re SLSL Intro "Our Common Nightmare"

[pynchonoid]

Of course, not all scientists believe in the fairy
tale that science can fully explain the universe;
here's a recent example of reporting on the trend:

The New Convergence
By Gregg Easterbrook
The ancient covenant is in pieces: Man knows at last
that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling
immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance." So
pronounced the Nobel Prize-winning French biologist
Jacques Monod in his 1970 treatise Chance and
Necessity, which maintained that God had been utterly
refuted by science. The divine is fiction, faith is
hokum, existence is a matter of heartless probability
— and this wasn't just speculation, Monod maintained,
but proven. The essay, which had tremendous influence
on the intellectual world, seemed to conclude a
millennia-old debate. Theology was in retreat, unable
to explain away Darwin's observations; intellectual
approval was flowing to thinkers such as the
Nobel-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who in 1977
pronounced, "The more the universe seems
comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless." In
1981, the National Academy of Sciences declared,
"Religion and science are separate and mutually
exclusive realms of human thought." Case closed.

And now reopened. In recent years, Allan Sandage, one
of the world's leading astronomers, has declared that
the big bang can be understood only as a "miracle."
Charles Townes, a Nobel-winning physicist and
coinventor of the laser, has said that discoveries of
physics "seem to reflect intelligence at work in
natural law." Biologist Christian de Duve, also a
Nobel winner, points out that science argues neither
for nor against the existence of a deity: "There is no
sense in which atheism is enforced or established by
science." And biologist Francis Collins, director of
the National Human Genome Research Institute, insists
that "a lot of scientists really don't know what they
are missing by not exploring their spiritual
feelings." 

Ever so gingerly, science has been backing away from
its case-closed attitude toward the transcendent
unknown. Conferences that bring together theologians
and physicists are hot, recently taking place at
Harvard, the Smithsonian, and other big-deal
institutions. The American Association for the
Advancement of Science now sponsors a "Dialogue on
Science, Ethics, and Religion." Science luminaries who
in the '70s shrugged at faith as gobbledygook —
including E. O. Wilson and the late Stephen Jay Gould
and Carl Sagan — have endorsed some form of
reconciliation between science and religion. ..."

continues at:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/convergence.html



<<... but what about God?>>

Fairy tale.>


Pynchon's texts seem to hold both science and religion
equally in doubt with regard to their explanatory
power, if not their ability to command blind faith.

-Doug



=====
<http://www.pynchonoid.blogspot.com/>

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