Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'
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"The history of science is a history of errors."
"The highest aim of physics is to find the one all-embracing law which governs all natural phenomena."
"The human mind is capable of understanding the universe."
"To be a good scientist, one must be a good philosopher."
"Science is not only a discipline of reason but also one of romance and passion."
From a lecture or essay, emphasizing the role of faith in scientific endeavor.
Date: Early 20th century
Work & MoneyFound in 1 providers: grok
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Doing real scientific work requires a kind of faith—not religious belief, but trust that the universe is orderly, that nature follows discoverable laws, and that sustained investigation will eventually yield truth. Before evidence arrives, scientists must commit to hypotheses, endure long stretches without results, and believe their methods can reach reality. Without this underlying conviction, no one would persist through the grinding uncertainty that genuine research demands.
Planck spent six years wrestling with blackbody radiation before proposing energy quanta in 1900, an idea so radical he called it an 'act of desperation.' He trusted the math even when its implications horrified him, and he was a devout Lutheran who openly rejected any conflict between religion and science. This quote mirrors his lived experience: faith in orderly natural law sustained him through decades of theoretical struggle.
Planck worked as classical physics was collapsing—Newtonian certainty giving way to relativity and quantum mechanics. Early 20th-century Europe saw fierce debate over positivism, which insisted science needed no metaphysical assumptions. Meanwhile, religion and science were increasingly framed as enemies. Planck, writing amid two world wars and the Nazi persecution that killed his son, defended science as a disciplined act of trust, pushing back against both dogmatic materialism and anti-intellectual ideology sweeping Germany.
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