John Polkinghorne
John Polkinghorne
John Charlton Polkinghorne, KBE, FRSis an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer and Anglican priest. A prominent and leading voice explaining the relationship between science and religion, he was professor of Mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He served as the president of Queens' College, Cambridge from 1988 until 1996...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth16 October 1930
John Polkinghorne quotes about
The remarkable insights that science affords us into the intelligible workings of the world cry out for an explanation more profound than that which itself can provide. Religion, if it is to take seriously its claim that the world is the creation of god, must be humble enough to learn from science what that world is actually like. The dialogue between them can only be mutually enriching.
God is not a God of the edges, with a vested interest in beginnings. God is the God of the whole show.
It is the faithfulness of God that allows epistemology to model ontology.
The rational transparency and beauty of the universe are surely too remarkable to be treated as just happy accidents.
God didn't produce a ready-made world. The Creator has done something cleverer than this, making a world able to make itself.
If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
After all, the universe required ten billion years of evolution before life was even possible; the evolution of the stars and the evolving of new chemical elements in the nuclear furnaces of the stars were indispensable prerequisites for the generation of life.
Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe.
Whitehead reacted strongly against the idea of God as a cosmic tyrant, one who brings about everything.
However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.
I very much enjoyed my career in science. I didn't leave science because I was disillusioned, but felt I'd done my bit for it after about twenty-five years.
The physical fabric of the world had to be such as to enable that ten billion year preliminary evolution to produce the raw materials of life. Without it there would not have been the chemical materials to allow life to evolve here on earth.
The test of a theory is its ability to cope with all the relevant phenomena, not its a priori 'reasonableness'. The latter would have proved a poor guide in the development of science, which often makes progress by its encounter with the totally unexpected and initially extremely puzzling.
Theologians have a great problem because they're seeking to speak about God. Since God is the ground of everything that is, there's a sense in which every human inquiry is grist to the theological mill. Obviously, no theologian can know everything.