Marston: The Word "Science"

Following is an interesting quote from Sir Charles Marston in his book The Bible is True, published in the late 1930's:

It will be observed that an indiscriminate use is made of the word "Science," and that witnesses for the correctness of Science are motorcars and bicycles, radios and aeroplanes and the like. But bicycles and motor-cars and the other inventions enumerated, did not spring fully fledged and mature from the intelligence of a body of scientists. They were slowly and painfully built up, the product of a multitude of brains, some of which knew nothing about Science or its laws. The correctness of each idea as it took shape, could be and was verified by experience, and at every step and every stage of the development of the model, experience was both the judge of its correctness, and the guide to further modifications and developments. So it is always with inventions. The shelves of the Patent Office are crowded with a hundred thousand, and more, specifications of inventions describing ingenious devices, which have been abandoned because they have not stood the test or trial of experience; and let us remember that these Patent Office failures were usually based on some recognized fact. So it is obvious that the Science which is credited with producing these witnesses to testify to its excellency, was moulded and shaped with the aid of concrete facts of experience from start to finish.

But there are other Sciences which have had so little contact with experience that their teachings do not possess the certainty of Mechanics or Electricity; and even the Sciences of Chemistry and Physics, which have had any amount of contact with experience, have both recently had to undergo considerable modification. For example, Einstein's Theory of Relativity has completely revolutionized the Science of Physics.

Again, the word "Science" is applied to highly speculative theories, which have little or no basis in fact, and whose verification is extremely difficult. So the identification of the word "Science" with Reality, in the present state of human knowledge is entirely erroneous; and the analogies of motor-cars and bicycles, radios, aeroplanes and electric inventions, completely fall to the ground. For the word "Science," although it represents much that is true, also shields much that is doubtful, and much that is altogether false. Analogies based on the Sciences of Mechanics or Engineering, or of Electricity, cannot yet be used by those who desire reality, to justify an assertion that Science has shown the Bible to be false. For it may well be that the particular kind of Science involved is itself at fault, and its conclusions of no account. Examples of this are given in the next chapter.