Article May 5, 2008 Issue

THE UNFALSIFIABLE SCIENCE

BY DAVID CORNELL

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE has gained a unique place in today's religious discussion by uniting the religion of Christianity with the discipline of a science, a system that seeks laws that predict outcomes in a reproducible way. This union arose out of years of prayer and exploration, during which religious founder Mary Baker Eddy searched for a way to revive the healing method that Christ Jesus had practiced—one that, she believed, healed on the basis of divine laws. "In the year 1866," she explained, "I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science" (Science and Health, p. 107). She was convinced that these laws could be taught, and that then many people could use them to benefit themselves and society.

But there is a substantive difference between science as a human endeavor, and the Science described as spiritual law by the founder of Christian Science.

To be regarded as scientific by the academic community, a physical theory must be testable. Many experimentalists today occupy themselves by attacking a new theory in the attempt to shoot it down or find its flaws. A favorite target is Einstein's Relativity Theory, which has been subjected to repeated attacks from many angles. A widely accepted point in the philosophy of science—as advanced by its main proponent, philosopher Karl Popper—argues that a physical theory is never really true, but merely survives until one tested example proves it wrong. In this way, Sir Isaac Newton's notion of absolute time yielded to progress when Einstein and others showed that measurements of time depended upon the observer's perspective. Ever since, the old idea of time as an absolute has been regarded as just a convenient approximation.

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