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Saturday, May 5, 2012

Physics or Philatelics?

To The Theologian,

"All science is either physics or stamp collecting. "
   - attributed to Sir Ernest Rutherford


Physicists have not always been very generous about the other sciences.  Even those who admit that physics is not the only objective scientific enterprise see in physics, with its intellectual coherence and spectacular success in explaining and predicting the physical aspects of the universe, a paragon of science to which other endeavours may aspire.


"To set itself in systematic relationship to other sciences, theology would have to regard its own separate existence as necessary in principle.  But this is the very thing which it cannot do.  It cannot think of itself as a link in an ordered cosmos, but only as a stop-gap in a disordered cosmos"

"The only way which theology has of proving its scientific character is to devote itself to the task of knowledge as determined by its actual theme and thus to show what it means by true science"


So how does a physicist respond to Barth's claim that dogmatics is a scientific discipline?  Firstly, perhaps, a relief that Barth is not trying to build a grand metaphysical edifice that attempts to unify everything under the sun into a universal (and hence artificial) synthesis.  And secondly, hopefully, a healthy respect that in using the the adjective "scientific", Barth is emphatically not seeking to justify or apologise for the existence of theology as independent discipline.  Indeed he is quite clear that rather than seek to conform to to external notion of  what a science should be, it must above all seek to be true to its own object of knowledge.  Somewhat ironically, this freedom to pursue its own definite path of knowledge  (which means it does not have to be a science) is what gives dogmatics a 'solidarity' with other such human concerns for truth (and hence a scientific character).


"As a theological discipline dogmatics is the scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God."


The successful scientific disciplines are (IMHO) those that are deliberately limited (one could say 'focussed') in their scope and empirical in their methodology (i.e. continually  and rigorously testing their findings against an objective reality). In the case of physics, this means first always seeking to discern the essential physics in a situation - while this means ignoring many complexities in a situation as mere superficial details (all cows are spherical, for example, with legs and other appendages as incidental perturbations), it does lead to penetrating insight and allows for the powerful application of general physics principles).  Second, it means that physics must constrain itself to statements that can be quantitatively tested in the laboratory or by observation.

Hence it resonated with me that in this section Barth highlights both the limited scope of theology and its empirical nature.  It is limited in that is focussed on the examination of the church's proclamation, i.e. the collective christian talk about God, and it is empirical in that is seeks to continually test the coherence of this proclamation against the "being of the church", i.e. it continually asks whether the talk of the church is true to its origins.  

Barth's theological undertaking is undeniably vast and perhaps not a little bit intimidating.  But it is perhaps these simple constraints that give it such insight and utility.

Regards,
The Physicist.

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