Newton Project

Nobel Prize People speak about boundaries of cognizance...

On this Web-Site we present the opinions of contemporary scientists about the boundaries of cognizance. These opinions are the answers to the questions which were sent to known scientists representing different branches of knowledge.

Is the man really condemned to never-ending journey to full cognizance? What is the final goal of scientific work? What is the most important element of scientific work? - These questions seem to be vital for all contemporary science. Especially nowdays, in the era of the electronics and technology development, genetic discoveries, space penetration, in vitro technics and cancer healing, many people keep asking themselves: what are the boundaries of cognizance?

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Who can be more interested in answering these questions than the scientists themselves? No-one. Therefore we have decided to ask famous contemporary scientists - some of them Nobel Prize winners - their opinions about this matter. Here, on this Web-Site we present their answers. Some of them very personal, other very comprehensive, give us an in-depth insight into the dilemmas, convictions and believes of the people who make our world constantly deprived of its mysteries, and - paradoxically - at the same time more and more mystierious.

Isaak Newton once wrote: "to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and divering myself in, now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me".

Since Newton wrote these words much time has passed. The development of science gives us more and more knowledge both about the surrounding world and the human being. But at the same time we become more and more aware of this great distance which separates us from the full cognizance of all mysteries: of the universe, the matter, the life and the man. Science seems to abandon the 20th century's optimistic conviction that any cognizance is only a matter of time. Those theories which tried to confine the nature of the world to a couple of simple mechanisms, are gone. The world is too complicated and complex to be explained so simply. That's why contemporary predominant conviction is that science will never cope with all the questions the human being is asking himself facing "the great ocean of truth".

Here are the detailed questions to scientist:
Is a man - as a creature who congizes and is cognizable - really condemned to never ending journey to full congnizance?
What are the reasons of difficulties in achieving full knowledge understood as the knowledge of sunbstance of all phenomenas and mechanisms of their functioning the the branch You represent?
If a scientists as a specialist in his branche, is not able to know the whole truth he is interested in throughout all his life - as he constantly asks himself new questions - what is therefore the final goal of Your scientific work?
What do you consider as the most important thing in Your scientific work?

If you would like to answer these questions, please send them to us: centrum@arrupe.org

Up to now the following scientists answered our questions:

A.K. Sharma	professor of botanic, Uniwerstity of Calcuta, India
Arno Penzias	winner of Nobel Price, physic, Labolatories of AT&T, Murray Hill, USA
Carmi Schooler	professor of social psychology, National Health Institut, USA
David Baltimore	winner of Nobel Price, medicine, Massachusetts Institiut of Technology, USA
Dudley Herschabach	winner of Nobel Price, chemistry, Uniwersity of Harvard, USA
Edwin Power	professor of mathematic and phisic, Uniwersity of London, Great Britain
Esra Galun	professor of genetic, Institut of Weizmann, Rehovot, Izrael
Frederic Sanger	winner of Nobel Price, chemistry, Uniwersysity of Cambridge, Great Britain
Georg D. Snell	winner of Nobel Price, medicine, Perl Harbour, USA
Gertrude B. Elion	winner of Nobel Price, medicine, The Wellcome Research Labolatories Rabloid Releigh, USA
Heinz Rohrer	winner of Nobel Price, physic, Forschungszentrum IBM, Zurich, Switzerland
Jack Steinberger	winner of Nobel Price, physic, European Organisation for Nuclear Research, Geneve, Switzerland
Jan O. Stenflo	professor of astronomy, Eidgenoessiche Technische Hochschule, Zurich Switzerland
John E. Sulston	winner of Nobel Price, medicine, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Kary B. Mullis	winner of Nobel Price, chemistry,La Jolla, CA, USA.
Noam Chomsky	professor of linquistic, Massachusetts Institiut of Technology, USA
P.H. Bhargava	professor of biology, Molecular Biology Center, India
Peter C. Doherty	winner of Nobel Price, medicine, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA
Sir John Cornforth	winner of Nobel Price, chemistry, University of Sussex, Australia
Sir Nevil Mott	winner of Nobel Price, physic, Uniwersity of Cambridge, Great Britain
Swiatoslaw Fiodorow	professor of medicine, Russia
Vitalii Godlanskii	professor of physic and chemistry, Institut of Chemical Physic, im. N.N. Semenowa, Moscow, Rosja
Vladimir Ivanow	professor of medicine, Bulgarian Medical Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria
Winkried Lenz	professor of genetic, Institut of Genetic, Munster, Germany
Yurij Prokoshkin	professor of physic, Institut of Physic, Moscow, Russia

This project was launched 14 years ago by Krzysztof Czerwiński. At that time a journalist, Czerwiński sent the questions to some scientists and then published the answers in the local Gdansk (Poland) magazine "Wybrzeże". In the middle of 1990s. Czerwiński extended and re-edited the project in the Web togehter with Beat Brechbuehl, the Swiss wirter and owner of "Im Wardgut" publishing house set in Frauenfeld (Switzerland).

Krzysztof Czerwiński and Beat Brechbuehl gave us the right to publish these texts on our Web-Site.