If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that.
Interpretation
Science reveals the strange and unexpected nature of the world through its discoveries.
This quote by John Polkinghorne emphasizes the idea that scientific inquiry uncovers the peculiar and often surprising characteristics of our world. Throughout history, numerous scientific revolutions have transformed our understanding, challenging preconceived notions and highlighting the complexity and wonder of the universe.
In practice
During a science class, to encourage students to embrace curiosity about the oddities of nature.
The remarkable insights that science affords us into the intelligible workings of the world cry out for an explanation more profound than that which itself can provide. Religion, if it is to take seriously its claim that the world is the creation of god, must be humble enough to learn from science what that world is actually like. The dialogue between them can only be mutually enriching.
Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not _x000D_ simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some _x000D_ sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can _x000D_ understand.
However, as the Eastern churches have always maintained, through Christ creation is intended eventually to share in the life of God, the life of divine nature.
Chance doesn't mean meaningless randomness, but historical contingency. This happens rather than that, and that's the way that novelty, new things, come about.
Science cannot tell theology how to construct a doctrine of creation, but you can't construct a doctrine of creation without taking account of the age of the universe and the evolutionary character of cosmic history.
Evolution, of course, is not something that simply applies to life here on earth; it applies to the whole universe.
I'm not trying to copy Nature, I'm trying to find the principles she's using.
I suppose I can live with missing decimals, missing floors to tall buildings, and floors that are named instead of numbered. A more serious problem is the limited capacity of the human mind to grasp the relative magnitudes of large numbers. Counting at the rate of one number per second...to count to a trillion takes 32,000 years, which is as much time as has elapsed since people first drew on cave walls.
We consider it vital that the community of nations be drawn together in an orderly, disciplined, rational way to review the history of our global environment, to assess the potential for future climate change, and to develop effective programs.
E pur si muove. "Albeit It does move". (That's what Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.)
I'd like to see what fraction of things that chemists have figured out we could actually teach nature to do. Then we really could replace chemical factories with bacteria.
What we want is scientists who don't become part of the policy discussion: All they do is produce science. If someone becomes an advocate, then I won't pay as much attention to their science.
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