Today, a special treat. This guest essay was submitted by Dr. John Farnum, Ph.D., a theoretical chemist doing his post-doctoral work at Emory University.

In this essay, Dr. Farnum explains a scientist’s perspective on “the reality of the unseen,” which he describes as equally encompassing electrons and angels. Dr. Farnum makes a compelling argument that science is more philosophically consistent with the acceptance spiritual phenomena than with a purely materialist, or, in Dr. Farnum’s more precise description, “physicalist,” worldview.

The Reality of the Unseen

A dedicated adherent to the naturalist philosophy might say that he believes only in the real physical world, things that you can see or touch. This philosophy is often attributed to scientists because of their reliance upon experimentation and their preoccupation with the laws of the physical world. Many scientists themselves would not dispute accusations of physicalism, the belief that the only real things in the universe are physical observables. However, the deductions and practice of science are inconsistent with the argument that naturalism is the proper philosophy of one who relies on the scientific method or its claims.

Science observes the world and describes it with models. Often the theories and models become obsolete due to new or more accurate observations. A physicalist would use this fact to support his belief that the observables are the only real things in the world and the theoretical elements are simply an invention of man to help him keep track of the observables that he has seen. However, the consistency among different theories and the predictive capabilities of good theories imply that real theoretical elements exist in the universe.

Though theories may be replaced, any part of a theory that is correct must be retained in a replacement theory. This fact is used to evaluate quantum mechanical theories and, in this setting, is called the correspondence principle. When a quantum mechanical system grows to macroscopic scales, the results must agree with the classical equations. Classical mechanics is not exhaustively correct, but it is very accurate for a wide array of situations and will not be replaced by any theory that is more correct. In fact, to the extent that a theory is correct, any new theory must capture the essence of the old theory within the conditions and constraints of its correctness. Because of this characteristic of theories, there seems to be a real, complete theory which all theories are discovering and attempting to emulate.

The reality of a single correct theory also explains the predictive capabilities of good existing theories. It is true that theories do not always make good predictions and there is no way to know the truth of a prediction aside from measuring the predicted physical observable. But the predictions that are correct are often so far beyond the plausibility of coincidental discovery that a real theory is the only reasonable conclusion. Einstein’s predictions on time dilation, the correspondence between mass and energy, and gravity’s effects on light had no physical observations hinting at their existence. The predictions seemed fanciful at best until they were observed in desynchronized atomic clocks, the atomic bomb, and visible stars in a solar eclipse. The reasonable conclusion is that the theoretical mechanisms predicting these observable phenomena are real, albeit hidden, machinery in the universe.

When considering invisible objects in the world, the line between theory and reality itself begins to blur. An electron can never be physically seen. Science deduces the existence of electrons by secondary effects like observed charge quantization. Particular atoms are invisible except through recent advancements of the electron microscope (which really just creates an image out of secondary phenomena). It could be argued that atoms and electrons are theoretical elements explaining observed phenomena, but the entire chemistry community would disagree. A philosophy that restricts reality to things that can be seen with the human eye is naive.

The development of physicalism seems to be an augmentation and refinement of naturalism to account for things that cannot be directly seen or observed. But the augmentation required defeats the spirit of the physicalist philosophy. When indirect observations or secondary effects are allowed as proof of a thing’s existence, anything might exist. We believe that electrons exist because of their reactions to applied electric fields, but the existence of things such as miracles, angles, and God are on similar footings of proof. Historical evidence and personal accounts of observations argue for the existence of numinous things and beings. The frequency and controllability of these observations should have little sway on their veracity. Many subatomic particles have been rarely or never observed, yet the belief in their existence is strong enough to convince the government to spend millions of dollars on large detectors and research in the field. Because science believes that observations, sometimes very simple observations, support the existence of things that have not and possibly can never be seen, and in light of observed phenomena and evidence for a spiritual reality, science is more consistent with a dualist philosophy than a strictly physicalist or naturalist philosophy.