Indeed, Claude Bernard makes a distinction between the essence of life and the mechanisms acting in life.26 In my opinion this distinction is valid today, as it was 145 years ago. Generally speaking, what used to be called science

until modern times did not differentiate between the mechanisms CI-1033 price functioning in the world and the essence of the world itself. Nature was understood as expressing a purpose, meaning, or value embodied in the phenomena. The conception of nature and the world in terms of meaning dictated the way people looked on natural Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical data. For example, the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic conception of the celestial bodies revolving with uniform velocities in circular orbits was not derived from observation. In fact, observations suggested Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical all these movements to be neither circular nor uniform, but because circular and uniform movement was deemed as the perfect movement, and nature was supposed to express this meaning, an astronomy was devised in order to comply with the paramount notion of a perfect and meaningful universe. This is the background for the long-standing confrontation between “religion” and “science”. If the content and conclusions about natural phenomena bear specific meanings and are expressions of these values, then matters of science are on the same plane as matters of faith, namely both enterprises Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical deal

with questions of meaning. If this view is accepted, then religion and science may be intertwined, mutually antagonistic, or supplementary as the case may be. However, today we have no “science”

in the sense of the Middle Ages, in which religion and science meet. Modern science and the Torah are entirely alien to each other. Since natural sciences have gradually and progressively Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical liberated themselves from the task of discovering the meaning of reality and become exclusively interested in functional relationships, they Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical have become indifferent to any and all issues of meaning, purpose, or value (an important qualification: the practice of medicine is a problematic discipline in relation to other sciences, in that its practice has major moral and value consequences and therefore should not be considered in the present discussion). This is the only context in which natural science is objective; it is uniform and common to all who understand it and is independent of the varying outlooks and values of those involved in scientific Tryptophan synthase discourse. While the scientific discourse should be (by definition) understandable to anybody who acquires the knowledge of its language, the religious discourse, the language of the Torah is infinitely “incomprehensible” and needs constant interpretation. “The Torah speaks in the language of man” – we should always recognize that we are talking only in metaphors (This expression frequently arises in the Talmud as representing Rabbi Ishmael’s approach.