Fred Hoyle Quotes
A superintellect has monkeyed with physics.
Hoyle, Fred. "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science, vol. 45, no. 2, 1981, p. 12.
The religious theology of the Church of England had accepted the fact based on Newton’s work, that the heavenly bodies followed a set of scientific laws that were themselves created by God. However, the Church could not accept the same principle when it came to the different species of humans and lower order animals. Each species they believe was created with all its characteristics by God directly and species could not change, develop, regress, go extinct unless God specifically ordained that. It was this inconsistency that Darwin was afraid would produce religious attacks on him and his notions of natural selection while astronomy and physics was treated very different theologically. Darwin delayed publishing his findings for 25 years hoping to find a religious atmosphere that would treat biology much as physics and astronomy. It didn’t come and finally he published and took the heat, which actually was not very great. With the exception of some religious fundamentalists, most other elements of society welcomed and supported Darwin’s ideas which today we realize were among the most important ever put forth in the world of science.
His concept of the devine however was quite different and much more abstract than the Rabbis, Priests and Imams of the time. Albert Einstein, was a religious Jew, but his view of God was that of Spinoza (See Quotation 631763) who had been excommunicated by the Jews. Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims. Spinoza did not believe in a kins of anthropromorphic God who fabricated the earth and the stars. He saw God in the devine nature of the earth and the heavens and the mathematical rules that govern everything. It was this abstraction that was Spinoza's God which made sense to Einstein. Got was in the order, physical laws and mathematics of the universe. Modern scientists who are religious have no difficulty with the probablsitic nature of much of the physics that governs the univrese. It was God who created or more abstractly, was the mathematical and physical laws that in turn allowed the universe to be created from nothing.
Sir Fred Hoyle FRS was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth. He also wrote science fiction novels, short stories and radio plays, and co-authored twelve books with his son, Geoffrey Hoyle. He spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and served as its director for six years. He was one of the authors of the influential B2FH paper.
