Surprises in Science: How Do Possibilities Become Realities?

Does it make sense to imagine realities
out of possibilities? Sure; a philosopher
says, by committing self-deception!

Real vs. Imaginary Possibility

by John D. Wise, PhD

Something in Deep Space Is Flashing Every 44 Minutes and No One Knows Why (Study Finds, 30 May 2025). This article is introduced in this way (bold added):

In a nutshell

• Scientists discovered the first long-period radio transient that also emits X-rays, creating an entirely new class of cosmic objects
• ASKAP J1832−0911 pulses every 44.2 minutes with both radio waves and X-rays, something that wasn’t supposed to be possible
• The object could be either an ancient magnetar or an ultra-magnetized white dwarf system, both of which challenge current theories

PERTH — Something deep in the Milky Way is pulsing like clockwork, and no one knows what it is. Every 44 minutes, a mysterious space object nearly 15,000 light-years away sends out a blast of radio waves and high-energy X-rays, defying everything astronomers thought they knew about how stars behave. It’s not a pulsar, not a black hole, and not quite like anything we’ve ever seen before. Now, scientists say this bizarre cosmic beacon might be rewriting the rulebook on extreme stellar physics.

The article ends with this:

ASKAP J1832−0911 is yet another demonstration that the universe is still full of surprises. In a time when scientists often assume they’ve figured out how stars work, this one strange object proves that space still has secrets — and some of them are flashing at us every 44 minutes.

A Word of Testimony

As I familiarize myself with recent scientific literature for CREV, I have encountered a fascinating pattern: “Scientists have discovered X, something previously thought impossible” – fill in X with any of a great number of recent “scientific” discoveries. It is shocking—though “scientists” somehow contrive to never be shaken in their beliefs [1] —how often we read recent stories like this in biology and cosmology (especially since JWST).

I am relatively new to this (rather important and serious) game of examining the failures and gaps in recent evolutionary science, both logical and evidentiary. A little more than a year ago I was a believer in the Darwinian narrative and its historical outplay, despite my developed understanding that it was Hegelian in its practice.

How strange, then, to find myself writing for CREV!

As our Christian Atheist episode, “The Structure of a Scientific Revolution” made clear, there was a moment of radical transition for me, and a new way of seeing the world popped into focus. I experienced a Kuhnian revolution. I propose that something similar, though more universal, happened in the 19^th century. I would like to use this article to make my case.

How Science Interacts with Philosophy

As a philosopher my training has accustomed me to playing with words, concepts and systems of thought more readily than empirical evidence.[2] Nevertheless, I resist the idea that science and philosophy are so very distant from one another as is popularly assumed.

This article highlights the thought processes of scientists in relation to empirical discoveries. Their theoretical models of reality (theory, paradigm, worldview) cause them to expect nature to act in specifiable ways. We say that theories make predictions. When nature doesn’t comply with expectations, we get another article like this one, with the above-mentioned pattern instantiating differences only in the details.

These new discoveries raise a dilemma. Does science change the model (which, in this case, dictates that a cosmic object pulsing with both X-rays and radio waves is impossible), or find a way to make sense of the new information inside “the box” – in effect explaining away the contradiction – the evidence.

How does this relate to philosophy?

Distinguishing Possibilities

In Immanuel Kant’s groundbreaking magnum opus, The Critique of Pure Reason, he differentiates between real possibility and logical possibility. Logical possibility is the idea that everything that is logically consistent is possible. For instance, a married bachelor is impossible because it is contradictory.

There can be no such animal, as the logic of combining the terms yields contradiction.

However, a unicorn is not logically impossible, as there is nothing contradictory in the notion of a horned horse. Hence a unicorn, or a dragon, or a leprechaun is logically possible.

Since, however, human knowledge of reality is finite, bounded by actual experience, logical possibility is insufficient to tell us what is really possible or impossible. Reality, as in this article, can surprise us. Perhaps as our knowledge of reality expands (as we see in this article), we will discover some new information that reveals a logical contradiction between ‘horned-creature’ and ‘horse’ (perhaps at the genetic level?). We can’t imagine what that discovery might be, but neither can we deny the logical possibility that such a reality may come to light. It it did, the very meaning of our concepts “horse” and/or “horned” would have to be modified. If such a discovery were made unicorn would be as internally incoherent as married bachelor.

Hence, the only way to determine the real possibility of a unicorn – that there is no logical contradiction in its idea – is to encounter it.[3]

Another way to make this point is to say that reality must correct our thinking about reality – our theories, paradigms, and worldviews.

This is one of the foundational assumptions of systematic thought, and science.

And this consideration brings us to the facts of history.

Why Philosophy and Science Parted Ways, and How to Rejoin Them

Exactly when (and perhaps more interestingly, why) did science and philosophy part ways?

For most of Western history what we call “science” today was natural philosophy. Newton’s Principia, considered one of the foundational texts of modern science (1687), was titled “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.”

It was not until (surprised, anyone?) the 19^th century that what today we call “science” ceased to be considered a part of philosophy. When is uncontroversial and easy to answer. Why is far more complex and interesting.

In the early 1830’s (Hegel died in 1831 – coincidence?), the term “scientist” was coined by William Whewell (see our biography). His motivation?

Whewell observed an “increasing proclivity of separation and dismemberment” within the sciences. As fields like chemistry, mathematics, and natural history grew in their own right, the overarching term “philosopher” or “natural philosopher” was felt inadequate to describe the diverse individuals engaged in these pursuits. Despite the specialization, Whewell sought a term that could unite these disparate fields under a common umbrella, signifying a shared method of inquiry and a commitment to empirical investigation of the material world. Whewell also aimed to distinguish the empirical, fact-driven study of nature from the more contemplative and theoretical aspects of traditional philosophy.[4]

I argue that Whewell was motivated by a complex reaction to Hegelian philosophy and a profound understanding of the science of his day.[5] As an Anglican divine, Whewell opposed Darwinian evolution on two grounds in combination: 1) theological, and 2) empirico-rational. Design in nature implies a Designer; this is both rational and empirical. Natural selection, denying this obvious conclusion, was inadequate for Whewell as a purely rational mechanism,[6] and insufficiently supported by empirical evidence. Whewell’s criticism of Hegel was almost exclusively scientific. Hegel’s a priori method was unscientific, as it was not empirical. You cannot unravel the contingent truths of nature by Reason alone.

Whewell was a Kantian.

To establish the facts of science, we need the input of reality (empiricism) to which we then apply rational categories. The conclusion to Whewell was obvious. Hegel’s a priori rationalism denies God. Darwin’s hyper-rational[7] empiricism denies God. Science, like its various increasingly specialized branches, must be a highly specialized pursuit of knowledge different and distinct from the philosophical, which is (Hegel as example) speculative and insufficiently grounded in empirical investigation. Philosophy, Whewell reasoned, is speculative, but Science is empirical. In effect, he mirrored the “increasing proclivity of separation and dismemberment” within the sciences by sequestering faith and reason, and making the unselbstandig part (evidence-based reasoning) into the whole – Science.

Watch Those Presuppositions

Unwittingly, Whewell laid the groundwork for the now-prevalent (and demonstrably false) view that Science is a non-presuppositional exercise of empirical investigation that does not participate in philosophical speculation, or assumptions.

Science, the establishment now dogmatically believes, is pure Method (or Process) applied to a pure objective reality, yielding pure “scientific” results.[8]

Whewell’s solution mirrors that of Marx and Darwin – apply pure rational method to materialism but never acknowledge the contradiction. By dividing science from philosophy, he set the ground for true believers in scientism to lie to themselves about the unique purity of science.

The lie-to-onself, what I call a self-deceptive structure, is one of the most prominent features of Hegelian dialectic.

• It allows scientists to hold their theory dogmatically, yet claim skepticism
• It allows Darwinists to tell stories as if they are empirical evidence
• It allows scientists to claim empirical objectivity, yet deny correction by empirical evidence
• It allows scientists to claim skepticism, yet act with certainty
• It allows scientists to segregate their fundamental assumptions from correction by rationality or evidence

Bringing the Lesson Home

While a new discovery, like the one in this article, may rewrite the textbooks, the one thing it will never rewrite is the a priori philosophical commitment that if it exists, it evolved. Because science is pure rational method applied to an empirical world, not philosophy, science has no assumptions to question. This hidden philosophical assumption makes all scientific assumptions immune to being rewritten by reality.

Why? Because it is founded on the denial of having philosophical assumptions, which is in turn founded on a global assumption denying what is most evident of all: that Design implies a Designer.

Deny that as conditional, and logic dictates that anything can follow.

That’s Imaginary Possibility, folks, a just-so story that is utterly unfalsifiable … until it encounters the Designer.

Footnotes

[1] I can’t help thinking here of a passage in C.S. Lewis’s conversion narrative, Surprised by Joy, as he read G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man:

… for the first time [I] saw the whole Christian outline of history set out in a form that seemed to me to make sense. Somehow I contrived not to be too badly shaken. You will remember that I already thought Chesterton the most sensible man alive ‘apart from his Christianity.’ Now, I veritably believe, I thought—I didn’t of course say; words would have revealed the nonsense—that Christianity itself was very sensible ‘apart from its Christianity’.

[2] Science as avocation, if not vocation, was never far from me.

[3] My own view of Kantian real possibility is idiosyncratic, as it is built on my graduate advisor, Ermanno Bencivenga’s Kantian scholarship. His book, Kant’s Copernican Revolution is, I think, the best of the secondary literature on the topic.

[4] Taken from a Google Gemini response to the prompt, “Tell me more about William Whewell’s coining of the term ‘scientist.’”

[5] Whewell was a critic of both Darwin and Hegel, though for opposing reasons.

[6] By excluding divine agency a priori Darwinian natural selection segmented scientific (empirical) and rational (a priori) explanation by fiat, limiting the available rational explanations for the obvious (empirical) design in nature.

[7] Hyper-rational because it denies the supernatural appeal by rationalistic fiat, not on the basis of empirical evidence.

[8] To all intents and purposes, they believe scientific results are “certainties.” It is not just in the popular mind that “scientific” = certain, but also nearly universal even among scientists, no matter how much they say they are skeptical. For almost everyone in society today, looking for knowledge anywhere other than science is to practice science denial. They treat Science as the source of knowledge. To them, Science is God.

John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation was titled Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.

He tells the story of his 25-year odyssey from atheism to Christianity in the book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon). Since his return to Christ, his research interests include developing a Christian (YEC) philosophy of science and the integration of all human knowledge with God’s word.

He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus, and is a member of the Heterodox Academy. He and his wife Jenny are known online as The Christian Atheist with a podcast of that name, in addition to a YouTube channel: John and Jenny Wise.