Although Copernicus attempted to convert thinkers to his viewpoint, acceptance was not easy. What is important here is that Copernicus believed there was a better explanation for the Earth's position in space compared to the old Earth-centered Ptolemaic theory of celestial spheres in which the stars and planets were fixed. It was this personal belief that drove him to discovery.
In his book, Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi (physical chemist & philosopher) talks about this scientific passion, this subjective foreknowledge of a solution because we somehow know it’s out there. It drove the likes of Salk and Copernicus to seek what they believed to be true. It is the same heuristic commitment that, today, drives researchers to seek cures for cancer and aids. It makes scientists want to examine outer space because they have an intimation that it can be done regardless of limitations by distance and the speed of light.
Various religious beliefs have existed since humans started to think. The earliest humans must have concerned themselves with survival, the more thoughtful with an explanation of the natural world. Obviously, they made crude calendars by setting huge stones upright and observing the sun’s shadows over the course of time.
But it would seem that these peoples who’ve recorded any kind of history, also believed in goddesses or gods to explain the unknown. It’s as if they had a hint that something was there.
I wonder if their search and ours and that of science for a final explanation is a result of this same intimation?
Article comments
1 - Dr Dreadful
The key is in the kind of hints these various sages and pioneers were getting.
The deistic approach centers on the not altogether logical assumption that since there seems to be an overall structure to the universe, it must have been made by someone or something. Once you make that huge an assumption, you see the signs everywhere.
The scientific approach stops short of that. It observes that since the various natural laws appear to be inextricably linked, there may or must (depending on who you talk to) be some sort of overarching law that governs all the others. Whether such a law was actually enacted by a (conscious?) entity is beyond the remit of science, at least for the space/time being.
I personally feel that although the cosmos does show evidence of a creator, he was probably drunk at the time. I mean, come on.
2 - Rege Schilken
To me, there is a paradox here. On the one hand we search for answers when we (anyone) have an intimation there is an answer to be found. At times we even state our research via the null hypothesis, hoping to, "ah-ha," discover an answer we suspect is there.
On the otherhand, human beings have always searched for the "ultimate" explanation for the universe as IF it is out there.
I don't think the problem lies outside in reality; it is embedded within our mind which refuses to accept meaninglessness even though there is no real alternative. It is as if the logic part of our brain hits a dead end.
3 - Cindy
"our mind which refuses to accept meaninglessness even though there is no real alternative" - So you are an existentialist then?
The irony for me is - Even in finding that there is no answer, you have your answer....
4 - Regis
I guess I might be called an existentialist, but I am not happy with the fact that there is no answer.
Kierkegaard: "The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think."