Einstein, Polanyi, and the Laws of Nature
Einstein, Polanyi, and the Laws of Nature

Author: Lydia Jaeger

Publisher: Templeton Foundation Press

Published: 2012-01-15

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1599474077

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What is the relationship between religious belief and the study of nature, between theology and science? This is the fundamental preoccupation of the three different studies in Einstein, Polanyi, and the Laws of Nature. By exploring the highly original yet little-known thought of Michael Polanyi, Jaeger highlights the inherent personal investment in any quest for knowledge, including the scientific enterprise, thus raising the question of the objectivity of human knowledge. Considered to be the most incredible mind of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein saw scientific research as the fruit of the “cosmic religion.” His response to the question of the relationship between faith and science also receives the close analysis it deserves. Finally, Jaeger is interested in science’s propensity to use the concept of laws of nature, an idea also found in the Bible. She paves the way for interdisciplinary dialogue by examining the similarities and differences. The synthesis of these three complementary studies brings out the collaboration between belief and knowledge, thus establishing a bridge between two noble human activities: faith and scientific research. It will interest all serious followers of the ongoing science and religion dialogue.

Personal Knowledge
Personal Knowledge

Author: Michael Polanyi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-06-25

Total Pages: 503

ISBN-13: 1134746091

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First published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Michael Polanyi and His Generation
Michael Polanyi and His Generation

Author: Mary Jo Nye

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-09-16

Total Pages: 428

ISBN-13: 0226610659

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In Michael Polanyi and His Generation, Mary Jo Nye investigates the role that Michael Polanyi and several of his contemporaries played in the emergence of the social turn in the philosophy of science. This turn involved seeing science as a socially based enterprise that does not rely on empiricism and reason alone but on social communities, behavioral norms, and personal commitments. Nye argues that the roots of the social turn are to be found in the scientific culture and political events of Europe in the 1930s, when scientific intellectuals struggled to defend the universal status of scientific knowledge and to justify public support for science in an era of economic catastrophe, Stalinism and Fascism, and increased demands for applications of science to industry and social welfare. At the center of this struggle was Polanyi, who Nye contends was one of the first advocates of this new conception of science. Nye reconstructs Polanyi’s scientific and political milieus in Budapest, Berlin, and Manchester from the 1910s to the 1950s and explains how he and other natural scientists and social scientists of his generation—including J. D. Bernal, Ludwik Fleck, Karl Mannheim, and Robert K. Merton—and the next, such as Thomas Kuhn, forged a politically charged philosophy of science, one that newly emphasized the social construction of science.

Science, Faith and Society
Science, Faith and Society

Author: Michael Polanyi

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-01-07

Total Pages: 98

ISBN-13: 022616344X

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In its concern with science as an essentially human enterprise, Science, Faith and Society makes an original and challenging contribution to the philosophy of science. On its appearance in 1946 the book quickly became the focus of controversy. Polanyi aims to show that science must be understood as a community of inquirers held together by a common faith; science, he argues, is not the use of "scientific method" but rather consists in a discipline imposed by scientists on themselves in the interests of discovering an objective, impersonal truth. That such truth exists and can be found is part of the scientists' faith. Polanyi maintains that both authoritarianism and scepticism, attacking this faith, are attacking science itself.

Laws of Nature, Laws of God?
Laws of Nature, Laws of God?

Author: Louise Hickman

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2015-09-18

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1443883034

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Up until the time of Newton, scientists regarded the understandings of the physical world, at which they were arriving, as glimpses of the working of the Creator’s mind. Thus, the generalisations being formulated about the behaviour of matter – the “Laws of Nature” – were seen as the Creator's injunctions, to created matter, as to how it was to act. They were “laws” in the same sense as laws, Divine or human, about how people should behave: that is why the same word was used for both. And even now, scientific laws are occasionally spoken of as being “obeyed”! However, it is doubtful whether any practising scientist, religious believer or not, now thinks of laws in the way that the word literally implies. How, instead, scientists do or should view scientific laws has been debated since the time of Hume and Kant, and it is a vigorous field of investigation among current philosophers of science. In this book, scientists (physical and biological), historians and students of ideas, all of them theologically informed, tackle this topic from many angles. They do so in relation to the lead public lecture at the conference from which the book stems, given by the eminent and iconoclastic philosopher of science, Professor Nancy Cartwright. She asked the question, “How could laws make things happen?”, and her answer was “They couldn’t!”

The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity
The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity

Author: J. B. Stump

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-03-12

Total Pages: 667

ISBN-13: 1118256522

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A cutting-edge survey of contemporary thought at the intersection of science and Christianity. Provides a cutting-edge survey of the central ideas at play at the intersection of science and Christianity through 54 original articles by world-leading scholars and rising stars in the discipline Focuses on Christianity's interaction with Science to offer a fine-grained analysis of issues such as multiverse theories in cosmology, convergence in evolution, Intelligent Design, natural theology, human consciousness, artificial intelligence, free will, miracles, and the Trinity, amongst many others Addresses major historical developments in the relationship between science and Christianity, including Christian patristics, the scientific revolution, the reception of Darwin, and twentieth century fundamentalism Divided into 9 Parts: Historical Episodes; Methodology; Natural Theology; Cosmology & Physics; Evolution; The Human Sciences; Christian Bioethics; Metaphysical Implications; The Mind; Theology; and Significant Figures of the 20th Century Includes diverse perspectives and broadens the conversation from the Anglocentric tradition

The Natural Law of Cycles
The Natural Law of Cycles

Author: James H. Bunn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1351478958

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The Natural Law of Cycles assembles scientific work from different disciplines to show how research on angular momentum and rotational symmetry can be used to develop a law of energy cycles as a local and global influence. Angular momentum regulates small-scale rotational cycles such as the swimming of fish in water, the running of animals on land, and the flight of birds in air. Also, it regulates large-scale rotation cycles such as global currents of wind and water.James H. Bunn introduces concepts of symmetry, balance, and angular momentum, showing how together they shape the mobile symmetries of animals. Chapter 1 studies the configurations of animals as they move in a head-first direction. Chapter 2 shows how sea animals follow currents and tides generated by the rotational cycles of the earth. In chapter 3, Bunn explores the biomechanical pace of walking as a partial cycle of rotating limbs. On a large scale, angular momentum governs balanced shifts in plate tectonics.Chapter 4 begins with an examination of rotational wind patterns in terms of the counter-balancing forces of angular momentum. The author shows how these winds augment the flights of birds during migrations. A final chapter centres on the conservation of energy as the most basic principle of science. Bunn argues that in the nineteenth century the unity of nature was seen in the emergent concept of energy, not matter, as the source of power, including the movements of animals and machines. In each chapter Bunn features environmental writers who celebrate mobile symmetries. This book will interest students, naturalists, and advocates of the environmental movement.

The World in His Hands
The World in His Hands

Author: Christopher Lee Bolt

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-04-17

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 153263661X

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From the moment we wake until the time we go to sleep, we are bombarded by the benefits of science in the practical elements of everyday life. Electricity, lights, hot showers, breakfast cereals, clothing, cars, cell phones, roads, security systems, computers, communications, traffic lights, climate control, and entertainment are just a sampling of the many benefits of science. In addition to technological advances, medicine and agriculture progress with science as well. Even educational, political, and marketing strategists invoke science to substantiate their claims. Science dominates the collective Western mindset, and we regard it with the utmost respect. Yet society remains generally religious, even though science and religion are frequently thought of as being at odds with one another. How do we reconcile the two? Christians are taught to believe that God is in control of everything, including the natural elements. But how does God relate to physical laws? Is God in control of the world, or laws of nature? Could both views be correct? This book examines the Christian doctrine of divine providence and its implications for the laws of nature and the problem of induction before contrasting secular and Islamic approaches to these same topics.