God's Universe

I really wanted to like this book, given Prof. Gingerich's marvelous whodunit story The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus. Unfortunately it is a great book but like the spotted apple, it has a few flaws. Thus, I can only give it a "PG" -- some guidance is needed.

The plan of the book is marvelous and inspirational.

Lecture 1 treats the Copernican principle of "mediocracy" -- a very common viewpoint (most definitely not held by Copernicus) that there is nothing special about the human creation, man's earthly dwelling, or indeed his place in the cosmos. This, in contrast to the view of his contemporaries, that the earth was literally the center of the universe. Prof. Gingerich's treatment is generally excellent ending with (p40) "Quite possibly mediocracy is not a good idea."

Lecture 2 takes the opposite tack: that the cosmos, solar system and life on earth are the products of marvelous, exquisite, one might say unbelievable (except here we are!) fine tuning and/or phenomenally improbable contingency. Here his own biases in favor of a creator God shine forth, but with a true and remarkable humility.

Lecture 3 ties the previous lectures together in "Questions without Answers" which ends up with the view (I agree) that true science cannot exist without metascience, but that metascience cannot be asserted with the same confidence that is possible in science. Both are needed, but should be presented with some modesty and room for alternative views. Thus atheists should not claim that science can dispense with the "God hypothesis" and theists should not claim that God is "proved" by the scientific evidence.

Unfortunately in carrying out this good plan the author exposes some serious presumptions that taint the presentation. I first suspected this in his introductory remark (p9) "Intelligent Design is misguided when presented as an alternative to the naturalistic explanations offered by science, which do not explicitly require the hand of God." This may play well to the anti-ID crowd -- particularly to those who were offended by Michael Behe's ground-breaking book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution or Michael Denton's similarly marvelous books Evolution: A Theory In Crisis and Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe -- but it is a straw man. And it is disappointing that a scientist who so clearly does believe in ID would say such a thing. For one thing, I don't know a single ID proponent who presents ID as an "alternative to naturalistic explanations" when such explanations are efficacious. After a bit of reflection, though, I suspect that the author just mis-spoke. ID is a hypothesis that applies when the naturalistic explanations are fantastic "just so" stories.

Throughout the book, and particularly in Lecture 2, this muddle-headed view about ID comes out. What is needed is a very clear and concise statement of what is actually (or should be) the ID position. My own view is a take-off of Barnes' view of special revelation in Lectures on the evidences of Christianity in the nineteenth century: Delivered in the Mercer street church, New York, January 21 to February 21, 1867, ... on the evidences of Christianity. 1st ser) where he states, "It can not be supposed that God would give by miracle a special revelation when he had already furnished, in another mode, all that is needful for man, or that there would be two methods of communicating the divine will on the same subject. God does not give special revelations on those subjects which are quite within the range of the human powers." (p.17). This gives a nice statement of what we should expect the inspired sriptures to tell us -- which excludes statements of science: we do not get science from the Bible, although Barnes (and I) believe that the Bible does not contradict science if both are truly understood and sympathetically interpreted.

Here is my parallel statement about Creation: "It can not be supposed that God would perform by fiat a creative act when he had already furnished, in the natural world, all that is needful to perform that act of creation. God does not create by fiat those things which are quite within the range of natural processes." Thus Bertrand Russell's "world [that] came into existence five minutes ago, complete with my memories and the holes in my socks." and "starlight created on the way" are excluded. [ref: Little, J. 1980. "Evolution: Myth, Metaphysics, or Science?" New Scientist, 87(1217):708-709.]

I would [almost] have revered Prof. Gingerich if he had said something along these lines. But unfortunately he didn't, and his remarks muddle up the issue. The real transgression of secular scientists is that they invoke a kind of anthropic principle of their own, rather than sticking to the business of constructing true scientific demonstrations: we are here and so it must be possible to do the job naturally, and so invent just-so stories to cover the gaps: A and B share traits (genes?) of C and therefore they must be descended from C (or have a common ancestor). This is not science. This is metascience. Science is demonstration -- give me a plausible scientific explanation of how A and B descend from C or a common ancestor. A creator is quite able to re-use genes!

One book that in my view heads in the right direction along these lines is Sean Caroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo (see my review of that book). That is where evolutionary biology should be working, not in perpetuating fantastic stories to avoid ID.

I can't end without noting another flaw (gratuitous, because it has nothing to do with the theme of the talks): the supposed erroneous Hebrew value for pi, citing I Kings 7:23 (p11). The Biblical mention clearly is not intended as a scientific statement, or a "practical" statement either, but just as a casual approximation. Any apprentice that cut a 30" band to go around a 10" diameter bowl would immediately be pommelled around the head and shoulders. NO craftsman would accept such a value for pi, and so the Biblical reference is clearly nothing more than a general statement, on a par with "the sun rises in the morning." In contrast, the Greek value 22/7 for pi is acceptable to a craftsman -- it's a small overestimate (0.001+). In fact of course it is impossible to write in words what the value of pi is, and so it is doubly ridiculous to point out "error" in the Bible on this point.

Gingerich is a professor of both Astronomy and the History of Science at Harvard, and he is also a devout Christian (a blurb on the back says he's a liberal Christian, but there is nothing here that someone in, say, the Presbyterian Church in America, a theologically conservative group, could declare liberal). This book is the publication of his three William Belden Noble Lectures, which are an annual endowed lectureship at Harvard on a theme in Christian thought.

The lectures paint a picture of how Gingerich fits together science and religion as a religious scientist. He rejects young earth creationism as being out of line with the facts, though he doesn't dwell on it. He believes in intelligent design, but he doesn't support the teaching of Intelligent Design in the science classroom because it is not science proper since it invokes God explicitly ("This [rejection of ID] does not mean that the universe is actually godless, just that science within its own framework has no other way of working."). He accepts evolution as a mechanism, but he rejects it when it moves from science to philosophy, becoming an ultimate explanation. This point, to my mind, is the crux of the book.

Gingerich discusses the difference between efficient (or proximate) causes and ultimate causes. C. S. Lewis illustrated this distinction with a boiling tea kettle: one may ask, why is it boiling? The proximate cause is the heat applied to the kettle combined with the laws of thermodynamics, but the ultimate (perhaps penultimate) cause is that Mrs. Lewis wants some tea.

The scientific enterprise is only competent to discuss mechanisms, i.e., proximate causes. When it ventures into ultimate causes (affirming or denying), it has left physics for metaphysics. Physics is discovering the laws of nature, the mechanisms by which our world operates -- many of which are inherently imprecise and inscrutable -- and "thinking God's thoughts after him." Metaphysics addresses, among other things, why the universe exists rather than not, why it is amenable to scientific investigation at all, and what is its destiny -- in other words, the religious questions.

I appreciate Gingerich's humility and non-dogmatic approach to such metaphysical questions. His arguments therein are not proofs. The essence of his case for his own metaphysical framework is aptly summarized in his quotation from Polkinghorne: "I think I have good reasons for my beliefs, but I do not for a moment suppose that my atheistic friends are simply stupid not to see it my way. I do believe, however, that religious belief can explain more than unbelief can do." (Compare that to the dogmatism and arrogance that characterize Dawkins, et al.)

All in all, it's a short, interesting, and refreshingly non-polemical book. I recommend it.

This short book is based on the Nobel lectures presented by Dr. Gingerich in 2005 at Harvard. Gingerich was a long time professor of astronomy and the history of science at Harvard, as well as the senior astronomer at the Smithsonian Observatory. His book excels in that it is brief, and offers a beautiful perspective for seeing the universe and understanding the history of scientific discovery.

First, this book is not an apologetic in my opinion. Gingerich is not trying to defend his faith, nor to argue for interpreting the world in a certain way. He's not trying to show how faith proves science or vice versa as many apologetic books do. There are no "proofs" in this book, but instead a glimpse into how one scientist sees God's at work in the seemingly natural.

Second, in regards to the history of scientific ideals (and particularly astronomy), it is very common to hear the stories of Galileo and Copernicus as evidence of faith and science being in conflict. Gingerich, who is one of the world's most renowned scholars on Copernicus, tells a different story. His is of a conflict between interpretations among theologians as well as scientists and how the Roman Catholic response to the Copernicus situation may have actually been a response due to an overreaction to certain reformations. The dispute which was not the church against one man, but between a split within the church, may have actually been more about theology than science. The story he tells is much more complex and interesting than the simplistic form that is so often mentioned by those who see science and faith in conflict.

Third, I read the book on my Kindle, and this is one of those books that is perfect for the Kindle, so I would highly recommend it for Kindle users. At the same time, I realize that much of the information contained in this book can easily be found for free in the form of audio lectures Gingerich has presented at Calvin College, the American Scientific Affiliation, the Faraday Institute and other venues.

The author believes in "a universe created with intention and purpose by a loving God." Gingerich posits that "...the estimated number of stars in all the galaxies in the universe vastly exceeds the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the world.." Consequently, "given the wealth of possibilities, countless habitable environments must be scattered throughout these starry realms." We are probably not alone, thus, and just because life as we know it isn't likely elsewhere in our solar system, doesn't mean there's no God. Yes, scientists can explain how some living being was able to crawl out of the sea, and even from whence it came, how it adapts, etc., but WHY IS ANY OF THIS EVEN POSSIBLE? That's the point of this short book (really a collection of several lectures made into essays). "What passes for truth in science is a comprehensive pattern of interconnected answers to questions posed to nature---explanations of how things work (efficient causes), though not necessarily why they work (final causes)." Just because how something works is explainable doesn't make it natural. Besides, if it was so natural, why hasn't it occurred anywhere else in out solar system? Couldn't there be room for both a God and a natural explanation, in other words? Can't they be at least semi-complementary? That's Dr. Gingerich's view and if you are interested to know more have a look at this book (though I'd suggest you borrow it from your library since it can be read in 3 hours---the 160 pages are small and the print is huge). Cheers

Owen Gingerich, astronomer, historian of science, and Christian whose roots are anabaptist, has written a brief and thoughtful book (originally the Belden Noble lectures) that explores several issues: the possibility of a designed universe, the anthropic principle, the relationship between scientific, metaphysical, and theological propositions, and questions that intrigue but appear to be unanswerable ("why is the universe comprehensible?"). Throughout, Gingerich's claims are really more suggestions and hypotheses than nailed-down conclusions, and this is loyal to his conviction that metaphysical claims are of a different caliber than scientific ones.

Gingerich opens his discussion by reflecting on what he calls the "Copernican Principle" (one, he acknowledges, that would've horrified the man after whom it's named): the standard scientific assumption that there's nothing special about either humans or earth. The principle is so commonly accepted because of the assumption that it has scientific leverage. But Gingerich wonders if it fits facts on the ground such as the neural makeup of humans or the cosmological finessing that make the universe receptive to life. Ginergich's main discussion of the anthropic principle is mid-book, pp. 48-59.

He explores the relation of natural law to the possibility of design (although he's no Intelligent Design-er, he does think that the evidence suggests some kind of design), and in a striking simile suggests that the universe is perhaps like a Lego set: there's no predetermining overarching blueprint, but the interlocking parts are designed. So design is open-ended.

Finally, he suggests that scientific naturalism is a necessary method in the sciences, and that metaphysical and theological beliefs need to be kept separate if good science is to be done. He also criticizes--quite rightly, in my estimation--people like Dawkins who, while claiming to be doing science, actually drag in metaphysical claims when they deny the existence of God (of course the same criticism applies to ID advocates). But Gingerich is persuaded that reality allows for "multiple layers of explanation" (p. 72) because it's what Nancy Cartwright so tellingly calls a "dappled universe," and that there's no good reason for an overall privileging of one layer over another.

A fine little book. Four and a half stars. Highly recommended.