Notes

  1. . The two works by Harold Schilling representative of this new interest are Science and Religion (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962), hereinafter cited as SR, and The New Consciousness in Science and Religion (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1973), hereinafter cited as NC. In these works the religious interest is focused on Christianity. Ian Harbour has written extensively in this field. His Myths, Models and Paradigms (New York: Harper & Row, 1974) is a fine methodological statement of his position. Both Schilling and Barbour, while having a genuine respect for religious pluralism, focus their attention on Christianity, and both are influenced by process theology. Fritj of Capra, on the other hand, explores parallels between modern physics and “Eastern mysticism” in The Tan of Physics (Berkeley: Shambhala Publications, 1975). Jacob Needleman juxtaposes modern science with esoteric traditions from archaic as well as contemporary civilizations in A Sense of Cosmos: The Encounter of Modern Science and Ancient Truth (New York: Doubled ay & Co., 1975).
  2. . W. J. Thompson, A t the Edge of History (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), chap. 6.
  3. . “The Advancement of Learning,” in Selected Writings of Francis Bacon, ed. H. Dick (New York: Modern Library, 1955), p. 165.
  4. . W. T. Stace, Religion and the Modern Mind (New York: J. B. Lippincolt Co., 1952), p. 274.
  5. . As quoted in W. Donald Hudson's Wittgenstein and Religious Belief (London: Mac‐millan Press, 1975), p. 155.
  6. . J. D. Bernal makes the same point as Schilling from a Marxist perspective: “Science as an institution in which hundreds of thousands of men and women find their profession is a very recent development” (The Emergence of Science, Science in History, vol. 1 [Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971], p. 32).
  7. . Niels Bohr, Essays 1958–1962 on Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), p. 4.
  8. . Ibid., p. 10. Cf.: “… any account of experience even in atomic physics must ultimately rest on the use of the concepts indispensible for a conscious recording of sense impressions” (Niels Bohr, Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge [New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1958], p. 21).
  9. . The issue concerning the scientific status of “purpose” and “direction” in evolutionary theory is much debated. George Gaylord Simpson is a distinguished spokesman for the “synthetic theory” of evolution. This theory combines the original emphasis of Darwin in natural section with the more sophisticated awareness of genetic laws developed in this century. “We now define natural selection as differential reproduction. The basic idea is a simple one. It is clear that in every population, from amoeba to men and in all the rest, some individuals have more offspring than others, offspring that grow up and produce other offspring in their turn. If now the individuals that are thus more successful (or relatively prolific) in effective reproduction differ genetically, on an average and by however little, from the less successful individuals, their genetic characteristics will inevitably become more frequent in the genetic pool in the course of generations” (This View of Life [New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1947], pp. 76–77). Simpson rejects orthogenesis, i.e., evolution moving in a straightforward line. “But evolution is not really orthogenetic. Trends do not keep on indefinitely but level off, change direction or even become reversed. Valid predictions cannot be made by extrapolating a past trend into the future. As for man's brain, there is no evidence that it is now increasing in size” (ibid., p. 272). However, A. Tetry expresses the conviction that the synthetic theory of evolution is only a partial explanation of the evolutionary process (“Theories of Evolution,” in Larousse Science of Life [Feltham, Middlesex: Hamlyn Publishing Group, 1971], p. 449). Some biologists, while not going as far as Teilhard, do see the emergence of mind and consciousness as a critical event in the evolutionary process. Julian Huxley writes, “I … envisaged human evolution and biological evolution as two phases of a single process, but separated by a ‘critical point’“(Introduction to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man [New York: Harper & Row, Torchbooks, 1959], p. 11). Theodosius Dobzhansky writes, “To say that the origin of man has been the paramount achievement of the organic evolution is a legimate anthropocentricity, though it is going too far to suppose (as some writers have done) that the whole organic evolution was designed for the sole purpose of bringing man into being” (“Evolution: Implications for Religion,” in Changing Man: The Threat and the Promise, ed. K. Haselden and P. Hefner [New York: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1969], p. 149). And “with the appearance of life, and again with the appearance of man, something quite novel entered the world. … I have called these turning points ‘evolutionary transcendences’“(ibid., p. 151). However, these statements seem to be philosophical rather than scientific. Dobzhansky as scientist is firm in his rejection of vitalist theories and his adherence to the explanation of change based on natural selection and genetics. The theory of biological evolution is supplemented by evolutionary approaches in two other fields–astronomy and cultural anthropology. The development of stars based on molecular transformations is now a widely accepted part of cosmological theory. Thus “the life history of stars is part of the background of life because the activities of stars involves the condensation of primordial matter into the configurations of atoms, and particularly into the larger atoms that play so indispensable a role in the substance of living organisms” (C. Grobstein, The Strategy of Life [San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1964], p. 20; cf. W. Kaufmann III, Relativity and Cosmology [New York: Harper & Row, 1973]). The status of evolutionary theory in cultural anthropology is more debatable but lately is seriously discussed. See “Panel Five: Social and Cultural Evolution,” in Evolution after Darwin, ed. Sol Tax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 207–41.
  10. . See Gil Eliot, The Twentieth Century Book of the Dead (New York: Ballantine Books, 1972).
  11. . Needleman, p. 4.