The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: Until recently, it might have seemed that we were an unhappy bit of mildew on a heavenly body whirling in space among many that have no mildew on them at all. this was something that classical science could explain. Yet, the moment it begins to appear that we are deeply connected to the entire universe, science reaches the outer limits of its powers. Because it is founded on the search for universal laws, it cannot deal with singularity, that is, with uniqueness. The universe is a unique event and a unique story, and so far we are the unique point of that story. But unique events and stories are the domain of poetry, not science. With the formulation of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, science has found itself on the border between formula and story, between science and myth. In that, however, science has paradoxically returned, in a roundabout way, to man, and offers him — in new clothing — his lost integrity. It does so by anchoring him once more in the cosmos.
“Astronomy leads us to an unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
http://www.unm.edu/~hdelaney/cosmoquotes.html, Arno Penzias, quoted by Walter Bradley in "The Designed 'Just-so' Universe", 1999.
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Arno Allan Penzias 6
American physicist 1933Related quotes
Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 7, The limitations of falsificationism, p. 87.
As quoted in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, p. 318
Source: The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), Ch. IV, p. 61
[Physics in 100 years, Physics Today, 69, 4, 10.1063/PT.3.3137, April 2016, 32–39] (quote from p. 38)
Interview with The Guardian (15 May 2011)
Source: 1961 - 1975, Barbara Hepworth, A Pictorial autobiography', 1970, p. 286
Source: The Principles of Science: A Treatise on Logic and Scientific Method (1874) Vol. 1, pp. 257, 260 & 271
"The Way and the Life"
The Conduct Of Life (1951)
“Humane science must be adapted to the requirements of a balanced and rewarding life.”
pg 217.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])