Now, with the general decay of religious faith , it is the scientists who must speak ex cathedra, whether they wish to or not.

Now, with the general decay of religious faith , it is the scientists who must speak ex cathedra, whether they wish to or not.

The most likely way to kill a tradition is to over-formalize it, which is to carry it on in the same way after everyone has ceased to defer to it. The way to revive it is to show that it has grown out of and is still related to our most cherished values. But this requires radical insight and the stripping away of many things which are mere accretions.

The modern position seems only another manifestation of egotism, which develops when man has reached a point at which he will no longer admit the rights to existence of things not of his own contriving.

contempt for the degradation of specialization and pedantry. Specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed.

Somehow the notion has been loosed that nature is hostile to man or that her ways are offensive or slovenly, so that every step of progress is measured by how far we have altered these. Nothing short of a recovery of the ancient virtue of pietas can absolve man from this sin.

Nature is not something to be fought, conquered and changed according to any human whims. To some extent, of course, it has to be used. But what man should seek in regard to nature is not a complete domination but a modus vivendi - that is, a manner of living together, a coming to terms with something that was here before our time and will be here after it. The important corollary of this doctrine, it seems to me, is that man is not the lord of creation, with an omnipotent will, but a part of creation, with limitations, who ought to observe a decent humility in the face of the inscrutable.