PASS Scripta Varia 21 - Pontifical Academy of Sciences

MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE ON THE SCIENTIFIC LEGACY OF THE 20 th CENTURY
Science. But instead, God is everything. It is the task of philosophical thought
(see Appendix 6.4) to demonstrate that God exists through the Transcendental
Sphere of our existence and its connections with the Immanent
Sphere of everyday life.
APPENDIX 2
A Note on the Three Levels of Science
In order to be ‘scientific’, an activity needs the existence of the first level:
i.e., experiments with reproducible results in a laboratory. The results must be
expressed in mathematical terms with the correspondent uncertainty quoted.
If the experiment is reproduced in another laboratory and gives results
which are in contradiction with previous knowledge it is necessary to establish
which one of the experiments is wrong.
In the given activity, it must be possible to put different experiments in a
mathematical formalism which allows ‘predictions’ to be made (see Appendix
5.2). The best example of such an activity is the series of experiments in electricity,
magnetisms and optics that after two centuries allowed Maxwell to
find four equations from which all results could be derived. The four Maxwell
equations gave rise to the most powerful understanding of the effects generated
by the electromagnetic forces which allow predictions to be made with
very high precision. This understanding is known as Quantum ElectroDynamics
(QED).
Many activities can become ‘scientific’ if they follow the example of QED.
Otherwise, the existence of the second and third level must be continued
until the first level is discovered in the given activity.
The Scientific Legacy of the 20 th Century
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