MAN AND THE UNIVERSE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 10 January 1931, Page 2

MAN AND THE UNIVERSE

Speaking of the scientist’s descriptions of the profusion of worlds, Sir Arthur Eddington, in a lecture on science and religion, said that to realise the insignificance of our race amid the majesty of the universe was probably healthful, but it brought to us a more alarming thought. For man was the typical custodian of certain qualities or illusions which made a great difference to the significance of things. He displayed purpose in an inorganic world of chance. He could represent truth, righteousness, sacrifice. In him there flickered for a few brief years a spark from tho Divine spirit. Were these as insignificant as he was? What was the truth about ourselves? We might incline to various answers. We were a bit of a star gone wrong. We were complicated physical machinery—puppets that strutted and talked and laughed and died as the hand of time turned the handle beneath. But there was one elementary inescapable answer. We were that which asked the question. Responsibility toward truth was an attribute of our nature. It was through our spiritual nature, of which responsibility for truth was a typical manifestation, that we first came into the world of experience; our entry via the physical universe was a re-entry. It might happen that some day science would be able to show how from the entities of physics creatures might have been formed which were counterparts of ourselves, even to the point of being endowed with life. The scientist would, perhaps, point out the nervous mechanism of this creature, its powers of motion, of growth-, of reprodueiton, and end by saying, “That’s you.” But the inescapable test was, “Is it concerned with truth as I am; then I will acknowledge that it is indeed myself.” Wo demanded something more even than consciousness. Sir Arthur Eddington added that the fact that scientific method seemed to reduce God to something like an ethical code might throw some light on the nature of scientific method; lie doubted if it threw light on the nature of God.