a whole and of the incredibly rich array of its component parts, animate and inanimate, with their complex atomic and molecular structures. So far has science come, especially in this century, that its achievements never cease to amaze us. In expressing my admiration and in offering encouragement to these brave pioneers of scientific research, to whom humanity owes so much of its current development, I would urge them to continue their efforts without ever abandoning the sapiential horizon within which scientific and technological achievements are wedded to the philosophical and ethical values which are the distinctive and indelible mark of the human person. Scientists are well aware that “the search for truth, even when it concerns a finite reality of the world or of man, is never-ending, but always points beyond to something higher than the immediate object of study, to the questions which give access to Mystery”.

So true science then, is science which maintains a sapiential dimension to it. That is, a conviction, rationally held that there us an overarching meaning to life. An agreement that it is reasonable to postulate that there is some cohesion, purpose, reason and connectedness to the cosmos.

Example? What about the recent stem cell debate? Scientists wanted to harvest embryonic stem cell tissue for research, disposing of the unwanted babies after the procedure. Thankfully, president Bush stopped this from happening, for which he suffered a great deal of criticism, until it was found that they could use adult stem cells to greater effect. If the scientists had maintained a sapiential dimension to their thinking, they would have avoided killing unborn children in order to carry out their research in the first place.
 
I don’t even know what you are asking here. Could you please make that question a…little more specific?
 
FightingFat said:
Thankfully, president Bush stopped this from happening,
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While not wanting to derail this thread, this statement is not true. President Bush prohibited the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research except for those lines of stem cells derived from embryos that were in use at the time of the ban. Private or state-level funding for embryonic stem cell research has always been available.

Peace

Tim
 
FightingFat said:
So true science then, is science which maintains a sapiential dimension to it. That is, a conviction, rationally held that there us an overarching meaning to life. An agreement that it is reasonable to postulate that there is some cohesion, purpose, reason and connectedness to the cosmos.
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So the science of today’s society is not sapiential since it is atheistic, close-minded empiricism which contains an inherent contradiction: that science itself, not Logos, is the “overarching meaning to life” and that human reason is the only extant type of reason?
 
Geremia said:
So the science of today’s society is not sapiential since it is atheistic, close-minded empiricism which contains an inherent contradiction: that science itself, not Logos, is the “overarching meaning to life” and that human reason is the only extant type of reason?
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Seems reasonable! 👍
 
Orogeny said:
While not wanting to derail this thread, this statement is not true. President Bush prohibited the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research except for those lines of stem cells derived from embryos that were in use at the time of the ban. Private or state-level funding for embryonic stem cell research has always been available.

Peace

Tim
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Sorry! :o Teach me to talk (type?) off the top of my head! Still, doesn’t spoil the gist of my argument does it?
 
It’s the only kind of reason we can use to produce any meaningful empirical results in science, that’s right.

In fact, you may have indeed be acquainted with the notion that if God is really that omni-everything, outside spatiotemporality, there is nothing meaningful we can say about such a being anyway, so mh - that’s what religion and stuff is for, I guess, but not science. In its way, that is a very disciplined viewpoint indeed.
 
Nepenthe said:
In fact, you may have indeed be acquainted with the notion that if God is really that omni-everything, outside spatiotemporality, there is nothing meaningful we can say about such a being anyway, so mh - that’s what religion and stuff is for, I guess, but not science. In its way, that is a very disciplined viewpoint indeed.
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We can say lots, thanks to Revelation.
 
/Which sure as heck has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific method. Thank you.
 
Nepenthe said:
/Which sure as heck has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific method. Thank you.
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Sorry you feel that way. I kind of feel that metaphysics is an essential part of maintaining a genuine metaphysical range to our thinking. Being is everything for us after all, and an a priori dismissal of the metaphysical can do nothing exceot limit out openess to being IMO. Our meta must go from phenomenon to foundation, encompassing material, human, spiritual and divine being. In understanding the tiniest bit about being it is possible to understand something about everything

Ask yourself- can we reject the reality of God? There are a thousand rational objections—not only in Jesus time, but throughout all generations and today maybe more than ever. For we have developed a concept of reality that excludes reality’s translucence to God. The only thing that counts as real is what can be experimentally proven.

In the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31) the rich man dies and in knowledge of what awaits his family cries out for more evidence of revelation to be sent to his family.

The highest truths cannot be forced into the type of empirical evidence that only applies to material reality. If a miracle were indeed provided as the rich man requests, there is still every possibility that it will simply lead to a hardening of hearts as evidenced in John 11:45-53.

God cannot be constrained into experimentation and thus we are free to reject the parables’ message. This means, though, that the parables are ultimately an expression of God’s hiddenness in this world and of the fact that knowledge of God always lays claim to the whole person—that such a knowledge is one with life itself. Knowledge of God only comes through the gift of God’s love becoming visible to you—but this gift too has to be accepted.

God’s sign for men is the Son of Man; it is Jesus himself. And at the deepest level, he is this sign in his Paschal Mystery, in the mystery of His death and resurrection.

Hope you get there. 😉
 
Dameedna said:
What’s the difference between true science and science?

Science is a search for truth. Religion, is an assumption of it.
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I think that’s a terribly narrow definition. Science follows in God’s footsteps in many ways. Christian faith (rather than ‘religion’) is an exposition of the truth about who and what we are and why we are here.
 
It’s no narrower than your ‘definition’, but it’s a whole lot more euphonious, and what’s more, to the point.
 
True science, in opposition to for instance pseudo-science, is these days understood as the method of methodical, analytical and repeatable research combined with preferable mathematical integration and subsequently test and experiment, by which one tries to gain reliable, but also provisional and refutable knowledge on parts of the researchable reality. True science has nothing to do whatsoever with metaphysics, world view, belief system, etcetera, other than that it delivers data and insights for reflecting on the deeper nature of reality. Though very often – see for instance Dannett, Dawkins and Gould – science is seen as one with metaphysics, in this case materialism.
 
  1. Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a non-dogmatic Christianity; that is to say, into a broad and liberal Protestantism.
I believe this line from the encyclical is a condemned statement being made by modernists that good science and religion are totally incompatible unless religion changes to meet the “facts”. This incompatibility in actual fact does not exist and this Pope is pointing that out. “True” science is a modernist mis-conception that what can’t be observed, weighed, and measured cannot be true.👍
 
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