Amir Aczel holds a PhD in Mathematics from Berkeley, is a science writer for Scientific American, Discover Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, and is currently a research fellow at Harvard University. The book does a terrific job of chronicling the history and intersection of religious thought and scientific discovery. Prior to the 16th and 17th centuries, most European scientists were in fact working to uncover the scientific basis for “what God had created”.
But as knowledge grew, they came into direct conflict with the command and control structure of the Catholic Church – that’s where things went wrong: Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) – was religious. His daughter was a nun and he had many friends in religious circles (including the pope). He was known as the father of astronomy and modern science. In 1600 Galileo using his telescope verified the theory of Copernicus – that the earth circled the sun. The church was furious, and thus began the fight between science and religion.
Galileo was forced to appear in front of the Catholic Inquisition in Rome who ordered he be put to death (and had already killed many other scientists and thinkers for going against church orthodoxy). In 1633 in trial, Galileo recanted his findings under threat of torture and was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Galileo also is famous for linking science and mathematics and said “the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics”. After this, of course, over the next 400 years Science and Religion has grown apart.
It’s a pity because as Einstein said: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”. Could the new Pope bring Science and Spirituality back together again? An example would be if the Pope were to say that the church will be open to accepting anything that Science can prove or disprove in terms of scripture (the Dalai Lama by the way has already made this statement in relation to Buddhism). The Pope has already shown he’s capable of amazing things. Maybe it will happen…
The book is a very interesting read that covers the major scientific discoveries through current day. Aczel’s intention is exactly as the title states, not to prove the existence of God, but to prove that Science does not Disprove God and to firmly take on the Dawkins lead New Atheist movement. Below are some highlights from the book:
Science in Relation to Religion Over the Last 2,000 years – Brief Tidbits
- Greeks had advanced ideas about the natural world and science. However, once the dark and middle ages arrived, the church took on a moral and spiritual role in human life and all free thought was discouraged. As an example, the view on the sun being at the center of the universe was not allowed to be championed though a number of scientists tried. Not until Nicolaus Copernicus, polish mathematician and astronomer, in 1500 was the correct model arrived at. Until then, a model by Claudius Ptolemy, mathematician and astronomer) in 100 AD (living in the twighlight of the Greek empire) which in a very complex way showed that the earth was at the center. Copernicus can then be thought of as the beginning of modern science.
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) – religious. His daughter was a nun and he had many friends in religious circles (including the pope). Known as the father of astronomy and modern science. In 1600 Galileo using his telescope verified the theory of Copernicus – that the earth circled the sun. The church was furious, and thus began the fight between science and religion. Galileo was forced to appear in front of the Catholic Inquisition in Rome who ordered he be put to death (and had already killed many other scientists and thinkers for going against church orthodoxy). In 1633 in trial, Galileo recanted his findings under threat of torture and was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Galileo also is famous for linking science and mathematics and said “the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics”.
- German scientist and mathematician Johannes Keppler invented the mathematics of planetary motion – still used till today. Keppler like other scientists at the time mixed science, spirituality, and the occult. Leibniz and Newton followed his work by inventing Calculus.
- Rene Descarte born in 1596 mixed science, philosophy, and religion as well. Blaise Pascal was a friend of Descarte and who contributed greatly to physics and math, was deeply religious.
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) – philospher, statesman, mathematician. A religious protestant who was influenced by his association with Catholic princes. Leibniz was attracted to the idea of reconciling the religions of Europe as a way of unifying all the people of the continent. In 1668, Leibniz wrote a treatise arguing for the existence of god and the immortality of the soul. Titled, “nature’s testimony against the atheists”.
- Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was born on christmas day of the year galileo died. Newton was deeply religious and spent two years alone in Woolsthorpe meditating on the universe and its laws and then invented the calculus. Newton saw no conflict between pursuing groundbreaking science and and contemplating the most difficult religious ideas. His worrk gave us extreme insight into how the universe works – mechanics, optics, astronomy, and mathematics. His understanding of gravity was fundamental to our modern day control of technology.
- 1851- self educated french physicist Leon Foucault proved that the Earth is rotating. Dealing another blow to church orthodoxy.
- 1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species. The discoveries of fossils, evolution, geological time, the rotation of the earth, and other developments in science showed that scripture should not be taken literally.
- 1905 – Modern Theoretical Physics begins with Einstein’s special theory of relativity. showing that time is not constant and that both time and space bend , contract or expand, to accommodate the universal constant – the speed of light. He also showed in 1905 that e=mc^2 and that energy and matter are the same thing.
- 1929 – Hubble shows that the universe is expanding (contrary to what einstein believed). Belgian Catholic Priest Georges Lemaitre works out the mathematics to show that if the universe is expanding, then there must have been an initial point – The Big Bang.
- Einstein was religious at times during his life. He attended synagogue services in Prague in 1913 – during the period of his highest scientific productivity. It appears he did believe in a kind of god; the entity that created the laws of nature, which einstein viewed as his life’s role to uncover. Einstein spoke in terms of god all the time, famously saying “subtle is the lord, but malicious he is not” and “I want to know god’s thought – the rest are details”. He once replied in a letter to a little girl asking him his thoughts of god – “…everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way, the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.” Einstein once said “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind”. It is said einstein didn’t believe in a personal god (one who observes the actions of all people and actively intervenes in their lives), as of the bible, but more a mystical god fully in charge of natural laws.
- 1920’s – Quantum Theory – Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli, Neils Bohr, and Max Born. “Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities. The universe according to quantum physics, has no single past, or history.”
- 1960 – String Theory – italian physicist Gabriele Venziano – while working at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. the basic elements of nature are tiny vibrating strings. In string theory, the universe is seen to inhabit a space that has more than the usual four dimensions of space and time because the equations that govern the behavior of these stings make sense, mathematically, only in a larger context of ten or eleven dimensions. Some scientists have taken this theoretical requirement of string theory to mean that the actual physical universe in which we live must have an extra six or seven latent dimensions. String theorists such as greene call these “curled up dimensions” viewing them as hidden within the three dimensions of space and one of time that we are aware of.
If you’ve seen the recent movie Interstellar, then you’ve seen the dramatization of some of the tenets of String Theory in action. Here’s a quick 4 minute video explanation on String Theory by Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.
Much more to come…
-Jay Kshatri
www.ThinkSmarterWorld.com
