Tag Archives: Science

Stability: Is It for Real?

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I was listening to the radio last week on the way to pick up my children. They were talking about an unstable region in China in which the government had to ‘enforce’ stability using means that are seemingly contradictory to a stable environment. Then the reporter mentioned an interesting statement. She said, “The more stability has to be enforced, the less stable the situation is.” And as I continued to listen to the story, it reminded me of one of my first jobs out of school.

I worked at a biotech company that manufactured surgical sealants. My job was to test the stability of the raw materials and final products. Stability is basically a measurement of how well the product lasts (or doesn’t last) that is used to determine the shelf-life of a product. There were certain conditions in which the samples were to be stored- usually some combination of time and temperature. Analyses would be run to compare the original data of a freshly made product to products that had been stored in a variety of conditions. Sometimes we would purposely increase a certain condition, like the temperature, to force degradation in order to see what by-products were there. If there were results that did not pass the guidelines, then an investigation would be opened to determine where the error occurred- analyst, equipment, or product.

I thought about life as I continued my drive. Maybe we, as humans, aren’t meant to be 100% stable. Maybe we try to force stability in our lives. Maybe God designed us to be a bit “unstable” so we learn dependence on Him, that He is the only one that needs to be in charge, as He is our Designer. Instead of just changing our situation to gain a temporary stability, maybe we should launch our own investigation into the root cause of the instability. There could be things in our lives that need to be discovered that would never be known if we were always in a stable environment. Things that are good- like faith, trust in God, prayer, fasting. Or it could be things that we need to rid ourselves of like anger, bitterness, lack of trust in God.

If we force our own control or stability, then we leave no room for God to work in our lives. If we are constantly manipulating our environment, circumstances, relationships, we are effectively saying to our Designer that we don’t need Him, that our design/control of our lives is better than His. God knows us much better than we do.

Maybe God lets us go through seasons of instability in order to see his power and experience a growth in faith that otherwise would not have been seen.

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  • The more stability has to be enforced, the less stable the situation is.  Buffer
  • Maybe God lets us go through seasons of instability in order to see his power.  Buffer

Constructing Newton’s Bridge

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Isaac Newton, one of the most influential scientists who ever lived, also was a Christian theologian. He once said, “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” His quote resonates with me because bridges filled the landscape of my childhood.

I spent the first eighteen years of my life growing up in “The City of Bridges”. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, contains more bridges within its city limits than Venice, Italy, with the current number of bridges totaling nearly two thousand. Three major rivers come together at the Point, the location of Pittsburgh’s iconic fountain first built in 1974.  In addition to the presence of rivers, the steep hills and ravines around the city make bridges a necessity for transportation. The early European settlers of Pittsburgh quickly learned that they had to choose between living in isolation or finding creative ways to span the waters and valleys.

People cluster on one of two riverbanks in their approach to relating human reasoning to faith. The first approach, common in many Christian circles in my childhood and college years and persisting to this day, revolves around mistrust of the intellect. Acquiring knowledge, analyzing information, and questioning assumptions become suspect activities. Too much thinking means that you are not listening to your heart; you are out of touch with practical concerns; or you are not truly spiritual.

Many Christians find support for mistrusting the intellect in a variety of Biblical passages. All the way back in Eden, Eve’s temptation included a desire for wisdom and knowledge. In Proverbs 3:5, an often-quoted verse reads, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” In the New Testament in John 20:29, Jesus said to the doubting Apostle Thomas, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” In his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:27), the Apostle Paul explained, “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

Clustered on the second riverbank, we find those who worship the life of the mind above all else. Human reasoning reigns supreme. The standard for judging truth becomes data collected through the human senses and processed by rational thought. Atheists and agnostics wield Occam’s razor to slice away the possibility of revelation, preferring explanations that avoid spirituality. When human reasoning rightfully ends in “I do not know,” those who cluster on this second riverbank feel compelled to stop their search.

Perhaps the two camps of settlers could survive adequately without venturing beyond the limits of their respective riverbanks. Yet I join Isaac Newton and the early settlers of Pittsburgh in the conviction that a richer life waits for those willing to construct a bridge.

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  • People cluster on one of two riverbanks in their approach to relating human reasoning to faith.  Buffer
  • A richer life waits for those willing to construct a bridge.  Buffer

Blip or Trend?

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At some point in every relationship and along every path to a goal, something goes wrong. A friend disappoints you. A partner is insensitive. You are disillusioned by how a teacher, coach, or church leader handles a situation. You experience a setback. You make a careless mistake. You skip your morning run and choose a double fudge sundae for an afternoon snack. The moment is forever gone; the words cannot be unspoken; and the regret begins.

You cannot undo your choice or rewind your circumstances. Your failed midterm will never magically be given an “A”. In all likelihood, your former boss will not hire you back. However, you have a new choice to make. You get to decide whether this moment in your life remains a blip or becomes a trend.

Choosing Your Future

About five years ago, I learned the concept of the “blip” from a friend who worked as Director of Human Resources for a large bank. He said that a person who loses his job at the bank must decide if this event is a “blip” or the beginning of a career downslide. If the ex-employee is willing to learn the necessary lesson from the unpleasant experience, the event becomes a blip. If the person goes on to the next job with the lesson unlearned, history can repeat itself again, slowly derailing the person’s professional life. Finally, if the person learns his lesson but becomes too demoralized by the experience, the person may never regain his former career trajectory.

Graphing Your Life

A “blip” refers to a point at which a line on a graph makes a sharp change of direction before returning to its original course. A trend is a long-range change in a certain direction. In other words, one argument does not need to create permanent conflict. One double fudge sundae does not necessarily mean the end of a person’s diet. You can lose a battle and go on to win the war.

Marriages that go the distance happen because a husband and wife decide to turn setbacks, disagreements, and stressful events into blips, not trends. People who attend the same church for years do the same within their faith communities. Successful businesses surmount a bad quarter to turn a profit over time. History teaches that individuals who make their mark on society persevere past the quitting point for everyone else.

Clearing the Hurdles

Jonas Salk, the University of Pittsburgh researcher who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine, had to clear several hurdles before he led his own laboratory. Three institutions turned him down before the dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine offered him a lab. However, when he arrived in Pittsburgh, Salk quickly discovered that the lab was in a cramped basement location of an old building with no laboratory equipment. Yet Salk found funding from the Mellon family, a wealthy and influential family in Pittsburgh.  He turned the cramped basement into a working virology laboratory and went on to develop a vaccine for the worst disease of the postwar era. The rejections became blips and Jonas Salk became a household name.

The next time your faith is shaken through challenging circumstances or frustrating encounters with difficult people, remember Jonas Salk. Choose to make your momentary problem a blip. Even if justified, reject the impulse to wallow in your frustrations, turn away from relationships, and become cynical. Instead, question your doubts, re-engage people productively, and get back in the game.

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  • Choose to make your momentary problem a blip.  Buffer

Which Butterfly Caused the Tornado?

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The public expects science to deliver discoveries that provide increasingly precise answers about our world. Yet some scientific discoveries suggest inherent limits to scientific knowledge. One example is chaos theory, popularized as the “butterfly effect.”

The butterfly effect is a simple insight first extracted from the complex science of meteorology by Edward Lorentz in 1961 at MIT. He found that small changes in initial conditions, such as rounding a number used to represent an atmospheric condition from .506127 to .506, could completely transform a long-term weather forecast. He explained this insight in his 1972 paper, “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?”

 His paper described both a practical limit for weather predictions and a philosophical limit for the explanatory powers of science. In complex, nonlinear systems, a small change in input can produce a large change in output. Thus, weather predictions more than a week in advance always will be fairly inaccurate. The philosophical limit is that the effects of chaos prevent us from knowing which butterfly caused the tornado.

So the lesson of the butterfly effect is that our world will remain fundamentally unpredictable because tiny differences in our scientific measurements make too big a difference in the final answer. Everything happens for a reason, but science may be unable to give us an exact cause for an event. Accepting limitations to the explanatory power of science does not diminish the importance of science. After all, the discovery of our human limitations in fully comprehending our world is a finding with profound significance.

Questions to ponder: What does the inherent limitations of science say about the limits of human understanding? Does science preclude spirituality?

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Finding Answers Together

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Near the end of a typical Harvard commencement ceremony, the University President confers degrees on the candidates from the various schools. Doctoral candidates belonging to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences are welcomed “to the ancient and universal company of scholars,” a traditional phrase that accurately describes the life of an academic researcher. The University President admits the seniors of the undergraduate class to “the fellowship of educated men and women.” The ceremony concludes with bells ringing from church towers across Cambridge, with at least fourteen churches participating.

 

 The Harvard Commencement ceremony recognizes that good scholarship happens in a community. The research of today links with the work of the brilliant minds of the past. This process connects with Christian thinking expressed in the Bible in Proverbs 27:17, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” The community of scholars refines and corrects the thinking of any one researcher.

 

 By asking questions of other scholars and learning from each other, researchers advance knowledge. Perhaps the scientific community offers a good model for those embarking on a journey of faith, seeking answers to the questions that science does not answer.

 

We do better in life when we join together with others. We make better scientific progress working together than we ever could accomplish alone. I believe that we also experience enhanced personal growth when we connect with others to find meaning in life and to seek ways to make a positive impact on our world.

 

My hope is that this blog community will become a place where we can find answers together, accomplishing more than we ever would on our own.

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  • The process of discovery rarely happens in isolation.  Buffer
  • We do better in life when we join together with others.  Buffer

The Power of a Good Question

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I believe in the power of a good question. Questions promote discovery. Every scientific experiment starts with a question that leads to a hypothesis.

Why is the sky blue?

What causes uncontrolled growth in tumor cells?

How do plants convert sunlight into energy?

In life, questions can clarify your goals and sharpen your sense of purpose.

What do I do well?

How can I live life to the fullest?

Who matters the most to me?

Questions also reveal truth and cut through unnecessary complexity.

Do you love me?

Why wasn’t I invited?

What happened to all the cookies?

This new blog, Question Your Doubts, is all about asking questions. Questions to promote discovery. Questions to clarify your life goals. Questions to ignite a sense of purpose. Questions to reveal truth. Questions to strength your faith, your confidence, and your relationships. Thanks for visiting!