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The Clockwork Image: A Christian Perspective On Science
128 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1997
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August 20, 2024
A FAMOUS CHRISTIAN CRITIQUE OF DETERMINISM, AND EXPOSITION OF SCIENCE
Donald MacCrimmon MacKay (1922-1987) was a physicist and professor of communications at the University of Keele in England; he also wrote 'Brains, Machines & Persons.' [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 112-page 1974 edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1974 book, "This book is addressed both to Christians who want to take stock of the scientific enterprise in the light of their faith, and to non-Christians who may wonder what Christian commitment would mean for their intellectual integrity in an age of mechanistic science. Its central theme is the WHOLENESS of the view of our universe presented by biblical Christian theism: the essential, non-accidental harmony between the Christian doctrine of the natural world on the one hand and the spirit and practice of natural science on the other." (Pg. 9-10)
He argues, "Anyone who tries to make the indeterminacy of the models of physics a basis for restoring the idea of freedom, and combating machine-mindedness, must admit that at the level of man-sized objects this unpredictability normally makes no practical difference... Moreover, although most physicists today speak of atomic events as 'indeterminate,' there have been those, including the great Einstein himself, who refused to concede that they were anything more than impredictable-by-us. For both reasons, then, it would be very unwise to try to combat machine-mindedness and restore the idea that there is freedom in the world by laying stress on the indeterminacy of physical models." (Pg. 15)
He suggests that the Bible "gives us little, if any, indication of the SCIENTIFIC processes by which the features of our world have changed in the course of time... This idea, that... God's way of working has been slow and gradual (the bodies of higher animals coming into being through descent with modification from earlier species), is all that is meant by the term 'evolution' as used in science. In this technical, scientific sense the idea is theologically neutral, and is widely accepted by biologists who are also biblical Christians. Nothing in the Bible rules it out..." (Pg. 51)
He presents his well-known argument against determinism: "the basic point is that (according to the mechanistic brain theory itself) what you believe, accept as inevitable, etc., is represented in some precise sense by the state of your brain. Thus no completely detailed description of the present or immediately future state of your brain could be equally accurate whether or not you believed it. If it were accurate before you believed it, then when you believed it your brain-state must change in some respect, so that the description must be out of date and you would be in error to believe it... In short, the present and immediately future state of your brain ... has NO COMPLETELY DETERMINABLE SPECIFICATION that YOU would be unconditionally correct to accept, and in error to reject, if only you knew it. In that sense, your immediate future is not inevitable for you... to put it otherwise, no completely detailed specification of your immediate future can exist, upon which both you and all observers would be correct to agree, until after the event." (Pg. 79)
This book will be of interest to Christians interested in apologetics, psychology, and philosophy of science.
Donald MacCrimmon MacKay (1922-1987) was a physicist and professor of communications at the University of Keele in England; he also wrote 'Brains, Machines & Persons.' [NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 112-page 1974 edition.]
He wrote in the Preface to this 1974 book, "This book is addressed both to Christians who want to take stock of the scientific enterprise in the light of their faith, and to non-Christians who may wonder what Christian commitment would mean for their intellectual integrity in an age of mechanistic science. Its central theme is the WHOLENESS of the view of our universe presented by biblical Christian theism: the essential, non-accidental harmony between the Christian doctrine of the natural world on the one hand and the spirit and practice of natural science on the other." (Pg. 9-10)
He argues, "Anyone who tries to make the indeterminacy of the models of physics a basis for restoring the idea of freedom, and combating machine-mindedness, must admit that at the level of man-sized objects this unpredictability normally makes no practical difference... Moreover, although most physicists today speak of atomic events as 'indeterminate,' there have been those, including the great Einstein himself, who refused to concede that they were anything more than impredictable-by-us. For both reasons, then, it would be very unwise to try to combat machine-mindedness and restore the idea that there is freedom in the world by laying stress on the indeterminacy of physical models." (Pg. 15)
He suggests that the Bible "gives us little, if any, indication of the SCIENTIFIC processes by which the features of our world have changed in the course of time... This idea, that... God's way of working has been slow and gradual (the bodies of higher animals coming into being through descent with modification from earlier species), is all that is meant by the term 'evolution' as used in science. In this technical, scientific sense the idea is theologically neutral, and is widely accepted by biologists who are also biblical Christians. Nothing in the Bible rules it out..." (Pg. 51)
He presents his well-known argument against determinism: "the basic point is that (according to the mechanistic brain theory itself) what you believe, accept as inevitable, etc., is represented in some precise sense by the state of your brain. Thus no completely detailed description of the present or immediately future state of your brain could be equally accurate whether or not you believed it. If it were accurate before you believed it, then when you believed it your brain-state must change in some respect, so that the description must be out of date and you would be in error to believe it... In short, the present and immediately future state of your brain ... has NO COMPLETELY DETERMINABLE SPECIFICATION that YOU would be unconditionally correct to accept, and in error to reject, if only you knew it. In that sense, your immediate future is not inevitable for you... to put it otherwise, no completely detailed specification of your immediate future can exist, upon which both you and all observers would be correct to agree, until after the event." (Pg. 79)
This book will be of interest to Christians interested in apologetics, psychology, and philosophy of science.
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