is science based on faith

Is Science Based on Faith?

Paul Davies has a piece on the op ed page of today's NYT that seems to

me to be rather confused. In the piece, Davies argues that science and

religion are not at odds in the way that they are often thought to be

since "science has its own faith-based belief system." And how is

this? Well, according to Davies, "All science proceeds on the

assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way."

This is an assumption that cannot itself be proven and, in fact, is

exempt from the testability that is demanded of science more

generally. It has to be accepted on faith in order for science to even

get off the ground. Davies goes on to get more specific about how he

thinks science requires taking the rationality of the universe on

faith.

The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the

cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on

which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism,

the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of

motion -- all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But

where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that

they do?

He concludes that there is not much difference between the belief in

the existence of God and the belief in the existence of the laws of

nature. In fact, he notes that the very idea of a law of nature is a

theological notion (God's laws). Historically, he is correct about the

source of the idea of natural law in theology, but he fails to

recognize that the genesis of the idea need not determine the

contemporary use of the term. There is another way of thinking about

the assumptions of rationality and about "laws" of nature so that does

not commit us to thinking of science as resting on faith. Bas van

Fraassen in his Laws and Symmetry (1990) reviews the metaphorical use

"law" and opts for an understanding of the notion that does not

require a commitment to the existence of laws of nature. I offer the

following in a similar vein. It is not that science requires the

assumption that the universe is rational and governed by laws. What it

requires is the belief that we will be able to construct useful

theories if we make these sorts of assumptions. It is very much worth

noting that this belief is not based on faith. If we take it as a

given that there is order in the universe, then we can build theories

about it. If those theories work, that is evidence that we are

justified in our assumptions. If we were to make these assumptions and

were unable construct successful theories, then we would not be

justified in them and we would have to abandon them. But there is

another point to make here as well. That we are able to build theories

that are successful using these assumptions does not show that the

universe is rational and governed by laws. It only shows that we are

able to successfully navigate the universe with theories that describe

it in that way. So my point is that this "faith" seems to be of a very

different sort than theological faith and so ultimately Davies' claims

that they are both based on faith is at least misleading, if not

simply false.

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith --

namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the

universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical

laws,... . For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox

science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

Contrary to Davies' claim, the assumption that we can explain and

understand key elements of the universe by modeling it as a rational

universe with laws does not commit us to the existence of anything

outside of the universe. He assumes that science requires a realism

about laws and rationality which it does not. He does finish the

article asking for science to explain the laws of the universe without

appeal to something external to the universe, but isn't that the task

of philosophy of science rather than science? And shouldn't that