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Ärende: Vatican Information Service (Press Release)
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                               VIS-Press releases

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY CANNOT FULFIL ALL NEEDS

VATICAN CITY, NOV 6, 2006 (VIS) - At midday today, the Pope received
participants in the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,
headed by the president of that institution, Nicola Cabibbo. They have been
meeting to consider the theme: "Predictability in Science: Accuracy and
Limitations."

Addressing his audience in English, the Holy Father observed how some people
"have seen in the progress of modern science and technology one of the main
causes of secularization and materialism: why invoke God's control over these
phenomena when science has shown itself capable of doing the same thing?"

"Christianity does not posit an inevitable conflict between supernatural faith
and scientific progress," he stressed, recalling how "God created human beings,
endowed them with reason, and set them over all the creatures of the earth." In
this way, man became "the steward of creation and God's 'helper.' ... Indeed,
we could say that the work of predicting, controlling and governing nature,
which science today renders more practicable than in the past, is itself a part
of the Creator's plan."

"Man cannot place in science and technology so radical and unconditional a
trust as to believe that scientific and technological progress can explain
everything and completely fulfil all his existential and spiritual needs.
Science cannot replace philosophy and revelation by giving an exhaustive answer
to man's most radical questions: questions about the meaning of living and
dying, about ultimate values, and about the nature of progress itself."

Pope Benedict then went on to address the issue of a scientist's ethical
responsibilities. "His conclusions must be guided by respect for truth," he
said, "and an honest acknowledgment of both the accuracy and the inevitable
limitations of the scientific method. Certainly this means avoiding needlessly
alarming predictions when these are not supported by sufficient data or exceed
science's actual ability to predict. But it also means avoiding the opposite,
namely a silence, born of fear, in the face of genuine problems. The influence
of scientists in shaping public opinion on the basis of their knowledge is too
important to be undermined by undue haste or the pursuit of superficial
publicity."

"Our world continues to look to you and your colleagues" the Pope told his
audience, "for a clear understanding of the possible consequences of many
important natural phenomena. I think, for example, of the continuing threats to
the environment which are affecting whole peoples, and the urgent need to
discover safe, alternative energy sources available to all.

"Scientists," he added, "will find support from the Church in their efforts to
confront these issues, since the Church has received from her divine founder
the task of guiding people's consciences towards goodness, solidarity and
peace. Precisely for this reason she feels in duty bound to insist that
science's ability to predict and control must never be employed against human
life and its dignity, but always placed at its service, at the service of this
and future generations."

"The scientific method itself," the Pope warned, "has inherent limitations that
necessarily restrict scientific predictability to specific contexts and
approaches. Science cannot, therefore, presume to provide a complete,
deterministic representation of our future and of the development of every
phenomenon that it studies.

"Philosophy and theology might make an important contribution to this
fundamentally epistemological question by, for example, helping the empirical
sciences to recognize a difference between the mathematical inability to
predict certain events and the validity of the principle of causality, or, ...
more radically, between evolution as the origin of a succession in space and
time, and creation as the ultimate origin of participated being in essential
Being."

The Holy Father concluded: "At the same time, there is a higher level that
necessarily transcends all scientific predictions, namely, the human world of
freedom and history. Whereas the physical cosmos can have its own spatial-
temporal development, only humanity, strictly speaking, has a history, the
history of its freedom. Freedom, like reason, is a precious part of God's image
within us, and it can never be reduced to a deterministic analysis"
AC/SCIENCE:LIMITATIONS/CABIBBO VIS 061106 (680)

SUMMARY

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