Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)
2010 / 2. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Kaiser, Christopher Barina: "Isten bölcsességének jelei" Comenius Panorthosia c. művében: egy bibliai téma a modern tudomány alapjaiban
Christopher Kaiser in a more secularized form than the Christian Europe he envisaged. I shall return to Comenius’s possible evaluation of the present-day situation at the end of my paper. Comenius as a Janus-like Figure I see Comenius as representative of his “Janus-faced” generation. Like the ancient Roman god of gateways, Comenius faced both forward and backward in time. In order to appreciate the pivotal role that he and his generation played in the history of ideas, it is necessary to think diachronically—looking as far back as the wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, and looking forward to great scientists of the present time. In this paper I shall focus on one particular way in which Comenius mediated between these two poles: the ancient Judeo-Christian tradition and the emergence of modern science. Comenius’s mediation stands as a witness against any programmatic attempt to portray religious faith and modern science as necessarily being in conflict. His work shows that modern scientific endeavor is deeply rooted in traditional Christian faith. In order to view Comenius role diachronically, we will begin our journey with the work of present-day scientists and work our way backward. Looking Forward: Modern Scientists on the Comprehensibility of the Natural World Let us begin with a brief look at the ideas of some modern-day scientists. I will focus on the ideas of just two physicists. It is often supposed that scientists are arrogant about the success of their disciplines. In some cases that may be true—scientists are capable of arrogance like anyone else. But there are also many scientists who have been truly humbled, not by failure, but by the success of their work. Even if science is still very far from reaching its goal of understanding the physical world in all of its depths and dimensions, it has already progressed far beyond what anyone might have expected on stricdy naturalistic grounds by themselves. I will document this idea with two examples. My first example is the Templeton laureate, Paul Davies. In several important articles and most eloquently in his 1992 book, The Mind of God: The Sdentific Basis for a Rational World., Davies has drawn attention to what he calls the “great miracle of science”: The success of the scientific method at unlocking the secrets of nature is so dazzling [that] it can blind us to the greatest scientific miracle of all: science works. Scientists themselves normally take it for granted that we live in a rational ordered cosmos subject to precise laws that can be uncovered by human reasoning. Yet why this is so remains a tantalizing mystery. Why should human beings have the ability to discover and understand the principles on which the universe runs? ...does it point to a deep and 22 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK
