Science and religion are incommensurable: you cannot use centimeters to measure volume. Science’s proper cognate is theology. Science and theology are two human activities which are basically conceptual (partly fallible) frameworks for explaining experience. On the other hand, religion and technology involve and control or limit human practice and experience: they involve sensible reality, people and things. The study of the interaction of these four terms (or any two) must use the terms more precisely.

Science – as practiced today – has become scientism, another theology. Technology is, without any doubt, the world’s most powerful and fastest growing religion.

Minor squabbles among theologies, including science, must continue, but it is the tension between technology and the established religions will define this century. Battles in this war on three fronts are already clear: the environment, globalization, and the economic gaps. But whole person healing, the replacement for high-tech reductionist modern medicine, is the most significant because it will undermine science, which has hitched its wagon to this falling star.

The end of fundamental science is upon us, because it has been so successful. Science will be increasingly applications-driven, and it will be judged by results. Here, it has met its nemesis in whole person healing, incorporating integrative medicine. Scientists must now reconsider their role in society. It will not be easy to accept a humbler position. Moreover, the vague allusions to spirituality by scientists need a more authentic commitment to praxis in lifestyle.

Reality test, science-theology relation, spirituality fuzziness, technology-religion relation.

There is so much confusion in the "science-religion" conversation or controversy that it is difficult to know where to begin. But as responsible citizens and academics we must, as Dag Hammarskjold admonished us long ago, have great respect for the word. I start, therefore, by trying to clarify the terminology around the four key words: religion, technology, theology, science.

I write from the biases developed by my personal history. Raised in India by upper-middle class parents who were active Christians by choice, albeit 33^rd generation Brahmins genetically and socially. Schooled in the best British private schools, I was equally devoted to the classics and to religion and science. That balance of interest and active involvement has persisted through my emigrant life in the United States since 1945. I have been actively participating in the frontiers of modern science as a much decorated materials scientist for 53 years. For the same period, I have been actively involved in the development and modification of the religious institutions of our time. Hence, I have spent nearly equal times in each element of the 2x2 matrix.

I start by clarifying the "science-technology" definitions, building on my major science policy book with Deborah Shapley, "Lost at the Frontier," (Roy 1985) which pioneered the case that it is technology that leads to science, not the other way around.

Between religion (technology) and theology (science), the same relationships exist. Religion is based on the empirically adopted practices of groups of humans, which adopt specific myth structures which roughly fit the practices, but which may well affect the practices as time goes by and the myth is elaborated on by powerful leaders. However, centuries and millennia test the religious practices for survival value (but not the theological formulation).

These relationships among the four terms are sketched out in Figure 1, which adds a different dimension to the degree of abstraction in the "science-religion" conversation, which has increased with time and leisure. My own emphasis, elaborated on in books and papers, is to emphasize as Teilhard de Chardin put it: "Faith is the substance of things," and as Derek Price, Yale’s dean of science policy made the case that thermodynamics (base science) comes from the experience of steam engines (technology).

In my book "Experimenting with Truth," which was presented as the Hibbert Lectures in London in 1979, I introduced the term reality theology – the embodiment of one’s belief structure into concrete behaviors (Roy 1981, 140). In my own scientific research and the 700-odd papers resulting therefrom, my approach has equally been to emphasize experimental confirmation of any theoretical concepts. And in the book, I make the case that by definition, the two human efforts of the religion and technology streams must converge at their contact with reality. And as the shaded area attempts to show, the academic world has, in the last 30 years, slowly come to accept this area of overlap as a "discipline" (or area of academic study) under the accurately descriptive term, Science, Technology, and Society (STS), which I helped create.

That is why ultimately it is clear that if there will ever be an appropriate academic home for the Religion:Technology and Thelogy:Science question, it must be within the STS programs established on many of the major U.S. campuses, and finding its way into the secondary schools.

Finally, on language in the last decade, a new term has entered the discussion, spirituality. It is worth a digression because it does confuse the debate. In Figure 2, I have attempted to diagram out the relationships of science, technology, theology, and religion to spirituality. It is a fuzzy word as used and muddies the water. Whereas most religions include a spiritual and mystical dimension, modern spirituality disavows any "reduction to practice." The reader is referred to two recent books, "Spirit Matters" by Michael Lerner (Lerner 2000), which is a tract affirming the transcendental dimension of life and its importance. A more significant counterweight to this is Huston Smith’s brilliant argumentation in "Why Religion Matters," (Smith 2000) in which he strongly criticizes the casual use of spirituality in our culture and counterattacks against the ignorance of scientists and their scientism by demonstrating their ignorance of other fields, especially religion, upon which they often comment.

Religion and technology are the two major forces shaping the culture today. No more dramatic juxtaposition of the powers of both are needed than the impact of the dot.com meltdown and the Enron "explosion" on the one hand, and the September 11^th event on the other. But these serve well as examples of skirmishes in the emerging "Clash of the Titans," (Roy 1995, 136) which I identified at the "World Parliament of Religions" in Chicago in 1993. From that paper, I show but one table (Table 1), showing how international technology functions replace what traditional religions offer.

In "Experimenting with Truth" in 1979, I had argued the case for the interpenetratation of these two giant force fields in culture, for humanity’s survival. Moreover, the case was made that technology was becoming a full-fledged religion. In the twenty years since, especially with the development of worldwide television and the Internet, it is clear that technology is the world’s most powerful, most unified, and most rapidly growing religion in every sense of the word. Its "religious practices," linked largely to consumerism and total rejection of altruism, are spread by the irresistible forces of the media. It is therefore seen as, and often in fact is, directly competing for territory and power with every one of the world’s religions. September 11^th, in that picture, is a kind of opening salvo by one religion on one front. The nature of the resistance or confrontation will hardly resemble September 11^th, but it is certain to be a permanent part of our future.

Having clarified the terms and shown the incommensurability of these two particular human ventures, we can now move clearly to make the distinctions.

I start with the Mount Rushmore national monument shown in Figure 3. How can it be understood by science and religion? Culture and religion affirms that it is a national monument, with giant images stirring memories and passions in U.S. citizens, perhaps to attempt great achievements. It touches emotions, leads to actions.

What can science contribute to understanding this connection? Nothing, or very little. Why? Because as a reductionist scientist, one can no doubt examine the calcite crystals that make up the glasses on Teddy Roosevelt’s nose. Intrinsically, science deals with tiny points, not the assembling of the points into a pattern. Making a picture is not its forte, indeed not its business. Religion conversely deals only and intrinsically with the big picture, and often goes astray in detailing the points (e.g. the dietary laws of believers moved to a radically different climate and environment).

There is another key distinction. It can be seen in Stephen Kline’s (Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford) concept on the focus of science and religion in his book, "Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking," (Kline 1995) from which Figure 4 has been adapted. Religion deals mainly with "ground zero for humans" on the scale of a person or a group’s needs. Contemporary science, which once was about explaining a human’s experience of nature, has retreated to the outer fringes of nano-, pico-, or femto-, or giga- and tera-, orders of magnitude away from the interest or comprehension of 95 percent of humans.

Much of the so-called science-religion debate brilliantly shows its own irrelevance, to all but fanatics on both sides. Huston Smith has very clearly articulated my old argument in which I, because I live in that world, know more fully than he, that in practice, the majority of scientists have converted to scientism. Against "there is no god but Allah (or XYZ)," they offer that science is the only road to truth, wisdom, and learning. Science über alles. More science (especially more money for science) will fix almost anything. Scientists are unthinkingly committed to more science education for all citizens, and an unthinking Congress and culture says yes. No one points out why knowing Newton’s laws, but not knowing that Nicaragua is in Central America, is any better than the opposite. Clearly, the opposite was vastly more important to the U.S. citizens in the Reagan era. Why not put geographic, historical, and cultural literacy on an equal plane with science literacy? Indeed, the ludicrous nature of the attempts to ram the abstract concepts of the science-theology down an unreceptive audience is confronted by some startling failures and fiascos. In fully video documented research, two dozen graduates of Harvard attributed the change of seasons to the nearer approach of the sun to the earth. In a parallel study, engineering graduates of M.I.T. could not explain where the mass of a tree trunk came from. Nor could 90+ percent light a bulb with a battery and one wire. Now, it is a very fair question to ask: If this, the crème de la crème of U.S. scientifically specialized students, have not absorbed these abstract concepts, what in the world are we trying to do in the science education of lawyers, plumbers, CEOs, and senators?

The old chestnut of the creation story vs. evolution is used again and again on both sides, without pointing out that current cosmology is but a tiny, tiny part of science, totally irrelevant to 99 percent of the citizens, and that the creation story in the Bible takes up one column on one page in a thousand page book. Only the fundamentalists on both sides need care, since they are unrelated to most human, personal, or societal choices.

Since 1979, I have argued the case that abstract basic science is "complete"; it is therefore ended. Today, what is really vastly more significant about the status of science is the increasingly widespread recognition among those that have thought or written seriously about it, that fundamental science is wound-up, complete, "ended." One can define such "fundamental science" easily, as that which affects ever widening circles of neighboring sciences. This definition was first proposed by Alvin Weinberg, founder of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in his classic "Criteria for Scientific Choice." (Weinberg 1963) Modern particle physics and astronomy, of course, fail to qualify by this criterion.

This is the really new feature on the horizon – that fact that "basic science," the kind that is determined by the curiosity of individual investigators alone, not aimed at any goal or product, but at understanding that which does not affect other fields, is coming to an end. This "end of science" motif has been expanded on in three books:

The simple empirical fact is that since World War II, in spite of an annual worldwide R&D effort of several orders of magnitude greater than the total scientific effort before World War II, nothing fundamentally new – remotely approaching the significance of the discovery of quantum mechanics – has emerged.

Reductionist science has fissioned into ever narrower niches, with each discovery confined to the narrower field. The absolute experimental proof of this judgment is the fact that 100 percent of the corporate world, since 1992, has eliminated its basic or non-targeted research for the very sound reason that nothing useful can be expected to emerge via that route. They have turned to applications-pulled science, which can include long-term basic science.

The future of science in is such real science – the sciences of agriculture, materials, health, engineering, and earth science – where you can touch, see, and feel the results. It will be applications-driven science – including new very basic science – but always oriented toward a goal. The demand upon scientists, administrators, and journalist will be to return to honest presentations about science, with no hype and no predictions.

Reductionism has served science qua science, well. But, illicit claims, exaggerations, and hype transferred to a whole-person world have eroded science’s credibility. The reason why this time reductionism has met its match, and the majority of the public will soon realize the limitations of science, is the meteoric rise of whole person (or integrative or complementary) medicine. Scientific or high-tech medicine – as in every primitive culture – was the proving ground to the public of the validity of all the religion of science. For fifty postwar years, miracle drugs and miracle new tools for diagnosis and surgery were the authentication of the scientific weltanschauung. Antibiotics made relativity believable; x-rays and MRIs made details of the big bang and red-shifts credible, even if esoteric and changeable. The experience of healing by medicine, conferred credibility on all high science.

But suddenly, since 1995, the heroes of healing have changed. Deepak Chopra, Andrew Weil, Dean Ornish, Larry Dossey, Herb Benson, etc., are the new gurus or champions of "whole-person" medicine. They have been given more sustained attention in the media as healers, than any scientist (with the exception of Einstein) has ever received. Their message is quintessentially wholist, integrationist, and fundamentally anti-reductionist. The whole person is body-mind-and-spirit, and may be accessed by any combination of those channels.

As Establishment science reaches increasingly into the fringes of the reductionist forest, it is ceding more ground in the popular mind, including (proportionately) scientists, to Integration and Wholeness, as experienced by tens of millions of Americans and whole person healing is the testing ground.

The fantastic speed with which complementary and alternative medicine has penetrated the healing market is incredible. When one takes into account the incredible legal, scientific, and political "cheating" and the pressure by the American Medical Association in combination with the pharmaceutical industries detailed in the books by Dan Haley (2000) and Kenny Ausubel (2000), it is doubly surprising that integrative medicine could have stormed the Bastille so suddenly that in less than two decades, as Table 2 shows, half the U.S. population pays out of its own pocket for "alternatives." And this at the point where a citizen needs "science" the most. One wonders what the ratio would be on a level playing field, with either both or neither synthetic pharmaceuticals and alternatives totally covered by insurance.

The stupidity of Western medicine in an era of globalization, in trying to maintain a monopoly for its reductionist, body-only approach is unbelievable. Imagine basing one’s theory on the equation that P=B (a person is only a body) instead of P=B+M+S (body, mind, and spirit). Imagine basing a health system on fighting off inevitable death at all (literally) costs.

Whole person healing, incorporating integrative medicine, has won the day. It is a matter of time to see what kind of system emerges, but it will have room for a lot of alternatives.

Science is vague and abstract; to the public it is reified in persons. The scientists and their commitment to science is easily seen. The more appropriate question is: In what concrete form of commitment is the spirituality of the scientist manifest? What, in Gandhi’s terms, is their sacrifice? What service, social cause, working for political or social goals, for the poor? I believe that Einstein was committed to such a reified spiritual quest (Einstein 1960):

Concern for man himself and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors – concern for the great unsolved problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of goods – in order that the creation of our minds shall be a blessing and not a curse to mankind. Never forget this amid your diagrams and equations.

I personally have found great spiritual growth via this route of working on "the role of labor, and the distribution of goods" in our contemporary society where these issues are orders of magnitude more significant than subtle changes in cosmology.

We end with what is perhaps a more thoughtful analysis by one of their own might be considered by scientists. It appears at the end of C.F. von Weizsäcker’s book, The History of Nature (1976):

Von Weizsäcker, the physicist-theologian, then shows how the disconnection between "knowledge" and "love" has led to despair and nihilism and, I would add, to ignoring the social and political context of science and technology. In effect, science-technology has become, thereby, the unconscious agent of the forces of reaction. Von Weizsäcker is, perhaps, most perceptive in his Garden of Eden analogy:

Einstein, Albert. 1960. Einstein on Peace. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Eisenberg, David M., et al. 1998. "Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United States, 1990-1997: Results of a Follow-up National Survey." Journal of the American Medical Association 280 (18): 1569-75.

Gimpel, Jean. 1995. The End of the Future. Westport, CT: Preger.

Haley, Dan. 2000. Politics in Healing. Washington, DC: Potomac Valley Press.

Horgan, John. 1996. The End of Science. Menlo Park, CA: Addison Western.

Kline, Stephen. 1995. Conceptual Foundations for Multidisciplinary Thinking. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Lerner, Michael. 2000. Spirit Matters. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads Publishing,

Price, Derek John de Solla. 1976. Science Since Babylon. New Haven, Yale University Press

Roy, Rustum. 1981. Experimenting with Truth. New York: Pergamon Press.

_________________ and Deborah Shapley. 1985. Lost at the Frontier. Philadelphia: ISI Press.

_________________. 1995. "The Coming Clash of the Titans." In Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends, ed. Clifford N. Matthews and Roy Abraham Varghese, 129-154. Chicago: Open Court.

Sarewitz, Daniel. 1996. The Frontier of Illusion. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Smith, Huston. 2000. Why Religion Matters. San Francisco: Harper Publishing.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. 1976. Phenomenon of Man. New York, Harper Perennial.

Von Weizsacker, Carl F. 1976. The History of Nature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Weinberg, Alvin. 1963. "Criteria for Scientific Choice," Minerva, 159-71.

Between religion (technology) and theology (science), the same relationships exist.

Figure 2:

The relationships of science, technology, theology, and religion to spirituality

Figure 3

Figure 4

Rustum Roy is an Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor of the Solid State, Professor of Geochemistry, and Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Pennsylvania State University. He is also a Visiting Professor of Medicine at the University of Arizona and a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Materials at Arizona State University. His address is 102 Materials Research Laboratory, University Park, PA 16802 or rroy@psu.edu. This paper was presented at the Star Island Conference on Science and Religion in July 2001.

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