Off campus

For my off campus event I went to a talk given by Fransisco Ayala, an authority in the field of evolutionary biology, at the University of Texas in San Antonio. My first reaction was that it was somewhat basic, covering the fundamentals of evolutionary theory using a case-study approach. Then, I realized that I have studied the subject at the undergraduate level at some depth, and so perhaps it wasn’t as basic as I thought. Awesome, I think.
I also realized that it’s nice, in and of itself, to hear an authority speak in their field. You realize that they really know their shit, spending their lifetime investigating the subject. At first, such specialization seemed to me restricting, but I realized that its beneficial to refine one’s passion to a fairly specific field.
The last thing I got out of going the talk was fairly personal. At the end, a man stood up, clearly an academic, who asked what was, in my opinion, the perfect question. Citing the evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, he asked Ayala to confront the issue of non-overlapping magesteria. It doesn’t really matter, but non-overlapping magesteria is the theory presented by Gould which states that science and religion, to use Ayala’s example, are like two windows looking out into the world from the same room. It’s the same world, looking at it from slightly different angles. As long as the domain of science doesn’t encroach upon religion, and visa versa, then all is well. When they do, conflict inevitably arises. In short, leave science to the scientists, and religion to the clergy.
Getting back to the issue at hand, the man asked the question, in Gould’s terms, as to the idea that science has the ability to, for example, explain phenomenon which religion takes as divine. Essentially, he asked Ayala to explain himself on why he thought this was inaccurate. He dodged the question, going back to the idea of an interesting world as one where perhaps religion has a role.
So why did this man have an impact on me? Well, for one, it made me think about where I align myself with regard to science and religion—I’m still working on it. But more importantly, I realized what science in some sense is. Any science is simply a creation of a new vocabulary. It creates and evolves language itself so that understanding can increase in complexity. When within a science, the learned individual, the scientist, feels comfortable. With their newly formed and specialized language in hand, they have words for things which only they interact with. They seem to be able to know more, or at least know quicker, with this vocabulary—able to bring up a somewhat intricate formulation of the relationship of science to religion understood in the term, “non-overlapping magesteria.” It enables you to really get somewhere in conversation. Moreover, it enables you to get your own opinion on the matter, providing a clear means of understanding. I realized that in many respects I want to be that guy—well-read, vocabulary in hand, for some field, or maybe a cross-section in between fields.