"A word that is commonly used among scientists is wonder, though you won’t often see that word used in their scientific papers," the Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne tells the Religion News Service. "Doing research is laborious, and often the reward for all that is the sense of wonder that people get from time to time. Scientists’ experience of wonder is, in a sense, an act of worship."
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Is the "Wonder" of Science Like Worship?
Posted by Heather Wax at 6:31 AM
Labels: On the Record
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comments:
He should talk to his colleague, Justin Barrett. There is the theologically correct idea of religion, which Polkinghorne advocates. And then there is religion as it is practised by real people (including theologians) - which is about relating to an anthropomorphic, minimally conterintuitive, cognitively limited, sentient being.
So yes, some theology is sufficiently distanced from real religion that a label like 'sense of wonder' can adequately encompass it. I'm not sure what that proves, though.
Post a Comment