V Religion and Science

Religion and Science He holds that the modern concept, which interprets matter in terms of waves of electrons, is quite unconceivable to human thought, because these ‘waves’ could be only the ‘waves of probabilities’ without having any material existence. Such reasons have compelled Jeans to conclude that the substance of the universe is thought, not matter. Now where is this thought situated? His answer is that it exists in the mind of a great ‘mathematical thinker’. Because the structure of this thought that comes to our mind is a completely mathematical structure. The ‘great Architect of the Universe thus begins to appear as a pure mathematician.’3 Sir James Jeans then states the entire case with great precision: It seems at least safe to say that the river of knowledge has made a sharp bend in the last few years. Thirty years ago, we thought, or assumed, that we were heading towards an ultimate reality of a mechanical kind. It seemed to consist of fortuitous jumble of atoms, which was destined to perform meaningless dances for a time under the action of blind purposeless forces, and then fall back to form a dead world. Into this wholly mechanical world, through the play of the same blind forces, life had stumbled by accident. One tiny corner at least, and possibly several tiny corners of this universe of atoms had chanced to become conscious for a time, but was destined in the end, still under the action of blind mechanical forces, to be frozen out and again leave a lifeless world. Today there is a wide measure of agreement, which on the physical side of science approaches almost to unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter—not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown exist as thoughts.