UNSOLVED MYSTERIES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 914, 6 September 1910, Page 6

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES.

RELIGION AND SCIENCE. i QUARRELCONMNED TO CAMV- : FOLLOWERS. By. Tcl«ffraph-l'resa Association-Copyright. (Rec. September 5, 9.35 p.m.) ' ■ . ■ . , London, September 4. ; Tho Archbishop of York (Dr. Cosmo Lang), preaching 'before the British .Association for tile Advancement of Science, said' the quarrels between religion and science wore.now confined to the campfollowers.. Science was concentrating itself on. its own subject matter, and was becoming impressed with the unsolved mysteries connected. with' ultimate causes, the origin of life,'and'the'meaning of the human spirit. Religion was also recognising its,limitations and abandoning any claim to prescribe God's methods of governing the world. ; ; LIMITATIONS OJ'' SCIENCB. ; 'The attitude of-probably the niajoritj of modern. scientists as regards what may .bo called ultimate problems is stated by Professor J. Arthur Thomson, . the Regius Professor of Natural History in the University of Aberdeen, as follows: —"There:nave been .some'who have not . hesitated to publish abroad' what they regard ' as .a scientific clearing up of the riddles, of the universe, leaving their gullible readers the impression that everything has been .explained. /; I' would be more accurate to say. that, so far. iis science is concerned, nothing has been explained. Of course, immediate explanations: are continually being given, but they are never more : than statements'of fact) or accurate descriptions of happenings, or unravellings of an.intricate series of sequences into their component more familiar sequences, or comparisons ■■ of what seems a novel succession 'of events- with previously wellknown'successions, .or ; -tri)cing'back a. development, through its phases, or making a general formula-which unifies a whole series of, occurrences, and so on. . These interpretations • leave '•: the fundamental mysterioushess of the universe untouched." . .He goes .on;.to say 'that we' cannot conceive the . possibility. of ' knowing whence -the; mechanism, of the universe has come,'why it is here, 'or.whither it is going. .These things are not explained by science/and'.never, can be.. "These things are-/ of,the'spirit, and must be spiritually discerned." '•■ Sir .Oliver Lodge,/ quite' '.siniply arid frankly-states':—"Let us admit: as. scientific men that of real, origin, even'of the simplest, thing, we know-nothing;. not even .of'a pebblb." ; '■:■■', '"■;' , .--, -