Introducing "Science in the Shadowlands"
By Rebekah Valerius
“Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it.” ~C.S. Lewis, “Miracles”
In his essay, “Is Theology Poetry,” C.S. Lewis observes that “the deepest habit of mind in the contemporary world” is to believe that the cosmos is moving on its own from “imperfect to perfect, from small beginnings to great endings, from the rudimentary to the elaborate … that morality springs from savage taboos, adult sentiment from infantile sexual maladjustments, thought from instinct, mind from matter, organic from inorganic, cosmos from chaos.”1 While a proponent of this narrative might argue that modern advances in science have shaped and legitimized this habit of mind, Lewis challenges that interpretation. According to him, it isn’t empirical science but scientism—the assumption that science is our sole arbiter of truth—that has cultivated this way of seeing the cosmos.
Throughout his literary corpus, he continually exposes the temptation to extend scientism into the realms of human life where it cannot serve as a final authority, such as politics, philosophy, ethics, and education. When placed in such a position of power, Lewis warns that scientism tends to destroy objective moral values and boundaries. By reducing the universe to mere matter and energy, realities that are fundamentally mindless and amoral, scientism can ultimately justify anything. Lewis warns of this predatory potential in The Abolition of Man:
The final stage is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself. Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man. The battle will then be won. We shall have ‘taken the thread of life out of the hand of Clotho’ and be henceforth free to make our species whatever we wish it to be. The battle will indeed be won. But who, precisely, will have won it? For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.2
Sounding the Alarm
Lewis is relighting a beacon for his age and ours, warning against this salvific view of what scientism can accomplish. He is joining a long line of thinkers who recognize the danger when science as a discipline is put in a position of final authority that it simply cannot sustain. In such a situation, science is made to do a job it was never meant to do. In Mere Christianity, he wrote:
Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, “I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 a.m. on January 15th and saw so-and-so...” Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science—and a very useful and necessary job it is too.3
This does not mean that science cannot point to God or that it is strictly limited to naturalistic explanations. Some might use this quote to argue that Lewis opposes examining nature for evidence of God's fingerprints. I believe this is going too far. Indeed, in his book Miracles, Lewis argues that human reasoning itself is potent evidence of a designing Intelligence behind our own. Naturalistic explanations alone are not sufficient to explain the validity of human rationality—a truth that the very existence of the scientific enterprise presupposes. While science as a discipline cannot prove the existence of a Creator, it can certainly point to Him. Likewise, others have argued that Lewis is a science skeptic, but that also fundamentally misunderstands him. It is better to call Lewis a scientism-skeptic.
Scientism Today: From Science to Myth
The question for us is whether or not this scientism is still at work in our world. Recent statistics have shown that the cultural appetite for the spiritual is returning with a vengeance (see, for example, my review of Tara Isabella Burton’s “Strange Rites”). Again, Lewis has something to say here. He observes that this modern habit of mind—scientism—is nothing but a new myth grafted onto the discipline of science, that seeks to satisfy this spiritual hunger. Lewis notes that under the guise of a moving and inspiring narrative, scientism has enchanted us into believing that this world is our final home and we are free to do what we want with it. To awaken us from this illusion and re-sensitize us to the intuition that we are actually exiles, Lewis argues that we need a counter-spell to break its hold on our imagination:
And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing this shy, persistent, inner voice; almost all our modern philosophies have been devised to convince us that the good of man is to be found on this earth. And yet it is a remarkable thing that such philosophies of Progress or Creative Evolution themselves bear reluctant witness to the truth that our real goal is elsewhere. When they want to convince you that earth is your home, notice how they set about it. They begin by trying to persuade you that earth can be made into heaven…4
A Counter-Spell
Heeding Lewis’s call, “Science from the Shadowlands” seeks to break the spell of scientism to restore a proper, full appreciation of science as the essential discipline it truly is. In subsequent issues, we will explore modern technologies and scientific breakthroughs, ranging from the promises of immortality offered by artificial intelligence to biotechnological efforts such as gene editing aimed at eradicating disease and deformity. Our goal is to analyze scientistic interpretations and justifications that claim an authority they cannot legitimately possess. We will seek to unravel scientism’s powerful promise of creating a heaven on earth, which has so taken hold of the modern imagination and of science itself. Additionally, we will provide practical resources and links designed to help readers navigate scientific developments with discernment and clarity.
The Seeing Eye
In the opening of Miracles, Lewis shares a story of a friend who saw a ghost. He notes that she “disbelieved in the immortal soul before she saw the ghost and still disbelieves after seeing it.”5 He concludes that what we can learn from experience “depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to the experience.”6 Scientism is one such philosophy that many in our world bring to the table, whether consciously or not. More than that, it is a philosophy that operates as a grand myth—one every bit as potent as the pagan stories of old, capable of capturing the cultural imagination. Yet its promises of progress and salvation are ultimately hollow, self-defeating, and destructive. We do not have to abandon the beautiful discipline of science to such a mytho-philosophy. “Much depends on the seeing eye,” Lewis writes.7 May this new column offer another, more excellent way to see the proper place of the sciences in the cosmos, and how they fit in the more comprehensive and sustaining Christian narrative.
~Rebekah Valerius has a BS in Biochemistry and an MA in Apologetics. She teaches advanced placement chemistry and biology, and apologetics at a classical Christian school in the Dallas area.
C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry,” in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 137, Kindle.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man: A Christian Perspective on Ethics, Science, and Education Through the Wisdom of C.S. Lewis (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 60, Kindle.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis Signature Classics ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 22, Kindle.
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, 31–32, Kindle.
C.S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 1, Kindle.
Ibid., 1–2, Kindle.
C.S. Lewis, “The Seeing Eye,” in Christian Reflections (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 211, Kindle.
This is a wonderful idea, Rebekah. My next Substack post is about how scientism leads to a denial of reality (even scientific reality).
Looking forward to future posts!