Interpreting the Story of Life

Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage is a classic of American literature; that much is agreed upon. But is it a profound deconstruction of the ideology of war and hero-creation, or is it an inspiring depiction of the way that war forges cowardly boys into courageous men? Alas, on that question there is no agreement. Rather, there are literary critics lining up on one or another side to offer the grounds for their interpretation.

How does one settle the debate? One thing is clear: it is not enough simply to recount the narratival facts themselves, for the facts do not speak for themselves apart from interpretation. And so interpret we must.

What about science? Is it enough to recount the "facts of nature", or does interpretation rear its ugly head here as well?

I thought of this question in a recent exchange with atheist Gaga on the thread for my post "When is a miracle a miracle?" At one point I made the following observation: "Concerning the evolution of life from bacteria to Bach you aver that this bespeaks no sign of purpose. Why? This strikes me as ineluctably a teleological process...." In other words, interpreting the emergence of life in all its complexity as fundamentally designed is much more holistic than a conclusion from the argument that certain structures or processes are "irreducibly complex". Take in the whole story and one is overwhelmed by the incessant move from lower to higher complexity as a guided process.

Gaga was unimpressed: "your opinion is utterly irrelevant, only facts count. You keep working under the assumption that all your opinions somehow should be true unless proven otherwise. It doesn't work that way."

What struck me about this comment was the absolute dichotomy Gaga drew between "opinion" (that is, interpretation) on the one hand and "facts" on the other, for this seemed to imply that facts are not interpreted. But that which is false in the books of literature is just as false in the book of nature. Naive Baconian induction may have presumed that there were only facts to be added up sans interpretation. But today scientists recognize that science is always theory-laden, and thus that facts never come to us naked, but always dressed in the robes of interpretation.

In conclusion, it is just as erroneous to pit a "factual" reading of natural history against an interpretation as it is to pit a "factual" reading of The Red Badge of Courage against an interpretation. Rather, we have two competing interpretations, each of which needs to be evaluated in light of all the evidence.

So how do we evaluate two competing interpretations of the story of life? That shall occupy a subsequent post, but for a glimpse ahead: Ockham's razor will figure into the discussion.