The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust
This book review was originally published on The Journal Gazette on September 21, 2024
On Dec. 17, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration issued a briefing document entitled “Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee Meeting.”
On Page 5 of the executive summary, details appear concerning the “safety and efficacy data from an ongoing Phase 3 randomized, double-blinded and placebo-controlled trial of mRNA-1273 in approximately 30,400 participants.” Less than a year after COVID-19 was confirmed to be circulating, scientists in the United States were about to unveil whether the vaccine they had developed was a success and, if so, at what level.
With no fanfare, one finds a historic set of details further down in that paragraph: “Efficacy in preventing confirmed COVID-19 occurring at least 14 days after the second dose of vaccine was 94.5.0%.”
Not only had the team of scientists drawn together by Operation Warp Speed — “a federal effort that supported multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates to speed up development” — produced a vaccine, it had done so at an unprecedented level of success.
In line with the development of other vaccines, scientists initially speculated that success in terms of the Phase 3 trial for the COVID-19 vaccine would be a prevention rate of 65% to 70%. Well beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, these scientists confirmed a prevention rate of 94.5%.
As recounted by Francis S. Collins in “The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust,” what was conceived of as a gift to people around the world was not universally welcomed.
By the summer of 2021, dogged resistance to “the shot” surfaced in the U.S. Collins, leader of the National Institutes of Health at the time, was as perplexed by such resistance as he was exuberant by the results he and his colleagues confirmed in late 2020.
Not only had that resistance compelled people to refuse vaccination, in some cases it even compelled people to demonize the scientists who developed it.
As an evangelical Christian, what proved most challenging to Collins was that the people most resistant to getting the COVID-19 vaccine were people who shared his religious convictions. Instead of succumbing to a downward spiral of self-loathing for his brethren, what follows in “The Road to Wisdom” is a heartfelt yet grounded exploration of how to engage with people who think differently than oneself — an exploration whose timeliness unfortunately proves self-evident during this election season.
While part autobiography inspired by the days following the release of the COVID-19 vaccine, Collins’ work is also “about the sources of wisdom” and how to leverage those sources as a means of bringing people together.
Along those lines, Collins views those sources of wisdom as “truth, science, faith, and trust, resting upon a foundation of humility, knowledge, morality, and good judgment.”
Such humility, Collins acknowledges in Chapter 1, is not only critical to scientists as they pursue knowledge but all people who acknowledge their finite nature. That acknowledgment leads to the realization that no one human being can know everything and thus people need one another and the wisdom that arises from the collective nature of knowledge.
In their own ways, Collins invites his readers to entertain the conviction that “failure is part of being both a believer and a scientist.”
Chapters 2 through 5 are each defined by one of the sources of wisdom: truth, science, faith and trust.
Perhaps part of what makes Collins’s book so valuable is not only what he writes in relation to any of these topics, but also how he strives to uphold each in relation to one another.
The relationship shared by science and faith, for example, proves difficult to navigate for many people. In recent centuries, one need look no further than debates concerning the origins of creation that consumed a host of church communities.
Debates concerning the vaccine also consumed a host of church communities with “Faith Over Fear” becoming a battle cry dividing parishioners into one of two camps. Part of how Collins seeks to bridge such a divide is to discern the difference between “science, which aims to discover how nature works, and ‘scientism,ʼ which is a worldview that insists that there is nothing outside of science that is worth considering.”
Such an understanding puts science in its proper place, and, in turn, grants faith its proper place in people’s lives — which Collins believes “are of crucial importance.”
Short of exercising these sources of wisdom, Collins is the first to contend that merely discussing them and the relationships they share will not bridge the divides presently separating people.
In Chapter 6, Collins concludes his book with a call for people to lay down their arms and engage one another. Collins lobbies: “To take up this challenge would therefore not be born out of exhaustion or desperation, but one arising from the hopeful pursuit of the promise of greater flourishing for our entire human family.”
For Collins, taking up that challenge meant joining Braver Angels, an organization committed to bringing “Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic.”
For some, taking up that challenge may mean initiating conversations with family members, church members and/or community members from whom they are estranged. Regardless of how people go about doing so, Collins is admirably convinced that what unites people in the United States is still greater than that which divides them.