Faith in science

摘要

"But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis," wrote the devout Christian physicist James Clerk Maxwell to a friend in 1876. "The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such a hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten." Maxwell's words were characteristically subtle. His first sentence suggests that his major concern was in protecting the integrity of Biblical scriptures, implying that serious damage could occur should these texts be linked to speculative scientific hypotheses that subsequently proved untenable. His second sentence, however, strongly suggests that any such bonding of conjectural scientific hypothesis to scriptural text would actually damage the progress of science.