The Guild

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Spring 2007
2 May 2007
So far today I’ve been grateful for - the radio alarm that woke me up, the car that got me here and the coffee machine which is helping me sound so perky at this hour.  Just three inventions that have made life more convenient  for me, and no doubt you’ll have your own list of things you wouldn’t be without. But what would you nominate if you were asked to pick humanity’s greatest innovation ?  

Over a hundred prominent scientists have been invited to do just that in a survey which aims to stimulate debate about human ingenuity and current scientific research.  Responses so far include the microscope, the rocket and the random search engine. But one contributor put forward something a bit less specific .  “Anything” he said, “that enables us to rub out our mistakes and correct them; to go back and put things right.”  

He argues that, in the scientific context, an ability to correct mistakes would breed the confidence to risk failure and to experiment with abandon – presumably in the knowledge that if things went horribly wrong, they could be fixed.  It’s a comforting thought, but in reality science can’t be divorced from the risk of failure any more than faith can be shielded from the shadow of doubt.  Oppenheimer describes the world of science as “one in which doubt is not only a permissible thing, but in which doubt is the indispensable method of aiming at truth.”

People who try to drive a wedge between science and religion  tend to forget that they’re both, like art, an expression of humanity’s quest for truth.  If you’re serious about faith you’re going to have to live with doubt and risk and, like the scientist, you’re going to need an intuitive imagination and the courage to ask the What if ? questions – what if we tried this, where might it lead?  A religion that leaves no room for questions and tries to remove all doubt from life’s complex dilemmas is as sterile as a science that refuses ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before.’