On science as Freudian wish-fulfilment

I have just discovered a list of 20 blasphemous acts causing religious outrage from the recent past on TimesOnLine. In the forum attached to the article the discussion quickly turned into a debate about whether atheism is a religion. To read the posts was illuminating, infuriating and entertaining.

The tenets (or their lack) of atheism were often supported by scientific methodology and provability. This prompted me to consider whether science can be said to fulfil a human need. For I think that ultimately, arts and activities under the label 'humanities' exist primarily because of a human need -- perhaps that of better understanding, of more effective expression, or merely of remaining sane.

While the results of the sciences -- their application -- helped spectacular machines, procedures and organizations spring to life (this power of the sciences cannot be denied), I also do believe that sciences as such fulfil an intrinsically human need. For what science does is largely to construct mathematical models of parts of the world in order to "explain" past phenomena and predict future ones. However well such a model works, we can never be sure that its internal workings mirror those of reality. To take an example, a photon is neither a particle (one model), nor a wave (another model). It is something the behaviour of which can be predicted to a certain degree under specific conditions supposing it either a small ball or rippling ether.

No, there must be another reason for the construction of models than the urge to discover Nature, for it is precisely what models don't do. I think the aim of models is to be in control.

Sigmund Freud, in his "Beyond the Pleasure Principle," describes a play of a small child. It consists of throwing something away or behind another object and saying the German equivalent of "Gone". Freud reached the conclusion that it was the way the child dealt with the unpleasant experience of his mother leaving him. What interested Freud in this hypothesis was that it clearly contradicted the Pleasure Principle as according to it, the play recreated a bad experience. Freud concluded that albeit this is true, the reason why the child kept playing the game was because in the game, he was in control. He was no longer left, he made the 'mother' go away.

The same thing may apply to the sciences. We have little control over the world, and little understanding of it. But in our models, we are in charge. If we can't conquer the universe, we will at least be the masters of the numbers on the paper and the colours on the screen.