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Dear Editor:

In an article in page A17 of today's Herald, Johann Hari states:

"Science is based on strict empirical observation of the world, and deductions based on reason from it. Faith is based on divine revelation ( that is, hallucination ), or following the words of men who claim to have experienced it."

Both of these assertions are questionable.

Science is based on the construction, by imagination ( or perhaps hallucination  ? ), of models which account for the known observations. It is impossible to prove that any such model is true; all we can say is that it is in accord with all the experiments we have done. We can never know, except by further exercises of try-it-and-see, whether or not there are other models which would work equally well; sometimes further experiments are incompatible with the models we use, when we must reject them and find new models - but they are still models, not truth.

Faith is based on revelation, which we believe to be Divine. Hari asserts that this is hallucination. Where is the observation, deduction, or reason in support of this assertion ? He presents none. I cannot prove that my faith is true ( which is why I call it "faith" ); all I can say is that it is in accord with all my experience. If it were not, I would bend my faith a bit to fit the new experience.

And that is exactly what the scientists do. When they find that atoms are not tiny hard indivisible things, they change the model to include subatomic structure; when they find that objects which move very fast don't quite stick to Newton's laws of motion, they invent relativity theory. Where do the models come from ? Someone, somewhere, has a bright idea. Or perhaps a hallucination. Or, perhaps, a divine revelation. Who can tell ?

Hari certainly can't. Instead, he resorts to pointless invective, with a dogmatism to match that of any religious fundamentalist. It spoils what could have been an interesting article.

G. Alan Creak.

Alan Creak,
2007 June.