Great scientists integrate religion with science

[Guest guest]

From the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature:

 

Bible study led Newton to scientific discoveries

 

 

 

Sir – I feel that your News story "Newton's religious screeds get online airing" (Nature 430, 819; 2004) rather misses the point. To our modern minds, Isaac Newton's religious ideas may indeed seem "unorthodox" or "radical", but they did not look like this to his contemporaries. Like another father of modern science, Francis Bacon (see "A modern kind of magic", Nature 418, 821; 2002), Newton strongly believed that he lived in an era that had been predicted by the Book of Daniel of the Old Testament, a time when knowledge was expected to grow beyond recognition.

 

Throughout his life, Newton tested biblical truth against the physical truths of experimental and theoretical science. He never observed a contradiction. The order that he found in nature through experiment and calculation — later to be called the mechanistic worldview — was for him God's work, and proof of God's work in history, which he extracted from the Bible. Astronomical calculations helped him to synchronize biblical events described in the Old and New Testaments with what he knew about ancient, medieval and modern history.

 

To English Protestants during the seventeenth century, when the country was consumed by apocalyptic zeal, the Book of Daniel and The Apocalypse, or The Revelation of St John, were history — revealed truth — even though they were written in visionary and symbolic language. The task was to turn these visions and symbols into modern language.

 

A whole host of scientific writers — including the illustrious Cambridge polymath Joseph Mede — took to the task of interpretation. It was on the shoulders of these giants that Newton was standing when he wrote his main religious work Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St John, which was intended as an update of world history based on the five-kingdoms scheme in the Book of Daniel.

 

It is probably one of the deepest ironies in the history of science that Newton's brilliant work did not serve the purpose that he intended. Rather than proving the Bible right, it led to the birth of science as we know it — that is, experimental natural science.

 

We now know that the Book of Daniel's five-kingdoms scheme is a myth and The Revelation of St John is a wonderful fairy tale. But it is the Bible, nevertheless, that stands, in a very literal sense, at the origin of modern science.

 

Erwin Heberle-Bors

Vienna Biocenter, Dr Bohrgasse 9, A-1030 Vienna, Austria

 

 

 

[Gauracandra]

If you are looking for a very good sci-fi book that relates science and religion I would suggest 'A Canticle For Liebowitz'. I came across it quite by accident. Every so often I'd hear of this book, and it was always said to be great. Then I started researching a bit and found many "serious" sci-fi readers considered it one of the greatest, but least read sci-fi books. In fact, apparently there have been college courses taught on this book.

 

So I picked it up and wasn't disappointed. Its a slow book that builds. But it is never flashy. It takes place after the world has destroyed itself in a nuclear war. Then from that point it looks at the rise of civilization over 3 chapters, each takes place 600 years apart. First there is 'Fiat Homo' - "Let there be man". Then the next chapter is titled 'Fiat Lux' - "Let there be light". And finally 'Fiat Voluntuas Tua' - Thy Will Be Done.

 

Its interesting for several reasons. First because it takes religion seriously and in fact shows the role religion has played in science and the creation of the modern world. I'm not real knowledgeable about the histories of the world - but apparently the book basically mirrors real events from the Dark Ages forward, and if you know what those events are you will understand it further (thus the college courses I suppose). Second, because it gives a great look at what monastic life is like and how it has survived (it follows a single order of Monks over those 1800 years). Finally, because it perfectly incorporates philosophy with storytelling without being preachy.

 

So if you are looking for a good read I'd suggest picking it up.