Religion and Science
5. Religion and Science
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found within any academic framework. No, the
reason is to be traced, alas! to a biased mentality.
How often have we seen educated people refuse to
accept the truth when ample proofs have been
offered them, simply because of deeply-rooted
preconceived ideas. It was just such a prejudiced
attitude, in the seventeenth century, which had pre-
vented Italian scholars from accepting Galileo’s
theory as an alternative to Aristotle’s, although a
ball thrown from the Leaning Tower had
demonstrated quite conclusively that Galileo was
right. Again, it was this bias which caused scholars
at the end of the nineteenth century to ridicule
Berlin Professor Max Planck when he gave a
physical explanation of light,— the quantum
theory, — which proved the Newtonian concept
wrong. Planck’s theory was not accepted for many
years, but today it is considered one of the most
important principles in physics.
There is a common belief that it is only laymen who
are guilty of prejudice and not scientists; we should
do well, therefore, to mark the words of A.V. Hills,
himself a scientist: ‘I should be the last to claim that
we, scientific men, are less liable to prejudice than
