Theory and faith

“Faith is necessary in order to validate science” is the title on an interesting letter in the Friday 17 Philadelphia Inquirer. J. Alexander Adams Jr., a scientist, contends that faith is not purely a religious concept and does have a place in science. He uses string theory as an example.

I don’t know what string theory is, but I do know that some people point to it as “weird science” and it sometimes comes up in discussions about whether “intelligent design” qualifies as science. Adams writes,

“String theory at present is not, strictly speaking, science at all, but philosophical speculation awaiting corroboration by experiential phenomena. When it explains and predicts observations, it will then become science….Likewise, if observations invalidate string theory, faith in it will thereupon become invalid.”

Then he hits the nail on the head with this observation

“Those who abuse faith appear to have an aversion to the compromises, imponderables and messiness that characterize our world. These people require hard-edged answers to all questions, answerable or not. Testability is not at issue here; these people wish to banish their anxieties with comforting ideologies. This is the way of many a bad scientist and many a good ideological fundamentalist.”