THE SUB-MYTH OF SCIENCE
Although it is not of itself a myth designed to give human dignity and meaning, the myth of science is so closely allied to the myth of progress and is a source of such hope for mankind that it is well to deal with it again briefly here.
To those who know very little about it, one source of absolutely dependable answers is science. Archaeologists, such people think, have an unbroken chain of unquestionable evidence moving step by step through endless eons of time back to the beginning. Doctors' diagnoses, even if confusing to the non-scientist must be accepted without question or doubt. Physicists have isolated the ultimate building blocks of all reality, and those blocks are solid and predictable in a way that the airy maunderings of philosophers can never be.
This ignorant trust is a rank disservice to serious scientists who are infinitely more cautious than their ill-instructed supporters. Physicists do not speak of the atomic �fact� but about the atomic theory (i.e., myth), and are far more hesitant to speak of truth and unchanging laws than the student who has had one course in basic physics. No physicist today would go to the wall for the - Niels Bohr model of the atom which we are all used to, with its sticks and colorful pellets. Since Heisenberg shot an electron at a shield with two holes and the electron went through both holes at the same time, no theoretical physicist would claim that the ultimate components of seemingly solid objects are indeed solid building blocks. Sub-atomic �particles� sometimes act like pellets and sometimes act like waves, and since no one has ever seen one, there are quite a few educated guesses regarding their nature � each of which is different but incapable of being called the answer.
Furthermore, Nobel prize-winning physicists now fabricate acceptable explanations for phenomena in, terms which would make a primitive aborigine [sic] hesitate: electrons which have positive charges because they are moving backwards in time; neutrons with no mass or extension or electric charge which have all the �physical� properties of ghosts; parallel lines which, meet in outer space, etc. The healthiest scientific research is, in fact, based on as many seemingly improbable explanations as any religion that people have ever known. And, very often, even though the scientist can�t literally see the realities he is studying he figuratively describes them. Yet, however bizarre the explanations seem, when he acts as if the, figurative explanation were literally true, things work out as he had predicted.
The atomic theory is a myth � a framework of ideas which temporarily organises our present data about subatomic particles and makes invisible realities a bit more easily understandable. The serious scientist readily acknowledges that it is a figurative way of describing a reality beyond our senses - not as it is but as it is like. The atomic myth like the progress myth, is inadequate to the reality it attempts to understand, but it is the best we have so far, and in its way, it works - most of the time.
Note, however, that whatever is the ultimate composition of physical objects is not a myth, but the way we describe that reality is a myth.
O�Malley., S. J. (1980). The Living Word � Vol. 1. New York: Paulist Press.
I warm in the knowledge that numbers of indigenous Australian groups have native title claims over various areas of forest, particularly the Nyoongar peoples of the south-west of Australia in the home state of Minister "T".
There is hope for us yet, in the wisdom of the elders of this ancient land, be that scientific or otherwise...
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