God’s Dice or God’s Purpose

Under the heading “God’s Little Dice Game,” the Melbourne Age recently published a review of Jacques Monod’s book Chance and Necessity. The reviewer introduced Monod as a Nobel Prize-winner and a best-selling author, an unusual combination for a scientist.

According to the reviewer, scientists have discovered “that there doesn’t seem to be a secret [of life]; and that the enormous variety of nature and the richness of human culture can all be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry.”

Monod’s book is said to fit into this picture. He rejects the thought of an overall great plan, saying, “We know that all that is passed from generation to generation is a chemical. Except in rare cases (some viruses) this is DNA, which must be very stable, otherwise offspring would not resemble their parents. Like any chemical, it can be affected by heat or by radiation, and the mutations that evolution works on can be accounted for simply by these.” The review adds, “Not only does science not need a plan, but it now knows that there cannot be a plan.”

Without the book before me I would not attempt to comment on it in detail. But the statement that “there cannot be a plan” in the universe is one worth looking at, quite irrespective of the way Monod works out his thesis.

For it is clear that, like many others, he is overlooking the elementary fact that we can often give more than one explanation of an occurrence, such that each is true and each is complete in itself. A homely illustration is the boiling kettle. In answering the question “Why is the kettle boiling?” one can speak of the striking of a match, the kindling of a gas flame, the increase of the temperature of the water, and so on. The chain of cause and effect can be complete.

But it is also possible to answer the question by saying, “Because I want to make a cup of coffee.”

The second answer is just as true as the first. It would be foolish to deny the truth of the second on the grounds that the first can be demonstrated scientifically. The scientific explanation, while true, is not the only one. And it may be argued that it is not the most significant one. The personal factor is important.

Professor D. M. Mackay, professor of communication in the University of Keele, England, made a similar point in a lecture he gave in Melbourne recently. He reminded his audience that it is possible to explain the workings of a computer purely in terms of transistors and the like. The explanation is complete. Nothing is missed. Yet this does not prevent us from having another, quite different understanding of what is going on. We can say instead that the computer is solving the problem the programmer has fed into it. Indeed, without the thought that the programmer’s purpose is being worked out, most of us would consider the account of the computer’s operation a trifle defective. The technological explanation, though in its way complete, is unsatisfying if taken alone. Professor Mackay was making a point about the way the brain works, but his illustration is relevant to our topic also.

So far we have looked at two kinds of answer. Examined more closely they are answers to two different questions. The scientist who explains the boiling of the kettle or the working of the computer is really answering the question “How?” (though the question may have been asked in the form “Why?”). His concern is with the way things work. The question “Why?,” on the other hand, is really concerned with purpose. When this question is asked, the answer should be given in terms of my cup of coffee, or the question I have put to the computer.

The scientific method is perfectly adequate for answering the question “How?” But the fact that the scientist answers his own question so well does not give him justification for denying that other questions may be asked of the same phenomena and other answers may be given. In his legitimate preoccupation with his own approach he must not overlook other possibilities.

And, of course, many scientists do not overlook them. Einstein rejected a view much like Monod’s by saying. “I cannot believe that God plays at dice” (hence the title of the review article). On another occasion he said, “The scientist must see all the fine and wise connections of the universe and appreciate that they are not of man’s invention. He must feel toward that which science has not yet realized like a child trying to understand the works and wisdom of a grown-up. As a consequence, every really deep scientist must necessarily have religious feeling.”

The trouble with scientists like Monod is that they are so happy with the answers they have found to the questions they are asking that they have not noticed other questions, equally important. They assume that because they can explain certain phenomena, there cannot be a plan behind the universe.

Every day of our lives we show that this is not so. We use the products of technology in our homes and offices and factories. And every time we do we set in motion a process that can be explained along the lines of Monod’s atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of our own purpose. If this is true of our use of the products of technology, it is at least possible that a parallel exists on the cosmic scale.

Finally, it is not easy to see what Monod can possibly mean when he calls his system true. Truth is not a property of matter. Conceivably one might speak of one’s thoughts as “chemically correct.” But if there is ultimately nothing but matter, what does it mean to say that anything is true? Our very use of the concept of truth proclaims our certainty that matter is not everything.

Indeed, if ultimately there is nothing but matter, how can we be sure that anything is true (granted that we can put meaning into the word “true”)? On this view we would hold all our opinions on the basis of the behavior of certain atoms and molecules. Because they react in such and such a way, we would express such and such a conclusion. We would have no way of knowing whether we were right or not. We could do no more than register the end result of a mechanism.

If Monod is right, we can have no way of knowing it, for if his thesis is correct he is not giving us the result of a careful weighing of the evidence. He is simply reporting what the molecules tell him to report. His method is self-defeating.

Science and religion have much to learn from each other. The man of faith must always be on his guard against intruding dogmatically into the scientist’s legitimate sphere. But he is entitled to ask in return that the scientist refrain from using his dogmas to dispose of awkward religious questions.

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