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Philosopher John Polkinghorne

  • John Polkinghorne

    was born in Somerset, England and was an English Physicist and priest who publicly championed the reconciliation of science and religion.
  • Early Education

    John was homeschooled up until the age of eleven when he was able to attend Grammer school. With his father's promotion, he switched to Perse school in Cambridge where he excelled in mathematics and physics. In 1948 he received a scholarship from Trinity College.
  • Graduation and beyond

    Polkinghorne graduated from Cambridge in 1952 and was awarded his PH.D in 1955 and soon after left for the United States to attend California Institue of Technology. During his travel to the United States John was offered a position of lectureship in theoretical physics in Edinburgh, Scottland.
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    Contirbutions

    Between 1955 and 1966 John made many contributions to the mathematical physiology field. He published numerous papers within this timeframe some to include; An identity for the S matrix for a finite time interval, Renormalization of the transformation operators of quantum electrodynamics, and Unstable states and the separable potential model.
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  • Religion

    Polkinghorne says that science, in fact, encourages a belief that God exists. He was a religious man that became an Anglican Priest believing that the best place to seek scientific support for God is in quantum mechanics.
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  • Science and God

    When you toss a coin you could prediction (heads or tails) if you knew every piece of information about the flip—the speed and height of the toss, the movement of all the air currents in the room, etc. At the quantum scale, equivalent events are intrinsically indeterministic: The universe simply does not contain enough information for you to predict a result. This fundamental indeterminism has been repeatedly confirmed in the lab.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_NG6Ea0ABM