Preparing for the Miraculous

eing human and the copernican principle 119putting her in discredit for her inability to accept the developmentof the sciences. Her condemnation of Galileo remainsthe big mistake which nothing can efface and makesthe Church into an enemy of science for ever.” (JacquesArsac) 2 The nineteenth century hardened the standpointof Scientism while generally weakening religious faith. Thepolemical tension between both survives in the present,witness the quarrel between Scientism on the one hand andCreationism or Intelligent Design on the other.Science is now thought by many to be the only sourceof true knowledge, which should be clear from the fact thatit can prove its affirmations mathematically and experimentally,and that it has conquered the Earth. Yet the firstaffirmation is contradicted by the many discredited scientifictheories left by the wayside, and by the recently gainedawareness that scientific systems depend on the temporarilydominant paradigm. The second affirmation, that of science’sworldwide triumph, can also be questioned if onerealizes how much technology differs from theoretical science,which may lead to the conclusion that the triumphshould not be claimed by the theoretical scientist but by theengineer. Although nowadays the two often overlap, scienceis about abstract knowing, technology about practicalmaking.Science is also the privileged domain of people with aknack for complicated mathematics and an extensive trainingin them. This has led to the image of the scientist, morespecifically the physicist, as a sort of higher being with anintellect out of the ordinary, who indeed sometimes seeks“to understand the mind of God” (cf. Albert Einstein andStephen Hawking). The acceptance of such a view wouldput science and the crucial decisions made by scientists2 Jacques Arsac: La science et le sens de la vie, p. 15.