In search of god at Columbia - Columbia University

Cross Currents, Spring, 2002 by Charles Henderson

Pollack next takes on Richard Dawkins as the biologist who "best articulates a vision of science that would abolish all religious insight" by reducing it all to the level of the meaningless. Pollack points out that while science itself cannot establish the reality of the unknowable, neither can it demonstrate that the unknowable is lacking in reality. In fact, when scientists like Dawkins insist on the meaninglessness of all religious insight absent any experimental test that might either verify or falsify it, then science itself has become mired in dogma. This is particularly true, Pollack argues, because the process of scientific research itself, while failing to offer "proof" of the unknowable, often moves forward though a process of discovery that is itself beyond the reach of human understanding.

Ask any scientist what lies at the core of her work, you will learn that it is not the experimental test of the hypothesis -- although that is where most of the time and money in science go. It is the idea, the mechanism, the insight that justifies all the rest of the work of science. The moment of insight that reveals the new idea, where an instant before there was just fog, is the moment where the unknown first retreats before the creativity of the scientist. Here, then, is the first door into the unknowable: where does scientific insight come from? Surely from someplace currently unknown. Let us consider the possibility that scientific insight, like religious revelation, comes from an intrinsically unknowable place.... Good ideas emerge in the mind of a scientist as gifts of the unknowable. They are not, as data are, simply trophies of a struggle with the unknown.

Thus, concludes Pollack, the central event in science, namely, the insight that leads to new understanding, is so similar to religious experience "that I see only a semantic difference between scientific insight and what is called, in religious terms, revelation."

While Pollack has a great deal more to say about the relationship between science and religion generally, what makes his writing compelling are the specifics. He does not attempt to represent either religion or science in general, but rather writes as a Jew and a biologist in particular. And he quickly moves from the level of the purely theoretical, to discuss specific issues where his ideas might be applied to the practice of medicine, for example, or to the shaping of public policy on stem cell research or therapeutic cloning. The article that follows was given as a speech at a public forum sponsored by the George C. Marshall Foundation Roundtable in Washington, D.C., last October. What attracted me to this paper, in addition to the power and clarity of Pollack's thought, was his ability to draw with equal skill upon the insights of both science and religion, applying these to a problem that will surely be with us for a long time to come. From this perspective Pollack is able to critique President Bush's de cision on stem cell research, while suggesting a very different course of action that would honor the beliefs of those who affirm that life is sacred (like the President), while still moving forward with research that holds significant promise of actually saving lives.