Huston Smith interviewed in SF Gate
One of my favorite religious scholars, Huston Smith, is interviewed in today's SF Gate. Given my personal interest in reconciling science and religion, I was particularly intrigued by this part of the conversation:
Q: And the scientific method, as you see it, has led to the spread of secularism. Some people might not consider that a problem. Why do you think it is?
A: When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones.
This has yielded many great things -- washing machines, microwaves, a significantly longer life expectancy, to name a few. But those discoveries were so good that we overlooked something. We thought the scientific method was giving us omnicompetence (an understanding of all things). It isn't.
We are physical beings, but we also have a spirit. Science relies on our physical senses, mostly our vision, for its discoveries. But there are some things that our physical senses do not detect. Nobody has ever seen a thought. Nobody has ever seen a feeling. And yet the world of our thoughts and feelings is the primary world in which we live.
Q: And the scientific method, as you see it, has led to the spread of secularism. Some people might not consider that a problem. Why do you think it is?
A: When the scientific method came into being, it gave us a new window on the truth; namely, a method by laboratory-controlled experiments to winnow true hypotheses from false ones.
This has yielded many great things -- washing machines, microwaves, a significantly longer life expectancy, to name a few. But those discoveries were so good that we overlooked something. We thought the scientific method was giving us omnicompetence (an understanding of all things). It isn't.
We are physical beings, but we also have a spirit. Science relies on our physical senses, mostly our vision, for its discoveries. But there are some things that our physical senses do not detect. Nobody has ever seen a thought. Nobody has ever seen a feeling. And yet the world of our thoughts and feelings is the primary world in which we live.
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