John Polkinghorne

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John Polkinghorne bigraphy, stories - Physicist and priest

John Polkinghorne : biography

16 October 1930 –

The Rev. John Charlton Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS (born 16 October 1930) is an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer, and Anglican priest. He was professor of Mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge from 1968 to 1979, when he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. He served as the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge from 1988 until 1996.

Polkinghorne is the author of five books on physics, and 26 on the relationship between science and religion; his publications include The Quantum World (1989), Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship (2005), Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (2007), and Questions of Truth (2009). The Polkinghorne Reader (edited by Thomas Jay Oord) provides key excerpts from Polkinghorne’s most influential books. He was knighted in 1997 and in 2002 received the £1 million Templeton Prize, awarded for exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.

Early life and education

Polkinghorne was born in Weston-super-Mare to George Polkinghorne, who worked for the post office, and Dorothy Charlton, the daughter of a groom. John was the couple’s third child. There was a brother, Peter, and a sister, Ann, who died when she was six, one month before John’s birth. Peter died in 1942 while flying for the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.O’Connor, J.J. and Robertson, E.F. , Gap group. Retrieved 23 March 2010.

He was educated at the local primary school in Street, Somerset, then was taught by a friend of the family at home, and later at a Quaker school. When he was 11 he went to Elmhurst Grammar School in Street, and when his father was promoted to head postmaster in Ely in 1945, Polkinghorne was transferred to The Perse School, Cambridge. Following National Service in the Royal Army Educational Corps from 1948 to 1949, he read Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1952, then earned his PhD in physics in 1955, supervised by Abdus Salam in the group led by Paul Dirac.From Physicist to Priest, pp. 9–11; 23–29; 34.

Ideas

Polkinghorne said in an interview that he believes his move from science to religion has given him binocular vision, though he understands that it has aroused the kind of suspicion "that might follow the claim to be a vegetarian butcher." He describes his position as critical realism and believes that science and religion address aspects of the same reality. It is a consistent theme of his work that when he "turned his collar around" he did not stop seeking truth.See, for example, He believes the philosopher of science who has most helpfully struck the balance between the "critical" and "realism" aspects of this is Michael Polanyi. He argues that there are five points of comparison between the ways in which science and theology pursue truth: moments of enforced radical revision, a period of unresolved confusion, new synthesis and understanding, continued wrestling with unresolved problems, deeper implications.Quantum Physics & Theology, pp. 15–22.

Because scientific experiments try to eliminate extraneous influences, he believes they are atypical of what goes on in nature. He suggests that the mechanistic explanations of the world that have continued from Laplace to Richard Dawkins should be replaced by an understanding that most of nature is cloud-like rather than clock-like. He regards the mind, soul and body as different aspects of the same underlying reality—"dual aspect monism"—writing that "there is only one stuff in the world (not two—the material and the mental) but it can occur in two contrasting states (material and mental phases, a physicist might say) which explain our perception of the difference between mind and matter." He believes that standard physical causation cannot adequately describe the manifold ways in which things and people interact, and uses the phrase "active information" to describe how, when several outcomes are possible, there may be higher levels of causation that choose which one occurs.