William Essex
  • About Us
  • About Me
  • Dear Diary
  • Books (and other stories)
  • This takes you to Medium Dot Com

Scientists in shimmering white robes

27/4/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Today's interesting book is The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims In The Slipstream Of Ultimate Questions by Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs (Oxford). Not that I've got further than the opening pages of Chapter One, but it's well written, the easiest of reads, and already worthwhile. It's promising from the outset in the way that Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari; Harper) was promising from the outset.
     Found this in the Prologue. "For medieval thinkers ... religio referred to interior acts of devotion, while scientia was considered a habit of mind." The concept of 'religion', the authors tell us, hardly existed before the seventeenth century, and the word 'scientist' was first used in the nineteenth. The opposition between religion and science is a recent invention. An individual could contain religio, so to speak, while looking out at the world with scientia.
     This makes sense to me. The notion that "there's more" fits with both science and spiritual belief (widening this out from 'religion', which seems to me a restrictive term) and is probably necessary to both. If 'religion' is signing up to the letter of a man-made doctrine, and 'science' dictates that there is nothing beyond the observable/verifiable, then they're both expressions of the same human impulse towards restriction, control, domination, fear of the unknown, closing the eyes. And the answer to both is: yes, but what if there's more?
     Scientific enquiry, my logic suggests, rests on the assumption that we could know more; that there is more to be known - and a scientist will thus tend to be open-minded as well as curious. People who say "I believe that there's more", or any such phrase, in the context of a conversation about religion, don't seem to make it a condition of their belief that the "more" reveals itself. Both scientists and spiritual believers are open to the possibility that we don't know the whole story.
     For me, the distinction between the two is: scientists are concerned with the engine; spiritual types look towards the driver. Maybe there is more beyond the senses we have. Maybe our senses aren't such a convenient match with everything that could be sensed. I wonder.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Dear Diary: The Archive

    April 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    April 2024
    July 2023
    March 2023
    May 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011



No animals were harmed in the making of this website. Other websites are available online (and off). All the content here is copyright William Essex, this year, last year, the year before that and, you guessed it, the year before that, although I don't have the time right now to hunt out that little symbol. This website uses organic ingredients and respects your privacy. Come back some time.

Promoted by T&F CLP on behalf of William Essex at PO Box 16, Jubilee Wharf, Commercial Road, Penryn TR10 8GF.​