John Polkinghorne

John Charlton Polkinghorne

Polkinghorne was the author of five books on physics and twenty-six on the relationship between science and religion;[11] 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.^[12]

Early life and education

Polkinghorne was born in

After two years in Scotland, he returned to teach at Cambridge in 1958.[13] He was promoted to reader in 1965,^[15] and in 1968 was offered a professorship in mathematical physics, a position he held until 1979,^[13] his students including Brian Josephson and Martin Rees.^[16] For 25 years, he worked on theories about elementary particles, played a role in the discovery of the quark,^[12] and researched the analytic and high-energy properties of Feynman integrals and the foundations of S-matrix theory.^[17] While employed by Cambridge, he also spent time at Princeton, Berkeley, Stanford, and at CERN in Geneva. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974.^[13][18]

Priesthood and Queens' College

Polkinghorne decided to train for the priesthood in 1977.

He has been a member of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee, the General Synod of the Church of England, the Doctrine Commission, and the Human Genetics Commission. He served as chairman of the governors of The Perse School from 1972 to 1981. He was a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, and was for 10 years a canon theologian of Liverpool Cathedral.^{[citation needed]} He was a founding member of the Society of Ordained Scientists and also of the International Society for Science and Religion, of which he was the first president.^[24] He was selected to give the prestigious Gifford Lectures in 1993–1994, which he later published as The Faith of a Physicist.

In 2006 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the

Polkinghorne said in an interview that he believes his move from science to religion has given him binocular vision, though he understands that it has aroused the kind of suspicion "that might follow the claim to be a vegetarian butcher."[20] He describes his position as critical realism and believes that science and religion address aspects of the same reality. It is a consistent theme of his work that when he "turned his collar around" he did not stop seeking truth.^[28] He argues there are five points of comparison between the ways in which science and theology pursue truth: moments of enforced radical revision, a period of unresolved confusion, new synthesis and understanding, continued wrestling with unresolved problems, deeper implications.^[29]

He suggests that the mechanistic explanations of the world that have continued from

Sometimes Christianity seems to him to be just too good to be true, but when this sort of doubt arises he says to himself, "All right then, deny it", and writes that he knows this is something he could never do.[32]

On the existence of God

Polkinghorne considers that "the question of the existence of God is the single most important question we face about the nature of reality"

He suggests that God is the ultimate answer to Leibniz's great question "why is there something rather than nothing?" The atheist's "plain assertion of the world's existence" is a "grossly impoverished view of reality… [arguing that] theism explains more than a reductionist atheism can ever address.".^{[citation needed]}

He is very doubtful of

• The intelligibility of the universe: One would anticipate that evolutionary selection would produce hominid minds apt for coping with everyday experience, but that these minds should also be able to understand the subatomic world and general relativity goes far beyond anything of relevance to survival fitness. The mystery deepens when one recognises the proven fruitfulness of mathematical beauty as a guide to successful theory choice.[35]
• The anthropic fine tuning of the universe: He quotes with approval Freeman Dyson, who said "the more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming"^[36] and suggests there is a wide consensus amongst physicists that either there are a very large number of other universes in the Multiverse or that "there is just one universe which is the way it is in its anthropic fruitfulness because it is the expression of the purposive design of a Creator, who has endowed it with the finely tuned potentialty for life."^[37]
• A wider humane reality: He considers that theism offers a more persuasive account of ethical and aesthetic perceptions. He argues that it is difficult to accommodate the idea that "we have real moral knowledge" and that statements such as 'torturing children is wrong' are more than "simply social conventions of the societies within which they are uttered" within an atheistic or naturalistic world view. He also believes such a world view finds it hard to explain how "Something of lasting significance is glimpsed in the beauty of the natural world and the beauty of the fruits of human creativity."^[38]

On free will

Polkinghorne believes that

The well-known free will defence in relation to moral evil asserts that a world with a possibility of sinful people is better than one with perfectly programmed machines. The tale of human evil is such that one cannot make that assertion without a quiver, but I believe that it is true nevertheless. I have added to it the free-process defence, that a world allowed to make itself is better than a puppet theatre with a Cosmic Tyrant. I think that these two defences are opposite sides of the same coin, that our nature is inextricably linked with that of the physical world which has given us birth.^[39]

On creationism

Following the resignation of Michael Reiss, the director of education at the Royal Society—who had controversially argued that school pupils who believed in creationism should be used by science teachers to start discussions, rather than be rejected per se^[40] — Polkinghorne argued in The Times that "As a Christian believer I am, of course, a creationist in the proper sense of the term, for I believe that the mind and the purpose of a divine Creator lie behind the fruitful history and remarkable order of the universe which science explores. But I am certainly not a creationist in that curious North American sense, which implies interpreting Genesis 1 in a flat-footed literal way and supposing that evolution is wrong."^[41]

Critical reception

Nancy Frankenberry, Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College, has described Polkinghorne as the finest British theologian/scientist of our time, citing his work on the possible relationship between chaos theory and natural theology.^[42] Owen Gingerich, an astronomer and former Harvard professor, has called him a leading voice on the relationship between science and religion.^[43]

The British philosopher Simon Blackburn has criticized Polkinghorne for using primitive thinking and rhetorical devices instead of engaging in philosophy. When Polkinghorne argues that the minute adjustments of cosmological constants for life points towards an explanation beyond the scientific realm, Blackburn argues that this relies on a natural preference for explanation in terms of agency.^{[citation needed]} Blackburn writes that he finished Polkinghorne's books in "despair at humanity's capacity for self-deception."^[44] Against this, Freeman Dyson called Polkinghorne's arguments on theology and natural science "polished and logically coherent."^[45] The novelist Simon Ings, writing in the New Scientist, said Polkinghorne's argument for the proposition that God is real is cogent and his evidence elegant.^[46]

In contrast to Grayling, science historian Edward B. Davis praises Questions of Truth, saying the book provides "the kind of technical information… that scientifically trained readers will appreciate—yet they can be read profitably by anyone interested in science and Christianity." Davis concludes, "It hasn't been easy to steer a middle course between fundamentalism and modernism, particularly on issues involving science. Polkinghorne has done that very successfully for a generation, and for this he ought to be both appreciated and emulated."[50]

Published works