Augustine Pamplany CST
Sir William Brag (1862-1942) was a British Physicist who won the Noble Prize in Physics in 1915. He received the Nobel prize for the “services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays.” He hailed from a simple peasant family. His mother was the daughter of the local vicar. His mother passed away when he was only seven. Probably this background motivated him to lead a simple and gentle lift throughout his career.
He received a scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1882. He recollects here final year in the school to be a terrible year. There was a strong religious emotionalism in the school. The students were frightened by the stories of fiery hell and eternal damnation. Later in 1914, In his address on Science and Faith at Cambridge, he stated, “I am sure that I am not the only one to whom when young the literal interpretation of Biblical texts caused years of acute misery and fear.” However, he was balanced in his meaning-making as his early faith was well founded in the authentic interpretation of the Scripture.
He fostered his own meanings of the relationship between science and religion. In The World of Sound, wrote, “From religion comes a man’s purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hand are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.”
He had a wonderful sense of philosophy and he exhorted the scientists to look at the fundamental implications of their discoveries. “The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” In this sense he can be place along the line of the original founders of modern science like Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, etc., who were great philosophers and in a way Literarists as well.
Understandably, he underscored the importance of humanities in science- learning: “I feel very strongly indeed that a Cambridge education for our scientists should include some contact with the humanistic side. The gift of expression is important to them as scientists; the best research is wasted when it is extremely difficult to discover what it is all about … It is even more important when scientists are called upon to play their part in the world of affairs, as is happening to an increasing extent.”
