Science and wisdom

Theology Today, Jul 2001 by Moltmann, Jurgen

According to the biblical traditions, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. According to the early Greek philosophers, all knowledge is the fruit of wonder. Do we have to choose between Jerusalem and Athens? Must we decide between the church and the laboratory? Are sciences and humanities two different cultures, or two different windows to reality?

When Galileo wanted to show Jupiter's moons to his theological opponents, they refused to look through his telescope. They believed-as Berthold Brecht put it-that "truth is not to be found in nature, but only in the interpretation of texts." A classical definition of this separation of science and theology was given by Pascal: "If we perceive this distinction clearly, we shall lament the blindness of those who only allow the validity of tradition in physics instead of reason and experiment; we shall be horrified at the error of those who in theology put the arguments of reason in place of the tradition of Scripture and the Fathers."' But why does astonishment over the world not lead us to the fear of God, and the fear of God not to astonishment over the world?

ALL KNOWLEDGE IS ME FRUIT OF WONDER

In general epistemology, we see how cognition of the same and the similar leads to the re-cognition of what we already know, and to endorsement, whereas knowledge of what is different and alien evokes pain over the alteration in our own selves. But how do we come to perceive something new?

The roots of the perception of what is new are not to be found solely in the perceiving subject. They also lie in the object to be perceived. We perceive what shows itself-what "allows itself to be perceived"-and not merely what we want to perceive; therefore, we bring forth of ourselves. Perceptions that lead to knowledge arise in the encounter between the awakened human senses and impressions of the outside world. Encounters of this kind issue in astonishment. If something astonishes us, our senses unfold for the direct reception of the impressions, as flowers turn toward the rising sun; the things or processes perceived penetrate our sensory organs, fresh and unfiltered, like the sun's rays. Impressions quite literally impose themselves on the human being. They im-press us, and we are im-pressed. We still cannot take them in as we say; we are taken aback, taken by storm, and stand there disconcerted at first-disconcerted by our boundless wonder. That is why alarm and amazement are so close to one another.

In wonder, we perceive things for the first time. Astonishment is the source of intuitions. The wondering child still has no concepts with which it can grasp the impressions that crowd in upon it from every side, for it cannot remember anything comparable. It is only the second or third time that memories are formed that allow the impressions to be comprehended, and repeatable attitudes spring up to meet the impressions that crowd in. All our concepts presuppose intuitions. After many repetitions, the child has then already become accustomed to the perception. It is no longer surprised and no longer wonders. It reacts as it is accustomed to do, and as it has learned. That is why grown-ups think of wonder as belonging to the child's eyes, which see the world for the first time. With every child, a new life begins, and every child discovers the world in its own way.

We can go beyond childlike wonder and say, in general, that astonishment always and everywhere accompanies the perception that a phenomenon is unprecedented. Therefore, every new piece of scientific knowledge is called a "discovery" and evokes the astonishment that belongs to something that is "for the first time." Afterward it can be repeated and proved, and in this way it expands the horizon of our knowledge. Yet, we recall "the first time" by giving to the discovery the name of the discoverer, such as the Hubble effect. Because an event of this kind evokes this astonishment over what is new, we talk about dis-coveries, meaning the disclosure of what has been hidden and the perception of what was hitherto unperceived.

Ever since the beginning of the scientific age, we have stressed the active side of these discoveries. People set out on voyages of exploration in unknown continents or "make" such discoveries in the course of their experiments in unknown parts of nature. But every discovery also has its foundation in its objective side. That is why we talk about "phenomena" and say that what has been concealed has "shown itself ' to us. That is the passive side of such discoveries. There are experiences that "happen to us." Expected, they yet involuntarily surprise us. If we consider the subjective and the objective side of discoveries made for the first time, we see a consonance between that which has shown itself and that which has been discovered. The dis-covery corresponds to the re-velation. We have perceived what it has been "given to us" to know. We have elicited something that we did not invent. The thing is, as we have dis-covered it to be. The world can be known by us human beings. It is accessible to our reason and seems to be determined by a hidden rationality. We humans know more than we need for our survival. Wonder is not evoked only through findings made for the first time. Even if we already know something and are familiar with it, an element of astonishment has to accompany all our knowing, since in the strict sense of the world nothing ever "repeats itself' in the world and in our lives, for time is irreversible. "No one steps twice into the same river," wrote Heraclitus. What is past never returns, and, consequently, every moment in time is unique. Only that element of wonder within us is able to perceive the uniqueness of all happening, because it comprehends the dissimilarity in everything that is or seems to be similar.