Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion
    Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion
    Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion
    Ebook180 pages2 hours

    Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion

    By Jan H. van Bemmel

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The author is completely perplexed by the marvels in this world and beyond.
    His reflections are summarized in four different chapters: on Nature, the Universe, Intelligence, and finally the ultimate question: Why are we here? Of course, answers to such questions are very personal and will be far from complete. Perhaps, more questions are asked than answers can ever be given. The material for his reflections was borrowed from the scientific literature, his own research and from books of wisdom, primarily from the different writings of the prophets and the apostles in ther Bible
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLulu.com
    Release dateJul 2, 2015
    ISBN9781326340018
    Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion

    Related to Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion

    Related ebooks

    Reference For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cosmologist Laura Mersini-Houghton: ‘Our Universe Is One Tiny Grain Of Dust In A Beautiful Cosmos’

      Aug 27, 2022

      Laura Mersini-Houghton was born in Albania and grew up under a totalitarian communist regime which, until its collapse in 1991, cut the country off from the rest of the world. Influenced by her father, Nexhat Mersini, a mathematician, she developed a

      5 min read

    • Article

      When We Were the Cosmos

      Jun 20, 2019

      Leading off this week’s chapter of Nautilus, physics writer Michael Brooks carries on a playful, imaginary conversation with Jerome Cardano, a crazy-bold 16th-century scientist, inventor, and astrologer (it was, after all, the 16th century). Brooks w

      6 min read

    • Article

      Is Life Special Just Because It’s Rare?

      Jan 20, 2021

      A rocket powered by kerosene and liquid oxygen and carrying a scientific observatory blasted off into space at 10:49 p.m., March 6, 2009 (by local calendars and clocks). The launch came from the third planet out from a G-type star, 25,000 light-years

      7 min read

    • Article

      Is Life Special Just Because It’s Rare?: Vitalism in the age of modern science.

      Oct 15, 2015

      A rocket powered by kerosene and liquid oxygen and carrying a scientific observatory blasted off into space at 10:49 p.m., March 6, 2009 (by local calendars and clocks). The launch came from the third planet out from a G-type star, 25,000 light-years

      7 min read

    • Article

      The ‘Small Self’ Effect

      Feb 14, 2023

      The ‘Small Self’ Effect
      5 min read

    • Article

      A New Dawn

      May 12, 2023

      A New Dawn
      17 min read

    • Article

      Five Veteran Scientists Tell Us What Most Surprised Them: Fifty years ago, who knew we’d learn to clone genes and find water on Mars?

      Sep 24, 2015

      Turn back the clock to 1965. Science appeared to be marching forward at an unrelenting pace. Biochemists had cracked the genetic code (how DNA translates into proteins), inspiring Life magazine to envision “superbabies with improved minds and bodies.

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Big Bang Theory

      Jan 27, 2022

      The Big Bang Theory
      8 min read

    • Article

      Our Library

      Oct 29, 2018

      One of the oldest debates in the scientific literature is whether ‘time’ is something that can be ‘perceived’ at all. Most psychologists and neuroscientists have come around to thinking that it isn’t. Our five senses – taste, touch, smell, sight, and

      2 min read

    • Article

      End Of The Multiverse Theory?

      Jul 18, 2019

      End Of The Multiverse Theory?
      7 min read

    • Article

      Electrons May Very Well Be Conscious

      Dec 30, 2020

      Happy Holidays. This week we are reprinting our top stories of 2020. This article first appeared online in our Facts So Romantic blog in May, 2020. In May, the cover of New Scientist ran the headline, “Is the Universe Conscious?” Mathematician and ph

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble with Counting Alien Civilizations

      Jun 24, 2020

      You might imagine that in the midst of a global pandemic and all of its social and economic fallout that our minds would be laser-focused on immediate, Earthly woes. But apparently not entirely. A case in point is the recent virus-like spread of news

      5 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      Oct 6, 2021

      Q&A
      6 min read

    • Article

      Looking Back In Time

      Mar 17, 2021

      Nigel Warburton: You’ve spent a huge amount of your life looking at space. There’s a very famous quotation from Immanuel Kant, that’s even on his gravestone. “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often an

      15 min read

    • Article

      The Universe Explained

      Jun 16, 2022

      The Universe Explained
      16 min read

    • Article

      Do Parallel Universes Exist?

      Nov 4, 2021

      Do Parallel Universes Exist?
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion - Jan H. van Bemmel

      Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion

      Where were you? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion

      Jan H. van Bemmel

      C:\Users\Jan\Documents\2015 Reflections\2015_06_30 Nw ePub Reflections for LuLu\Images\Earth.jpg

      Copyright

      Copyright@2015 by Jan H. van Bemmel.

      All rights reserved. ISBN number: 978-1-326-34001-8

      All contents of this book, called: Where Were You? Reflections on Science, Philosophy and Religion are copyright of Jan H. van Bemmel.

      Credit is given to source material (>200 references, several Figures).

      Parts of the material in Chapters 1-3 were published in different books in the Dutch language.

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transferred in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the author.

      Preface

      When opening your eyes in this world for the first time, you have no idea that a miracle has just happened. You came into being after the fusion of two cells from your parents, the implant of your early embryo in your mother's uterine wall, and a most wondrous development during nine months. Your spine was already completed in the first weeks after conception and your heart started beating after merely six weeks. Your mother provided you with all necessary nutrients and oxygen through the placenta. When leaving the womb you experienced a series of events, in some way comparable to the launching sequence of a spacecraft. No longer were you dependent on your mother's organism, but you were fully on your own.

      When you grew up, you started looking around. Nature appeared to be full of miracles and you began wondering why and how all this came into being. You started asking more questions than answers could be given. The complexity of nature was overwhelming.

      Looking to the sky above, in particular during cloudless nights, you started asking myriads of further questions. How come? Why all this? What's the sense of it? What is beyond that blue ceiling that seems to cover us at daytime?

      The most intriguing questions, however, dealt with yourself: Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? You learned that during the history of the world many other people had thought about these and similar questions as well and that philosophers and scientists had formulated already answers for a multitude of questions. It made you start thinking how to discover meaning and direction in your very own life.

      This small book is the result of such wondering and thinking. The author is completely perplexed by the marvels in this world and beyond. At the same time he realizes that this beauty often goes along with incredible misery.

      My reflections are summarized in four different chapters: on Nature, the Universe, Intelligence, and finally the ultimate question: Why are we here? Of course, answers to such questions are very personal and will be far from complete. Perhaps, more questions are asked than answers can ever be given. The material for my reflections was borrowed from the scientific literature, my own research and from books of wisdom, primarily from the different writings of the prophets in the Bible and the apostles, the followers of Jesus Christ. Besides nature, the universe and human intelligence, it is His person and life that I admire the most.

      Jan H. van Bemmel

      1. Nature

      Introduction

      Wondering (thaumazein) was for Plato the core of his philosophy.[1] This wondering also determined my own choice for conducting scientific research. Who is not perplexed when observing phenomena in the micro- and the macrocosmos? You become speechless by watching the miracles that take place in front of your eyes. Such observations influenced my choice for a career in physics and biomedical research. As a researcher in the field of biomedicine I investigated, for example, the dynamic properties of the fetal cardiovascular system and the electrical properties of the adult heart.[2] Halfway through the 1960s, our research team was able to measure the electrocardiac activity of fetuses less than 10 weeks of age[3] by measuring electric signals from the maternal abdominal wall.[4] The amplitudes of these tiny signals were in the order of microvolts.[5] We found that the fetal circulation and the fetal heart are prepared, already long before birth, to achieve the spectacular changes that take place during delivery (see the elaboration of this issue later in this chapter). Admiration for the nonliving and the living aspects of nature may have started early in my life.

      As a student at grammar school, I was an enthusiastic member of the Netherlands Society for Amateur Astronomy. During those years I constructed my own telescope with the first Japanese lenses that were then available and spent long nights on the roof of my parental home. At that time there was not much stray light, which nowadays radiates skywards from our big cities and brightly lit highways.

      zonne-eclips JHvB B&W

      Figure 1

      Solar eclipse, observed by the author in northern France on August 11, 1999.

      It was wonderful to observe the 12 moons of Jupiter in their orbits (today we count 76 of these moons), the rings of Saturn, the red glow of Mars, the intense blue radiation of Sirius, and the changing solar spots. I still follow with more than common interest the progress in astronomy and new theories on quasars and pulsars,[6] and I am, as many others, full of awe of the impressive pictures taken by the Hubble space telescope. In the same way, I was deeply impressed by the total solar eclipse on August 11, 1999, that I was allowed to observe and photograph in northern France (Figure 1).

      An interesting feature of astronomy is that the history of the cosmos unfolds itself, so to speak, in front of our eyes: the farther away we look, the longer ago the observed cosmic events took place.[7] Of course, one should have trust in the assumption that the laws of nature have not changed during all these many billions of years and are identical at the outer limits of the universe. This assumption cannot be proven, but there are strong indications that it is correct. In its ability to look back in time, astronomy is radically different from biology. The formation of the many millions of different life forms does not unfold itself before our eyes, and it is impossible to replay the process of biogenesis.

      When the word 'evolution' is used both for the course of events in astronomy and the history of life on earth, we should be aware that the meaning of the word evolution has a different connotation in cosmology from that in biology. In Darwinist evolution as well as in the genesis of the universe, the aspect of 'randomness' of the sequences of events in both domains is in a way comparable. However, the expression 'survival of the fittest' applies to biological evolution only, being the core of Darwin's original ideas. In contrast, the genesis of the cosmos—for which rather erroneously also the term 'evolution' is used— can be compared with the unwinding of a clockwork. In contrast, in biology, the many different species originated, according to evolution theory, by means of the struggle for survival of the most healthy ones. There is a further comparison between the beginning of the cosmos and that of life on earth: in scientific terminology both onsets are entirely unknown; they are both a great mystery and whatever scientists have formulated on the beginning of the universe or the onset of life is not far from pure speculation.

      In this chapter, my admiration will prevail. In discussing some of the phenomena that occur in living nature, I will try to stay close to my own discipline, physics. In the following paragraphs I will give examples of the functioning of wings, of perception, and of communication in different animal species. I will also address the functioning of the fetal circulation during birth. I will finish with the conclusion that the artist or designer of these wonderful processes must have thought deeply about all these phenomena in living nature. It can be compared to a composer, who beforehand also thought deeply about a piece of music, or a painter about his work of art, an architect about a building, or an engineer about a technical artifact. But first I will illustrate how the observation of phenomena in nature may influence our worldview and presuppositions, and also the reverse: how presuppositions influence our observations and interpretations. I will do so by first discussing the different lines of reasoning that are followed in astronomy. Thereafter, I will give examples from living nature.

      C:\Users\Jan\Documents\2015 Reflections\2015_06_30 Nw ePub Reflections for LuLu\Images\chapter01 Fig02.png

      Figure 2. Very small differences in the intensity (anisotropy) of the microwave background radiation, measured by the Planck satellite, after correction for interfering radiation.

      Cosmology

      At the end of the 1990s, a discovery dealing with the beginning of the universe was made public at the congress of the American Physical Society. The background radiation[8] of the cosmos had been measured very precisely by the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite, with a few microdegrees of temperature difference[9] (Fig. 2). It was concluded that the temperature of the background radiation was about 2.7 degrees above the absolute zero temperature, after correction for interference from the sun, the moon and the planets, and the stars in our own galaxy,[10] the Milky Way (see also the next chapter on the Universe).

      C:\Users\Jan\Documents\2015 Reflections\2015_06_30 Nw ePub Reflections for LuLu\Images\chapter01 Fig03.png

      Figure 3

      Galactic system NGC 4319, with a redshift of 0.006, and accompanying quasar Markarian 205, with a redshift of 0.070, interconnected by a bridge of matter (from Arp¹⁴).

      The picture in Figure 2 (that was obtained from observations by the Planck satellite in 2013) shows the tiny relative differences in the measured temperatures against the background of the visible cosmos. This temperature (i.e., the counterpart of the microwave background radiation) appears to be very uniform and can be interpreted as the remnant of the extreme temperature that existed shortly (that is, 380,000 years) after the creation of the universe. Because of the expansion of the cosmos, the wavelengths of this original high-frequency radiation were stretched during billions of years, because of the expansion of the cosmos, and are now observable as radiation in the microwave domain. Because of that finding, there is strong evidence that the universe came into existence with a great explosion, a 'big bang', about 13.8 billion (10⁹) years ago. This length of time can be derived from Hubble’s Law.[11] The leader of the research team that made the first discovery of this microwave radiation said, ‘If you are religious, it is as if you see God.’ When reading this assertion, you may wonder whether he meant by 'God' the watchmaker of Paley[12] or the blind watchmaker of Dawkins.[13]

      Many researchers point to a first cause or God when confronted with the limits of their knowledge. One of them is Stephen

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1