In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.
The greatest sin is judgment without knowledge.
Our science has become terrible, our research dangerous, our findings deadly. We physicists have to make peace with reality. Reality is not as strong as we are. We will ruin reality.
But what sin is to the moralist and crime to the jurist so to the scientific man is ignorance.
Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.
Physics is, hopefully, simple. Physicists are not.
Knowledge of the sciences is so much smoke apart from the heavenly science of Christ.
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.