Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- WHAT IS LIFE?
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 THE CLASSICAL PHYSICIST'S APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT
- 2 THE HEREDITARY MECHANISM
- 3 MUTATIONS
- 4 THE QUANTUM-MECHANICAL EVIDENCE
- 5 DELBRÜCK'S MODEL DISCUSSED AND TESTED
- 6 ORDER, DISORDER AND ENTROPY
- 7 IS LIFE BASED ON THE LAWS OF PHYSICS?
- EPILOGUE. ON DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL
- MIND AND MATTER
- 1 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- 2 THE FUTURE OF UNDERSTANDING
- 3 THE PRINCIPLE OF OBJEGTIVATION
- 4 THE ARITHMETICAL PARADOX: THE ONENESS OF MIND
- 5 SCIENCE AND RELIGION
- 6 THE MYSTERY OF THE SENSUAL QUALITIES
- AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
5 - SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- WHAT IS LIFE?
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 THE CLASSICAL PHYSICIST'S APPROACH TO THE SUBJECT
- 2 THE HEREDITARY MECHANISM
- 3 MUTATIONS
- 4 THE QUANTUM-MECHANICAL EVIDENCE
- 5 DELBRÜCK'S MODEL DISCUSSED AND TESTED
- 6 ORDER, DISORDER AND ENTROPY
- 7 IS LIFE BASED ON THE LAWS OF PHYSICS?
- EPILOGUE. ON DETERMINISM AND FREE WILL
- MIND AND MATTER
- 1 THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
- 2 THE FUTURE OF UNDERSTANDING
- 3 THE PRINCIPLE OF OBJEGTIVATION
- 4 THE ARITHMETICAL PARADOX: THE ONENESS OF MIND
- 5 SCIENCE AND RELIGION
- 6 THE MYSTERY OF THE SENSUAL QUALITIES
- AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
Summary
Can science vouchsafe information on matters of religion? Can the results of scientific research be of any help in gaining a reasonable and satisfactory attitude towards those burning questions which assail everyone at times? Some of us, in particular healthy and happy youth, succeed in shoving them aside for long periods; others, in advanced age, have satisfied themselves that there is no answer and have resigned themselves to giving up looking for one, while others again are haunted throughout their lives by this incongruity of our intellect, haunted also by serious fears raised by time-honoured popular superstition. I mean mainly the questions concerned with the ‘other world’, with ‘life after death’, and all that is connected with them. Notice please that I shall not, of course, attempt to answer these questions, but only the much more modest one, whether science can give any information about them or aid our — to many of us unavoidable — thinking about them.
To begin with, in a very primitive way it certainly can, and has done so without much ado. I remember seeing old prints, geographical maps of the world, so I believe, including hell, purgatory and heaven, the former being placed deep underground, the latter high above in the skies. Such representations were not meant purely allegorically (as they might be in later periods, for example, in Dürer's famous All-Saints picture); they testify to a crude belief quite popular at the time.
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- Chapter
- Information
- What is Life?With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches, pp. 140 - 152Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992