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Thirring 18-07-2003 15:02 Pagina 362

GOD’S TRACES IN THE LAWS OF NATURE

WALTER E. THIRRING

Dear Colleagues,
Far from being able to give a comprehensive review of the vast subject
of the relation between Science and Religion, I want to comment on a few
points which have not been sufficiently put into focus yet. Many of you
might remember that some years ago our highly esteemed colleague
Germain told us that his father tried to dissuade him to go into science. He
feared that he would loose his religious faith as science conflicts with reli-
gion. After thinking for half a century about this question, I am reaching
the opposite conclusion. Of course we all have to start from the same facts
and I don’t claim that I have the only rational way of looking at them.
However I think that my view is consistent and logically tenable.
When I speak about religion, I shall restrict myself to monoteistic reli-
gions and more specifically to God as revealed in the Bible. Here I want to
discuss three aspects, the creating God of the Genesis, the guiding God of
the old testament and the loving God of the new testament. All three fea-
tures have their correspondence in natural science. It seems to me that
when looked at the right way science does not conflict with the religious
world view but makes it more glorious.

1. THE GENESIS

To get trivia out of the way, let me start with the following remark:
‘Everything can be described on different levels’. There may be a simpler
but coarser description which conveys the point one wants to make,
though in some ways it is oversimplified or even wrong. There will be a
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GOD’S TRACES IN THE LAWS OF NATURE 363

more accurate and detailed description which however is too complicated

to bring one’s point into a focus. This has nothing to do with religion and
there are plenty of examples in science. Take for instance chemistry where
the atoms of a molecule are represented by little balls and the bonds
between them by little sticks. This notation has become a way of thinking
and proved to be so fertile that modern science cannot live without it. Yet
we know that it is incorrect. Not just because of the trivial reason that on
a sheet three-dimensional objects must be represented by two-dimension-
al projections but because the whole mental picture does not apply. The
correct description is furnished by the Schrödinger equation. It operates
with completely different notions and deeper questions like the stability of
matter or Bose-Einstein condensation of atoms do not appear in the sim-
pler picture. But a more refined analysis shows that instability does not
appear on earth but only for cosmic bodies which are gravity dominated
and B-E condensation requires for its realization the high technology of
ingenuous experimentators. Thus, chemists may happily go on using their
simple pictures, for their purposes it is good enough. I think with Genesis
we are in a similar situation, it obviously does not meet our present scien-
tific standards. But what we have learned from our chemistry example is
not to criticize the coarser description once one has a more accurate one.
This criticism is trivial and can be left to more modest intellects. The ques-
tion is, does the more accurate description modify the outlook of the
coarser one and this is what I want to do now.
From Genesis, I abstract the following message. The universe was cre-
ated in a single act and the powers of its creator must have infinitely tran-
scended all human capacities. Expressed in this form, Genesis is not only
supported by science but also brilliantly illustrated by it.
The big-bang picture of the origin of the universe as a huge exploding
fireball is now so well established that I suppose it to be common knowl-
edge. At least what happened after three minutes of its creation is well sup-
ported by observation. The first three minutes remain a realm of scientific
speculation since their traces have been extinguished but this should not
concern us here. To start I have to sketch the laws which governed this ter-
rific explosion. At first sight it seems unexplicable because where should all
this immense amount of energy come from? Nevertheless, according to
Einstein’s theory of gravity this should not be a problem. The gravitational
energy is negative which in a high-density object may get so huge as to
compensate the positive energy of matter. In fact, in this theory for a closed
universe the compensation is exact and its total energy is zero. Amazingly
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364 WALTER E. THIRRING

energy conservation does not forbid the creatio ex nihilo, however it might
be inhibited by some barrier. Thus, the state of nothingness, ‘the vacuum’,
will be unstable against big bangs. If you like, you may picture ‘the earth
was dark and vaste’ of Genesis as the vacuum of quantum gravity and ‘there
be light’ as its breakdown due to its instability. If the whole universe
appears in a small region, its gravitational energy will be near -∞ so the
energy of its matter must be close to +∞. That is to say, the newly created
universe will be very hot and all possible particles will be created. The rea-
son why now we can continue the speculation scientifically is that on a
small scale we can reconstruct such a situation using high energy acceler-
ators. At this point, as a physicist, I cannot refrain from sticking in some
orders of magnitude; in the cosmic background radiation we actually see
the last glow of the first light. By the expansion of the universe the wave-
length of this light has been stretched proportionally and is now about 1
mm. With the biggest accelerators, we can reach wavelengths of 10-17 cm
that is to say smaller by 1016. Thus, we can realize states, which occurred
when the universe was smaller by this factor 1016 which means when it had
the size of the sun since it now measures 1028 cm across. Hence we can now
leisurely study what comes out of the vacuum in such a highly concentrat-
ed situation. High energy events where thousands of particles are created
out of vacuum appear chaotic. Nevertheless closer analysis reveals a high
degree of symmetry referring to an ‘inner space’ not visible on the macro-
scopic scale. This symmetry led people to guess the laws which govern the
behaviour of these particles. The deduction of these laws was not logically
compelling but used above all arguments of beauty and simplicity. Wonder
over wonder as experimental analysis and calculations where refined, one
found theory and observations approached each other and are now in
agreement within the level of their accuracy of about 1‰. Thus we seem to
possess the laws of creation and the following speculations about its creator
come to one’s mind.

1.1. God is spiritual, omnipotent and omnipresent

The laws reveal their simplicity and beauty not to the simple mind but
only to minds at home in higher levels of mathematical abstraction. Thus
their architect must possess these highly spiritual qualities and He must
have engraved them in nature in a way beyond human understanding.
These laws are simple on a conceptual but not on a computational level and
we need all the powers of our supercomputers to work out their conse-
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GOD’S TRACES IN THE LAWS OF NATURE 365

quences. Yet these tiny particles, 10-15 cm across, follow these laws and
somehow can easily solve these difficult equations in 10-25 sec. On a human
scale this appears far beyond anything feasible which to me represents a
sign of God’s omnipotence. The omnipresence is directly shown by the fact
that, as far as we can see, these laws are valid all over the world.

1.2. Man is God’s image

If we call these laws ‘Gods words’ (‘the logos’) then man is able to read
them in an unexplicable way. One cannot argue that these laws are just
archetypes set in our brain by evolution since our evolution of life never
met energies of 100 GeV or distances of 10-16 cm. The mathematical images
appearing in our laws were created by man only in the past decades and
must have received their inspiration from somewhere else. Somehow the
human mind is tuned to God’s wavelength.

1.3. Man is the coronation of the creation

It is often argued that man is nothing, being only an infinitesimal part of

the universe. But I think lifetime or size is not what matters, even the uni-
verse was once as tiny as the head of a pin. What is important is that we are
able to understand the laws of nature and as far as we can see we are the
only ones. It is true that there are about 1010 galaxies, each containing about
1011 stars and many of them might have planetary systems. Thus, the prob-
ability for the existence of incredibly robust unicellular creatures some-
where is overwhelming. However, for these cells to get organized to higher
forms of life took on earth 3 billion years. For this evolution we need plan-
ets with a stable climate over such a stretch of time and this will be highly
improbable. Even granting that still one has to wait until dinosaurs are erad-
icated and then a ‘Newton’ needs to be born for science to emerge. How long
this chain of events takes somewhere else is everybody’s guess. The proba-
bility for higher extraterrestrial intelligence is the product of a huge and a
tiny factor. Which one wins out cannot be pinned down. Thus the outcome
can only be settled by observational evidence and so far there is none.
Up to now, I have been talking about a creator without saying why I
assume there is one. In fact, positivists will say this in an unprovable and
unnecessary hypothesis and this is logically correct. But the positivistic atti-
tude, though sometimes quite healthy, may also be counter-productive
because an unprovable hypothesis may very well pave the way to deeper
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366 WALTER E. THIRRING

understanding. Let’s return to our scientific example. When Demokritos

postulated the existence of atoms he thought this was a way to reconcile the
undestructibility of matter with its ever changing forms. At this time, one
was far from being able to prove this assumption and up to the beginning
of the 20 th century positivists objected to it. Now we not only have to say
that it is as if there where atoms but we can even see them. So everybody
thinks that Demokritos was right. However, atoms show some unexpected
features and it’s not so clear that what he was talking about really exists.
In science we always start with an ‘as if’ situation in order to relate the
unknown to the known. To show in which sense a putative element exists is
not the most rewarding task. Rather one has to show that its assumption leads
to a consistent scheme. If it turns out to be inconsistent, it ought to be modi-
fied, if it works well, the ‘as if’ is eventually dropped. Take an example from
pure thought, namely from mathematics, our notions of numbers. To start
with we have the natural numbers 1, 2, 3 .... They exist in the sense that we
can count them with our fingers. However, they are not a perfect scheme since
subtraction is not always possible, it is as if they are only part of a more com-
plete set. Indeed by incorporating 0, -1, -2, one arrives at the integers. At this
stage, one does neither worry that we do not have negative fingers nor ask in
which platonic sense the new elements exist, but just notes that one can
always subtract. The scheme still lacks perfection since one cannot always
divide so one incorporates the fractions 2, 3, q, .... Now one has a nice
scheme and these numbers are called the rational numbers. Yet, there must
exist more numbers. Already the Greeks found to their horror that the diago-
nal of a square cannot be expressed by rational numbers. Such numbers were
punished by being called ‘irrational’ but it was found that they are the major-
ity. Though called irrational everybody believes that these numbers exist. Not
so much because they can be realized by mental constructs like the Dedekind
cut or converging ultrafilters but because they lead to a powerful and consis-
tent tool. Such a process has been repeated on and on in mathematics up to
nonstandard analysis, which essentially assumes that limits always exist. But
then the problem is that the limit may not have the desired properties. Thus
returning to our discussion we have to state which properties the creating
God shows. First of all it is clear that God must possess properties so vastly
different from what we are used to. We can state:

1) God the creator cannot be pictured by any natural object:

On this point the three abrahamic religions agree but our reasoning
suggest even more.
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GOD’S TRACES IN THE LAWS OF NATURE 367

2) God the creator cannot be called the good Lord or the loving Father:
In fact, gnostic theologians thought the creator was cruel and terrible.
But to me it seems that these adjectives do not apply either. Admittedly, the
early universe was a terrible place and completedly hostile to life. But since
there was nobody to complain about it, this can hardly be called cruel. But
more generally
3) God the creator does not show any personal features:
I think that this is the reason why many scientists believe in some sort of
creator but have difficulty in picturing a personal God. Such features appear
only if we follow His traces to the further stages of the evolution of the universe.

2. THE GUIDING GOD

Here I have to discuss first the limitations of the predictive power of the
laws of physics. By its laws the state of a system at a later time is deter-
mined from the initial state by the equations of motion. Great pains have
led to equations where the solution is unique and therefore laws are deter-
ministic insofar as the present determines the future. This also holds in
quantum mechanics except that there are no states where the values of all
observables are completely fixed so not only the future but even the present
contains uncertainties. More importantly when considering the whole uni-
verse, we can never completely determine its state because only finitely
many measurements are feasible. Of course we are free to measure what-
ever we please and such a finite number of measurements determines a
state of the system within what is mathematically called a weak neigh-
bourhood. Now for a system as complex or chaotic as the whole universe
the state at much later times depends so sensitively on the initial state, that
any weak neighbourhood leaves enough leeway that practically anything
can come out of it. This does not only concern minor details but also which
path is chosen at important crossroads that eventually determines the
future fate of the universe. Actually the state of the universe at a much later
time is, in Gellman’s words ‘the product of many frozen in accidents’. In
particular our present form of the laws of nature contains many parame-
ters, masses of particles and strengths of interactions, which we cannot
explain and which may be the result of frozen in accidents. However,
whether the universe is a livable place or not depends essentially on such
quantities as I shall now illustrate with a few examples.
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368 WALTER E. THIRRING

2.1. The age of the universe

The big bang is the explosion of a highly compressed system kept

together by gravity. How long this keeps expanding depends on the strength
of the initial thrust relative to the gravitational pull due to its mass. It is like
lauching a satellite into an orbit which should circle the earth many times.
With too much thrust it escapes the earth, with too little it falls back. It took
humanity some time to learn this fine tuning but for the universe it needs
far finer tuning. For the big bang the characteristic time to collapse again
is the Planck time 10-43 seconds. To get a universe capable of producing life
like ours you need about 1010 years = 1017 seconds. Thus, you need fine tun-
ing by a factor 1060.

2.2. Stability of matter

There are far more reasons favouring instability of matter than there
are for stability. One obvious condition for the existence of matter is the sta-
bility of the proton. But there is its neutral brother the neutron, and which
of the two is the stable one depends on which one is lighter. Usually, the
neutral brothers are lighter but here we have an anomaly, which appears
accidental, the neutron is heavier by about 1/1000. Thus it decays in about
one quarter of an hour into a proton which then is stable. If it were the
other way around, there would be no stable proton and therefore no hydro-
gen. Not only there would be no water for us to drink but there would be
no earth, no stars, only lumps of neutrons held together by gravity floating
as dark matter in the vast space. A triste world.

2.3. The formation of heavier elements

For life to evolve we need not only hydrogen but also carbon and oxy-
gen. The big bang starts out with hydrogen which in the concentrated
phase may fuse into He nuclei (= α-particles). The ladder to heavier nuclei
is however missing one step. 3α-particles give carbon (C12) and 4α-particles
give oxygen (016) but 2-α-particles don’t stick together at all. This means that
the corresponding nucleus Be8 has no ground state but only more or less
short-lived excited states. A carbon nucleus can only form if within the
short lifetime of Be8 a third α-particle comes along with an appropriate
energy and they all fuse into C12. Whether this actually happens essentially
depends on the exact form of the nuclear forces and their strength relative
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GOD’S TRACES IN THE LAWS OF NATURE 369

to the electric repulsion of α-particles. In some parameter space is only a

small window through which such escape to heavier elements is possible.
These examples of the accidental nature of the circumstances in which
life can emerge are only three among the many which have been collected
in thick books.

The Anthropic Principle

It states that on the many crossroads met in the evolution of the uni-
verse the path chosen is the one which eventually leads to life.
Now some explanations are in order:
1. It is called principle not law of nature since it is not deducible
from fundamental laws.
2. It is called anthropic since it refers to the emergence of man. At
this point I prefer to talk about the emergence of life as the necessary
conditions for the steps from life to men are even less understood.
3. Some people think it is not even a principle but a tautology as
there would be nobody to state the principle if the conditions were
not met. So maybe the vacuum fluctuations which lead to the big
bang also lead to many different big bangs and among these innu-
merous universes there was bound to be one qualified for producing
life and this is ours. Though logically possible this kind of
Darwinistic explanation lacks any scientific substance as long as we
do not see any signs of these many alternative universes.
4. One might think it may be explained in probabilistic terms
according to the idea that all roads eventually lead to Rome. I don’t
believe this because of the following reason. At the beginning there
must have been the state of infinite temperature which assigns all
possibilities the same probability. Since their number is legion what-
ever comes out is exceedingly unlikely. But then one is not interest-
ed in a particular possibility but in the occurrence in any one of those
where the highly ordered structures which we call life exist. But this
subset of all possibilities is such a minority that the probability is still
practically null. One might object that there can be situations where
life develops by necessity but then these situations are exceptional on
a global scale. Thus a priori probability will lead us nowhere.
At this stage, it is tempting for theology to take advantage of the fail-
ure of rational explanations of the anthropic principle and to say it is as
if God were guiding the evolution of the cosmos such that eventually He
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370 WALTER E. THIRRING

can create His image. This immediately triggers a question. First I have
been talking about a God who uses His laws to create the universe and
now I talk about a God who uses the ambiguities left by his laws to let the
universe develop in the direction he likes. Is this still the same God? I
must refute this question because it presupposes an illegitimate picture of
God. The notion of sameness, though obvious for material objects, may
not apply to immaterial ones. For instance the question whether I wake
up in the morning at the same point in space where I fell asleep the night
before cannot definitely be answered. First we tend to say yes but remem-
bering that in the meantime the earth has moved a bit around the sun,
one would say no. Only by uniting all points in space to ‘the space’ we can
say I wake up in the same space but whether at the same point depends
on the frame I choose.
The great breakthroughs in science have been made by uniting into a
more universal entity things which first appear different to us. This started
with Newton who had the inspiration that what pulls the apple onto his
head is the same as keeps the moon in his orbit around the earth. This went
on to Einstein who united all points in space with all instances of time into
the ‘Minkowski space’ and recognized that this was the natural arena of all
events and finally leading to Glashow, Salam and Weinberg who united
forces which appear entirely different, namely the ones governing electro-
magnetisms with the ones producing β-decay. So the question whether
space and time are to be considered the same is not an unqualified ‘yes’ or
‘no’ rather a ‘no but they are simply different aspects of the same object,
namely Minkowski space’.
On its way to further unification, physics is now stuck at a ‘trinitarian’
situation. We are left with three fundamental forces, gravity, electroweak
forces and nuclear forces but most of us physicists think they are just dif-
ferent aspects of ‘the Force’ which we don’t know yet how to formulate.
Coming back to God’s sameness if one searches for an answer, it would be
reasonable to say ‘It is God who and by whatever means guided the evolu-
tion towards the creation of men, but whoever wants to emphasize differ-
ent aspects of this long road should not be burned as heretic’.

3. THE UNIVERSALLY LOVING GOD

When we turn from evolution of the universe to evolution of life we

encounter as the main driving force Darwin’s ‘survival of the fittest’. Though
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GOD’S TRACES IN THE LAWS OF NATURE 371

originally banned as heresey, now it seems obvious if not tautological: fit is

what enables survival. However, the great watersheds were when evolution
turned against this dictum. I shall call it ‘antidarwinistic’ though my bio-
logical friends tell me that Darwin had already understood that. The first
crucial crossroad we encountered before. The earth became livable about 4
billion years ago and soon after unicellular organisms developed. They per-
fected fitness to an amazing degree. They can live in the deep sea where
magma bursts into the water and it is several hundred degrees hot. They are
found in polar ice or in places of the earth mantle where nothing else can
live. Above all they are immortal in the sense that they don’t die of old age
like us. According to Darwin’s dictum this should be the endpoint of evolu-
tion and indeed it took about 3 billion years to get beyond it. There must
have been innumerable abortive attempts but once multicellular organ-
isms succeeded they spread like a firestorm around the earth and created
this marvellous diversity of species we find today. It was like a phase tran-
sition in physics but whether this was progress may be a matter of dispute.
Owing to their immortality, the unicellulars are still among us, in fact they
are the main contributors to the biomass on earth. Yet there can be no
doubt that though mortal we are their masters. We can cultivate them,
manipulate them, exploit them.
These kinds of watersheds to higher organisational units kept reap-
pearing along the way up to the evolution of men. About 40 thousand years
ago the Neanderthals were replaced by Chromagnons despite the fact that
the individual Neanderthal must have been a highly fit creature in order to
survive under the terrible climatic circumstances of that time. Presumably,
they lacked organizational skills so they lived in small clans each including
a handful of people. On the other hand Chromagnon reached a higher cul-
tural level so they could coordinate large tribes. As a consequence the
Neanderthals had no chance of survival despite their fitness, again a sign of
antidarwinism. This ability – coordinating even larger tribes and people –
brought about yet another phase transition in human evolution which in
turn led to amazing architectural and artistic achievments of the ancient
cultures. The idea of a nation as the human unity is also reflected by the
religions of the various people. They mainly served to deify the ruling class
and their Gods had a certain local flavour. Even when finally monotheism
was reached as presented in the old testament, God was seen in relation to
some people. In an act of universal validity, as the statement of the ten com-
mandments, God first identifies himself as the God who led the people of
Israel out of Egypt. By necessity the next step in human evolution was to
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372 WALTER E. THIRRING

see the whole humanity as the relevant unit. This step was taken by Jesus
Christ who turned to people irrespectively of their social level, professional
activities or ethnic origin. He did not divide humanity into friends and ene-
mies, on the contrary he preached love extended to your enemies. This is
obviously in our sense antidarwinistic but necessary to bring peace to
mankind. Thus, I see the importance of Christianity and also the reason for
its success in its universality: one God for all people. Unfortunately, the cor-
responding phase transition in human evolution had not yet taken place, it
is as if the nationalistic thinking were genetically engraved in our brains.
Our generation still learned at school ‘Recht ist was dem Volke nützt,
Unrecht was ihm schadet’ and even today all over the world fights get ignit-
ed by ethnic prejudices. Do we have to wait the genetically relevant time of
40 million years of Teilhard de Chardin to reach his Ω point? I hope not as
I am afraid if we don’t reach it earlier we will never get there.
To summarize I see in the evolution of the cosmos a continuing strive
for higher organisational structures leading up to humanity. Nietzsche
declared God to be dead since Darwin could explain the biological evolu-
tion ‘naturally’. This means you expect of a living God a spectacular mira-
cle and to show us that he breaks his laws. As J. Monod emphasized in his
famous book Le hasard et la necessité this does not seem to happen in the
biological evolution. It does not contradict the fundamental laws of physics
but it cannot be predicted by them either. It could have happened but need
not happen the way it did. We have seen such a situation all along the way
in the evolution of the universe. At crossroads it always took the path such
that finally we could evolve. If in a vessel with gas one atom is near a cor-
ner this does not contradict any law nor if there are two. If all are there we
would call it a miracle since it contradicts all our probability estimates.
What is now the probability that at all bifurcations the universe evolves so
as to create more ordered structures? Surely low but how low is hard to
estimate convincingly. I don’t want to call it a miracle but I see in it the
guiding hand of the invisible God.
Statement Zichichi/Statement 18-07-2003 15:02 Pagina 373

STATEMENT ON THE CULTURAL VALUES OF SCIENCE

BY PROF. ANTONINO ZICHICHI

The discovery of Modern Science represents one of the greatest achieve-

ments of mankind in the immanent sphere of our existence. This achieve-
ment was made possible thanks to Galileo Galilei, two millennia after the
study of Nature by ancient Greeks, as a selfless form of research for truth.
Galilei realised, and said openly, that God is more intelligent than us all.
Consequently, if we want to discover the logic of Nature there is only one
way: to pose, in a rigorous manner, the question to the Creator and this
means performing an experiment. If we seek the correct answer, the result
of the experiment must be reproducible. The rigour is granted by mathe-
matics, the correctness is ascertained by reproducibility. This is how Galilei
discovered the first fundamental laws of nature, which brought him to for-
mulate the principle of relativity and to invent the ‘Gedanken Experiments’.
The values of Modern Science have their roots in the act of faith
towards the Creator, as expressed by Galilei when he explained the reason
for which he was using stones and ‘vulgar’ matter, as the footprints of God
were also to be found in vulgar matter, not only in the stars. History tells us
this is how Modern Science was discovered. Even nowadays, in the most
advanced laboratories worldwide, the Galilei teaching is the only one
which allows us to further our knowledge of the logic of Nature.
It is our duty to ensure that the world be made aware of the role played
by John Paul II in defining the meaning of Science, its clear distinction
from Technology and the need for a Third Millennium culture which would
be in harmony rather than in conflict with Faith.
Statement Zichichi/Statement 18-07-2003 15:02 Pagina 374

STATEMENT ON THE CULTURAL VALUES

OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES

At its Plenary Session of 8-11 November 2002, the Pontifical Academy

of Sciences discussed the various contributions made by scientific activity
and education to the culture of humankind. Seeing ‘culture’ as a set of free
and responsible learned ways of acting, behaving and taking decisions, as
opposed to inherited patterns of behaviour and instincts, the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences wishes to issue the following Statement.
If by science we mean the sophisticated arts of mathematics, aesthet-
ics, architecture and metallurgy, it is possible to describe ancient Egypt,
China and Mesopotamia as the first homes of science. The knowledge base
built up by studies in the natural sciences beginning with the theoretical
practice of the ancient Greeks as a selfless form of the search for truth, and
then developed by the method of Galileo and his heirs, constitutes a fun-
damental dimension of human culture. Since that time, this dimension has
shaped human history and is now an irreversible part of one’s destiny. It is
a value in itself which provides both a science-based view of the world and
people and extensive opportunities to improve living conditions through
applications in such areas as health, life expectancy, food security, sustain-
able growth, energy and water resources, information and communication,
and the preservation of the environment. In the context of these applica-
tions, a worldview where science and its values play their role in the quest
for truth, together with the ethical wisdom developed down the centuries,
can be of great help in assessing policies and technology so as to reduce the
possible risks that accompany many such applications. Thus, a global
awareness of the need to engage in a responsible evaluation of human
impact can lead to the implementation of sustainable developments which
guarantee good for all people. Many national and regional Academies of
Science, as well as international scientific unions and inter-academy organ-
Statement Zichichi/Statement 18-07-2003 15:02 Pagina 375

STATEMENT 375

isations, are ready to help political and cultural leaders, governments and
companies in a careful and prudent assessment of the new technologies.
The rigorous standards generally applied in scientific research with
regard to data collection and interpretation and experimental design, and
the ethical rules that govern scientific practice, impart intrinsic cultural
value to scientific work. Similarly, the steadily enriched scientific knowl-
edge base, sharing the values and contents of science, represents a force of
great value for education and can act to improve the conditions of human
lives. For these reasons, the broad knowledge base of the natural sciences
constitutes a dynamic and open trans-disciplinary foundation that is of rel-
evance to all human beings at all levels of education. In order to benefit
fully from this knowledge base, societies should develop scientific educa-
tion, starting from primary school, and ensure that their scientists respon-
sibly take care that the progress of science and technology goes to the
advantage of all men and women.
Successful scientific research strongly depends on originality, creativ-
ity and invention. These requirements are similar to those of other cultur-
al activities in the various fields of the arts and in the social and human sci-
ences. All of these fields make their specific contributions to the heritage of
human culture; they are complementary and cannot replace each other.
Today, more than ever before, what is required is a new humanism which
takes into account all aspects of human culture, and where human, social
and natural sciences can work together as partners. This will greatly con-
tribute to improving the overall knowledge of our world and our place in it,
to increasing the respect for future generations, to promoting what is
human in people, to safeguarding the environment, and to fostering sus-
tainable growth and development. In this way, science will help to unite
minds and hearts, and encourage dialogue not only between individual
researchers and political and cultural leaders, but also between nations and
cultures, making a priceless contribution to peace and harmony amongst
the peoples of the world. Science, so much appreciated in the teaching of
John Paul II, when it is in harmony with faith can fully participate in this
new humanism. The members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences make
an appeal to the readers of this Statement to fully recognise the valuable
contribution made by the natural sciences to human culture.
Statement Zichichi/Statement 18-07-2003 15:02 Pagina 376
TABLES
378 MAURIZIO IACCARINO

GEOGRAPHY

Fig. 5. A Globe representing Al Mamoun’s Map of the World, developed by the geogra-
phers in Baghdad during the period 813-833 AD.
 SCIENCE AND CULTURE 379

CHEMISTRY

Fig. 6.
380 MAURIZIO IACCARINO

MEASUREMENTS

Fig. 7. An original astrolabe used by the Arab astronomers during the 10th-15th cen-
turies.
 SCIENCE AND CULTURE 381

PHYSICS

Fig. 8. This is a spectacular and fairly accurate Balance. Produced out of copper, it can
be seen at the Institute of Arabic Islamic Science in Frankfurt Germany.
382 JOSEPH E. MURRAY

Slide 4. Charles as he looks today.

 SURGERY OF THE SOUL 383

Slide 5. Charles on arrival at VFGH.

Slide 6. Charles with skin allografts.

384 JOSEPH E. MURRAY

Slide 9. Patient at birth.

Slide 10. With twin brother as I first saw him.

 SURGERY OF THE SOUL 385

Slide 11. The two brothers later in an office visit.

386 JOSEPH E. MURRAY

Slide 13. Asymmetrical infant face and cranium.

Slide 14. Skull and hip bone segments.

 SURGERY OF THE SOUL 387

Slide 15. Post-op photo of infant.

388 JOSEPH E. MURRAY

Slide 16. Cosmos and Damian.

 SURGERY OF THE SOUL 389

Slide 22. Double hand transplant, courtesy of Dr. Max Dubernard of Lyon, France.