Scientific Faith vs. Scientific Religion
“Bats are SUCH bitches.”
I have been sitting with this opening line in a Ted Chiang interview from 2002 since reading it last week: "All science fiction is fundamentally post-religious literature. For those whose minds are shaped by science and technology, the universe is fundamentally knowable. Faith dissolves, replaced by a sense of wonder at the complexity of creation."
What total trash.
That was my sincere first response.
In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer makes a point I think is essential:
"It is important to ... separate two ideas that are often synonymous in the mind of the public: the practice of science and the scientific worldview that it feeds" (emphases mine). She goes on to explain. The practice of science "brings the questioner into an unparalleled intimacy with nature fraught with wonder and creativity as we try to comprehend the mysteries of the more-than-human world." Here's the sentence I really want to highlight, though: "Trying to understand the life of another being or another system so unlike our own is often humbling and, for many scientists, is a deeply spiritual pursuit."
In contrast, the scientific worldview is one she claims uses science and technology to "reinforce reductionist, materialist economic and political agendas."
Item #1, then—the practice of science—is a faith. Faith doesn't dissolve with science; it is enlivened by it. Questions lead to more questions. Awe is magnified. People are invited in. Curiosity and risk are encouraged. Magic and myth and math and mystery and poetry and paradox are welcome. Quantum physics and the theory of relativity can both be true and yet fundamentally opposed.
Item #2, however—the scientific worldview—is a religion.
Religious scholar, Reza Aslan, understands religion as "first and foremost a matter of identity, not a matter of beliefs and practices." And identity structures are primarily concerned with creating clubs—places where some people are allowed and others are not. And because they are primarily concerned with who is in and who is out, religions are very concerned with matters of black and white. Religions believe that all things are knowable, that if you just follow a set of rules—whether dogma or the scientific method—you can conquer doubt. You are this and not that, never two things at once. In religion, anything queer is highly uncomfortable. Disruptors are silenced, questions are squelched, and awe and wonder are suffocated.
Science fiction, then, is actually a supreme act of faith. Imagining that the world might one day look differently than it does today is a creative, explosive, dangerous endeavor. It is extremely vulnerable and full of contradictions. And, I'm taking real liberties here, but Ted Chiang—the author of "Stories of Your Life," which inspired the movie Arrival—strikes me as a dude that believes in faith. A person who understands that even science is often sloppy. As Dr. Banks says in the movie, "We need ... to understand the difference between a weapon and a tool. Language can be messy, and sometimes one can be both."
Given this, let us not forget that science is a tool.
The point is not to know everything.
The point is the joy we feel in pursuing the questions.
