Science and the Quest for Absolute Values

An edited version of the founder’s address given at the first International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS), in 1972, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York, New York.

Reverend Sun Myung Moon

Honorable Chairman, distinguished scientists, eminent professors and scholars, I deeply welcome all of you. As the founder of the International Cultural Foundation (ICF) which is sponsoring ICUS, I have desired and done my best to create and maintain an atmosphere in which an open and unreserved exchange of opinions can take place.

Despite the deep desire of scientists and diligent efforts, poverty, illiteracy, and disease still prevail in the advance countries; tensioins, wars and hostilities continue among nations. Thus, mankind continues to suffer from sorrow, distress and pain even in the midst of our luxuriously developed countries. Many leaders are trying to eliminate this misery and to establish true peace and stability, but the world is filled with empty words of peace, and mankind is sinking deeper and deeper into restlessness, anxiety and fear. How has this come about? The main reason is that the standard of value which regulated man’s behavior has been undermined. As ethics and morality have lost their power, the standard of goodness has all but disappeared.

No one can deny that every creature, including man , is a unified being with two natures—a material nature and a d-like nature. Man is the unified being of body and mind; animals are unified beings of body and instinct; plants are unified beings of matter and directive life; and inorganic bodies are unified beings of matter and directive energy.

From the standpoint of ontology, the cosmos is a world of effect and it must therefore have an ultimate cause. Materialism says this ultimate cause is matter and idealism insists that it is spirit. However, because the world of effect is made of unified beings with two natures, the cause must be a monistic being with the potential of the two natures of matter and mind unified into one. This is God.

The world that both God and man desire is a unified world in which creativity and love is practiced. In such a world the desire of both God and man will be fulfilled, but to practice love man must find the center of love.

A norm must first be set up because a true life of love requires order. In a society where order has been destroyed, a life a life of love cannot be practiced in harmony. A life of love needs order and for order a norm is required. ”Norm” means laws and principles which regulate man’s behavior, and these are morality and ethics. Therefore to have a good life centered on love, man must set up sound morals and ethics and must practice them.

The morals and ethics which apply to the unified world must be clear and applicable to modern man. The reason why past morals and ethics have been undermined lies partly in modern man’s tendency towards materialism and their inability to guide the modern age. Today, a new standard of value is needed. It can only come from an elevated, unified system of thought which can unify all the past philosophies and religious doctrines.

Science has put its efforts into improving material life because its domain was limited to the material world. We can now conclude that scientists must participate in the reformation of spiritual life in order to secure the true happiness of mankind and to protect the precious work so far accomplished by scientists. The reformation of spiritual life means creating a world of goodness. How can we create a new reformation? We must find the center of love. This is God, who is unique, eternal and unchanging. Love is the flow of heart—the outpouring of deepest heart. The essence of God is heart.

How could God create the and man? He could do it because He has heart. Where there is heart, life appears; where there is life, development and creation can take place. For creation there must always be a purpose. Because heart always direct toward purpose. The purpose of creation could only be joy, which fulfills the desire of heart This joy comes when the creation, especially man, comes to resemble God. God’s goal is to have man and creation reflect His love and creativity. This brings Him joy.

Through our amazing scientific progress we have begun to take after God’s creative power, but not yet his love. In order to take after His love, we must practice love, and lead a life of goodness. When we take God as our standard of goodness, absolute value can be established, and then the eternal world of peace and happiness will be realized. Since God is a unified being, man and social life should also be unified. This means that man must love while he lives a creative live, and he must live a creative life while he loves. Such a man is the unified man and the world in which he lives is the unified world.

Through observation and study of the world of reality, science has extended and expanded this reality beyond what can be perceived by our physical senses. We are cognizant of bacteria, which we can only see through a microscope. Some of us journey to the moon, directed by computers whose astronomical speed of calculation baffles the human mind, while others talk about making it an everyday possibility. To our naked eyes, the earth still appears flat, but science has compelled us to admit that it is round. On a more abstract level, the transition from reality to extended reality is described as by the transiton from classical to quantum mechanics and from the deterministic to the probabilistic model, both of which are equally or more confusing to the common minds.

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