Science and religion / [Sir J. Arthur Thomson].

  • Thomson, J. Arthur (John Arthur), 1861-1933.
Date:
[1925]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Science and religion / [Sir J. Arthur Thomson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    intelligent behaviour, social sympathy, conscious in¬ dividuality and personality, we are justified in saying that a new aspect of reality has been revealed. In any case, the more complex sciences have to do with emergences rather than with resultants, with new syntheses rather than additive summations. This is one of the luminous ideas in Professor Lloyd Morgan’s “ Emergent Evolution ” (1923). § 10. Religion It is easier to speak about science than about religion, for science is essentially impersonal, while religion is essentially personal. Religion has to do with an aspect of reality that is beyond science. In modern times it should include an interpretation of the results of science, but that is a recent development. Religion is difficult to define, for three reasons. First, because it is like a flower which ceases to be when science anatomises it. Is it not almost a contradiction in terms to give a scientific definition of religion ? Second, religion is one of the expressions of the develop¬ ing human spirit, and it has taken many forms in dif¬ ferent ages and among different peoples. It has evolved and it is evolving still. Third, religion is essentially personal, and expresses itself differently in different personalities. It is more intellectual in an Aquinas or a Spinoza, more emotional in a St. Bernard or a St. Francis, more practical in a Luther or a Knox. Sometimes a man does not know how intensely religious his brother is. But there has always been in religion —whether predominantly practical, emotional, or in¬ tellectual—a recognition of a higher order of reality than that reached in ordinary experience. With ordinary vision the young man in the ancient story