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 shall have faith.' It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with.
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous tra…"
"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradual…"
"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."
"The greatest error of all is to confuse the subjective with the objective."
"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.'"
Found in 1 providers: grok
1 source checked
Planck argues that doing real scientific work requires faith—not religious faith, but deep trust that nature is orderly, that hidden truths can be uncovered, and that years of effort on unproven ideas will eventually pay off. Without this conviction, no one would persist through failed experiments, dead-end theories, or decades of uncertainty. Faith, in this sense, is the fuel that keeps scientists searching when evidence is still incomplete.
Planck spent six years wrestling with blackbody radiation before reluctantly proposing energy quanta in 1900, an idea so radical he doubted it himself. A devout Lutheran who served as church elder, he openly rejected conflict between religion and science. His career demanded faith: he pursued thermodynamics when mentors called it a dead field, and championed Einstein's relativity when peers dismissed it. Persistence through doubt defined him.
Planck's era (late 1800s to 1947) saw classical physics shattered by quantum mechanics and relativity, overturning certainties Newton had established. Scientists faced a universe that seemed irrational—wave-particle duality, uncertainty, curved spacetime. Meanwhile, positivism claimed science would replace religion, and post-WWI Germany plunged into nihilism. Planck, who lost two daughters in childbirth, a son in WWI, and another executed by Nazis in 1945, spoke to a generation desperately needing reasons to keep believing anything.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].
Your cart is empty
