Does science provide a path to a meaningful life?

[Night FM]

I would also like to hear others' thoughts on whether or not science provides a path to living a meaningful life in the same vein as religion. I suppose that people can derive ethical values from scientific information, but others' thoughts on the matter is appreciated.

[iNow]

Science is a process which helps us to better model the function of the cosmos and more ably avoid blind spots in our understanding.

While the outcome of that process can make one’s life more meaningfully connected to reality, it is not in itself a source of meaning nor purpose. They’re distinct magisteria. 

[MSC]

On 10/15/2024 at 6:00 PM, iNow said:

it is not in itself a source of meaning nor purpose.

The caveat here being, that it can be; whether a person sees there own meaning and purpose in it, depends on them. It wouldn't be wrong of me to say that humanity in general finds some of it's purpose and reason for being, within scientific endeavors, from thinking to engineering. 

 

On 10/15/2024 at 5:55 PM, Night FM said:

I would also like to hear others' thoughts on whether or not science provides a path to living a meaningful life in the same vein as religion. I suppose that people can derive ethical values from scientific information, but others' thoughts on the matter is appreciated.

In short; yes. Religion as an idea comes from a linguistic evolution we can track to Latin, early Latin Religare, means to bind or tie fast while Religio means bond, obligation, reverence and it wasn't until the 5th century was the monastic bound to god meaning. 

In this sense, a religion is just a group with an obligation to commit to certain ideals, behaviors, beliefs and practices/ritual. What those ideals, behaviors, beliefs and processes determine, is how homogenous the group is. Scientists could be viewed through a religious angle, but the value system involved favours objective truth over observably falsifiable falsehoods. 

[iNow]

17 minutes ago, MSC said:

The caveat here being, that it can be; whether a person sees there own meaning and purpose in it, depends on them.

That’s fair. People can find meaning anywhere, but as a rule we look to science for clarity and accuracy more than purpose. 

[swansont]

On 10/15/2024 at 5:55 PM, Night FM said:

I would also like to hear others' thoughts on whether or not science provides a path to living a meaningful life in the same vein as religion.

Why is it supposed to?

Does collecting trash, or washing dishes, or emptying bedpans provide paths to living a meaningful life?

[Peterkin]

On 10/15/2024 at 5:55 PM, Night FM said:

I would also like to hear others' thoughts on whether or not science provides a path to living a meaningful life in the same vein as religion.

It does for scientists: doing research and making discoveries is what gives some people a meaningful way to contribute to society and also benefit from their work.  Religion provides a meaningful occupation to clerics, monastics and theologians.

For everybody else, the world is full of ways to be meaningful and productive. Many people find both their religion and scientific knowledge useful in navigating life. Some immerse themselves in art, or scholarship, or invention or sports or gardening or teaching or healing or saving endangered species, or.... whatever else people do. And of course, human relationships. 

On 10/15/2024 at 5:55 PM, Night FM said:

I suppose that people can derive ethical values from scientific information

No, but scientific information can direct them to appropriate action in the service of their values. The values themselves are constructed over time, on the from one's personality, environment, education, experience and social interactions. 

[Eise]

On 10/15/2024 at 11:55 PM, Night FM said:

I suppose that people can derive ethical values from scientific information, but others' thoughts on the matter is appreciated.

No, that is what is called the 'naturalistic fallacy', also known as 'one cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is''. But your title is another question: "Does science provide a path to a meaningful life?".

In a very basic sense, every person striving for something, whatever, leads a meaningful life. It could be even unethical. But leaving that aside, people derive their meaningful life from many things: successfully raising kids, getting rich or powerful, help other people, making beautiful woodworking (how do I get at this example? I wonder...), trying to improve on their moral stance, trying to understand the universe... Which is science.

Personally I think science can lead in another way to meaningful life, not just because one finds it 'interesting' or for the usage of its results in technology. Understanding the universe and our place in it can be a spiritual experience. I even once heard something like that from a theology student: he found the essence of religion the realisation that we are just a dust corn in the universe. Of course I like the factual way, as science goes, much better than a theological 'understanding', based on fantasies or old mythologies.

And last but not least (being very subjective now), I would plead for studying philosophy. Not freewheeling philosophy (that is fantasy not necessarily with gods or magic), but philosophy grounded as well in science as in our daily experience. The nice thing of philosophy is that it brings all together: it contains also the reflections on what facts, values, and a meaningful life are. So philosophy in this sense is the highest endeavor a human can do . So, I think this was my most subjective posting in this forum.  

[exchemist]

On 10/15/2024 at 10:55 PM, Night FM said:

I would also like to hear others' thoughts on whether or not science provides a path to living a meaningful life in the same vein as religion. I suppose that people can derive ethical values from scientific information, but others' thoughts on the matter is appreciated.

While it may be the object of religion to provide meaning in life, that is not the job of science. Trying to set science and religion up against one another, as if they are alternatives in some way, or even rivals, is to misunderstand science.  Science is the study of nature to understand how it works.    

As others have pointed out, people can derive a sense of meaning and purpose in life from all manner of things they do, which give them a sense of achievement and fulfilment. Science can be one of them.  

Ethics is an entirely separate question. 

Immense damage was done, over a century ago, in the United States, by the ideas of somebody called Andrew Dixon White, the first president of Cornell in the late c.19th. He promoted the so-called "conflict thesis" which claims science and religion are inherently opposed to one another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis  This is a rather discredited notion, belied, for example, by the number of clergymen and religious people who have played prominent roles in science. About the only serious example of conflict, historically, was the Galileo affair. This was largely a result of paranoia in the Catholic church about "heresies" at the time of the Reformation, combined with tactlessness on the part of Galileo. Dixon White's perspective was no doubt coloured by the upsurge of creationist, extreme Protestantism in N America at the time, which of course had huge problems with Charles Darwin's ideas, but that is hardly indicative of an intrinsic conflict between science and religion. Nevertheless the idea of conflict has taken root in some quarters and remains influential to this day.   

Edited October 17 by exchemist

[dimreepr]

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

While it may be the object of religion to provide meaning in life, that is not the job of science. Trying to set science and religion up against one another, as if they are alternatives in some way, or even rivals, is to misunderstand science.  Science is the study of nature to understand how it works.

Indeed +1

But it's also not the job of religion, religions only job is to provide a platfrom from which to be...

Contentment, is the operative word and religions have far more to say on the subject.... 

[MSC]

7 hours ago, Eise said:

So, I think this was my most subjective posting in this forum.  

It's objectively you, which is objective enough for me. I didn't find myself disagreeing with anything you just said. 

[MSC]

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

While it may be the object of religion to provide meaning in life, that is not the job of science. Trying to set science and religion up against one another, as if they are alternatives in some way, or even rivals, is to misunderstand science.  Science is the study of nature to understand how it works.    

As others have pointed out, people can derive a sense of meaning and purpose in life from all manner of things they do, which give them a sense of achievement and fulfilment. Science can be one of them.  

Ethics is an entirely separate question. 

Immense damage was done, over a century ago, in the United States, by the ideas of somebody called Andrew Dixon White, the first president of Cornell in the late c.19th. He promoted the so-called "conflict thesis" which claims science and religion are inherently opposed to one another. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis  This is a rather discredited notion, belied, for example, by the number of clergymen and religious people who have played prominent roles in science. About the only serious example of conflict, historically, was the Galileo affair. This was largely a result of paranoia in the Catholic church about "heresies" at the time of the Reformation, combined with tactlessness on the part of Galileo. Dixon White's perspective was no doubt coloured by the upsurge of creationist, extreme Protestantism in N America at the time, which of course had huge problems with Charles Darwin's ideas, but that is hardly indicative of an intrinsic conflict between science and religion. Nevertheless the idea of conflict has taken root in some quarters and remains influential to this day.   

I'd add that it also misunderstands religion, as pro-science beliefs aren't mutually exclusive to being non-religious. 

As for the Galileo affair, it was specifically political paranoia and Galileo wasn't being tactless he was a victim of the Catholic churches response to haemorrhaging followers to Protestants, who were preying upon peoples mistrust of science. Prior to this, Galileo, and his earlier work were sponsored and landed by the Catholic church. 

From the perspective of Galileo, it would be like an employer deciding to have you executed because their competition convinced lots of customers that you're evil, so they want to execute you to keep customers. Galileo wasn't tactless he was betrayed really. The church could have chosen to try to convince people that the natural philosophers of the time were just trying to learn knowledge and wisdom of everything possible under god, but nope. 

Rounding back to good points in your conclusion; just to bolster it with a modern example. The modern LDS/Mormon church is fairly pro-science, particularly in the field of medicine. During the pandemic while other evangelicals were spouting the anti-vax and anti-mask nonsense spouted by TOAPOSG (a shiny updoot if you can guess all the words/profanities in that!), they were telling followers to listen to doctors and the CDC. 

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, MSC said:

I'd add that it also misunderstands religion, as pro-science beliefs aren't mutually exclusive to being non-religious. 

As for the Galileo affair, it was specifically political paranoia and Galileo wasn't being tactless he was a victim of the Catholic churches response to haemorrhaging followers to Protestants, who were preying upon peoples mistrust of science. Prior to this, Galileo, and his earlier work were sponsored and landed by the Catholic church. 

From the perspective of Galileo, it would be like an employer deciding to have you executed because their competition convinced lots of customers that you're evil, so they want to execute you to keep customers. Galileo wasn't tactless he was betrayed really. The church could have chosen to try to convince people that the natural philosophers of the time were just trying to learn knowledge and wisdom of everything possible under god, but nope. 

Rounding back to good points in your conclusion; just to bolster it with a modern example. The modern LDS/Mormon church is fairly pro-science, particularly in the field of medicine. During the pandemic while other evangelicals were spouting the anti-vax and anti-mask nonsense spouted by TOAPOSG (a shiny updoot if you can guess all the words/profanities in that!), they were telling followers to listen to doctors and the CDC. 

OK, my comment about Galileo’s tactlessness was he put some of the pope’s ideas in the mouth of a fictional character in his book, for the purposes of argument, making this character out to be a bit of a simpleton. Not a great move, considering how jumpy the church authorities were at the time! Not sure why you mention execution. Galileo was put under house arrest and told not to publish any more.

[MSC]

9 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Not sure why you mention execution

Mixed up my heretics! My bad. House arrest/life imprisonment. 

 

10 minutes ago, exchemist said:

my comment about Galileo’s tactlessness was he put some of the pope’s ideas in the mouth of a fictional character in his book, for the purposes of argument, making this character out to be a bit of a simpleton

Huh, learned something new. I thought it was all about the heliocentric stuff. Although now you mention it, it does ring a bell. 

[exchemist]

44 minutes ago, MSC said:

Mixed up my heretics! My bad. House arrest/life imprisonment. 

 

Huh, learned something new. I thought it was all about the heliocentric stuff. Although now you mention it, it does ring a bell. 

No it was indeed about the heliocentric stuff, but he explained it, as I recall, in the form of an argument between two people, the nitwit being the person with the pope's ideas. Not a clever thing to do! 

I think describing house arrest as life imprisonment is not really right. Obviously he was not a free man, but he was not incarcerated in prison. 

[MSC]

29 minutes ago, exchemist said:

No it was indeed about the heliocentric stuff, but he explained it, as I recall, in the form of an argument between two people, the nitwit being the person with the pope's ideas. Not a clever thing to do! 

I think describing house arrest as life imprisonment is not really right. Obviously he was not a free man, but he was not incarcerated in prison. 

Yeah that probably was not smart, but a dialogue about two reasonable people making good arguments for their point of view probably wouldn't have been as entertaining to readers as mocking a nitwit, sad as it is. 

As to your other point, the sentence was life imprisonment and I'm sure after awhile, any small area of land or building you're never allowed to leave becomes it's own kind of prison. A gilded cage is still a cage, as the saying goes. 

I'll concede though that you're right, it was tactless, but you'd agree the response by the church was completely out of proportion and was based on more than just a knock to the popes ego, though it certainly didn't help. 

[exchemist]

32 minutes ago, MSC said:

Yeah that probably was not smart, but a dialogue about two reasonable people making good arguments for their point of view probably wouldn't have been as entertaining to readers as mocking a nitwit, sad as it is. 

As to your other point, the sentence was life imprisonment and I'm sure after awhile, any small area of land or building you're never allowed to leave becomes it's own kind of prison. A gilded cage is still a cage, as the saying goes. 

I'll concede though that you're right, it was tactless, but you'd agree the response by the church was completely out of proportion and was based on more than just a knock to the popes ego, though it certainly didn't help. 

Amusingly, it took 350 years before the pope (John Paul II) finally lanced the boil by arranging for a formal statement that Galileo had been right all along. More here: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13618460-600-vatican-admits-galileo-was-right/

But really, the point of the story in this thread is that, contrary to Dixon White's thesis, it is about the only example of hostility of what one might call traditional Christianity to scientific ideas. It's true there  was initial controversy over Origin of Species within the Church of England, but that's because the C of E encompasses a wide range of beliefs, including some on the Evangelical wing who are pretty close to being biblical literalists. (Ever since they got so badly burned over the Galileo affair, the Catholic church has generally been jolly careful not to take a position on matters of science.) 

[Genady]

40 minutes ago, exchemist said:

it is about the only example of hostility of what one might call traditional Christianity to scientific ideas

What do you think about Giordano Bruno in this respect?

[sethoflagos]

On 10/15/2024 at 10:55 PM, Night FM said:

I would also like to hear others' thoughts on whether or not science provides a path to living a meaningful life in the same vein as religion.

Different vein.

Science may help provide some understanding of what paths are at least feasible, whether meaningful or absurd. 

Religion may be one such path. But one of restricted choice largely of someone else's choosing. Utterly absurd in my view but others may differ.

Personality, I'm not averse to a little absurdity now and then. But preferably absurdities of my own choosing.

[exchemist]

9 hours ago, Genady said:

What do you think about Giordano Bruno in this respect?

He was clearly a victim of the same church paranoia of the time, being an almost exact contemporary of Galileo.  But Bruno seems to have been very different. He espoused a whole series of unorthodox (i.e "heretical") theological beliefs, including rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity and belief in reincarnation, despite having been ordained as a Dominican monk and as a priest. He seems to have renounced his holy orders and gone on the run to various places, in almost all of which he made himself unpopular. He even got himself excommunicated by the Lutherans, apparently.  

Although he is best known today for his imaginative cosmological insights, it looks as if his heresy trial was about the more serious (in the eyes of the church) charges of departure from core church doctrine.

So it looks to me as if he was basically a renegade priest and monk, not an oppressed scientist like Galileo.  

[WillyEngland]

What is the meaning of life? - Probably there is none.

Kafka wrote:

"So why would I want anything from you?

The court doesn't want anything from you.

It accepts you when you come and it lets you go when you leave."

("The process")

 

There is also the idea that the purpose/meaning/... of the universe is self-awareness.

In that sense one could argue that doing science is probably closest to the intent of the universe.

 

[Genady]

2 hours ago, exchemist said:

So it looks to me as if he was basically a renegade priest and monk, not an oppressed scientist like Galileo.

Perhaps in SFn his posts would go to Speculations while Galileo's ones would be in the Sciences.

[exchemist]

6 minutes ago, Genady said:

Perhaps in SFn his posts would go to Speculations while Galileo's ones would be in the Sciences.

Yes I think so. Although his speculations were pretty well spot-on, which is amazing for the time: the stars as other suns, the possibility of life on other worlds around those suns, and the idea of the cosmos as infinite. He may not have been the first to have such thoughts, according to the little I have now read about him, but he was perhaps the first prominent thinker to write about them. 

He was also an alchemist and astrologer, it seems. But then, at that time, science was only starting to disentangle itself, by its insistence on accurate observation, from medieval philosophical ideas which were a hotchpotch of poetic and philosophical ideas, much  inherited from the Ancient Greeks, theology etc.   

[dimreepr]

49 minutes ago, WillyEngland said:

What is the meaning of life? - Probably there is none.

Kafka wrote:

"So why would I want anything from you?

The court doesn't want anything from you.

It accepts you when you come and it lets you go when you leave."

("The process")

He also wrote:

"If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it?"

50 minutes ago, WillyEngland said:

There is also the idea that the purpose/meaning/... of the universe is self-awareness.

In that sense one could argue that doing science is probably closest to the intent of the universe.

Depends on who you read, Douglas Adams argued that the universe actively sought to prevent that... 😉

[TheVat]

6 hours ago, exchemist said:

He was clearly a victim of the same church paranoia of the time, being an almost exact contemporary of Galileo.  But Bruno seems to have been very different. He espoused a whole series of unorthodox (i.e "heretical") theological beliefs,

And there was the polymath Cardano (complex numbers pioneer, among other things) who published an astrological horoscope of Jesus (at a time when astrology was considered a science) and was imprisoned for several months and lost his professorship in Bologna.

The Church could be hostile to both good science and bad.  And Mercury was retrograde in Libra at the time.

[MSC]

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

He was clearly a victim of the same church paranoia of the time, being an almost exact contemporary of Galileo.  But Bruno seems to have been very different. He espoused a whole series of unorthodox (i.e "heretical") theological beliefs, including rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity and belief in reincarnation, despite having been ordained as a Dominican monk and as a priest. He seems to have renounced his holy orders and gone on the run to various places, in almost all of which he made himself unpopular. He even got himself excommunicated by the Lutherans, apparently.  

Although he is best known today for his imaginative cosmological insights, it looks as if his heresy trial was about the more serious (in the eyes of the church) charges of departure from core church doctrine.

So it looks to me as if he was basically a renegade priest and monk, not an oppressed scientist like Galileo.  

It should also be noted that although he also espoused Copernicus and the heliocentric model, in Giardanos time, this was not a heresy. As far as we can tell, it was strictly his theological views that were on trial. However; it's actually very difficult to determine what happened during both his trial and the years he was held beforehand as there was a 250 year culture of silence around the topic and documentation confirming that the Catholic church had in fact executed him, didn't surface until the 1850s, many of the documents (because the inquisition documented everything, making the lack of documentation even more disturbing as it shows just how powerful the inquisition was) were hidden in the Vaticans secret archives, with the possibility that some documents pertaining to it are either still there or were stolen by Napoleon and were part of a large shipment of documents later being sent back to Rome from France, that we're actually mixed with water to break them down, to sell to some kind of paper or cardboard factory for 4300 francs (that's a lot of paper) by one of the people charged with returning it to the archives. 

Bruno has been described as everything from a hero of the Renaissance, evil heretic, poet, philosopher, astronomer, magician and even a spy for the queen of England. 

Just a few things are certain; the modern Catholic church definitely would prefer people believe he was executed for his religious beliefs and not for his scientific ones. The other certain thing is that we can't be sure exactly because there was most certainly a massive and effective conspiracy to cover it up. That said, a researcher could discover more documents tomorrow so we may yet learn more details.