"If I had to pick a major disagreement between the present world and the past, it would be the importance of invisible amounts of mass and energy, be they trace chemicals or transistors. Moreover we tend to care about emergent information content, the patterns in the material, rather than the actual material.
To a typical Victorian that wouldn't be heresy so much as fantastic nonsense. Your great-grandparents' world was populated by people, animals, and human-scale artifacts. Man was more literally the measure of all things. Important things were assumed to be big and obvious, or at least visible to the senses."
Really glad to see Aeon gaining traction. Their editorial voice runs counter to the dominant academic convention that separates liberal arts and humanities from the hard sciences and mathematics.
It's not about putting them together, so much as recognizing how artificial the distinction is in the first place. Both branches are fundamentally imaginative. To use a rough analogy, they're like the left and right sides of a single brain - neither of which is sufficient by itself.
If they've got one writer who stands out, it's Ross Anderson. Two of the best pieces they published were done by him. If you're familiar with the Clock of the Long Now and the larger effort to cultivate a sense of deep time, these are exceptionally worthwhile. Can't recommend them highly enough.
Am I the only person who doesn't think that science and religion are really at odds, except for in the minds of fools and the mouths of manipulators? Every major religion has the idea of "oneness" wherein the God/Godhead is portrayed as the ultimate underlying energy (or doer) within every existing thing. Where is the conflict?
Atheists like to say "Why invent this idea of God without evidence?", but they can't name who "invented" religion or prove that it was even invented. We were told about it. Also, every existing thing clearly does exist. So there's your evidence. How helpful is that?
Here are some more scientists, talking about the unknown:
From your comments, its not hard to see that you are religious, so it is understandable that you would see "god" as the underlying force in everything.
I think you are confusing agnosticism with atheism: agnostics basically question the existence of "god" or deities because of a lack of evidence.
It would be hard to argue that we don't know who invented various religions as the stories of various prophets getting messages or missions from "god" are widely known, as well as the groups of people who practiced early versions of what we call each religion today. And the point you make saying "we were told about it" is evidence enough to question the validity of religion and god- we are relying on words and stories passed on and reformulated throughout history.
This article is taking one facet of science- the microscopic world- and showing how more discoveries lead to skepticism when people in the past thought of religion as the answer to everything. It is essentially pointing to the fact that as more scientific discoveries are made, more religious theories are put to question. You are right, there is A LOT we STILL don't know about, but every time more discoveries are made, we find that more past assumptions (religious principles in this case) are proven false.
Religion and science becomes at odds if religion makes falsifiable claims about the natural world which is contradicted by scientific evidence. Many religions does that. Liberal theology tries to explain such claims away as metaphorical. The counter-reaction against liberal theology is fundamentalism.
There are a lot of religions which doesn't have the idea of a single God or Godhead. The concept of "underlying energy" sounds like New Age mythology - which is fine, but New Age is not every religion.
> Atheists like to say "Why invent this idea of God without evidence?", but they can't name who "invented" religion or prove that it was even invented.
Religious people are sadly known for destroying and burning any book and evidence that shows any history before or in disagreement to their main faith.
We can't, because you don't let us, and are willing to risk your lives in doing so.
I will mourn all my life about the knowledge lost in the Great Library of Alexandria.
The library at Alexandria wasn't burned for religious reasons. It's not clear that it burned at all, or whether this is legendary. The earliest story is that Julius Caesar set fire to some ships and the fire accidentally spread. Stories of the library being burned by religious zealots are much later and likely fabrications: http://bede.org.uk/library.htm.
We can't name who "invented" cooking either. But some specific dishes... for example Peach Melba was invented by Auguste Escoffier. As a parallel, Mormonism, for example, was invented by Joseph Smith.
"If I had to pick a major disagreement between the present world and the past, it would be the importance of invisible amounts of mass and energy, be they trace chemicals or transistors. Moreover we tend to care about emergent information content, the patterns in the material, rather than the actual material.
To a typical Victorian that wouldn't be heresy so much as fantastic nonsense. Your great-grandparents' world was populated by people, animals, and human-scale artifacts. Man was more literally the measure of all things. Important things were assumed to be big and obvious, or at least visible to the senses."
http://carlos.bueno.org/2010/10/predicting-the-future.html