Science and the Limits of the Possible

The world is a better and more interesting place thanks to scientific discovery and innovation. Few things have inspired me more in my career than witnessing novelty and creativity in science. Yet in the past few years, I have found myself increasingly uneasy about the attitude of society, including scientists, toward scientific advances. I am not afraid of AI overlords (though maybe I should be). Instead, my worries focus on the very way that science is understood by those who innovate, discover, and create.

Presently, we can select embryos, edit genes, synthesize novel molecules, manipulate weather, implant computers into brains, explore space, and model intelligence. Just last month the FCC approved a proposal for a space mirror to provide sunlight during nighttime. We possess tremendous ability, but what—or who—is it for? It seems we are consumed with a desire to remake the world in our own image. The state of scientific innovation brings to my mind a haunting line from the book of Judges:

In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25, ESV)

This current cultural moment has been a long time in the making. As science has progressed, we have slowly removed our creator king and elevated ourselves to that position. Over the past five hundred years, science has moved through various paradigms of the world. I propose that there have been two primary ones and that we are in the transition to the third, present conception.

Tracing the Lines

The first dominant scientific paradigm emphasized the order and regularity of the world. Originating in the idea of a machina mundi, or world machine, early modern science was marked by its “clockwork” conception of the world. Imagining the world as a clock whose gears tick with remarkable precision, many great scientists, like Newton, Descartes, and Copernicus, used this kind of language to give praise to the Creator who designed the world.

Scientific insights from the nineteenth century shifted the view away from the clockwork notion and toward the second primary conception: the “emergence” conception. New geological and biological theories suggested that the present world came together slowly—layer by layer and step by step. Rather than elucidating the laws of nature, the main scientific pursuits transitioned to understanding how the world emerged from the disordered matter of its ancient past. Quantum indeterminacy, which revealed that reality at its finest level was governed by probability rather than determinate laws, further unsettled the scientific image of the world. This emphasis on order emerging from chaos defines the emergence conception of the late modern period. This conception gradually came to shape the scientific imagination. Arising alongside the dechristianization of society, the idea of emergence is best captured by Nobel Laureate Jacques Monod who declared, “Man knows at last that he is alone in the universe…out of which he emerged only by chance.” No longer is there any inherent order or plan for the world. Meaning is being made as the universe matures.

The Programmable World

More recently, human ability has never been greater. There are now cures for previously incurable diseases, technology allows us to communicate with anyone around the world at any time, and it feels like any task is achievable if we devote enough effort to it. The general sense is that we can change the world into anything that we want it to be. We increasingly imagine ourselves to be the authors of meaning. This is the birth of the “programmable” world, the third and present conception.

What defines this programmable world is the desire for mastery and control. Humans no longer view themselves as stewards of the earth under divine rule. We now view nature as raw resources awaiting redesign, as Martin Heidegger described in his famous essay. We no longer ask what creation is, but what it can be made to become. Phillip Sherrard elucidates this further by saying contemporary science “presumes that the earth belongs to man, not man to the earth.” We have promoted ourselves from creature to creator.

This vision of mastery is rarely stated in these terms. Consider the recent remarks of AI researcher François Chollet on X who said, “All of reality is programmable.” Few scientists will openly advocate a vision of dominance, but this language of programmability reveals how many understand the world: a world stripped of givenness to modify, optimize, and redesign to our whims. Human embryos are winnowed like wheat from chaff, genetic code is rewritten to our liking, and even our bodies are carved and chemically altered to meet our designs. We are the potters, and the world is our clay.

Technology critics like Jacques Ellul, Lewis Mumford, and, more recently, Paul Kingsnorth have described the dominating role of technology in our lives. But the spirit of this programmable age is best summarized by Egbert Schuurman. In the spirit of Ellul, Schuurman labels this instinct toward mastery as “technicism.” Schuurman writes,

Technicism is the pretension of humans, as self-declared lords and masters using the scientific-technical method of control, to bend all of reality to their will in order to solve all problems, old and new, and to guarantee increasing material prosperity and progress.

To adopt the vision of the programmable world, we must first declare ourselves as sovereign. No longer is there a sense of transcendent responsibility. The goal now, it seems, is simply to exhaust the limits of the possible.

Science and Technology as Participation

Returning to that final line from Judges, the narrative does not suggest that everyone pursued depravity wholesale. Instead, everyone did what was “right in his own eyes.” This does not pronounce the lack of a moral code as much as it suggests innumerable self-legislated moral codes. A king should bind conscience and delineate right from wrong. With no king, science is pursued according to each person’s own ethical leanings.

Presently, scientific innovation and technological development operate chiefly on the harm principle. If an activity is not causing direct harm or generates substantial risk of physical harm down the road, there is little reason to stop its advance. The effect then becomes clear: virtually all innovation is good (especially if it returns a profit). Any sense of an inherent normative element of science has been lost.

While it might be more natural to develop opinions on technologies relating to human germline editing or autonomous lethal weapons, consider the following example with relatively low moral stakes: GloFish. Certain species of fish have been genetically engineered to fluoresce different colors for aesthetic purposes in aquariums. What standard is there to evaluate this venture? With no sense of transcendent normative structure, it seems odd to even question whether this is an acceptable use of technology since it harms neither the fish nor the environment.

To develop an evaluative framework, the place of science needs to be reinterpreted. Science is nothing less than the discovery and development of creation as a response to God’s call for humanity to subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28). This mandate to develop the earth is a continuation of God’s creative work. As Bruce Ashford and Craig Bartholomew describe, God intended for his image bearers to continue to develop creation. This mandate carries an intrinsic normative element. Specifically, God calls us to take what he has given and “make something of it for his glory.” By grounding ourselves in this creation mandate, we resist the impulse to self-legislate right and wrong. Ultimately, to do science is to participate in God’s creative work—to investigate, innovate, and create with the same direction toward justice and holiness as our creator king.

Rather than reflecting the lost spiritual state of the period of the judges, science should reflect its task of stewardship. This may be best reflected in Psalm 8:6-8:

You made them rulers over the works of your hands;

you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds,

and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky,

and the fish in the sea,

all that swim the paths of the seas.

We are rulers of the earth in that sense—not owners. Returning to the fluorescent fish, genetic engineering of organisms surely displays the prowess of the human mind, and it could be argued that it is an example of creation being further developed. Yet this modification treats animals as programmable commodities. Engineering fish solely to satisfy our aesthetic preferences risks reducing them to objects for our own alteration rather than creatures with their own telos in creation. It must not be forgotten that animals were declared good before mankind was created. In fact, humans were only granted permission to use them for food after the flood (Genesis 9:3). Humans are tasked with stewarding fish toward flourishing here on this earth. As it presently stands, innovations like GloFish represent technology for its own sake.

The technicist spirit of the age echoes the words of Pindar from over two millennia ago. In forsaking a belief in transcendence, we resign ourselves to the material, only able to engage with the possibilities of our finite existence. If we acknowledge our place under a king’s rule, not only will this guide how to pursue our science, but it allows us to take part in a much greater project that began with time itself: creation praising its creator (Psalm 19:1).

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