Science and Religion

I just started reading Physics and Philosophy, a series of essays derived from lectures that Warner Heisenberg delivered in the mid-1950s. At the end of the book, as a sort of appendix, and not even listed in the table of contents, is a separate short piece entitled Science and Religion, in which Heisenberg recalls a conversation he had in 1927 with Paul Dirac, Wolfgang Pauli, and others, and which he later related to Neils Bohr. I haven’t finished the piece yet, but what I’ve read so far reveals a fascinating insight into the personalities and thinking of these renowned physicists. At the risk of starting another screaming match between atheists and believers on this Forum, I thought I would present some excerpts from the part of Heisenberg’s Science and Religion that I’ve read so far:

[Wolfgang Pauli:] “…Einstein's conception… [of] God is somehow involved in the immutable laws of nature. Einstein has a feeling for the central order of things. He can detect it in the simplicity of natural laws. We may take it that he felt this simplicity very strongly and directly during his discovery of the theory of relativity. Admittedly, this is a far cry from the contents of religion. I don't believe Einstein is tied to any religious tradition, and I rather think the idea of a personal God is entirely foreign to him. But as far as [Einstein] he is concerned there is no split between science and religion: the central order is part of the subjective as well as the objective realm…”

Paul Dirac… had only just turned twenty-five, and had little time for tolerance. "I don't know why we are talking about religion," he objected. "If we are honest—and scientists have to be—we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards—in heaven if not on earth—all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins."

"You are simply judging religion by its political abuses," I [Heisenberg] objected, "and since most things in this world can be abused—even the Communist ideology which you recently propounded—all such judgments are inadmissible. After all, there will always be human societies, and these must find a common language in which they can speak about life and death, and about the wider context in which their lives are set. The spiritual forms that have developed historically out of this search for a common language must have had a great persuasive force—how else could so many people have lived by them for so many centuries? Religion can't be dismissed so simply as all that…”

"I dislike religious myths on principle," Dirac replied… “All this talk about God's will, about sin and repentance, about a world beyond by which we must direct our lives, only serves to disguise the sober truth. Belief in God merely encourages us to think that God wills us to submit to a higher force, and it is this idea which helps to preserve social structures that may have been perfectly good in their day but no longer fit the modern world. All your talk of a wider context and the like strikes me as quite unacceptable. Life, when all is said and done, is just like science: we come up against difficulties and have to solve them…”

And so the discussion continued, and we were all of us surprised to notice that Wolfgang was keeping so silent… In the end, we had to ask him to tell us what he thought. He seemed a little surprised and then said: "Well, our friend Dirac, too, has a religion, and its guiding principle is: 'There is no God and Dirac is His prophet.'"

Some time later, probably in Copenhagen, I told Niels [Bohr] about our conversation. He immediately jumped to the defense of the youngest member of our circle. "I consider it marvelous," he said, "that Paul should be so uncompromising in his defense of all that can be expressed in clear and logical language… His work is, in any case, quite brilliant. Recently the two of us went to an exhibition which included a glorious gray-blue seascape by Manet. In the foreground was a boat, and beside it, in the water, a dark gray spot, whose meaning was not quite clear. Dirac said, 'This spot is not admissible.' A strange way of looking at art, but he was probably quite right. In a good work of art, just as in a good piece of scientific work, every detail must be laid down quite unequivocally; there can be no room for mere accident…

“Still, religion is rather a different matter… But we ought to remember that religion uses language in quite a different way from science. The language of religion is more closely related to the language of poetry than to the language of science… The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality…”

As I continue reading, I’ll post other gems I come across. In the meantime I am reminded of a conversation I had with my oldest son when he was 8 or 9 or maybe 10 years old. “How do we know what is really real?” he asked me. “What do you think?” I asked in reply. He thought for a moment and said, “I think if you believe something is real, then it must be real.”

I have my own rather strong opinions on the matter, but at the same time I do try at least to understand the other point of view. But I’ll refrain from imposing them on you all here. I just thought the conversation among the physicists was worth posting.

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There is a story I heard about Bohr. He had a horseshoe hanging above the entrance of his home and a reporter visiting him asked him if he believed that the horseshoe brought him good luck. He said that of course he didn't believe in any of that nonsense but he heard it worked whether one believed in it or not.

That's how I remember it, so I looked it up and apparently it is common enough for others to have investigated if it happened or not: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/09/horseshoe-luck/

That's interesting, YesNo. In fact, the story is the concluding paragraph of the piece by Heisenberg, Science and Religion. He attributes it to Bohr who is speaking about a neightbor:

Niels closed the conversation with one of those stories he liked to tell on such occasions: "One of our neighbors in Tisvilde once fixed a horseshoe over the door to his house. When a mutual acquaintance asked him, "But are you really superstitious? Do you honestly believe that this horseshoe will bring you luck?" he replied, "Of course not; but they say it helps even if you don't believe it."

The book I'm reading, Physics and Philosophy, was copyrighted by Heisenberg in 1958, but the piece Science and Religion, appears as an appendix and is attributed to a book by Heisenberg, Physics and Beyond, published in 1971, so it's possible Heisenberg was recounting a conversation he had many years earlier. (I also don't know if the original was written in English or if it has been translated.) It's also possible Bohr told the story to other people as well, so who knows which is the correct/original version?

I found a link to the Science and Religion piece:

http://edge.org/conversation/science-and-religion

Unfortunately, the link leaves out the last four paragraphs (one of them is more than a page in length) of the piece as found in Physics and Philosophy. Let me know if you are interested and I'll retype the missing paragraphs here.

I remember reading Physics and Philosophy as an undergraduate many decades ago. I don't remember much about it, but I can probably find a copy somewhere.

The horseshoe story about Bohr is amusing whatever actually happened. It makes me think that reality doesn't care what we believe which makes sense if reality is primarily objective, all third person and no first person perspective except ones we provide as observers. In that case our subjective input is irrelevant. But what if reality is looking back at us? What if the kinds of questions we ask determine what is manifested or becomes real?