by Ben Clausen
Translated for Ciencia de los Orígenes, Enero-Abril 1997, N.46, p.7
Arthur Eddington was a professor at Cambridge University for most of
his career and his studies there led to the first understanding of the internal
constitution of stars. He is perhaps most famous for confirming that light rays are
deflected by massive celestial objects as predicted by Einstein's general theory of
relativity. This confirmation he accomplished by observing starlight passing close to the
sun during a 1919 solar eclipse on the island of Príncipe off West Africa. Eddington was
elected to fellowship of the Royal Society in 1914, was awarded the knighthood in 1930,
and became President of the International Astronomical Union in 1938. He has been
described as "the most distinguished astrophysicist of his time".
Eddington was a deeply religious man and it is hard to determine from
his writings whether his scientific work or his religious experience was more important to
him. In his popular book, Science and the Unseen World, he discusses the relation
between the two. He believed that changes in scientific thought might remove some of the
obstacles to a reconciliation of religion with science, but he was wholly opposed to
basing religion on scientific discovery. He believed that a personal relationship should
dominate our conception of the unseen spiritual world, and that arguments for a deity were
irrelevant to the assurance of a personal God for which humanity hungers. After all, we
take the existence of our human friends for granted, not caring whether it is proven or
not. Eddington took the passage in 1 Kings 19:11,12 as nearest to his own sympathies: the
Lord was not in the wind, earthquake, or fire that Elijah saw on Mt. Horeb, but in the
still small voice. Philosophers did not like Eddington's conclusion that ultimate reality
is spiritual, but his thoughts have something to say to us today in the Christian world.
As a lifelong Quaker, Eddington espoused the approach of a Seeker.
Although he would not urge that no defence of creeds is possible, he believed that
Quakerism in dispensing with creeds held out a hand to the quest of a scientist. However,
he concludes his book by saying that "religion for the conscientious seeker is not a
matter of doubt and self-questionings", because religion provides "a kind of
sureness which is very different from cocksureness."
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