“And
God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth, and subdue it;’” (Genesis 1:28a, NAS).
Science
has proven to be a very useful tool, enabling mankind to fulfill God’s commands
to fill and subdue the earth. Simply
put, science uses a systematic method of gathering information to help us
understand how God has made everything from atoms to galaxies. Industry then capitalizes on the information
that science provides to make new and better medicines, to genetically engineer
seeds that produce more abundant crops, and to build faster computers. But practically speaking, how does science
work? What do scientists do?
Instead
of describing what I do in the lab as a polymer chemist, it might be easier if
I describe how the tool of science could be used in the kitchen. Last week I made a batch of biscuits (yes, I
enjoy cooking almost as much as chemistry).
Making good biscuits is easy.
Just use a pastry cutter to blend flour, baking powder, and a dash of
salt with butter. The blend should be light
and crumbly, not heavy and pasty, or dry and dusty. Then add milk all at once and quickly stir
just enough to get a uniform mixture.
Spoon out dabs about the size of a walnut on a cookie sheet, and bake for
10 minutes in a pre-heated 425 F degree oven.
Mmm! I like them best hot out of
the oven with honey, and I don’t mind the sticky fingers. J
Now
for the science. Why does the recipe
call for three teaspoons of baking powder, and what will happen if I use two or
four teaspoons? Easy enough, I just whip
up a few batches with different amounts of baking powder and see what
happens. You guessed it, with less
baking powder the biscuits do not rise as much, and with more they rise
more. But how much more? I measure the exact size of my biscuits and
make a mathematical correlation between the size (volume) of my biscuits and
the amount of baking powder used. I
might end up with an equation like this:
Volume
of biscuits in cubic centimeters = (rise factor) x (teaspoons of baking powder)
Once
I run several more experiments to make sure that I have correctly determined
the value of the rise factor, I’ll begin to feel like I’m gaining an understanding
of the science of biscuit making.
However, being the inquisitive scientist that I am, I will then go on to
study how biscuit quality changes with the amount of butter, flour, milk, and
salt used, as well as with baking time and temperature. It is simply a matter of systematically
changing each of my variables (cups of flour, oven temperature, baking time),
and then observing/ measuring results (biscuit size, color, taste).
There
is so much that we can learn when science done well, like how to make the
perfect biscuit, but I have found that science can be un-safe for us scientists. The practice of science tends to produce in
us a peculiar arrogance. If I study
biscuit making in great detail, I will want to publish my results in a
prestigious scientific culinary journal (please bear with just a bit of
tongue-in-cheek here). I will likely
then be invited to speak about my work in symposiums on food chemistry. Within a few years I will aspire becoming
known as the world’s leading expert in the field of biscuit science. Over time I may come to identify myself so
strongly with the fine science of making biscuits that I will conveniently
forget that good biscuits have been made by little known cooks for hundreds of
years. It is so easy as a scientist to lose
sight of the fact that I did not create the biscuit, I merely study it.
Science
also has limitations. Though it can be
used to systematically study and gain knowledge about everything from atoms to biscuits
to galaxies, it has marginal value as a tool to help us gain knowledge about
anything that cannot be directly observed, measured, and studied in a
systematic way. How can I use the tool of science to unfold
the mystery of love, beauty, joy, or truth*?
Science is powerless to probe the spiritual realm, to prove or disprove
the existence of spirits, gods, or God.
Science has made great strides understanding the workings of God’s
creation, even how He might have gone about making it, but science cannot tell
us why He created the universe. More
importantly science cannot tell us why we were created.
*Neuroscience
is capable of monitoring the chemical and electrical changes in our brains that
occur as we observe a beautiful sunset, read a love poem, or grapple with moral
issues, but I would contend that beauty, love, and truth are more than the
measured responses of our brains to these intangibles.
