The Mystery of Our Being

Here's something I ran across in my readings for PHI340, Philosophy of Science. The course explores the ideas behind science and religion, where they merge and diverge, how ideas like Creationism get mixed in that great soup.

Anyway, from physicist Max Planck (1858-1947), a piece he wrote called "The Mystery of Our Being." This excerpt is from a Q&A at the end of the essay:

Planck:[...] Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and, therefore, part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. Music and art are, to an extent, also attempts to solve or at least to express the mystery. But to my mind, the more we progress with either, the more we are brought into harmony with all nature itself. [...]

Murphy: Goethe once said that the highest achievement to which the human mind can attain is an attitude of wonder before the elemental phenomena of nature.

Planck: Yes, we are always being brought face to face with the irrational. Else we couldn't have faith. And if we did not have faith but could solve every puzzle in life by an application of the human reason, what an unbearable burden life would be. We should have no art and no music and no wonderment. And we should have no science[...] because science would thereby lose its chief attraction for its own followers -- namely, the pursuit of the unknowable[...]