In Search of Divine Reality : Science as a Source of Inspiration

In This Remarkable Treatise, Professor Schafer shares his conclusions from a lifelong search for evidence -- from quantum science -- of the existence of a transcendent part of physical reality. With a view as wide as the cosmos and as infinitesimal as the electron, he combines disciplinary thought from science, philosophy, religion, and ethics to address the educated generalist and layman with a profound look at existence.When modern science adopted objectivity and experimental testing as operational principles, the ensuing advances in the physical sciences first clashed with, and then destroyed, the world view of the ruling religious mythologies. A general disorientation resulted and a schism evolved in society, disconnecting the world of facts from the world of values. In a disastrous way the covenant which all religious mythologies claimed existed between humanity and nature was broken, and it seemed to many that life itself was rendered meaningless in the process.However, twentieth-century science has discovered -- in quantum phenomena -- a part of physical reality which, in contrast to the mechanical world of classical science, has all the characteristics of a transcendent reality Now the foundation of the material world is discovered to be nonmaterial, the constituents of real things are found to be not real in the same way as the things that they make, and non-local, faster-than-light influences are found to pervade a universe whose nature is mindlike.Braving controversy, Professor Schafer concludes that the discovery of the phenomena of quantum mechanics has established a new covenant -- between the human mind and the mindlike background of the universe -- one thatprovides a home again to the homeless and meaning to seemingly pointless life. In this new understanding of the world, the universe must be assumed to have a moral as well as a physical order, and facts and values derive, again, from a single source.