Science History Lessons

On the idolatry of modern science as arbiter of truth, Jones and Wilson say:

The odd thing is that science has a rather ridiculous track record to serve as such a powerful veto-house of truth. If we think in terms of centuries and millennia, few other disciplines turn inside-out so flippantly and quickly as the natural sciences…. The history of science provides great strength to the inductive inference that, at any point in its history, that day’s science will almost certainly be deemed false, if not laughable, within a century (often in much less time). As the saying goes, if you marry the science of today, you will be a widow tomorrow.

If the history of science were a single person, we certainly wouldn’t let that person drive heavy machinery or carry sharp objects. Nonetheless, he could serve some useful functions. And he might do some better than others. But to set him up as the premier standard and priest of rationality is a bit too much to ask. We need to evaluate science with a more long-term, medieval view.

Just one of the good moments in Jones, Douglas, and Wilson, Douglas, Angels in the Architecture: a Protestant Vision for Middle Earth (Moscow, Canon Press, 1998), p55f.