The theological motivation of science

This post comes from Dr Jay Wilde.

The German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg (December 5, 1901 – February 1, 1976), was a pioneer of quantum physics. He developed his own formulation of quantum mechanics, for which he won the 1932 Nobel Prize in physics. He later developed his famous Uncertainty Principle, which continues to guide physicists in their understanding of the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles.

In April, 1973, he gave a lecture entitled “Tradition in Science”. It draws on the knowledge he gained through a lifetime of scientific experiences. Early on, he draws a distinction between descriptive science (which was championed by great thinkers like Aristotle) and mathematically-based science, which he calls the “new method.” He then writes:

Therefore two features are essential for the new method: the attempt to design new and very accurate experiments which idealize and isolate experience, and thereby actually create new phenomena, and the comparison of these phenomena with mathematical constructs, called natural laws. Before we discuss the validity of this method even in our present science, we should perhaps briefly ask for the basis of confidence, which led Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler on this new way. Following a paper of von Weizsäcker, I think we have to state that this basis was mainly theological. Galileo argued that nature, God’s second book (the first one being the Bible) is written in mathematical letters, and that we have to learn this alphabet if we want to read it. Kepler is even more explicit in his work on world harmony; he says: God created the world in accordance with his ideas of creation. These ideas are the pure archetypal forms which Plato termed Ideas, and they can be understood by Man as mathematical constructs. They can be understood by Man, because Man was created as the spiritual image of God. Physics is a reflection on the divine Ideas of Creation, therefore physics is a divine service.

What Heisenberg calls the “new method” is the way we do modern science. In other words, science in its current form was motivated by theology, specifically the Judeo-Christian ideas that God created nature and that mankind is made in God’s image with the ability to investigate nature. Science is the study of the “divine ideas of creation” expressed mathematically.

Acknowledgement

This post comes from an article by Dr Jay Wilde, “The Motivation for Modern Science was Theological”.

Posted, May 2024