Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington

Science and religion have long been thought incompatible. But nowhere has this apparent contradiction been more fully resolved than in the figure of A. S. Eddington (1882–1944), a pioneer in astrophysics, relativity, and the popularization of science, and a devout Quaker. Practical Mystic uses the figure of Eddington to shows how religious and scientific values can interact and overlap without compromising the integrity of either.

Eddington was a world-class scientist who not only maintained his religious belief throughout his scientific career but also defended the interrelation of science and religion while drawing inspiration from both for his practices. For instance, at a time when a strict adherence to deductive principles of physics had proved fruitless for understanding the nature of stars, insights from Quaker mysticism led Eddington to argue that an outlook less concerned with certainty and more concerned with further exploration was necessary to overcome the obstacles of incomplete and uncertain knowledge.

By examining this intersection between liberal religion and astrophysics, Practical Mystic questions many common assumptions about the relationship between science and spirituality. Matthew Stanley’s analysis of Eddington’s personal convictions also reveals much about the practice, production, and dissemination of scientific knowledge at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Jennifer Wiseman

Dr. Jennifer Wiseman is an astronomer and the Director of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also the Senior Project Scientist for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. She previously served as Chief of the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Her research employs the use of radio, infrared and optical telescopes to study the formation of stars and planets in dense interstellar clouds. She received her B.S. in physics from MIT, discovering comet Wiseman-Skiff in 1987, and continued her studies at Harvard, earning a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1995. She continued her research as a Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and as a Hubble Fellow at the Johns Hopkins University. She is currently a Fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation, a network of Christians in science. Dr. Wiseman also has an interest in public science engagement and policy and has served as a Congressional Science Fellow of the American Physical Society, working with the staff of the Science Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Marco Bersanelli

Marco Bersanelli is Full Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Director of the PhD School in Physics at the University of Milan, where he does research in observational cosmology. He has participated in a number of experiments in cosmology, including two expeditions to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica. He is one of the leading scientists of the Planck space mission, the European Space Agency project studying the early universe, successfully launched in 2009. In addition to numerous science papers, he published scientific and interdisciplinary essays and books, including From Galileo to Gell-Mann (Templeton Press, 2009) about the human adventure of scientific research. He serves as Science Director of Euresis, a scientific association promoting science as an expression of the broader quest for beauty and meaning.