Charles H. Townes is a 1964 Nobel laureate and inventor of the laser. He won the 2005 Templeton prize for his study of the relation between science and religion.
Here, he makes the point that both religion and science are attempts to learn how the universe works, and what meaning it may have.
As a scientist, I have been primarily trying to understand our world--the universe, including humans--what it is and how it works. As a religiously oriented person, I also try to understand the purpose of our universe and human life, a primary concern of religion. Of course, if the universe has a purpose, then its structure, and how it works, must reflect this purpose. This obvious relation brings science and religion together, and I believe the two are much closer and more similar in nature than is usually recognized.
We assume there is a meaning to life, the univese, and everything. Furthermore, we assume there is a meaning over and above the fact that life, the universe, and everything exist. Yet can we be sure? Science really doesn't seem to touch that ultimate question.
We all recognize that science has produced remarkable results. It allows us to do so many things and to think we already understand so much. Science is indeed wonderful, and yet there are still mysteries, puzzles and inconsistencies. We are now convinced that the matter we can identify in our universe is only about 5% of all that is there. What is the rest of it? Scientists are trying hard to detect this strange unknown matter. Will they, and when? Relativity and quantum mechanics have been remarkably successful, and we believe they explain and teach us many things. And yet, in certain ways they seem logically inconsistent. At present, we simply accept such inconsistencies and use these two fields of science with pride and pleasure.
We know the universe behaves as if there is some sort of unknown matter scattered about. We know it behaves as if both relativity and quantum mechanics are true, even though in certain extreme cases, they can't possibly both be true.
Quantum mechanics and classical mechanics are philosophically very different, and the behavior of atoms and molecules can only be understood by this radically different quantum mechanics. But quantum mechanics must and does also apply to larger objects such as planets, balls, or our own motions. Classical mechanics was in principle quite wrong. But, it was a good approximation, explaining very accurately the motions of everything much larger than atoms, such as planets, balls, or ourselves. We still teach and use classical mechanics. It's a very good approximation to reality and much simpler to understand than quantum mechanics, even though philosophically incorrect.
In the intersection between new physics and classical physics, we've been able to fall back on the "correspondence principle". Quantum mechanics or relativity have to yield the same results classical physics does in the systems where classical physics has been successful in the past. And in fact, if you calculate the acceleration on your car classically and relativistically, you get the same answer, well within any ability you have to measure it.
Some day, though, we may well be able to look at real examples where quantum mechanics and relativity interact. At that point, we'll have to see what is forced to correspond with what. When this happens, we may wind up having to modify our view of one or both theories.
As we understand more, will our views in science and also in religion be revolutionized as science already has been by quantum mechanics? My guess is yes. We must be open-minded and without completely frozen ideas in either science or religion. But even with future changes, I also guess that, like classical mechanics, our present understanding may be a good and useful approximation even though new and deeper views may be revolutionary.
Part of the conflict between religion and science results from the fact that religion has been unwilling to modify its views. If the facts point to, for example, evolution, and religion says otherwise, well then, too bad for the facts.
Both science and religion have involved a search for invariant principles. Over time, science has had to change its mind about which principles really are invariant. Religion may be dragged, kicking and screaming, into doing the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment