Where Religion and Physics meet

  1. Lemma
  2. Πού συναντώνται θρησκεία και φυσική
  3. Greek, Modern (1453-)
  4. Delli, Eudoxie
  5. Complementarity - Key thinkers
  6. 25-1-2017
  7. Markopoulos, John N. [Author]. Where Religion and Physics meet
  8. TO BHMA - ΓΝΩΜΕΣ [TO VIMA - OPINIONS]
  9. Pythagorean model - Neoplatonism - eschatology - Messianism - Saint Thomas Aquinas - St. John of Damascus - creative intuition
  10. Click Here
    1. <p>Μαρκόπουλος, Ι. Ν. [Markopoulos, I. N.] (1999, February 28). Πού συναντώνται θρησκεία και φυσική. <em>TO ΒΗΜΑ -ΓΝΩΜΕΣ</em>. Retrieved from http://www.tovima.gr/opinions/article/?aid=108556</p>

    1. John Markopoulos aims to revise the widespread belief according to which modern science and religion are opposite and rival and therefore incompatible to each other, by providing a more complex understanding of their fluctuating relationship across different periods.

      After a short historical account of the “violent ruptures” between modern science and Christian religion (in the frame of the Catholic and Protestant Churches), from Copernicus and Galileo to Marx, Darwin and Freud, the author goes back to the Pythagorean background of the convergence between natural science and spiritual initiation, inspired by the relevant book of Margaret Wertheim (Pythagoras’s Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender War, 1997; translated in Greek by F. Kondylis: Margaret Wertheim «Το παντελόνι του Πυθαγόρα», Athens: P. Travlos – E. Kostaraki editions, 1998).

      The Byzantine theologian Saint John of Damaskos (7/8th c.) and Saint Thomas Aquinas (13th c.) are mentioned as evidences for the possible conciliation of science and religion in the Middle Ages both in East and West. The author highlights the importance of the Aristotelian thought for the Christian theology and the scholastic philosophy, as well as the humanistic renovation of the Greek ancient science during the Renaissance, grounded in the firmness of religious education acting as a forerunner of scientific discipline. He also underlines the contribution of the Neoplatonism to natural sciences. Furthermore, he connects the expectations for scientific progress in the 19th and 20th centuries with the emergence of a transformed messianism and he sheds light to the Christian origins of the quest for truth, equally claimed by science.

      According to the author, the main difference between science and religion relies on the ongoing character of the scientific enterprise directed towards truth, the “really being” of Plato, while religion - due to its eschatological nature - is from the beginning to the end of this course, given that truth is identified with the Christian doctrine of the Trinitarian God.

      The author closes by insisting on the possible cooperation between science and religion in approaching reality and searching for the truth. Finally, he exposes the limits of scientific discourse: human life at its extremities, at the beginning and at the end. On the contrary, religious discourse treats them in a way that resists to any scientific verification. Finally, Markopoulos mentions the role of religious creative intuitions as possible catalyst for scientific hypotheses and discoveries, designating the involvement of irrational element into scientific inquiry.