Love is lived, not measured or reduced to data

Science has achieved extraordinary success in describing the mechanisms of the natural world. It traces genetic sequences, measures cosmic radiation, and maps the neurological pathways of thought and emotion. Its discipline has given humanity clarity about processes that once lay hidden.

Yet the deeper question remains quietly present beneath every discovery. Can scientific explanation account for the whole of reality, or does it illuminate only one dimension of it?

In her book Surprised By Purpose, Martina Pook addresses this tension with both intellectual seriousness and experiential depth. She acknowledges the explanatory power of evolutionary theory, yet she asks whether reduction through science can truly account for everything we feel, hope for, lose, and love. Her concern is not with dismissing science, but with recognizing its limits.

Love Measured and Love Known

Pook continues that the evolutionary theory has succeeded in reducing the wonders of life to scientific categories, yet she immediately introduces love as a quiet contradiction to total reduction. Science can describe hormonal shifts, dopamine release, and neurological activation when a person falls in love. It can observe correlation with impressive precision. What it cannot do is explain what love is in its essence.

She notes that attempting to define love purely in biochemical terms would almost diminish one of the most precious human experiences. The body can be scanned, but devotion cannot be scientifically examined. Neural patterns can be recorded, but sacrifice, longing, and fidelity resist containment in laboratory language.

Her analogy is strikingly simple and profound. One may define heat in terms of molecular motion or measure temperature in degrees and describe energy transfer. Yet a person who has never touched something hot does not truly understand what heat is. Language alone cannot transmit the experience. Only contact does.

In the same way, love must be lived in order to be known. It is recognised through encounter rather than definition. Words and science both serve essential roles, yet neither can fully encompass subjective or spiritual realities. To conclude that something is unreliable simply because it escapes scientific measurement, Pook argues, reveals the narrowness of the framework rather than the unreliability of the experience.

The Limits of Reductionism

The philosophical issue underlying this discussion is reductionism, the idea that complex realities can be fully explained by breaking them down into their smallest material components. While this approach has yielded remarkable scientific progress, it falters when applied to consciousness, moral obligation, and transcendent longing.

C. S. Lewis raised a similar concern when he argued that reason itself cannot be trusted if it is merely the accidental byproduct of blind processes. Rational inquiry presupposes that the mind can grasp truth. That presupposition reaches beyond chemistry.

Michael Polanyi, a philosopher of science, also emphasised that personal knowledge and tacit understanding play indispensable roles in human knowing. Scientific data do not interpret themselves. Meaning is always involved.

Pook presses this insight further by exposing a cultural inconsistency. Many educated people readily embrace vague concepts such as karma, reincarnation, or an impersonal universe that distributes fortune without moral character. These ideas often rest on little empirical evidence, yet they are accepted without demand for laboratory verification. When confronted with the claim of a personal God who upholds justice and righteousness, however, the demand for scientific proof suddenly intensifies.

This contrast reveals less about evidence and more about preference. An impersonal cosmic force asks nothing of us. A personal Creator introduces moral accountability.

Moral Law and the Intelligible Universe

Beyond the experience of love lies the broader question of moral law. Science can describe evolutionary advantages related to cooperation or altruism, yet it cannot declare cruelty objectively wrong. When human beings protest injustice, they appeal to a standard that transcends biology.

Augustine observed that truth is discovered rather than invented. Logical laws remain stable across cultures and centuries. Mathematics does not evolve according to preference. The intelligibility of the universe, as thinkers like John Polkinghorne have argued, invites reflection on whether rational structure reflects rational source.

The success of science itself depends upon the assumption that the world is ordered and comprehensible. That assumption harmonises naturally with the Christian vision of a rational Creator.

Meaning Beyond Measurement

Martina Pook’s central argument in Surprised By Purpose does not reject science. Instead, it situates science within a wider horizon. The measurable world is vast, yet human experience stretches beyond measurement. Love, moral conviction, longing for justice, and awareness of beauty all testify that reality includes more than mechanism. 

She portrays: "You can scientifically know that I am, by seing and touching me, but you cannot through the same method of measure know who I am. For that you have to be me, or be close to me"

To insist that only what can be tested in a laboratory is trustworthy narrows the scope of human knowledge to a fragment of existence. Such a stance cannot account for the very experiences that give life depth.

Science explains much. It illuminates structure and process with remarkable clarity. Yet it cannot explain everything, because everything includes meaning, morality, consciousness, and love itself. The human heart continues to ask questions that equations alone cannot answer, and those questions open the door to a reality deeper than matter.

In that space, faith and reason meet rather than collide.

Further Reading and Resources

(For those who wish to explore this question more deeply)

The question “Can science explain everything?” has been addressed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and historians across centuries. What follows is a carefully selected pathway for serious readers who wish to move beyond surface debate and engage the issue with intellectual depth and spiritual clarity.

Foundational Christian Thinkers on Reason and Reality

• Augustine of Hippo – His reflections on truth, reason, and the illumination of the mind remain foundational for understanding why logical laws and moral truths are discovered rather than invented. Confessions and On the Trinity are especially relevant.

• Thomas Aquinas – In Summa Theologiae, Aquinas argues that reason and revelation are harmonious, and that causality itself points beyond the material chain.

• C. S. Lewis – In Mere Christianity and Miracles, Lewis addresses moral law, rationality, and the inadequacy of naturalism to ground reason itself.

• Alvin Plantinga – In Where the Conflict Really Lies, Plantinga argues that the deepest tension exists between naturalism and reason, not between science and Christian belief.

Scientists and Philosophers Engaging Science and Faith

• John Polkinghorne – In Science and Christian Belief, Polkinghorne reflects on the intelligibility and fine tuning of the universe, arguing that rational structure suggests rational source.

• Michael Behe – In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe examines molecular systems whose integrated complexity challenges purely undirected explanations.

• Michael Polanyi – Personal Knowledge explores how tacit understanding and personal participation shape scientific inquiry.

• Francis Collins – In The Language of God, Collins describes scientific discovery alongside his Christian faith, affirming compatibility without reduction.

On Consciousness, Morality, and Meaning

• J. P. Moreland – Consciousness and the Existence of God argues that the reality of mind cannot be reduced to matter.

• Charles Taylor – In A Secular Age, Taylor examines modern assumptions about transcendence and immanence.

• G. K. Chesterton – Orthodoxy addresses the coherence of Christian belief in a rational universe.

On Love, Experience, and the Limits of Reduction

• Surprised By Purpose by Martina Pook – Reflects on love as lived experience rather than biochemical event, arguing that science can describe bodily processes yet cannot define love’s essence. Her analogy of heat illustrates how encounter surpasses definition, and how spiritual realities cannot be dismissed simply because they exceed laboratory method.

• Dallas Willard – The Divine Conspiracy explores lived spiritual reality beyond mechanistic frameworks.

Recommended Online Resources

• BioLogos – Explores dialogue between science and Christian belief.

• Discovery Institute – Publishes research and articles related to intelligent design and critiques of strict materialism.

• Reasonable Faith – Philosophical arguments addressing cosmology, morality, and rational belief.

• Christian Classics Ethereal Library – Access to classical theological works engaging reason and revelation.

Those who wish to think carefully will discover that Christian thought has never feared inquiry. It has consistently argued that the measurable world rests within a wider and more meaningful reality, one in which truth, reason, and love ultimately find their source.