Science, Purpose, and Design

William Harvey was a physician and scientist in the 16th and 17th centuries who was the first to demonstrate how the circulatory system worked. He described how the arteries, veins, valves, lungs, and heart worked to circulate blood – and he was amazed at God's design and purpose in the systems of the body. He enjoyed studying how God had made things to work.

Harvey considered science a godly vocation and was motivated by the idea that the Creator had made things in an orderly way that could be understood and studied.  

Harvey’s primary achievement, the explanation of the circulation of the blood, was occasioned in part “by asking why God put so many valves in the veins and none in the arteries.” He believed that nature does nothing “in vain.”

He was physician to King James 1 and King Charles. He was also the first to propose that humans and mammals reproduced by a sperm fertilizing an egg.

Comments

[John Moore]

His lifelong regret was that he could not discover the function of the human appendix. Surely it must have a function, though, since nature does nothing in vain.

Harvey's contemporary, Rene Descartes, took that honor by discovering that the appendix is the seat of the human soul. Descartes kept this knowledge secret, however, since he had himself undergone an appendectomy. He suggested instead the pineal gland as the root of the soul. Nowadays we realize that Descartes spent half his days as a soulless zombie!

[James]

Mr. Moore, your example is poorly picked.

The appendix does have a function. See:

http://politicalblindspot.com/scientists-finally-discover-the-function-of-the-human-appendix/

and

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-the-function-of-t/

So the religious person hypothesized that it must have a function, and we find it does. Mr. Moore uses sarcasm with his scientific ignorance to make a point that is demonstrably moot.

[The Great Suprendo]

James

I think the point being made is that the motivation for someone to do science and discover something doesnt say anything about the veracity of the motivation.

Still amazed that Melinda wants to talk about design in naturally occurring things and even calls it 'God's design'. What is this? How is detected?

Again, posts like these simply raise more questions than they answer. However, mentions of Harvey are great because he was a brilliant man and one of the first true scientists - his work wasn't popular because it overturned the dogma of Galen. There's irony in that perhaps.

[WisdomLover]

However, mentions of Harvey are great because he was a brilliant man and one of the first true scientists - his work wasn't popular because it overturned the dogma of Galen. There's irony in that perhaps.

Wait. I thought that science was going along swimmingly in the Greco-Roman world only to be brought to a screeching halt by 1000 years of Christianity. I thought that we would be on spaceships to other planets and getting about by transporter beam by now if it weren't for Christianity. That's what Carl sagan told me. How could the first true scientists have appeared in the 16th century?

Are you then, coming out against the official history of atheism on that point TGS?

[DGFischer]

TGS,

I have been having a difficult time in weighing this assessment from your post.

>>> Still amazed that Melinda wants to talk about design in naturally occurring things and even calls it 'God's design'. What is this? How is detected?

The difficulty in all this is the nature of science itself. I study science and see the intricacies in the ecological scheme of a biome. I acknowledge the incredible abilities to predict the eclipse and approaching storm. These are patterns that set well with a "design paradigm." The only question is "how came this sense of orderliness in the cosmos"? Is it perceived, illusionary, or is there scientific grounding that natural processes can produce orderly systems?

The flip side of all this is that all systems are chaotic. But science could never allow this, unless we grant that several theories could expound rational explanations to a single phenomenon. This is not the way of science, which needs to resolve scientific questions, and chaos tends to get in the way of such goals.

I propose that design is grounded or science fails. We live on a "well put together" planet, or else, all this talk of the marvels of science and nature sound hollow.

[James]

TGS:

I think the point being made is that the motivation for someone to do science and discover something doesnt say anything about the veracity of the motivation.

No one is saying "my motivation for finding X was Y, I found X, therefore Y is true". That certainly does not follow.

The general argument that is leveled against Christians is that they are anti-science, or that Christianity cannot create good scientists, or that Christianity had nothing to do with the rise of science in western civilization.

The post is just more evidence that those arguments have no grounding whatsoever. The post supports the notion that a belief in the Christian God fosters science.

[Brad B]

The post supports the notion that a belief in the Christian God fosters science, "

Probably should have added the word legitimate in there between fosters and science since the term "science" has been hijacked by renegades.

[Roger]

Still confused.

I keep hearing that non-atheism is a science stopper because all believers rely totally on God of the Gaps, and any non-atheist who does anything useful in science or engineering is an anomaly and does so in spite of their handicap.

Is this not true?