16th century manuscript, Andrew Beierle, http://www.sxc.hu

If I could travel back in time to ask Isaac Newton about the relationship between science and religion, he would probably be completely nonplussed by the question. In the late seventeenth century, when Newton was teaching maths at Trinity College, Cambridge, the word ‘science’ was used more broadly to refer to a body of organised knowledge. Theology, maths, classics, astronomy and all the other sciences were integrated into the body of ‘natural philosophy’, which was taught by ‘natural philosophers’. William Whewell, another Cambridge academic and Master of Trinity College, coined the word ‘scientist’ in 1834 to describe someone who carried out experiments to discover things about the natural world, and it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that British natural philosophers actually began to call themselves scientists.

Denis Alexander used this story to illustrate his lecture on the history of the dialogue between science and religion at a recent retreat led by Faraday staff at Launde Abbey. He described the development of science as a relay race where the baton was passed from ancient Greek philosophers to Islamic scholars, and then on to Christians in Europe, including Newton. Obviously the early stages were important, but a number of ideas stemming from Christian theology were absolutely key to the development of what we now know as science.

In order to be able to do experimentally based science, one needs a certain metaphysical worldview that allows the framing of scientific questions. Most disciplines within modern science also involve some or all the following features: exclusion of values and questions about meaning and ultimate purpose, testable hypotheses, generalisations about the properties of things, mathematics, being publicly observable and repeatable, and aiming to be as objective as possible. Many of these characteristics have been nurtured by a specifically theological worldview.

First is the concept of a creator God making a rationally based universe that can be understood by physical laws and rational minds. Earlier understandings in Greek thought were of a demiurge that fought with unwieldy matter to make something that wasn’t completely satisfactory, or of an ‘unmoved mover’ presiding over eternal matter. These philosophies weren’t a great encouragement to investigate nature experimentally, but in seventeenth century Europe the great natural philosophers René Descartes, Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, amongst many others, taught that the universe was created by God and is accessible to rational investigation.

Secondly, matter is dependent on God so we can’t just assume what it will be like: we need to study it. That statement may sound completely obvious to our modern ears, but only because we know how science works. We have benefited from the hundreds of years of experiments that followed the scientific revolution. Earlier generations relied on authority, but Newton and his contemporaries worked hard to discover the true nature of things through observation and experiment.

Third, there is the Christian doctrine of ‘the fall’: the first humans did wrong, we all do wrong, and the whole world suffers for it. It seems odd that a negative doctrine should have something to do with progress, but in his book ‘The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science’, Peter Harrison describes how natural philosophers were suspicious of unaided reason, and convinced that we need help to find truth. One way to deal with the fallenness of the human mind is to do experiments. The logic is that it’s harder to make things up when the data are staring you in the face.

I’m fascinated that theology helped science to develop and flourish. Denis used some great quotes, and I recommend the video of a similar talk that he gave at the Faraday Institute. Much of the science-faith debate is cleared up when historical myths are debunked, and I’m glad that a growing number of reputable scholars are delving into the real stories of how science and faith have related over the centuries.

Helpful books on the history of science and religion

Ronald Numbers, Galileo goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

James Hannam, God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations for Modern Science

John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives

Denis Alexander & Ronald Numbers (Eds.), Biology and Ideology: Form Descartes to Dawkins

Denis Alexander (Ed) & Craig Baxter, The Isaac Newton Guide book

Leandro Cavinatto, http://www.sxc.hu

Why do we ascribe dignity and moral worth to human beings? At least part of the reason is because we can see beyond our physical makeup to qualities such as consciousness and the ability to make decisions. We are fantastically complicated biological systems, but we are more than our molecules: we are persons, and our conscious experiences are wonderfully real.

Last week the philosopher Tim O’Connor spoke at the Faraday Institute on The Emergence of Human Persons. Emergence is a fascinating area of research, and a controversial one. Although emergence is a philosophical argument, it has important implications for science.

O’Connor began his seminar by explaining where the idea of emergence came from. A group of British philosophers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century sought a middle path between the extreme reductionism of some and body-soul dualism of others. Why? Strong reductionism is the claim that we are nothing but atoms and molecules – a philosophy that most people would reject. Dualism is the idea that we have a separate disembodied soul that somehow interacts with the body. This has been thought to be part of Christian orthodoxy for centuries, but a number of theologians and Christian neurologists have pointed out that it is a Greek idea that’s been wrongly ‘baptised’ into Christian theology. Apparently a more Biblical idea is that our bodies are important and that our souls are part of our physical person, not a separate spiritual entity waiting to float off at a moment’s notice. So these philosophers proposed the idea that our human personhood – our soul – is a higher property that emerges when our bodies develop in all their complexity. This makes sense in the light of both the Hebrew notion of the soul/body and physical resurrection in the Bible, and the data that modern neurology has produced in the last few decades. Our personalities, thoughts and emotions are rooted in the physical stuff of our brains.

Unfortunately the early version of emergence was rather vague, and quickly lost popularity, but it is now enjoying a comeback. In the last twenty years a new group of philosophers has been exploring the idea of emergence and trying to define it more clearly – with some success. The idea is that while the atoms that make up our bodies determine how we are in some way, there are effects going in the other direction as well. The behaviour of my organs has an impact on the molecules they’re made of, the things I eat affect my body, and the choices I make affect the wiring of my brain. Properties emerge from the different parts of my body that are not determined solely by the properties of atoms, and one of these properties is consciousness. It’s still a disputed concept but a growing number of theologians are beginning to accept it.

Many scientists have assumed a reductionist position for so long that the idea of emergence is too controversial. But notice what I said: ‘assumed’. O’Conner made the point that philosophers are interested not in how the world matches up to our latest theories, but in what is actually the case.  Scientists should display a similar level of open mindedness, but at times it can be easy to hold onto pet theories. (And despite O’Connor’s optimism, I expect philosophers are often the same.) Perhaps it’s time allow space for a new paradigm? A number of scientists, including Bill Newsome and Harvey McMahon, have begun to study the way that higher properties affect lower-level systems. It will be interesting to see how this plays out – will more scientists begin to take emergent properties seriously?

For Christians, science can enhance our worship, both individual and collective.

The Psalms are very early examples of worship songs that express joy at the glory of creation. In other parts of the Bible the immensity and grandeur of creation is also used to invoke a feeling of awe and worship. Perhaps the most powerful expression of this is found in the book of Job. In the last few chapters, God describes the great sweep of his works in nature. We now understand some parts of the processes described – the formation of Earth, weather and animal behaviour, for example – but the whole is just as awesome as it was thousands of years ago. ‘And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?’ (Job 26:14)

The Chief Scientific Officer of the Hubble telescope is Dr Jennifer Wiseman, who featured in a recent blog has written that ‘Our worship of the Risen Christ should…acknowledge not only His victory over sin and death but also His Lordship over all time and space. In this way, scientific discovery can lift the minds and hearts of believers to a deeper level of awe and reverence for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who is also Lord of all creation.’

The songwriter Matt Redman has written that in church we sometimes ‘take the extraordinary revelation of God and somehow manage to make Him sound completely ordinary’.[ii] But the glory of creation inspires great art and science, which in turn help us to appreciate that glory and articulate our praise.[iii] Science has the power to expand our horizons and helps us to see how great God is. Again Redman says, ‘The highest mountain peaks and the deepest canyon depths are just tiny echoes of His proclaimed greatness. And the brightest stars above, only the faintest emblems of the full measure of His glory.’

Of course worship is not limited to songs. Collective worship can also be practical. We worship God by exploring creation to the full, using all of our faculties and the tools of science, art and technology. In his recent book Song of a Scientist, environmental scientist Calvin DeWitt describes how Christians sing from two books: the book of God’s creation and the book of his revelation, the Bible. The early church absorbed a little too much of the Greek philosophy of their secular neighbours, and sometimes thought of material things as ‘less spiritual’, but the earth that God made was declared ‘good’, and all creation praises God together.

In the past people had a strong sense of humankind as being God’s creatures, alongside the other creatures he had created. Psalm 148 is a vivid description of this: ‘Praise the Lord from the earth…you mountains and all hills…wild animals and all cattle…young men and women, old men and children.’ More recently we have lost sight of our creatureliness, and lost a dimension of worship along with it. The theologian Richard Bauckham has written that ‘The best way to learn to value other creatures is to learn to worship with them.’ Other creatures praise God by being themselves, and by preserving wilderness areas and other natural habitats, we allow them to do that fully. We do not help other creatures to praise God, but they help us: ‘Coming to appreciate the value they have for God raises our hearts and minds in praise to their Creator.’

As a PhD student I had an experience that convinced me I am not the only one to think about ‘the transcendent’ in the lab.

There is great beauty in science, whether in the experiments themselves, the data produced, or the presentation of that data. There is also great wonder, and that is what drives science forward. How does a seed grow into a plant? What is a star made of? Can we describe the movement of a cell using mathematical equations? At times wonder gives way to open-mouthed awe as we see something vast, incredibly complex or highly ordered.

Awe is enjoyed and cultivated by all scientists, despite their different personalities, and popular science writing is invariably full of awe and wonder – whatever the beliefs of the author. At times I feel like the writer of a medical drama who collects the most exciting moments in a person’s entire career and packs them all into a single episode – that’s ok, so long as you realise that in between are days, weeks or months of hard slog and disappointment. Moments of wonder and awe are the rare high-points in science: a reward for the daily grind of life in the lab, the office, or out on fieldwork. Finally something is understood, and it stops you in your tracks. Or maybe you see something unexpectedly beautiful or intricate as I did in my first encounter with a Zebrafish larva. These are often the most memorable moments in a scientist’s career. You want to share them with others, so you show photographs or tell and retell the story in different ways.

The theologian and philosopher Austin Farrer wrote that a scientist may experience ‘constant amazement at the…world which yields such complex and ordered responses to his yardstick method. But this amazement, this almost religious awe, does not find direct expression in his scientific activity; in so far as he entertains such feelings, he is more of a metaphysician than a pure scientist. That is only another way of saying, that as well as being a scientist he is a man; and indeed, most scientists are human.‘[i]

How do these human responses play out? As I have mentioned before in this blog, the sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund carried out research into the beliefs of scientists in the top 21 elite US universities.  She found that 20 per cent of scientists in this cohort were not members of any religious group, but considered themselves spiritual. Their experience of beauty, awe and wonder in their work led them to believe that there is something beyond science – one could perhaps call ‘transcendent’. For some of the researchers that Ecklund and her colleagues interviewed, this ‘other reality’ motivated them in their research, their teaching, and their lives outside of the lab.

I remember having a conversation with a colleague who had experienced something along these lines. We were sitting in the lab examining Zebrafish larvae. As we stared down our microscopes we talked about how much we enjoyed looking at these tiny creatures and watching them grow. My colleague told me that he occasionally had a moment of clarity when he realised something important about how amazing nature is. Those rare experiences of wonder and awe were a source of inspiration for him, and one of the reasons why he wanted to stay in research and become a lecturer: he wanted to share those moments with others.

Head of a Zebrafish larva, around 24h

Whether Christian or not, scientists share a reverence for the moment when painstaking lab work blossoms into something almost transcendent. This post is taken from an article that I recently wrote for Third Way, and explains some of the thinking behind my current work on science and faith.

I’ll never forget my first sight of a Zebrafish larva. At twenty-four hours old they are about two and a half millimetres long and almost completely translucent. A simple low-magnification microscope reveals every detail of their anatomy in minute detail. You can see the heart pumping, and tiny red blood cells moving through capillaries. You can trace the outline of muscle fibres in their tails, and see every detail of the developing eye. Later on the eye becomes covered in silvery pigment cells, the transparent lens protruding, beautifully rounded and greenish in colour.

As a teenager heading off to university, I knew that science was compatible with Christianity – but I didn’t expect it to enhance my faith in the way that it has. I studied genetics because I enjoyed finding out how things worked. I was also attracted by the visual aspect of biology: developmental biology, for example, is essentially stories with pictures. There’s a huge amount of creativity involved in scientific research, and I loved the way in which problem solving and lateral thinking were an important part of my courses. I went on to earn my PhD by spending three years looking at how eye development in Zebrafish is affected by various environmental and genetic factors – and I never grew tired of looking at those wonderful organisms.

I wasn’t quite patient enough to stay in the lab long-term, but my experience as a working biologist showed me how complex the natural world is, and how privileged we are to understand even a tiny part of it. Ultimately it taught me how great God is. Any being who can create such a vast and beautiful universe is worthy of my worship.

When I left the lab I worked for the professional group Christians in Science, and was immediately involved in debates over creation, bioethics and the environment. If we evolved, how are we different from animals? Do we have a disembodied soul? If we’re getting a new earth, why bother with this one? These dialogues are important, and I spent several years addressing them in different contexts. Shortly after I began to work at The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Dawkins’ book The God Delusion was published and sparked a huge response. Some of the responses to Dawkins have been helpful, but I began to wonder whether we will ever be able create opportunities for a more positive dialogue.

I was challenged by something that the theologian Alister McGrath said in a video: ‘Christians who are scientists are always reacting…one of the big questions is, how do we begin to take charge of the cultural agenda…rather than continually respond to it?’ Christians working in science know first-hand that science enriches their faith, but their voices are not often heard. A large part of my current role as a Research Associate at The Faraday Institute is to start new conversations that show how science enhances faith.

Starting a conversation about science and faith in a positive way is difficult. I often have to delete the first few sentences of an article or the first slide of a presentation because I have fallen into the trap of using a negative hook yet again. It is very important to respond to the prominent media stories about science and religion being in conflict, but we don’t all have to – there are other ways to be culturally relevant.

The BBC makes science and nature documentaries that lift our spirits and reassure us that in between wars and ugliness, beauty and wonder still have a place. I have found that it is possible to start a dialogue on science and religion by relating the stories of scientists who find beauty, awe and wonder in their work. These experiences are common to all scientists, regardless of their beliefs. There is something here for everyone, both Christians who need to be encouraged that science does not threaten faith, and those who have not yet explored the spiritual side of science.

As for me, I still think Zebrafish are beautiful, and I feel privileged to know so much about them. How are these creatures part of the whole world’s worship of God? I’m not completely sure, but my study of them has filled me with awe. I am more able to appreciate God’s vast creation in all its intricacy, evolving and bursting with life.

Omega centauri star cluster, Hubblesite.org

The astronomer Dr Jennifer Wiseman visited Cambridge recently to speak about her work on ‘exoplanet’ discovery. Exoplanets are planets in solar systems other than our own, and until 1989 they were the stuff of science fiction. Now we know there definitely are other planets in the universe, some of which may be like Earth. The discovery of life on other planets – perhaps single celled organisms – in the next few decades is a real possibility.

Our universe is active and fruitful. We live in an abundant universe, and can celebrate that with new knowledge. The changes made to the Hubble telescope in 2009 have brought us beautiful new pictures that show the universe in greater depth than ever before. This one of the Omega Centauri star cluster shows a startling variety of stars.

The universe is beautiful, and the range of telescopes that astronomers use are like a symphony orchestra, with many different instruments contributing to our knowledge of the universe. The Hubble telescope has a relatively narrow field of view, but can see deeper into space. The large ground-based telescopes can take wide-angle shots, and Infra Red or radio telescopes can detect differences in temperature.

The universe is vast and active, with old stars disintegrating and exploding into clouds of gas, and new stars forming as those clouds coalesce again. It takes several generations of stars to generate the chemical elements that are needed for life. When the right factors are all present, a star coalesces and dusty discs develop around it from which planets are born.

Galaxies such as the famous spiral galaxy contain around 100-200 billion stars, and there are at least 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Even if planets are rare, might there not be life elsewhere in this vast cosmos? There are now a thousand confirmed exoplanets, and research is still gathering pace. We might have as many as 5 billion planetary systems in our own galaxy. What scientists like Jennifer want to find out is, what fraction of the stars in our galaxy harbour potentially habitable planets? The easiest way to start is to look for planets similar to our own, because we already know Earth is hospitable to life. So we need Earth-sized planets with a crust, the right temperature for liquid water, and evidence of elements like oxygen and carbon in the atmosphere.

By the time of Jennifer’s talk about four Earth-like candidates had been found. The most promising one is too far away to do follow up study, but planets seem to be so common (perhaps one for every star in our galaxy) that it might not be long before we find one a bit nearer. Another was announced the week after the talk: one that showed evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere. This new planet is so hot that it’s unlikely to contain life, but it’s a start.

I am excited about the search or exoplanets, because if we find even very simple cells on another planet that would teach us a huge amount about how life developed. Does it always involve DNA? What might the precursors be? Are there alternative ways to generate life?

Jennifer Wiseman said that the human responses to the grandeur of the universe span a wide range. The data doesn’t tell you how to reflect on it, so your reaction depends on your perspective. As a Christian it leads her to worship, and I agree. I believe in a big God who is immensely creative and immensely generous. What we find in the universe helps me to understand a little more about him, and my awe turns to praise.

DNA, Tomislav Alajbeg

The young researcher Matt Meselson must have been very excited when he pulled a photograph showing a series of grey stripes out of his wallet and passed it round at breakfast on New Year’s day 1958. Most of us might have a limited understanding of what he was celebrating, but his work has since been hailed as ‘the most beautiful experiment in biology’.

Last week marked the 60th anniversary of the publication of Watson and Crick’s famous Nature paper describing the structure of DNA. The now iconic helix was a bold idea based on data from the biophysicist Rosalind Franklin, and kick-started a revolution in biology. From the 1960s onwards, molecular biologists, including Matt Meselson, have been unravelling the secrets of the genome.

As a student in genetics I was taught the key experiments that helped scientists to accept that DNA was the molecule of inheritance, understand its information-carrying properties, and figure out how that information is passed on. I’m glad we didn’t have to reproduce this work in the laboratory because it was highly technical, rather tedious, and often involved the use of radioactive chemicals. With my impressive track record of spilling liquids, I’m not sure I would have survived! The resulting data, however, are beautifully simple and satisfyingly visual.

Perhaps the fuzzy grey bands that Meselson pushed under his friends’ noses that day would not look beautiful or simple to most people. To a biologist, however, the clear and visible demonstration of the ‘semiconservative’ replication of DNA by Meselson and his co-worker Frank Stahl is beauty itself. Something that looked rather boring – a series of grey stripes representing DNA with different chemical labels – has changed the way we see ourselves in a fundamental way.

Learning about what goes on inside every cell of my body at such a high level of detail has expanded my view of God. The world is incalculably complex and interconnected. Using our minds and our hands we can understand some of that complexity. For some of us, that will involve doing science. Others create technology, or use it in their everyday lives. Still others interpret the world through the arts. Though we cannot create something from nothing like God did, we can use our creativity to understand and live well in the world he created. In doing so, as astronomer Johannes Kepler said, we are thinking God’s thoughts after him.

This article was originally published by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity as part of its ‘Connecting with Culture’ series, and is reposted here with permission.

Neil Shubin is a paleontologist who’s fascinated by the deep history of the planet. The main narrative of the book centres on the origin of the universe and our place in it, with a good dose of geology on the way. Each chapter is a story of exploration and discovery, introducing the main—and often colourful—characters involved, and ends by showing what the cosmic or global upheavals described have to do with us. The overall message is that we, our bodies, and everything about them that makes us human, are the products of processes that started when time itself began.

Shubin is a fantastic teacher, and he tells a good story, using intrigue and suspense to carry the reader along. I laughed at the stories of field trip misadventures and “innovative” experiments with frogs. The appendix even includes a link to recipes that satisfy Arctic campers, but are also perfect for serving to “company you never wish to see again.” I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the discovery of continental drift (currently 1.5cm/year) and the carbon cycle. (If my summaries sound dry, the chapters are not.

There were quite a number of “wow” moments for me as I read this book, even when I was already familiar with the science that was being explained. Most of the starlight we see at night was emitted before the first humans walked the earth, and it has taken many thousands of years to travel the huge distance to earth—that’s how big the universe is. It was 300,000 years after the Big Bang before the first true atoms formed. Continental drift caused the planet to cool, and the body clock operates on a 24-hour cycle even when we don’t see the Sun.

Through reading The Universe Within, I gained a deeper insight into the timescales by which God works. It was worth waiting hundreds of thousands of years for atoms more complex than lithium, and two billion years of single-cell life was for a reason. Any Christian knows that God almost never works by quick fixes, and creation is the ultimate example of how he is happy to work on long timescales. Somehow all this beauty, diversity, and fecundity but also pain, death, and violence, were all part of God’s good world—fit for his purpose. The Garden of Eden was to be subdued, and that is what we have done, though we have made some gigantic mistakes on the way.

I am humbled by the fact that we are different to other animals not because of our own cleverness but as a result of forces (sustained by God) that shaped us over millions of years. Shubin’s book has helped me to realise just how extraordinary the development of human life was. Any number of factors could have changed the course of history and eradicated our ancestors, but here we are. I felt something similar when I saw the human evolution exhibit at the Smithsonian museum. I’m proud to be human, but I know that I’m here by grace.

This review by Ruth Bancewicz was originally published by Books & Culture, and is reposted here with permission.

Michael & Christa Richert, http://www.sxc.hu/

For most Christians working in science, their work helps them to worship. The theologian Alister McGrath has written a number of books about the relationship between science and Christianity, but he also stresses that our response to what we see in science should not simply be intellectual. A Christian view of nature should recognise the intuitive sense of awe and wonder that we have when we look at the natural world, and our increased awe as our scientific understanding grows.[1] Our response to those feelings is rational, emotional and active: worship as well as theology.[2]

How does a scientist worship? In her writing on wonder, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Margaret Boden captures the experience of a Christian scientist when she says that ‘awe is a high degree of wonder, in which fear and respect are prominent. And worship is a deliberate expression of awe’.[3] The dazzling intelligibility of the world increases our humility before an awesome God. Worship happens for a scientist when they turn that humility and awe towards God and thank him for the incredible universe he has made.

Scientific research itself can also be seen as an act of worship. Christians are encouraged to offer their work to God, and there is a long tradition of scientists doing this. The sixteenth century astronomer Johannes Kepler is a well-known example.[4] Kepler was something of a mystic, and his scientific work was directly informed by his faith. Science was not his original choice of vocation. He wrote in a letter to a friend that ‘I wanted to become a theologian; for a long time I was unhappy. Now, behold, God is praised by my work, even in astronomy.’

Kepler’s scientific writing was interspersed with theology, prayers and hymns. Christians in the sciences often use a prayer that comes at the end of his most famous work, The Harmony of the World, and is a beautiful expression of dedication to God. ‘If I have been enticed into brashness by the wonderful beauty of thy works, or if I have loved my own glory among men, while advancing in work destined for thy glory, gently and mercifully pardon me; and finally, deign graciously to cause that these demonstrations may lead to thy glory and to the salvation of souls, and nowhere be an obstacle to that. Amen.’

The composer Johann Sebastian Bach adopted the Jesuit tradition of writing J.J. (Jesu juva – Jesus help me) at the beginning of every piece of work, and S.D.G. (Soli Deo Gloria – glory to God alone) at the end. I know a physicist who was inspired to do the same in her laboratory notebooks and lecture notes: a tangible reminder of God’s hand in everything we do. Virtually every Christian scientist I interview is acutely aware that their work is an expression of their worship to God, and looks for similar ways to express that either privately or publicly.

Science results in new technologies, and how those technologies are used and developed is also part of a Christian’s worship of God.[5] Revelation 21 describes how the ‘kings of the earth will bring their splendour’ into the city of God. Will that splendour include wonderful technologies, beautiful writing and fine craftsmanship? It’s both humbling and inspiring to think that work done now as an act of worship might last into eternity.

The stochastic nature of biology

‘Stochastic’ behaviour involves a certain amount of randomness. You could predict the outcome of a stochastic event using statistics, but you would never be 100% certain what was going to happen. That is the nature of most biological processes. The question is, if we were smart enough to study biological systems down to the atomic level, would we find that they are actually completely predictable? Would knowing all the variables make 100% predictions possible? And if we could predict every process in our bodies and brains, would there be room for human decisions?

McMahon’s study of proteins has convinced him that there is true randomness in biology. For example, it’s very popular at the moment to make a pure solution of a protein and study its structure using X-ray crystallography. Crystal structures of proteins are useful, but they reveal only one possible conformation of a protein. McMahon works with membrane-bound proteins some of which have regions that move a lot, and may have to be stabilised in some way in order to function correctly. Randomness is inherent in the structure and function of these proteins, and in many other biological processes. Of course the question of free will is more complex than this, but it’s a start.

Emergent properties

Proteins are often described as if they are robots in an assembly line, each doing their bit to transform substrate A into substrate B in a linear series of biochemical reactions. More detailed analysis shows that they actually work in highly complex multi-dimensional networks, and there may be multiple ways to get from A to B, with many side reactions. What McMahon has realised through his own work is that for some networks, the energy input is towards the end, when the substrate has almost finished being transformed into B. This allows for an amazing amount of flexibility in the system, but every time the same end point is reached. The process is not being pushed, but pulled. Is this by design? A naturalistic explanation is entirely possible, but it looks as if the network of proteins is committed to a certain course. Purpose, or teleology, seems to be encoded in the system.

Abstract implications

Perhaps biological teleology and theology can inform each other. Theology says that the truth about God was revealed to humankind bit by bit, so can this theological understanding help us to understand the evolution of humankind? And if ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’, should we be learning about God from his creation?

McMahon suggested that the principles of a biological system could apply to much of life on a larger scale. For example, feedback loops and other reactions inside the cell ensure that things stay in balance (homeostasis) in our bodies. It takes a lot of energy to keep things in balance, but doing so makes it possible to up- and down- regulate the system very quickly. The ‘retinal bipolar neurons’ that are involved in our light sensory perception are a great example of this, where there is a constant turnover of their signalling machinery making it incredibly sensitive to inputs from light sensitive cells. We might view this constant turnover as a waste of energy but for our bodies, waste is part of the system and allows for efficiency. Can we learn from this? Perhaps efficiency should not be the primary goal in human institutions, and a bit of waste would allow for more effective working? Another example of something we can learn from biology is the way in which cells are master integrators of information because they exist in close relational proximity to each other. Should we do the same?

Our understanding of science affects every aspect of our lives. McMahon’s seminar was an appeal for integrated holistic thinking. This type of thinking was applied historically, but has since been questioned by those who did not understand what it might have to offer. It’s time to change the lens.