Science Acting Like Belief

Near the end of Émile Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of Religious Life comes an important statement on the relationship of science to religious belief:

It is not enough for [scientific concepts] to be true for them to be believed. If they are not in harmony with other beliefs, other opinions, in a word with the whole gamut of collective representations, they will be denied; minds will be closed to them; they will be as if they never were. [333-4]

We run into this now all the time, but its dynamic is not often understood. On the one hand there is the question of what is true about some aspect of reality. Science can come up with convincing answers to these questions. But on the other hand the spread and acceptance of those answers among a plurality of the population has nothing to do with the correctness of the science and everything to do with belief. In other words whether people believe in global warming will be a question that operates in the same sphere as “Will the Rapture occur next year?” This does not mean that a religious claim has the same validity as science, it just means that scientific ideas act like a religious claim when they hit the marketplace of ideas. People have a strong tendency to adopt the beliefs that fit in best with their interests.

This is a discouraging fact. It explains why evolution and global warming, despite broad empirical evidence, do not have a strong hold on the minds of millions of Americans. And unfortunately science is not always furnished with the best tools to win on the open marketplace, as Durkheim notes:

…for faith is above all an impulse to act, and science, even pushed to its limits, always remains at a distance from action. Science is fragmentary, incomplete; it progresses slowly and is never finished; life cannot wait. [326]

It’s true! Life can’t wait. We need to do something about the carbon in the atmosphere! To overcome this inherent slowness about science Al Gore or other environmental activists work to get the information out.. and they accomplish this by acting more like a religious organization.

The importance of associations and popular acceptance of ideas is largely underplayed.. as we like to imagine it as a fight between knowledge and ignorance, which misses the social dynamic. An example of this dynamic is in Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, during an extended (and hilarious) discussion about Darwin. The father al-Sayyid Ahmed is upset about an article his son has written on this guy Darwin, and demands heatedly:

All religions believe in Adam. What sect does this Darwin belong to? He’s an atheist, his words are blasphemous, and reporting his theory’s a reckless act. Tell me: Is he one of your professors at the college? [891]

Of course Darwin did not teach at the University of Cairo. He was an Englishman.. but that turns out to be the worst of all:

Let you stance in regard to English science be the same as yours toward their occupation of Egypt. Do not admit the legality of either, even when imposed on us by force. [895]

That’s a perfect example of what Durkheim was talking about. A scientist from England had a specific theory based on empirical evidence, but the association between England and the occupation of Egypt meant that this theory would be rejected out of hand. Like it or not, this is how things work in our world.

The American history of anti-evolution resembles this little vignette from the Cairo Trilogy. Remember that Origin of Species was published in 1859, and that this coincides with our Civil War. Evolution first arrived and found acceptance in the North, but it arrived in the South at a point when all things northern were suspect—rejected out of hand. And as the South came to dominate American religious life over the course of the next century, anti-evolutionism spread apace. That, at least, is the way I recall the story going. The point being that ideas are subject to historical and social forces that are often unforeseeable.