Science Can't Explain It All. Calls for an Openness to Philosophy and Theology
Benedict XVI praised the extraordinary possibilities opened to humanity by science, but he cautioned that technology cannot explain everything.
The Pope expressed this today to members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, who are gathered in
In his English-language discourse, the Holy Father said, "This increasing 'advance' of science, and especially its capacity to master nature through technology, has at times been linked to a corresponding 'retreat' of philosophy, of religion, and even of the Christian faith.
"Indeed, some have seen in the progress of modern science and technology one of the main causes of secularization and materialism: Why invoke God's control over these phenomena when science has shown itself capable of doing the same thing?"
"If we think, for example," he said, "of how modern science, by predicting natural phenomena, has contributed to the protection of the environment, the progress of developing nations, the fight against epidemics, and an increase in life expectancy, it becomes clear that there is no conflict between God's providence and human enterprise."
"Science, however, while giving generously, gives only what it is meant to give," Benedict XVI cautioned. "Man cannot place in science and technology so radical and unconditional a trust as to believe that scientific and technological progress can explain everything and completely fulfill all his existential and spiritual needs.
"Science cannot replace philosophy and revelation by giving an exhaustive answer to man's most radical questions: questions about the meaning of living and dying, about ultimate values, and about the nature of progress itself."
Inherent limits
The Pope further observed: "The scientific method itself, in its gathering of data and in the processing and use of those data in projections, has inherent limitations that necessarily restrict scientific predictability to specific contexts and approaches.
"Science cannot, therefore, presume to provide a complete, deterministic representation of our future and of the development of every phenomenon that it studies."
"Philosophy and theology might make an important contribution to this fundamentally epistemological question," the Holy Father said.
For example, he suggested, philosophy and theology can help "the empirical sciences to recognize a difference between the mathematical inability to predict certain events and the validity of the principle of causality."
The two disciplines can also help point out the difference "between evolution as the origin of a succession in space and time, and creation as the ultimate origin of participated being in essential Being."
"There is a higher level that necessarily transcends all scientific predictions, namely, the human world of freedom and history," said the Pontiff. "Whereas the physical cosmos can have its own spatial-temporal development, only humanity, strictly speaking, has a history, the history of its freedom.
"Freedom, like reason, is a precious part of God's image within us, and it can never be reduced to a deterministic analysis. Its transcendence vis-à-vis the material world must be acknowledged and respected, since it is a sign of our human dignity.
"Denying that transcendence in the name of a supposed absolute ability of the scientific method to predict and condition the human world would involve the loss of what is human in man, and, by failing to recognize his uniqueness and transcendence, could dangerously open the door to his exploitation."