- “Science and religion don’t mix, and never will.”
Plant me firmly on “future doesn’t need us” ground if this is a representative opinion among all of nanotechnology’s thought leaders.
True science is ruled by humility, since a scientist above all is aware of how vast is his deficit of knowledge. A scientist who is ruled by arrogance, prejudice and caricature of what he does not understand is not practicing science at all, but is treading into historically cataclysmic territory.
And in Europe, if the past gives us any guide, the scientist who dismisses as unimportant the moral and ethical foundations of those whose lives he is allegedly improving will assuredly be shown the hammers of the Luddites.
But a greater man said it better:
- “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries.
“Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.
Albert Einstein
NanoBot Backgrounder
The Kabbalah Nanotech Connection