Science & Myth by Wolfgang Smith
To read Wolfgang Smith is to encounter that rara avis: someone deeply versed in science and religion. Whereas most who stand on the side of religion lack the technical expertise to know science from inside, scientists and writers on science are, as a rule, blind to their own metaphysical assumptions, and woefully inept when it comes to subtle metaphysical points. Not so for Professor Smith, who moves easily between these two essential ways of knowing: between the core twentieth-century discipline of physics, and metaphysical doctrine as articulated by the sapiential traditions of mankind.In Science & Myth the author shows that science too has its mythology, unrecognized and unacknowledged though the fact be. Starting with a profound clarification of this basic issue he goes on to explain the metaphysical significance of scientific findings relating to visual perception, the relation of neurons to mind, and much else, all of which leads up to the central chapter on Stephen Hawking's best-selling book, The Grand Design. Professor Smith first presents Hawking's case, summarizing his entire argument -- in which Hawking claims that the very existence of the universe can be explained on scientific grounds -- and then proceeds with a magisterial point-by-point rebuttal that leaves his grand thesis in tatters. Science & Myth is a must-read for all those concerned with contemporary issues of science and religion.
Smith, Wolfgang: - Wolfgang Smith was born in Vienna in 1930. At age eighteen he graduated from Cornell University with majors in physics, mathematics, and philosophy. At age twenty he received his Master's degree in theoretical physics from Purdue University, and climbed the Matterhorn. After contributing to the theoretical solution of the re-entry problem as an aerodynamicist at Bell Aircraft Corporation, Smith earned his doctorate in Mathematics at Columbia University, subsequently embarking upon a 30-year career as a Professor of Mathematics at MIT, UCLA, and Oregon State University. Above all, however, it needs to be realized that despite his impeccable credentials in physics, mathematics, and philosophy, Wolfgang Smith is at heart an outsider not only in regard to these academic disciplines, but more profoundly, in reference to the post-Enlightenment premises of our contemporary world. Early in life he became deeply attracted to the Platonist and Neoplatonist schools, and subsequently undertook extensive sojourns in India and the Himalayan regions to contact such vestiges of ancient tradition as still could be found. And one of the basic lessons he learned by way of these encounters is that there actually exist higher sciences in which man himself plays the part not merely of the observer, but of the scientific instrument: becomes himself, in other words, the microscope or telescope by which he is enabled to perceive hitherto invisible reaches of the integral cosmos. By the same token, moreover, Smith came to recognize the stringent limitations to which our contemporary sciences are subject by virtue of their extrinsic modus operandi: the folly of presuming to fathom the depths of the universe having barely scratched the surface in the discovery of man himself. Finding himself, thus, irreconcilably at odds with the prevailing Zeitgeist, Smith decided to forego a professional career in the fields of his primary interest-i.e., physics and philosophy-in favor of pure mathematics: the one and only academic discipline, he avers, in which political correctness can find no foothold. And so he enjoyed the luxury of pursuing a respected university career while being at liberty, as he puts it, to remain perfectly sane. It is no wonder, then, that when he finally confronted the so-called quantum enigma, Smith perceived the issue in a very different light than his peers. The problem all along had actually not been technical! It was not a question to be resolved by way of differential equations, nor primarily a matter of finding something new-but one of jettisoning an entire Weltanschauung. And for Wolfgang Smith this posed no difficulty: he had in fact done so decades earlier, as can be discerned in his remarkable series of publications. Wolfgang Smith's life and work are the subject of the documentary film The End of Quantum Reality, scheduled for release in early 2019.
| SKU | Nicht verfügbar |
| ISBN 13 | 9781597311359 |
| ISBN 10 | 1597311359 |
| Titel | Science & Myth |
| Autor | Wolfgang Smith |
| Buchzustand | Nicht verfügbar |
| Bindungsart | Paperback |
| Verlag | Angelico Press |
| Erscheinungsjahr | 2012-07-25 |
| Seitenanzahl | 242 |
| Hinweis auf dem Einband | Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden. |
| Hinweis | Nicht verfügbar |