Explanation and Understanding -
Author Chris Else ponders Richard Dawkins

It’s Writers’ and Readers’ Week at the International Festival of the Arts and Richard Dawkins is in town. When I first saw he was on the programme I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go and hear him or not. I’m still not sure but I doubt I would have a choice now; his sessions will be sold out.
I feel ambiguous about Dawkins because he comes across as being utterly convinced that he is right. Complete certainty bothers me. Even though I often sound completely certain myself, I am easily convinced that there is another point of view worth considering and, even though I sometimes pour scorn on other people’s opinions, I sometimes get a sneaking sympathy for anyone who is viciously attacked by a third person. Thus, when I picked up Dawkins’s The God Delusion six months or so ago, I expected it would make me angry. It didn’t. Instead, I agreed with almost everything in it. Dawkins gets wound up at times but, for the most part, he presents what I believe is a pretty good argument against the notion of a Supreme Being.  Where I tend to part company with him, though, is in his capitulation to the power and beauty of science.

Here is a quote from a report of an interview Philip Matthews conducted with him recently (the Dominion Post magazine, Saturday 27 February 2010). In response to the question “What is it about science that really gets your blood running?” Dawkins answered: 

“It’s so thrilling, so exciting to feel that during our few decades in the sun we have it in our power to understand why we’re here. To understand the really remarkable detail. To know where the world comes from, why it’s here, how old it is. Why life is here, why life is the way it is. Why humans are here, why humans are the way they are. How the universe is going to go on in the future.

“This is absolutely enthralling and anybody who wastes their life by not getting to grips with these great questions of existence, given that in the 21st century we have that privilege, is really not living life to the full and that’s tragic.”’

Perhaps the key to the problem I see here is Dawkins’s use of the word ‘understanding’. Science gives us a certain kind of explanation, arguably the best kind. The history of thought is littered with the dead claims of people who said ‘Science will never be able to explain X’ but, nonetheless, I am bothered by the assumption that explanation is the same thing as understanding.

Read the rest on Chris Else's blog Bruitin.