‘Commitee 4 DRAFT--7/1/95 Science, Nature and the Sacred For Conference Distribution Only KEPLER AND THE SACREDNESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE by Job Kozbamthadam Reader Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth (Pontifical Athenaeum) De Nobili College Pune, INDIA ‘The Twentieth Intemational Conference on the Unity of the Sciences Seoul, Korea August 21-26, 1995 © 1995, Intemational Conference on the Unity of the Sciences0B KO2AMTTADAM 5. J, De Nobili liege, PB 7c th 84, NDIA. KEPLER AND THE SACREDNESS OF NATURAL SCIENCE Sone soholars still seen to believe that modem science arose ass revolt against religion. According to them, science and religion can never go together. These tuo have been engaged An au sueuding war, with setence emerging victorious each tine. This is the recurrent theme in books like A.D, White’s 4 History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom.\ Sone other scholars do not subsoribe to such a “conflict view," but support a “conpartnentalist view,” according to which science and Feligion oan coexist with mutual respect, but with no construe~ tive interaction between the two. Well-known sayings ike “When Faraday opens the door of his laboratory, he closes the door of Me oratory” renind one of this conpartnentalistic relationship However, a close look at the history of the origin of modern selence in the sixtesnth and seventeenth centuries reveals that the founding fathers subscribed neither to the conflict nor te the compartmentslist view. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, De cartes, Leibniz, Newton, ete. were deeply religious persons, who found genuine harmony between their life as successful scientists 7 in the case and faithful religious persone.? It te quite el of these great scientists that in their life science and reli- Sion, far from being a cause of conflict, were a source of enrichment, mutually complementing each other. This was partiou- larly true of Johannes Kepler. He could become an outstanding founder of modern science not by distancing his science fron hie religion, but rather by integrating the two. For hin the universe Ie peswas something sacred, and science, the study of that universe, was 4 sacred profession. Science, nature, and the sacred formed fan unbreakable triad. This paper ie a study of Kepler’s holiscic view of science and its relevance to us today. It s that the conflict view is a later development thet arose due to ‘the particularizetion and consequent inpoverization of the initial goals of science for prageatic and technological gains; recapturing of the genuine Keplerian spirit ean counteract this process of inpoverization withost jeopardizing the positive geins of science Tho Keplerian Progran Kepler w ‘8 born scientist. The basic seientific instinct ~ the desire to understend the structure and operations of nature on the basis of observable data - was an integral part of hie Personality. At the same time he was a deeply religious persor, who placed religion at the very center of his whole life. “I en a Christian,” ho declared to llerwart, hiv 1ife-lony patron-frierd and correspondent. "I have accepted the Augsburg confession (the Lutheran articles of faith), and I adhere to it. I have not learned to be s hypocrite. I am in earneat with my religion, T don’t play with it."? In him science and religion merged almost wleasly, nurturing and nourishing each other. This fact is at the basis of his synthetic mode of thought. In his thought Process the religious, the philosophical, and the empirical (scientific) formed one unified whole. One may say that his basic unit of thought was "interconnected categories,” his thought o>