Spirituality and Emotional Thinking in Science, Mathematics and Logic
Including the religious beliefs of 5 famous physicists
Irrationality, emotions and aesthetic taste are used by scientists, mathematicians and logicians, including in their work. This demonstrates that science, and all areas of ‘objective’ and ‘logical’ thinking, is not just about objectivity and cold logic. Emotions and subjectivity are parts of how all humans think. They are integral to human intelligence and reasoning.
London School of Philosophy lecturer Rachel Paine writes, "Emotions bear complex relationships to rationality. On one hand they are seen as arational or irrational, on the other they make our actions intelligible and arguably lift us above the purely mechanistic behaviours of machines. Much like human sensory perception, emotions perform an essential function: they inform us about the world."
Hypotheses are a part of science. Hypotheses are essentially ideas or questions scientists come up with. “In this area of physics (or biology or chemistry), I think this is the way things work.” Then the scientists go out and observe, collect data and empirically test the hypothesis. Some hypotheses turn out to be provisionally correct, some turn out to be incorrect, some in-between. That is science.
The key here is that these hypotheses are in part produced via the scientist’s intuition, speculation, imagination, creativity and aesthetic taste.
Einstein said creativity and intuition were essential parts of his theorizing, and that it was essential for humans to use different ways of thinking. He said that imagination is more important than knowledge, and came up with the theory of relativity using mind experiments and speculation, not scientific testing. He came to the conclusion "from the intuition and the general sense of the situation." This demonstrates how subjectivity and biases help drive human intelligence and knowledge, even in science, mathematics and logic. (Einstein in Wald 2007)
Louis de Broglie created the now-accepted theory for the double nature of light before experimental proof existed. Charles Townes said that many of his scientific ideas, including that led to the invention of the laser and maser, came to him in epiphanies akin to mystical revelations. (emidicalprep 2015) (Wikipedia 2020)
Medical professor Andrew Newberg said that many of our “Aha!” epiphany moments are mini-mystical experiences or changes in the brain's perception where we see things from a new perspective. (Dimitropoulos 2015)
Historian of science Thomas Kuhn wrote that science has popular paradigms that are not based just on empirical data, but societal forces and social psychology. Philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend said that not only was science not as objective and orderly as scientists claimed it to be, but that it shouldn’t be. He felt that creativity, rule-breaking and anarchic thinking were essential parts of successful science. He thought scientists’ attempts to stick to strict rules and order hindered science. (Kuhn 1970) (Feyerabend 1975)
What is telling is that many of the scientific hypotheses cannot be proven by science. They are beyond observation and scientific testing. There are theories that are widely believed by scientists to be true or logically possible-- such as concerning the creation of the universe, and other worlds and time--, but the scientists know they can never be scientifically tested and proven true. This points to that there may be insights, ideas and hypotheses come to through art, intuition, religion and philosophical speculation that are correct, but can never be proven to be objectively true or false, and many are beyond objectivity. We just can’t know. Such is the human condition.
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The religious views of five famous physicists
“God is one way of thinking. Science is another.”
It is fascinating to look at what scientists and logicians believe beyond their domains of science and logic.
Science has many great uses and will solve more and more questions and continue to expand our scientific knowledge, technology and capabilities. It has helped us learn much about physical nature at the subatomic to the cosmic level. It has helped us cure diseases and reach the moon, extended lifespans and led to computers. However, as with every human method, science has a particular specific scope, methodology and purpose that gives it limits.
Science is strict in what it can and cannot study. It works in areas that can be observed and empirically tested, with extrapolation using human logic. Many things-- many real and important things, including things important to and used by scientists-- are beyond scientific testing and human logic. These areas include art, spirituality, religion and God, morals and ethics, and emotional and metaphysical meaning.
As with all human endeavors, science has axioms, or unproven and unprovable assumptions. Some are genuine beliefs including shared by you and me, while others are definitions needed to make the system work.
Scientific models and theories are practical tools to make predictions about physical phenomena. The theories and models themselves are not representations of reality, and are not even intended to be. British statistician George E.P. Box said, “All models are wrong, but some are useful.”
Philosopher of religion Alan Watts said the scientific worldview was comparable to the Abrahamic worldview. He said that scientific philosophers removed the notion of a lawmaker (God) but kept the notion of law. He said science's axiom about the materialistic order is just as unscientific as a religious dogma of the order and lawmaker of the universe. (Watts 1967)
Professor Reginald L. Bell asked the provocative question “Does believing in scientific assumptions that cannot be proved make these sorts of beliefs more or less like a religion?”
Scientists have a wide variety of views in subjects outside of the scope of science, such as politics, society, art and morality. As with everyone, scientists’ world views, including about science, involve unscientific and irrational thought. It's telling that scientists and mathematicians using the same mathematics, logic and scientific methods come to very different conclusions about topics such as the existence and nature of God
The following looks at the religious views of the physicists Stephen Hawking, Isaac Newton, Richard Feynman, Charles Townes and Albert Einstein.
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)– Atheist
The most famous scientist of his day, Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist, mathematician and cosmologist at the University of Cambridge. He is known for his theories on gravity, black holes and time.
Hawking was a hardcore atheist, rejecting the Abrahamic anthromorphic God. He wrote: “The question is, is the way the universe began chosen by God for reasons we can’t understand, or was it determined by a law of science? I believe the second. If you like, you can call the laws of science ‘God’, but it wouldn’t be a personal God that you would meet and put questions to.”
Hawking was dismissive of philosophy, saying that the questions it deals in can be answered by science.
Isaac Newton (1642-1726/7)– Devout but unorthodox Christian
The British Newton is often ranked as the greatest scientist of all-time, and was a key figure in the scientific revolution and the Western Enlightenment. He developed the principles of modern physics and co-invented calculus.
Newton was devoutly and studiously Christian. However, his views were unorthodox and had to be hidden in Trinitarian society. He was Unitarian and thought being a Trinitarian a sin. He believed in the plain language reading of the Bible, felt reason should not be used to interpret scripture, and found no mention of the Trinity.
Newton did not separate science from religion or God. He felt that science and scientific laws were a reflection of God. While modern atheist scientists often see the scientific laws as the be-all and end-all, he saw God’s hand in all of science and happenings.
Richard Feynman (1918-88)– Atheist
Richard Feynman was an American theoretical physicist and 1965 Nobel Prize winner known for his work in quantum mechanics.
Feynman was an atheist, and said that the Abrahamic personal Gods were something he could not believe. He thought Abrahamic scriptures were interesting historically, but nothing more.
However, he said there was no inconsistency between believing in science and believing in God. He said he disagreed with scientists who believed in God but not that they were wrong. He explained how and why he appreciated and understood how they could and did hold the two beliefs. He said that holding the two beliefs can be logically consistent and sound.
Feynman used probability to answer all questions, including about the existence of God. He rewrote the question “Is there (or isn’t there) a God?” to “How sure can we be that there is (or isn’t) a God?”
Charles Townes (1915-2015)– Devout Christian
Charles Townes was an American theoretical and applied physicist, and winner of the 1960 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Townes was a devout Christian, a member of the United Church of Christ. He said “I feel the presence of God. I feel it in my own life as a spirit that is somehow with me all the time.”
Townes said that science and religion were addressing different questions. He said that science examined the physical nature of the physical world, while religion addressed the questions of metaphysical meaning.
He said that the religious and scientific discoveries were much alike in many ways. Each requires a faith, a method of inquiry and observation, axioms and inspiration.
Townes saw the limits and problems in science, writing “I don’t think that science is complete at all. We don’t understand everything, and one can see, within science itself, there are many inconsistencies. We just have to accept that we don’t understand.”
He thought there might be a day when science and religion come together to give a full view.
Albert Einstein (1878-1955)– Agnostic, pantheist
Einstein was a theoretical physicist who developed the special and general theories of relativity.
Einstein did not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic God, considering that type of conception naive. He believed in a pantheistic God, writing to a Rabbi: “I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”
Einstein was spiritual, a violinist and lover of music.
He wrote, “The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical . . . He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.”
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References
Box G. E. (2020), 'All Models are Wrong', en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
emidicalprep (2015) "Dual Nature of Electron", emedicalprep.com/study-material/chemistry/atomic-structure/dual-nature-of-electron/
Feyerabend P (1975), Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, New Left Books
Kuhn T (1962), “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (University of Chicago Press)
Oxford Philosophical Society (2020), "OUDCE Philosophy Weekends at Rewley House", oxfordphilsoc.org/EventsProgramme.html.
Wald D (2007), "Einstein on Creativity" creativecreativity.com/2007/11/11/einstein-on-cre/
Wikipedia (2020), “Charles Townes” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_H._Townes