Augustine Pamplany CST
Robert Jastrow (1925-2008) was an American Astronomer and Physicist. He worked with NASA for long. He secured his Masters and Ph. D from Columbia University. He served as assistant professor at Yale, and later in 1958, he joined the NASA as head of its theoretical division. He was the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and he held this office until his retirement. Jastrow also served as the first chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee.
Apart from his scientific career, he was also popular as a prolific writer and commentator on diverse science related topics. His book, Red Giants and White Dwarfs: The Evolution of Stars was a 1981 bestseller. After leaving NASA, he founded the George Marshall Institute in 1984 to assess the scientific issues that influence the public policies. His work, How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete was a result of the researches by this Institute. He was a denier of the climate change. He thought that the rise in global temperature might have been due to non-anthropological factors.
Jastrow reveals an ironic state of mind as regards his philosophical and religious convictions. He regarded himself as an agnostic who thinks we cannot know if there is God and the existence of God cannot be proven rationally. Though he claimed himself to be an agnostic, his views on creation of the universe was very close to the religious views. He wrote in The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe, “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” The assumption here is that science is never going to fix the mystery of creation and scientific discoveries may finally lead to the ancient religious claims on creation.
On a similar note, despite his convictions that there are no overlapping domains between science and religion, he wrote, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the Biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and Biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.” In his interview with the Christianity Today in 1981, he said, “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation …. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.” He was a seeker of truth throughout his life and was open to the religious views in seeking meaning as a scientist.
Leave a Comment