‘E pur se move’ . With this statement of Galileo, the current struggle between science and religion took full flight. The struggle crystallized in 1687 with Newton, echoed in Pope’s poem, “God said let there be Newton and all was Light”. We have lived in the Newtonian Paradigm since Copernicus then Newton – The Clockwork Universe. With Newton, Descartes lost his Res cogitans. Life is a machine, mind is gone, God is rendered useless.
But it all this is deeply wrong. We are at a third transition in science beyond the wonderous Newtonian Paradigm. The evolving biosphere is a non-deducible, non-prestatable, propagating construction, not an entailed deduction. The dream of a final theory, pace’ Weinberg and Kaku, is only that. With this Third Transition, we are Of Nature not Above Nature. We cannot Dominate Nature, we can and do participate. We surely need and have a sense of the sacred. In the Abrahamic traditions this a participation with an Immanent God. This is also the Dao, the Way. It is ultimate concern.