"..modern physics offers no positive support (let alone proof) for a mystical worldview. Nevertheless, every one of the physicists in this volume was a mystic. They simply believed, to a man, that if modern physics no longer objects to a religious worldview, it offers no positive support either; properly speaking, it is indifferent to all that." (preface).
It was a source of irritation to many physicists, Eddington included, that the "new age" audience seemed firmly convinced that the new physics, delving as it did into seemingly inexplicable sub-atomic behaviour, somehow supported or proved mysticism, when clearly, a scientific proof of God had not then, nor has yet been achieved. Nevertheless, physics does now move in an area where ideas and imagination seem more important to make headway when digging deeper, than when decoding the perhaps more easily understood phenomena behind the movements of planets and the forces in magnetic fields.
The physicists quoted here are eloquent and persuasive. All were practical men involved in the solution of real world problems. Perhaps the distancing of physics itself from mysticism is a good thing: after all, as Wilber quotes particle physicist Jeremy Bernstein, "If I were an Eastern mystic the last thing in the world I would want would be a reconciliation with modern science, [because] to hitch a religious philosophy to a contemporary science is a sure route to its obsolescence." If genuine mysticism is indeed genuine, it should be able to stand on its own merits without recourse to compromising physics in the process.
Werner Heisenberg 1901 - 1976
Brilliant co-creator of matrix quantum mechanics, one of the results of which was the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Erwin Schroedinger had independently developed a wave mechanics; these two formalisms were quickly shown to be equivalent, and thus was born quantum mechanics. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932.
Erwin Schroedinger 1887 - 1961
Developed a form of wave mechanics in many ways simpler and more elegant than Heisenberg's matrix mechanics. "Schroedinger's wave equation" soon became the heart of modern quantum mechanics and its most widely used mathematical tool. Awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Albert Einstein 1879 - 1955
Regarded as the greatest physicist who ever lived. Contributing special and general relativity, quantum photoelectric effect, Brownian movement theory, and the immortal E=MC2 . Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. His image has gradually become an icon which sums up the sometimes eccentric brilliance of the physicist. When an outraged Hitler produced a paper entitled "100 Scientists Against Einstein" he simply replied, "If I were wrong, one would have been enough."
Prince Louis De Broglie 1892 -
Conceived the idea of "matter waves" which was experimentally verified in 1927; in 1929 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. De Broglie argued that all genuine science is motivated by spiritual ideals. But since science itself cannot advance these ideals, he argued that in addition to science, a "supplement of the soul" was called for.
Sir James Jeans 1877 - 1946
Mathematician, physicist and astronomer. Made fundamental contributions to the dynamical theory of gases, the mathematical theory of electromagnetism, the evolution of gaseous stars and the nature of nebulae. Knighted in 1924.
Max Planck 1858 - 1947
Generally regarded as the founder of the quantum revolution with the idea that nature is not continuous, but comes in discrete packets, or quanta. Planck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Wolfgang Pauli 1900 - 1958
Considered to be the most brilliant mind the field of physics has yet produced. A stern critic of shoddy thinking or threadbare ideas, his contributions were many and included the famous "exclusion principle" and the prediction of the neutrino two decades before it was discovered. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945.
Sir Arthur Eddington 1882 - 1944
Knighted in 1930. Perhaps the most eloquent writer of the above physicists, he argued forcibly, with an intellectual wit which left his opponents little room for manouevre. Led the famous expedition that photographed the solar eclipse which offered the first proof of Einstein's relativity theory.
..on Scientists:
"By dogged endeavour, he is slowly and tortuously advancing to purer and purer truth, but his ideas seem to zigzag in a manner most disconcerting to the onlooker. Scientific discovery is like the fitting together of the pieces of a great jigsaw puzzle; a revolution of science does not mean that the pieces already arranged and interlocked have to be dispersed; it means that in fitting on fresh pieces we have had to revise our impression of what the puzzle-picture is going to be like. One day you ask the scientist how he is getting on; he replies, "Finely. I have very nearly finished this piece of blue sky." Another day you ask how the sky is progressing and are told, "I have added a lot more, but it was sea, not sky; there's a boat floating on the top of it." Perhaps next time it will have turned out to be a parasol upside down, but our friend is still enthusiastically delighted with the progress he is making.
"These revelations of thought as to the final picture do not cause the scientist to lose faith in his handiwork, for he is aware that the completed portion is growing steadily. Those who look over his shoulder and use the present partially developed picture for purposes outside science, do so at their own risk."