1965 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 241

THE NATURE AND VALUE OF PHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE

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predict the future, as well as to reveal the past of the whole universe, the history of mankind included, i) This deterministic and even fatalistic conception was expressed by Goethe in his often quoted statement: „Nach ewigen, ehemen Grossen Gesetzen Mussen wir alle Unseres Daseins Kreise vollenden". Of course in this conception we have not to do with a scientifically justified evaluation of physical knowledge, but with a philosophical interpretation and extrapolation, based on a materiahstic and deterministic view of the world. Nevertheless, such ideas have played an unmistakable roll in the confrontation of religious faith and scientific knowledge. Such problems as „Determinism and Providence", „Miracles and the Laws of Nature", were, even among christian men of science, frequently discussed on the basis of this objectivistic concept of physical knowledge, with the result that the encounter between science and religion resulted in a controversy, rather than in harmony. The advancement of physical science itself has provided reasons to criticise and revise this objectivistic interpretation of physical knowledge. Under the pressure of the empirical facts, physicists themselves recognized that the observing and knowing subject could not be eliminated completely from the knowledge about the observed and known object. Einstein was the first to introduce the „observer" in physical theory. It is true, that in the theory of relativity, just as in classical physics, the observer is assumed to be able to observe and to measure without disturbing the state of the observed and measured object. However, it is emphasized in this theory that experimental verifiability and measurability are essential conditions in the definition of physical concepts and quantities. In consequence the geometry and chronometry of the continuum of physical events lose the absolute observer-independent character ') Laplace, Theorie analytique des probabilités. Oeuvres Completes, VII, p. 6.

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