"I recently listened to a talk by a famous biologist. He spoke about... scientific materialism and religious transcendentalism. He said, "...they are incompatible and mutually exclusive." This seems to be a widely accepted view... I do not share it. I do not know what the word "materialism" means. ...I judge matter to be an imprecise and ...old-fashioned concept ...[M]atter is the way particles behave when a large number of them are lumped together. When we examine matter in the finest detail in experiments of particle physics, we see it behaving as an active agent... Its actions are... unpredictable. It makes what appear to be arbitrary choices between alternative possibilities. Between matter... and mind... there seems to be only a difference of degree... We stand... midway between the unpredictability of matter and the unpredictability of God. This view... may not be true, but it is... logically consistent and compatible with... experiments of modern physics. Therefore... scientific materialism and religious transcendentalism are neither incompatible nor mutually exclusive. We have learned that matter... does not limit God's freedom to make it do what he pleases."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions: Gifford Lectures given at Aberdeen, Scotland April-November 1985 (1988) pp. 7-8 (paperback, 1989).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Transcendentalism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Transcendentalism
2 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Transcendentalism →
Related Quotes
"The Germans who first gained the full transcendental insight were romantic people; they were more or less frankly poe…"
"In the higher degrees of Scottish Freemasonry, there are two mottos whose meaning is related to some of the considera…"
"In absolute clarity, one sees as little as in absolute darkness. Pure light and pure darkness are two voids, they are…"
"Deus est Diabolus inversus."
"The oxymoron is preferred by the mystic because it allows him to express something ineffable, because it is the best …"
"Our history of philosophy can only be the Greco-Roman-Christian one. We know neither the time of formation nor any ki…"
"The concept seemed ambiguous to me, and the emphasis with which "pastorality" was attributed to the current Council w…"
"The imagination ... that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and o…"
"Night hung its blue over the garden. Satan fell asleep. He had a dream, and in that dream, soaring over the earth, he…"
"Just as the ritual of life has materialized on earth since ancient times, persisting even today in the gentle light o…"