The CONFLUENCE OF SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY IN THE SELECT WORKS OF UMBERTO ECO

Abstract

Everett W.Hall in the very opening page of his book, Modern Science and Human Values “It is not simply that scientific method in the area of social sciences should be promoted, it is rather that this promotion should occur in order that we may be more intelligent, be wise in our choice of the ends to which our greatly expanded physical knowledge is devoted” (1). The inspiration and motivation for such a unification of seemingly two disparate subjects like science and religion can be derived from the forms of arts like painting, music, dance, literature and the like, by their appeal to human mind and soul, simultaneously. Umberto Eco declared that “there is something artistic in a scientific discovery and there is something scientific in that which the naïve call ’brilliant intuitions of the artist’ “(159) in his The Limits of Interpretation. No novelistand thinker in recent years have contributed more to the crossing of disciplinary boundaries than Eco. His works engage with history, philosophy and science. Science, as both object of study and method of inquiry, amalgamated with religion, play an important role in his fiction, particularly in his first two novels, The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, taken for the study of unification of science and religion without discounting the disparities in them.