| We should note that until the dawning of the nineteenth | | | | Physics and Philosophy that science and philosophy be |
| century, philosophy had always been associated with | | | | re-associated, insisting that relativity and quantum |
| science. Historically, many of the great scientists had | | | | theory philosophy made this association imperative. |
| also been philosophers (Thales, Aristotle, Decartes, | | | | Free will was back on the table as a definite possibility. |
| Leibniz, etc.) By the twentieth century, mechanistic | | | | He wrote: |
| science had shouldered out religion and philosophy and | | | | "Science usually advances by a succession of small |
| reigned supreme. The proposition of freewill itself was | | | | steps, through a fog which even the clear-sighted |
| sniffed at by those materialists who believed humans | | | | explorer can see only a few paces ahead. |
| are but machines, just as they perceived the rest of | | | | Occasionally the fog lifts, and eminence is gained, and |
| the universe. | | | | a wider stretch of territory can be |
| In 1898 Friedrich Paulsen published a book, Immanuel | | | | surveyed-sometimes with startling results. A whole |
| Kant: His Life and Doctrine. Kantian scholar Paulsen | | | | science may then seem to undergo a kaleidoscopic |
| proposed that there are three disciplines which broadly | | | | rearrangement, fragments of knowledge being found |
| lay claim to truth: science, religion and philosophy. | | | | to fit together in a hitherto unsuspected manner. |
| Paulsen suggested that the role of philosophy occupies | | | | Sometimes the shock of the readjustment may |
| a place between science and religion, and should seek | | | | spread to other sciences; sometimes it may divert the |
| to mediate between the two. Philosophy then could | | | | whole of human thought." |
| establish a synthesis by means of an integration of | | | | This is a vivid description of the re-adjustment that |
| scientific fact and spiritual insight. The Urantia Papers | | | | epochal revelation strives to achieve, and this is the |
| were to embrace this concept. | | | | purported mission that confronted the Urantia Papers. |
| However, by the time the Urantia Papers appeared at | | | | The Urantia Papers are in the public domain, and are |
| the midpoint of the twentieth century, science had | | | | published by several publishers as a book titled "The |
| become much more complicated. The theory of | | | | Urantia Book." Since 1955, more than 600,000 copies |
| relativity challenged many of the findings of | | | | are now in print. No one knows who wrote them. |
| mechanistic science, and quantum theory challenged | | | | There are no gurus associated with them. |
| the theory of relativity. In 1942, just about the time the | | | | Are the Urantia Papers a big hoax? If they are, no one |
| completion of the epochal revelation known as The | | | | know why it was done. Are they the real thing? No |
| Urantia Book, Sir James Jeans suggested in his book | | | | one can prove they are. They are a spiritual mystery. |