Design in the universe then and now: Cicero and Max Planck

As a friend puts it, they had the same ideas about it, just 1989 years apart.

You deny that intelligence plays any part in the processes of nature. Then what sort of accident is this? what a fortunate clash of atoms, from which suddenly men are born in the image of the gods! …and argue instead that our likeness to the gods has come about by chance. Do we need to look for arguments to refute this? I only wish it were as easy for me to discover the truth as to expose such falsehoods!” – Cicero (Roman orator), 45 BC (De Natura Deorum Cotta, 1.90 Translated by Rockham H, (1933) “Cicero, Marcus Tullius” London: W. Heinemann

Warp, warp

As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter. – Max Planck (particle physicist), 1944, Das Wessen der Materie, speech at Florence, Italy (from Archiv zur Geschichte der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep.11 Planck, Nr.1797)

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