Science deals with a lot of phenomena that we can't really see, but which we need to communicate about. To do this we resort to models - which are simply devises which aid our effort to understand an often unseen reality. It isn't too tough to distinguish between a model and reality when we are thinking in everyday life. I often show a photograph and say "this is my grandson" Thankfully he is a lot more complicated than the coloured chemicals on treated paper. When I say this is my grandson, you know that I am not giving a fully adequate characterization of the complexity of the real boy. The photograph is illuminating, but not totally descriptive. It is playing the role that a scientific model plays. It is something that aides our discovery, and gives us some insight into reality. We don't fool ourselves that this is reality, or a fully adequate characterization of its complexity. But certainly the communication that we need is immensely helped by the model we formulate. Of course the use of devices to help us understand the unfamiliar by reference to the familiar is not confined to science. Jesus used devices to do this job, in trying to explain unseen spiritual truths. These aids to understanding are not the end of the search for truth, just an aid to reach a destination, understanding what is. (Scientists sometimes forget they are not just collecting models just as Christians sometimes forget they are not just collecting doctrines!)

It's the same in science. For example, investigations into the structure of matter suggests that particles that make up the nucleus of an atom can be thought of as if they were composed of fractionally charged constituents (called quarks). Quarks when struck by high energy projectiles behave as if they were freely moving within the particle - but are nevertheless confined, so that they cannot escape from the particle. To get a grip on these phenomena different models were invented - just to help our understanding. Particles were pictured as being in containers, which confine the freely moving quarks within them. This was called the bag model, and was successful in helping us understand a variety of phenomena, and helped correlate a number of different observations.

A good model should help us develop a more complete theory, to further test by experiment. Light, for example, was thought of as behaving like waves, because of the way it behaved in certain experiments. But this was found to be only half the story. In other experiments we were forced to think of light as particles. We were forced to a duality - two models for the same thing. Quantum theory developed in 1920's was able to contain both the wave and particle aspects of light without inconsistency. We can accept two complementary pictures in some instances - but only when they are necessary to do justice to experience and experiment. Our investigation of the physical world has stretched our minds and enlarged our notions of what is conceivable.

The attainment of an all embracing account of phenomena explained by a single theory is the idealized and unreachable goal of science. In dealing with any particular phenomena individual theories aim at comprehensiveness - and therefore it is only tolerable to believe in one such theory at a time. There are it turns out a lot of similarities between the illusive world of quantum theory, and the world which theology deals with. Both pursue an understanding of what is unpicturable and unexpected.

Both the scientist and theologian deal with some entities which are not directly observable. And need to make use of model and metaphor. The scientific and theological enterprises share the common tools of limited words and images to express what we find. In the end, in both Christianity and science, success is the criteria we use for measuring whether we are right - validation is found in whether it works in practice or not. (I am always amused by the Neils Bohr story, a famous physicist who had a horseshoe over his laboratory door. "Surely you don't believe in luck?" "No, but I have been told it works - whether you believe in it or not!")

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