Wisdom & Wonder: Read an Excerpt

Science is not the personally acquired possession of each person, but gradually increased in significance and stability only as the fruit of the work of many people, among many nations, in the course of centuries.

From this fact proceeds the independent character of science. For science does not come into existence by first having one of the best architects produce a fully developed blueprint for the building of this temple, and then having subsequent generations labor quietly by common consent according to that original blueprint, in order eventually to build the temple.

Rather, the entire temple is constructed without a human blueprint and without human agreement. It seems to arise by itself. Each one quarries his own little stone and brings it forward to have it cemented into the building. Then comes another person who removes that stone, refashions it and lays it differently. Working separately from one another, without any mutual agreement and without the least bit of direction from other people, with everybody milling about, everyone going their own way, each person constructs science as he thinks right.

Through that endless confusion, it nevertheless appears that, in the course of centuries, out of this apparently confused labor, a temple emerges, displaying the stability of architecture, manifesting style, and already generating speculation about how the entire building will ever be completed.

At that point, then, it must be acknowledged and confessed that all this labor was led and directed unseen by an Architect and Artisan whom no one saw.

At this point it will not do to suggest that this most beautiful result emerged by accident, without plan, all by itself. Rather, we must confess that God himself developed his own divine plan for this construction, created the geniuses and talents for implementing that plan, and directed the labor of everyone and made them fruitful so that what he wanted and still wants would indeed become reality.

Seen this way, however, science is then also an invention of God, which he called into being, causing it to travel its paths of development in the manner he himself had ordained for it.

This means nothing else except to say and to confess with gratitude that God himself called science into being as his creature, and accordingly that science occupies its own independent place in our human life.

© Christian's Library Press
Reprinted with permission.