Method
John Polkinghorne
Overview
John Charlton Polkinghorne (16 October 1930 – 9 March 2021) was a Cornish theoretical physicist, theologian, and Anglican priest. A prominent and leading voice explaining the relationship between science and religion, he was professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He served as the president of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1988 until 1996.
Polkinghorne was the author of five books on physics and twenty-six on the relationship between science and religion; his publications include The Quantum World (1989), Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (2005), Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (2007), and Questions of Truth (2009). The Polkinghorne Reader (edited by Thomas Jay Oord) provides key excerpts from Polkinghorne's most influential books. He was knighted in 1997 and in 2002 received the £1-million Templeton Prize, awarded for exceptional contributions to affirming life's spiritual dimension.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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190. The difficulty that M. Bayle has imagined in connexion with Strato seems a little too subtle and far-fetched. That is termed: _timere, ubi non est timor_. He makes another difficulty, which has just as slight a foundation, namely, that God would be subjected to a kind of _fatum_. Here are his words (p.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Theodicy Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil
States what John Polkinghorne is; the author is tied to John Polkinghorne in the knowledge graph.
For even the synthesis established by the old theocracies of Egypt and India was insufficient, because, being based on purely subjective principles it could never embrace practical life, which must always be subordinated to the objective realities of the external world. Theocracy was thus limited at the outset to the sphere of thought and of feeling; and part even of this field was soon lost when Art became…
Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism Or, Summary exposition of the System of Thought and Life
Close in meaning to John Polkinghorne; the term itself is not named.
Its claims have been rested upon its function as a sanction to right conduct. Also the purpose of right conduct quickly degenerates into the formation of pleasing social relations. We have here a subtle degradation of religious ideas, following upon their gradual purification under the influence of keener ethical intuitions. Conduct is a by-product of religion—an inevitable by-product, but not the main point. Every…
Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the modern world
Close in meaning to John Polkinghorne; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Yale University Press
- Anglicanism
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Michael Ruse
- Theoretical physics
- Murray Gell-Mann
- Professor
- Western culture
- Order of the British Empire
- Natural theology
- University of Edinburgh
- Princeton University
- Quark
- Richard Dawkins
- University of Cambridge
- Roger Penrose
- Stanford University
- Theodicy
- Anthony Kenny
- Theology
- Trinity College, Cambridge
- University of California, Berkeley
- World War II
- Gifford Lectures
Place in the tradition
Part of Eliminative materialism.