Beauty and science: quotations from others

The quotations below are about the relationship between beauty and science. They were written, or said, by a variety of people, some overtly Christian, such as John C. Polkinghorne, some not, such as Einstein or Feynman. Most of the publications are secular, including those from Yale University Press and Cambridge University Press, Physics Today, and the New York Times.

Richard Feynman, Nobel laureate, wrote: “What is it about nature that lets this happen, that it is possible to guess from one part what the rest is going to do? That is an unscientific question: I do not know how to answer it, and therefore I am going to give an unscientific answer. I think it is because nature has a simplicity and therefore a great beauty.” “Seeking New Laws,” pp. 143-167, in Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, New York: Modern Library, 1994. Quote is from p. 167. I have read all, or nearly all, of Feynman’s popular writing, and seen no evidence that he believed in God at all.

The world, you might argue, does not need yet another subatomic particle. But even particle physics has not been about particles for a long time, physicists say. Rather it is about the relationships between particles, the symmetries that nature seems to respect, in short, about the beauty that physical laws seem to embody. Dennis Overbye, "After Triumph and Disillusionment, Wonder Re-enters the Story," New York Times, July 27, 2004

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it; and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing and life would not be worth living. . . . I mean the intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts and which a pure intelligence can grasp. Henri Poincaré, as quoted by S. Chandrasekar, "Beauty and the quest for beauty in science," Physics Today, July, 1979, pp. 25-30, p. 25. Source not given.

We live in a world whose physical fabric is endowed with transparent rational beauty. Attempts have been made to explain away this fact. No one would deny, of course, that evolutionary necessity will have moulded our ability for thinking in ways that will ensure its adequacy for understanding the world around us, at least to the extent that is demanded by pressures for survival. Yet our surplus intellectual capacity, enabling us to comprehend the microworld of quarks and gluons and the macroworld of big bang cosmology, is on such a scale that it beggars belief that this is simply a fortunate by-product of the struggle for life. Remember that Sherlock Holmes told a shocked Dr. Watson that he didn't care whether the Earth went around the Sun or vice versa, for it had no relevance to the pursuits of his daily life! John C. Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. pp. 2-3.

Thus, the perception of the world's beauty as a reflection of God's glory is incomplete without the awareness that underlying the beauty and wonder of earthly nature is the omnipresent, restless operation of electromagnetic phenomena. These phenomena can be seen as a reflection, an analogue, of God's indwelling. This very thought, in itself, possesses an inherent aesthetic value.

Moreover, the appreciation of the beauty that the EMI [Electromagnetic Interaction] contributes to nature is wanting without the realization that the mathematical equations that describe the EMI have a timeless beauty. The elegant symmetry of Maxwell's equations and the inspired simplicity of Dirac's equation bestow an abiding aesthetic flavor to the texture of the microscopic underworld. Dirac and Heisenberg among many other theoretical physicists have throughout their careers expressed how they have been guided by the criteria of beauty and simplicity in their work. - Lawrence W. Fagg, Electromagnetism and the Sacred: At the Frontier of Spirit and Matter (New York: Continuum, 1999) p. 120.

For the theist, the rational beauty of the physical world is not just a brute fact, but a reflection of the mind of the Creator. Aesthetic experience and ethical intuitions are not just psychological or social constructs, but intimations of God's joy in creation and of his just will. Religious experience is not illusory human projection, but encounter with divine reality. There is an integrating wholeness in the theistic account which I find intellectually satisfying, even though it must wrestle with the mystery of infinite Being.

The theist and the atheist alike survey the same world of human experience, but offer incompatible interpretations of it. My claim would be that theism has a more profound and comprehensive understanding to offer than that afforded by atheism. Atheists are not stupid, but they explain less. - John C. Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker. The Gifford Lectures for 1993-4, p. 70. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994

That seems even clearer to us when we recognize that it is mathematics which gives us the key to unlock the secrets of nature. Paul Dirac spent his life in the search for beautiful equations. That is a concept not all will find immediately accessible, but among those of us who speak the language of mathematics, mathematical beauty is a recognizable quality. It is hard to describe but easy to recognize -- like most other kinds of beauty. Its essence lies in a certain economy and elegance that leads to the mathematical property of being 'deep.'… Time and again we have found that it is equations with that indispensable character of mathematical beauty which describe the nature of the physical world. - John C. Polkinghorne, Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 79-80.

I asked him once about a theory and he said, "when I am evaluating a theory, I ask myself, if I were God, would I have made the universe in that way." If the theory did not have the sort of simple beauty that would be demanded of a God, then the theory was at best only provisional. (Banesh Hoffman, "Working with Einstein," pp. 475-478, in Some Strangeness in the Proportion: A Centennial Symposium to Celebrate the Achievements of Albert Einstein, Harry Woolf, ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1980. Quote is from p. 476.) 

The Psalmist said:  1 The heavens declare the glory of God.
The expanse shows his handiwork.
2 Day after day they pour out speech,
and night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech nor language,
where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice has gone out through all the earth,
their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19, Bible quotations from the World English Bible, public domain)

St. Paul said:  "For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity . . ." Romans 1:20a.

As far as we can tell, God created a universe that is understandable, and beautiful. Physicists, and others, have understood part of the way in which that universe is put together, and what they understand reveals a universe of pattern, of beauty, of, if you please, design. Hebrews 11:3 says that we understand that God created the universe by faith, and it is true that there is no scientific proof for God's creation, but, for those of us who look, even some who have not believed in a personal Creator, the evidence is there.

Thanks for reading. We live in a beautiful universe!

John C. Polkinghorne on physics and free will

I reject a compatibilist account of human agency since I do not believe that the mere impression of choice can be the foundation of moral being. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 188.

Those who have appealed to (an assumed indeterministic) quantum theory . . . have to recognize how ill-defined and problematic is the concept of "indeterminate quantum events." The only events that we might feel reasonably free to invoke with some degree of confidence (assuming we have espoused the appropriate interpretative proposal) are measurement events. Their strictly episodic nature does not obviously fit them to describe agency which must surely be assumed to have a more free-flowing character. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 188-9.

Those who have appealed to chaos theory, ontologically reinterpreted as reflecting openness and not mere ignorance, and potentially affording a desirably continuous account of active process . . . do so partly because the exploration of a strange attractor seems to have a much wider and more flowing character than is afforded by a discrete series of measurement events. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 189

Those who appeal to quantum theory are supposing that its widely held (but poorly understood) indeterminism is the appropriate place at which to begin. Those of us who appeal to chaos theory are supposing that its direct connection with macroscopic phenomena, where human and divine agency are both expected to manifest themselves, makes it the more promising zero-order approximation. Both groups surely know that there is much more work to be done.
This might seem to be a disappointingly modest conclusion to the discussion, but problems of the exercise of agency are of immense difficulty and are unlikely to yield, after centuries of effort, to a contemporary quick fix. We can nevertheless be affirmed in the value of continuing the enterprise by our belief in our direct experience of human agency, and by our religious intuition of divine providence, both of which assure us that these fundamental experiences must be capable of being accommodated within an adequate worldview. John Polkinghorne, "Physical Process, Quantum Events, and Divine Agency," pp. 181-190, in Quantum Mechanics: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, Volume 5, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 2001. Quote is from p. 190.

Authors that try to integrate science & faith

I responded to a tag from Bonnie, indicating books that had meant a lot to me. One such category was books that try to integrate science and faith. John C. Polkinghorne has written several of these. Stephen M. Barr's Modern Physics and Ancient Faith is another good one. So is Ian Barbour's When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? Bonnie e-mailed me, saying that she had some interest in this type of book. I decided to publish my response to her, more or less, saying more about these books.

Barr is the deepest of the three, for the non-scientist, I think. This is from his first page:

The fact of the matter is that there is a bitter intellectual battle going on, and it is about real issues. However, the conflict is not between religion and science, it is between religion and materialism. Materialism is a philosophical opinion that is closely connected with science. It grew up alongside of science, and many people have a hard time distinguishing it from science. But it is not science. It is merely a philosophical opinion. And not all scientists share it by any means. In fact, there seem to be more scientists who are religious than who are materialists. Nevertheless, there are many, including very many scientists, who think that materialism is the scientific philosophy. The basic tenet of “scientific materialism” is that nothing exists except matter, and that everything in the world must therefore be the result of the strict mathematical laws of physics and blind chance. (p. 1) Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

A lot of it gets more scientific after that, but it's all relevant to integrating science and faith. Barr is a scientist by training, I believe.

Here's a sample of Polkinghorne, who has written quite a few books, generally not very long ones. Most any would do for an introduction to his thoughts on integrating science and faith:

Scientists, and theologians of a realist cast of mind, have one important commitment in common: they both believe that there is a truth to be found or, more realistically, to be approximated to. This belief does not entail a naive objectivity, either in subatomic physics or even less in theology. What we know of entities must conform to their nature and there is a necessarily veiled character to our encounter both with the quantum world and with God. Yet that encounter is a real meeting with something other than human thought, an exploration of what is and not just of what we choose to say. . . . The concepts we are considering cannot do the work that is needed to be done unless they have that ontological reference. A God who is just an internalized symbol of our commitment to the highest values may provide a focus for living but such a God is not the ground of hope in the face of death and beyond death. Unless there really is a God who really was "in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Cor. 5:19), then the cross is no answer to the bitter problem of suffering in the world. John C. Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. p. 45.

Polkinghorne's books are accessible to the intelligent reader.

Polkinghorne was trained as a scientist. My first introduction to him was when I was reading up on physics, after not having taught it for several years. I had no idea that I was reading anything other than an introduction to quantum mechanics, when, on the last couple of pages, I was astounded to discover that Polkinghorne was a believer. He eventually stopped practicing physics, and took theological training.

Ian Barbour is not an evangelical, as I read him, but I believe that he has something important to say. He argues (When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners?) that Christianity and science should not be in conflict, or independent of each other, or merely in dialogue, but should be integrated. I believe that he is right, and that the Bible teaches that. The book is relatively short, and readable. It has chapters on different branches of science, which can be read independently of each other.

Here's a quote from Barbour:

. . . both scientific materialists and biblical literalists have failed to recognize significant distinctions between scientific and religious assertions. The scientific materialists have promoted a particular philosophical commitment as if it were a scientific conclusion, and the biblical literalists have promoted a prescientific cosmology as if it were an essential part of religious faith. Ian G. Barbour, When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2002, p. 36.

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On February 19, 2009, I added links to the authors above, or to their books. I also changed the title, because I am adding a fourth author, one that I should have included in post in 2005, when I first posted this.

That author is Holmes Rolston, III. Rolston has written several books, especially Science and Religion: A Critical Survey. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987) Rolston's book was re-published in 2006. A firm believer in the efficacy of science, but not in all the side effects found in a scientific society, Rolston describes evolution in terms of suffering, but borne up by God in Christ, as the supporting redeemer. He argues for a Divine plan:
Life is not an accident, whatever place dice-throwing pays in its appearance and maturation. It is something arranged for in the nature of things. The dice are loaded. (p. 113.)

Rolston clearly writes as a believer, and he covers all of the major issues at the interface between science and religion.

on Evangelical blogging

I'm new to this (about a month) and I'm not sure anyone, except me, has ever read anything I've posted, or should.

But here's another try at relevance.

A couple of blogs I have read have a post on somehow increasing the presence of evangelical blogs. As an evangelical, on the face of it, that sounds like a good idea to me. However, on further thought, I'm not so sure. First question is, "why?"

If the why is to magnify Christ, and it works, then it's a good idea. No, a great idea. However, I'm not sure that some evangelical blogging really is about magnifying Christ. I have looked, a little, at what are claimed to be the most widely read evangelical blogs. Some of them read more like Republican blogs. Don't we have enough Red/Blue division already? I'm not sure that blogs like that magnify Christ.

A more fundamental reason for wondering about the value of evangelical blogging, per se, comes from the words of C. S. Lewis, who knew a little something about defending the gospel:

I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up against is this. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy's line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians about other subjects--with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way around. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defence of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. The first step to the re-conversion of this country is a series, produced by Christians. . . Its Christianity would have to be latent, not explicit: and of course its science perfectly honest. Science twisted in the interests of apologetics would be sin and folly. C. S. Lewis, "Christian Apologetics," in C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, edited by Walter Hooper. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970, pp. 89-103. Quote is from p. 93.

I have had an experience which illustrates the truth of what Lewis said. Over twenty years ago, I was asked to teach a course in physics, after not having done so for more than fifteen years. I needed to brush up. So I looked, in standard academic sources, for reviews of good books on physics. One such, according to a review, was The Particle Play, by John C. Polkinghorne. It was, indeed, a good introduction to particle physics, an area I needed to learn more about. I was astonished to read this, nearly at the end of the book:

Mathematics, which essentially is the abstract free creation of the human mind, repeatedly provides the indispensable clue to the understanding of the physical world. This happening is so common a process that most of the time we take it for granted. . . . It seems to me a remarkable fact. . . . Israel developed the idea of the Word of God who was his agent in the creation of the world. The Prologue to St. John's gospel not only makes the astonishing identification of that Word with Jesus of Nazareth but also says that the Word is the true light that lightens every man. The use of mathematics to comprehend the universe shows a relation between the workings of our minds and the structure of the world. I believe that this is one aspect of what the writer of the Fourth Gospel is telling us. (John C. Polkinghorne, The Particle Play, Freeman: Oxford, England, 1979, pp. 125-126)

Here, indeed, was a good introduction to particle physics by an author who obviously had a Christian world view.

To paraphrase Lewis for the 21st century, the best way to influence the world through blogging is to create great blogs on baseball, physics, photography, housewifery, travel, and many other subjects, posted by bloggers with a Christian world view.

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The text above the asterisks was posted on January 25th, and has not been altered, except that I have colored the quotations.

This is my fourth post today, and I don't expect to keep that up, nor should I.

Another writer, not as well known (at least not yet) as Lewis, said much the same thing:

What makes for a good, Christian movie? In brief, a good, Christian movie is one that is well-crafted and true. A film that does not strive for artistic and aesthetic excellence cannot be a good film. It will be a shoddy or uneven film, making whatever story or message is being told almost impossible to digest, no matter how biblically sound it is. Likewise, a film that does not bear allusive witness to the truth cannot be a good film. This phrase "allusive witness" is intentional, for we are not suggesting the evangelistic film. We're suggesting rather the film that witnesses allusively, obliquely, to the splendor of goodness, the shabbiness of sin, the hunger to be forgiven, the yearning for the divine, the playfulness of creation—all things true—"What Is a Good Christian Movie, Anyway?" (Part 1) by David O. Taylor, posted 07/13/04

Lewis and Taylor are saying something important. The greatest real influence is made by excellence. May I achieve this, and not for my sake.