MAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 February 1931, Page 10

MAN

FUSES SCIENCE AND RELIGION. From the earliest ages of human thought two questions. av ® u “ ingly assailed the ni md ? of man “AVhat am I? aud hat ls . Z world in which I dwell?” W wouj experiments in philosophy are the at tempts mankind has made to ans . w ®* either or both of these. (writes “C.E.” in the “Sydney Momjn* Herald). The most primitive philosophers concentrated on the of the universe. Her-acleitus found the fundamental principle of the oriel to lie in multiplicity and change—the first dun foreshadowing of the modern theory of relativity. The Eleatics, on the. other hand, asserted the unv 'S ing permanence of. reality. came Pythagoras, with his. .theoryof numbers and- the geometry of space. Not until Socrates and the Systematic Philosophers did speculation adopt n more anthropological trend. In the ages since then philosophical tbodgb has mainly"tended to co-ordinate the cosmic with the moral; and, social’ inquiries of mankind'. . The latest and mos.t far-reaching at-

tempt to answer our two eternal questions is that of Sir James. Jeans. _ In tlio system he sets forth) Ueracleitus and Pythagoras seem to have attained apotheosis, in a recent h;c:.uie on “The Mysterious Universe” at Cambridge' University, Sir James Jeans says: “To-day we regard the universe as consisting primarily oi waves—waves of radiation; whose pro: perties are specified by the undulatory theory of light. . . . The universe does not. appear to work, as was at one time thought, on animalistic or anthropomorphic lines, nor, as. was more recently thought, on mechanical lines; it rather works on purely mathematical lines; In brief, the universe ap: pears to have been designed by a- pure mathematician,” In the light of such a statement as that/ one asks oneself, with even greater emphasis and- mystification. “What, then, is man?” Sir James does not flatter us. He says: “At first glance at least life seems to be an utterly unimportant by-product; we living things are somehow off the main lihe.” He reaches this modestestimate of his species through a consideration of the stars. “A few stars were known which were hardly bigger than the earth, but the majority were so large that hundreds of thousands of- earths could-, be packed inside each'. ... And the total number of stars in the universe was probably something like the total number of grains of sand on all the seashores of the world.”

“This vast multitude of stars,” he continued, travelled through a universe so spacious that it was an eventof almost unimaginable rarity for a. star to come anywhere near another /tar. For the most part each voyaged' in splendid isolation like a ship on - an empty ocean. In a scale model in which the stars were, ships, the average ship, would be well over a miliiOn miles from its nearest neigh-h'ouy,” Can we picture, such a uniyer-se- as that, so vast in its with, so much matter in it, yet with, room for so much more? Can we pibk Outour tiny, insignificant earth in such a horde of immense planets? In-truth-, it does not make us feel that- we are of much importance. Where stands religion now? Religion tells us that the Creator of the universe—He whom the Christians call God, Herbert Spencer the Unknowable, and Sir James Jeans the Great Mathematic clan—is directly interested in each one of us, regards us as His sons and daughters. But if the world is run on mathematical lines, arid life is an accidental emergence on one of the smallest planets; liow can there be any such thing as' love of God? It is rather' staggering to reflect that in this scheme of things, Plato must be subordinated to Pythagoras, and Euclid is closer, to. fundamental reality than Jesus Christ.

THE MIND REBELS. And somehow the mind of. man rebels against it. The average individual! refuses to regard' himself- as a by-product. He looks around himself; and sees motor cans, steamboats, aeroplanes, wireless sets; splendid buildings, and' great works of- art’ — and he asks himself and- the scientists: “How can- these things be the creations ■' of an accidental divergence from the operations of a pure mathematician?” And- he looks within himself and: finds noble ideals, deep eriiotions, marvellous intelligence, spiritual yearnings—and' lie asks: “Can these; be satisfactorily explained' by, waves of radiation?” It is not his wounded amour propre, not his outraged egotism, but rather his common sense, that answers “No!”

And Sir- James Jeans himself gives us a new line of thought (though ho does not. follow it up) in this* same lecture. For he holds that- the possibility of life is restricted within very narrow limits. “The rarity of planetary systems had a special significance. Life could exist only inside a narrow zone, which surounded- each star at a. very definite distance. • Outside these zones life would be frozen; inside it would be shrivelled up. . . . And even within these zones life must be of extremely rare occurrence, for . . . only about one star in 100,000 had a planet revolving round- it in the small zone in; which life was possible ...” To. my mind, that entirely changes the aspect of the case. For it means that instead of mankind beingan utterly insignificant by-product of creation, he is the most- important, the most astounding, -the rarest of all created things. Here stand I one unit from among the many millions of human beings on this planet—and the probability is that there is. not another creature in all the realms of interstellar space like me! The thought is colossal; It almost gives mo swelled head to think it! And it opens up an entirely new vista from that surveyed- by Professor Jeans. There is no need to discredit his description of the Creator as the Great Mathematician; there is so much symmetry in the universe that I-Ie must be. But now we are not restricted to the view- -of God as a Mathematician only; now we can regard Him also as the Great Poet of Dr Whitehead’s suggestion, or even as the Great Lover, as Sir Francis Younghusband insists. THE HIGHER CONCEPTION. But the chief departure from Sir James’ viewpoint is tile way in which wo can now take stock of ourselves. Morality is atrophied, spirituality is killed, ethics are esthetics, intellect apd ambition are alike enervated if man is nothing but an accidental excrescence on the face of a minor!

planet. But if he is the pmnack of all creation, the greatest an significant of all the works of God then he is restored to his kingdom, receives back his heritage, he re habilitates his soul. And viewing him self thus, there wells up m him great pride, a great thankfunm , and a sense of great raspo h nsl^ l l t e s ( i Not for nothing has he beenled ■through countless aeons o^ 810 " ■working evolution unto the lord^ p the world. Not for nothing has he developed into so marveHows creature as to be able to peel l^lou^ f his telescopes into the of snace, and ask questions of th( L verse about his own creation. hex wo ask. what the reason for his -x - ence is, what, purpose is n ? al^ ind serve, it seems to me inevitable th ~ we should be brought back to the of Jesus of Nazarmln Sn James Jeans looks at life from the ex clusively scientific point of view and thereby gets a distorted view of Ute. ■No survey of humanity .is complete which does not take into account man’s religious nature. The quest toi God is as deeply ingrained m the nature of man as is the quest for food. And only by a fusion of the religious With the scientific attitude can we ■form any adequate theory of the origin and destiny of man. It is common ground that Jesus was the greatest religious genius the world has produced-. And' Jesus’ conception of the “summum bonunr,” of the whole duty of man, is l° ve —love towards God., expressed in its practical form of love towards one’s fellow-men. There is an old saying to the effect that it s love that makes the world 1 go round. Certain it is that there is no greater adhesive force in nature than love, while nothing is so disruptive and disintegi’ating as its opposite, hate. Jesus, then, shows us the reason for our exaltation, and points to perfection as the ultimate destiny of man. We are to make use of the amazing powers and potentialtiies vested in us ifor the common good of our species, striving ever to approximate more •closely to the ideal, Plato had much the same conception. But- Plato’s “good” had no real content: and Plato left a strong dualism between the ideal and the real. Jesus invests the “good” with- a true content, the .positive quality of love, and overcomes Plato’s dualism by His teaching that “The kingdom of God is within you.” In a word, Jesus tells us that the ideal life is obedience to the will of God, and the will of God is love. Thus He has lit 'a beacon to 1 guide us on our upward journey. Our existence is of- importance to the Mind that made the universe: the way we live matters. We have come a long way on our road to God. It is a far cry from protoplasm to humanity. Buj; there is a long way yet to go, and what the. ultimate goal may be no Twentieth Century mind may tell,