THE INDEPENDENT: SCIENCE Since quantum physics, the idea of a purposeful universe has become scientifically admissible. Scientists themselves, however, remain firmly divided. Martin Redfern reports on the challenge to dualist thought
FOR THE first time in 400 years, sensible people are saying some very dangerous things. Theologians are discussing the origins of the physical universe, the beauty of the fundamental laws of physics and the wonder of the complexity of nature. Scientists, too, are discussing what they suggest may be a sense of purpose behind the universe and questioning why those laws of nature should be exactly the way they are and why they give rise to those wondrous complexities. This year, a flurry of new books has been published, written by eminent scientists and with the word ``God'' in the title. It may be that this is in part due to pressure from publishers - ``God'' sells well - but it also represents a profound change of attitude since, until recently, few scientists who value their reputations would have risked the G-word even in private. That scientific books invoking God should sell well is also a reflection on the rest of us. Society seems to be searching for something which neither religion nor conventional science on its own has been able to deliver.
Science and religion began to go their separate ways in the Renaissance. The process continued when Galileo and Descartes started to ponder on the nature of the universe. To do so, they had to stray into the territory traditionally the exclusive domain of the church and, in Europe in the first half of the 17th century, the church was powerful indeed. Those who offended it too loudly or too fundamentally could burn in a hell that was very much on earth. So it was out of an instinct of self-preservation that Galileo divided the world into two. He said that there are primary qualities that are external and objective, such as temperature, wavelength, hardness and so on, and secondary qualities that are subjective, such as the sensations of heat, colour and pain. Thus he gave the primary qualities to science in comparative safety and left the secondary qualities to the church: on these he said, I am silent. » | Martin Redfern | Sunday, December 24, 1995
