1-30-02

Where Science Meets Metaphysics

The heater was blasting in the North room of the parish center. The machine had a vintage seventies look about it, all gray steel with a large fan, the grating large enough for a small child’s hand to fit through. The noise was not as bothersome to me as it normally would be given the quality of the lectures going on in the RCIA that morning. One woman seemed to have a hang-up on constantly explaining to us all the things that don’t “exist in a vacuum.” By the third time she said it, interrupting the other lecturer to interject a relating point from last week, so as to remind us that “the lectures don’t exists in a vacuum”, I’d had my fill. My mind wandered, wondering what would happen if I went to a vacuum shop and demanded the dismantling of a vacuum so that I might know what actually did exist in a vacuum, as the pickings would seem to be slim.

As my thoughts played out the pun in every conceivable way, the class wrapped up and I began to make good my escape. I didn’t see my candidate there, which was not uncommon, and was wondering at his absence. It seems that I was stuck with a lame duck candidate, because he was very tentative and the director felt I would not put undue pressure on him, given my calm disposition. This was so much the case that I have barely talked with him at all, and have not gotten to push all my various overzealous ideologies into his brain, much to my dismay. The only time I really got to talk to him at all I had given him a ride home and upon turning onto his street I noticed that there was a Catholic Church right there on the corner, as there usually is in New Orleans. “Why didn’t you go to this church?”

“I’ve never been in that church actually,” he said. “I’ve always heard about Holy Name and wanted to go there.” I hate it when people call it Holy Name. The whole title is The Church of the Most Holy Name of Jesus. The abbreviation is understandable, but this is not how I would break it down. Over the twin doors that enter the church the name is spelled out in the concrete one section over each door. I prefer the first section in and of itself “The Church of the Most”. That, I believe, is what I would call it. It gives it sort of a hiphop flare.

He went on to talk about another church that he had heard a lot about and that these two were “the type of church” he would like to go to. I got the impression that he meant affluent. This did not sit well in my mind. Two opposite thoughts reared their heads in my mind simultaneously. The first was that I couldn’t have this upstart poking his head around trying to grab all the fame at my church. This would be too much competition. The second was a dread in my head that had been slowly gnawing in the back of my mind that, yes indeed, I do go to an affluent church. Not because I chose it, like my candidate, but because it was the first one I saw close to my house. I began to wonder if I should start going to St Joan of Arch down the levee. It’s a mostly black Catholic church and I think, given my working class background, I would fit in better there, but I loath change too so I remain.

The class was over and I edged toward the door. The director was handing out qustionaires for the rite of acceptance. The questions are designed to let help the candidate or catechumen discern if they are ready for the next step. The sponsors too received a sheet of questions to let them express how they think their candidate is coming along. I was slinking toward the door hoping to avoid getting a sheet so as not to have to rat out my man when the director stopped me. “Phillip, I think Jason moved to Australia last week.” This was the first I heard of it. Apparently he had gotten accepted to medical school there and moved out that week. Shows how much I kept up with my candidate. So I got out of having to write him up for not showing up to class enough and seeking fame through the Catholic Church in some Machiavellian move to acquire the status of “Holy Name.”

I told the director that I would still come to the classes to help if I could but it puts me in an odd position. Given that my candidate fled the country, now I am neither team member, sponsor, candidate, nor catechumen. It seems I now exist in an RCIA vacuum.

So my friend Becky moved in town form Portland. I was sitting in the apartment of the Portland Contingent, a small advanced team she sent ahead of her to do the scouting, and was asked this question, “So what do you do every day at work?” I was taken aback, he knew I worked in an environmental chemistry lab. I first judged that the best way to answer the question was to relay what I had done that day. I told how I had been the first to arrive and had to disarm the alarm. From there my talk devolved from an explanation of my workday to my interior disposition when having to turn off the alarm. I hate it. Every time I go to turn it off I fear a slight slip of the finger and very loud response. After relating the whole story of how I set off the alarm on Martin Luther King Jr. day and the subsequent doubt as to whether I had to be at work at all that morning, I noticed the blank stares gazing at me. So I skipped ahead to when the day actually started, though I wasn’t finished my tirade. I started telling them the projects I was working on and the methods by which they were done. I was met with equally blank stares. Finally I broke down. “Okay I take dirt and water and squirt acid on it. Then I put it into a machine that turns it into numbers.”

“So what do the numbers mean?”

“Good and bad.” The answer seemed to satisfy.

Upon going home I began to realize the profundity of the statement. I take dirt and water and transform them by the methods of science from their physical properties into moral categories. In my mind I changed bad to “evil” to give it a better effect. The question struck me so hard that was in need of immediate reconciliation, how did science get into the position of being able to change physical entities into moral propositions. Such empiricists as A. J. Ayer, who stated that, “all metaphysics are nonsense” must be rolling in their collective graves.

The answer is of course the standard. In science you have to have a standard for everything. If you have a scale you have a weight that means 10g and it means that because somewhere in the bureau of weights and measures there is a weight that means 10g and the one you have was weighed against one that was weighed against one that matched that one, all of course within a plus or minus minimum. This weight is put on the scale every day to make sure the scale is working properly, if it weighs “right” you’re “good” to go.

This, through the myth of objectivity leaves out the fact that humans do this and most of them don’t give a bean about plus of minus. Doubt also creeps in when weighing. If you have your 10g and it weighs within the measure but a little low, say 9.95, that’s good but 9.98 is better, not only is it closer, but looks prettier, all curves and not as jagged. If however you weigh a 10.00, would any one really believe that? After all this is the third day in a row. Better make it 9.99 just to be sure. It’s a human desire to change what could be a perfect system in theory because we can’t handle perfect. If you want to be a metaphysical determinist about it you can just remember this triolet,

Divine purpose at work write the numbers as you please.
The God of the gaps will like what it sees.
.5 to .9 the pen moves with ease.
Divine purpose at work write the numbers as you please.
Write the right wrong, wrong right as you style,
the path, the teleological extra mile.
Divine purpose at work write the numbers as you please.
The God of the gaps will like what it sees.

Wa la it was meant to be. But enough of this nonsense, I digress, the point was that standards allow for moral determinacy because scientists all agree on them, and the way we regard them, allowing them to change our behavior doing certain actions and avoiding others, makes them a type of moral category. In short, the number I get for mercury in a soil sample has a direct effect on what the company does with the loads of dirt they have, because the EPA says there’s a standard to be met and the law says they have to do it. Why can’t the Holy See come up with a scam like that? The Papal EPA! The fact that A. J. Ayer would think morality “nonsense”, that is not apt to sensation, holds firm also for those oh so precious numbers that science holds so dear, have you ever seen a “five”? I have not, much less a “point five”. Moreover the fact that science’s love for knowledge, as defined under its system, seems almost always to be manifest as a change in behavior, presumably “for the better.”

It follows that though I have proved that it is not true that nothing exists in a vacuum, given my position in the RCIA, it appears I will not find science in there with me.

Phillip G.

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