Science but not necessarily nature

On Monday, the Templeton Foundation will announce its 2009 winner of the Templeton Prize to honor contribution to mankind’s spiritual life. Last year’s winner was Michał Kazimierz Heller, a professor of philosophy at The Pontifical Academy of Theology in Kraków, Poland, and an adjunct member of the Vatican Observatory staff.

I can’t say I have any interest in his theology and I’m sure I wouldn’t understand his physics, but I did learn something from him that perhaps I should have learned years ago: there could hardly be a science more divorced from what we think of as nature than physics. Unless it’s theology.

Here is the bit that opened my eyes:

People often say that physics is a science of matter or of material world, but while most books on theoretical physics contain lots of mathematics, few mention anything about matter. This is because physics develops by constructing mathematical models of the world and then by confronting them with empirical results. One may say that the world, as viewed by modern physics, is constructed not out of matter but rather out of mathematics.

Now I don’t feel so bad about having to read Stephen Hawking twice to even begin to understand what he’s talking about. He is describing a purely mental model of the universe. Any little stories physicists tell about people on trains moving in opposite directions or observers viewing a beam of light on a spaceship are no more than correct than the little stories adults use to tell children about how things work in the real world.

Incidentally, the Templeton Prize is a big deal. Valued at one million pounds sterling (approximately $1.41 million or €1.12 million), the Templeton Prize is the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual.