Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientists cannot dispense with. The man who handles a bulk of results obtained from an experimental process must have an imaginative picture of the law that he is pursuing. He must embody this in an imaginary hypothesis. The reasoning
faculties alone will not help him forward a step, for no order can emerge from that chaos of elements unless there is the constructive quality of mind which builds up the order by a process of elimination and choice. Again and again the imaginary plan on which one attempts to build up that order breaks down and then we must try another. This imaginative vision and faith in the ultimate success are indispensable. The pure rationalist has no place here.

As a matter of fact, Kepler is a magnificent example of what I have been saying. He was always hard up. He had to
suffer disillusion after disillusion and even had to beg for the payment of the arrears of his salary by the Reichstag in Regensburg. He had to undergo the agony of having to defend his own mother against a public indictment of witchcraft. But one can realize, in studying his life, that what rendered him so energetic and tireless and productive was the   profound faith he had in his own science, not the belief that he could eventually arrive at an arithmetical synthesis of his astronomical observations, but rather the profound faith in the existence of a definite plan behind
the whole of creation. It was because he believed in that plan that his labor was felt by him to be worthwhile and also in this way, by never allowing his faith to flag, his work enlivened and enlightened his dreary life. Compare him with Tycho de Brahe. Brahe had the same material under his hands as Kepler, and even better opportunities, but he  remained only a researcher, because he did not have the same faith in the existence of the eternal laws of creation. Brahe remained only a  researcher; but Kepler was the creator of the new astronomy. Another name that occurs to me in this connection is that of Julius Robert Mayer. His discoveries were hardly noticed, because in the  
middle of last century there was a great deal of skepticism, even among educated people, about the theories of natural philosophy. Mayer kept on and on, not because of what he had discovered and could prove, but because of what he believed. It was only in 1869 that the Society of German Physicists and Physicians, with Helmholtz at their head, recognized Mayer's work. ...

As  Einstein has said, you could not be a scientist if you did not know that the external world existed in reality, but that knowledge is not gained by any process of reasoning. It is a direct perception and, therefore, in its nature akin to what we call Faith. It is a metaphysical belief. Now that is something which the skeptic questions in regard to religion, but it is the same in regard to science. However, there is this to be said in favor of theoretical physics, that it is a very active science and does make an appeal to the lay imagination. In that way it may, to some extent, satisfy the metaphysical hunger which religion does not seem capable of satisfying nowadays. But this would be entirely by stimulating the religious reaction indirectly. Science as such can never really take the place of religion.


An excerpt from the article, "The Mystery of Our Being" by Max Planck

Timothy Ferris, in his book, Coming of Age in the Milky Way,  says:
And yet the more we know about the universe, the more we come to see how little we know. When the cosmos was
thought to be but a tidy garden, with the sky its ceiling and earth its floor and its history coextensive with that of the
human family tree, it was still possible to imagine that we might one day comprehend it in both plan and detail. That illusion can no longer be sustained. We might eventually obtain some sort of bedrock understanding of cosmic structure, but we will never understand the universe in detail; it is just too big and varied for that. If we possessed an atlas of our galaxy that devoted but a single page to each star system in the Milky Way (so that the sun and all its planets were crammed on one page), that atlas would run to more than ten million volumes of ten thousand pages each. It would take a library the size of Harvard’s to house the atlas, and merely to flip through it, at the rate of a page per second, would require over ten thousand years. Add the details of planetary cartography, potential extraterrestrial biology, the subtleties of scientific principles involved, and the historical dimensions of change, and it
becomes clear that we are never going to learn more than a tiny fraction of the story of our galaxy alone—and there are a hundred billion more galaxies. As the physician Lewis Thomas writes, “The greatest of all the accomplishments of twentieth-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance.”

SCHOLARS throughout the ages have defined love as the power that joins and binds the universe and everything in it; and love is often called the greatest harmonizing principle known to man. Teilhard de Chardin observed that love is the “only force that can make things one without destroying them.” Love has the power to transform lives, to heal sickness, to mute evil, and to create harmony out of discord. How do we identify unselfish, unlimited love?

No one ever saw love, or heard love, or touched, smelled, or tasted love—literally. How can a person physically touch a thought, an idea? Certainly, we can see the effects of love, but not the divine energy creating the effects. We can hear the sound of compassion and caring in a voice. But how can we taste the sweetness of inner peace or spontaneous joy? We may see love in the actions of others as they express this innate energy from within themselves to serve another person. We may smell love through the dinner so lovingly prepared by one who loves to cook. We may touch love in the embraces of dear ones as they open up their hearts and let their love flow toward us. The five senses can sense only love from within, outward. Thus, as we express love, we are the first to receive love. We recognize in others that which we are. After all these words, love can best be described through experience, and then description becomes unnecessary!

Someone once said, “When your heart is filled with love you will not be critical or irritable, but you  will be divinely irresistible.” Love is an inherent power that, if allowed to be expressed in one’s life, can transform disharmony, heal disease, and transmute negative conditions into part of a harmonious whole. The results of love are always good. But do not confuse sentiment and sympathy with love. Our focus in this book is the purified, transcendent power of divine love that is expressed through our hearts and minds when we are open and receptive to it and when we recognize, understand, and encourage love in its unlimited capacity. ...

Through unlimited love a person can enter the dimension of spiritual unity and wholeness and maturity. Love is the fairest flower in God’s garden. It has been referred to as “the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart of life, and is prophetic of eternal good.” Mature love can become an avenue of spiritual influence that breaks down
the walls that separate us from others. Mature spiritual love can unite us more closely with God and those around us. Surely our world will be a better place when the power of love replaces the love of power.

---- An excerpt from the book, " Pure Unlimited Love"  by Sir John Templeton

Many people will now be inclined to ask: Are there — can there be — any persons who from their own observation and experience are able to answer questions related to the riddles of spiritual life? This is precisely what Spiritual Science will make people aware of once more: the fact that — just as research can be carried out in the sense-perceptible world — it is possible to carry out research in the spiritual world, where no physical eyes, no telescopes or microscopes are available, and that answers can thus be given from direct experience as to conditions in such a world beyond the range of the senses. We shall then recognize that there was an epoch, conditioned by the whole evolutionary progress of humanity, when other means were used to make known the findings of spiritual research, and that we now have an epoch when these findings can once more be spoken of and understanding for them can again be found. ...
If we study human evolution impartially, we cannot fail to be impressed by the exceptional progress made in recent times by the sciences concerned with the outer world. Men have acquired something new. They have learnt to see the outer world differently because of something added to those faculties which apply to the external sense-world. Hence it became clear that the sun does not revolve round the earth; these new faculties compelled men to think of the earth as going round the sun.
No-one who is proud of the achievements of physical science can have any doubt that in his inner being man is capable of development, and that his powers have been remodeled from stage to stage until he has become what he is today. But he is called upon to develop more than outer powers; he has in his inner life something which enables him to recreate the world in the light of his inward capacity for knowledge. ...
Is it then inevitable that these inner faculties should remain as they are now, equipped only to reflect the outer world? Is it not perfectly reasonable to ask whether the human soul may not possess other hidden powers that can be awakened? May it not be that if he develops further the powers that lie hidden and slumbering within him, they will be spiritually illuminated, so that his spiritual eye and spiritual ear — as Goethe calls them  — will be opened and will enable him to perceive a spiritual world behind the sense-world?...
A study of the course of human history from a spiritual-scientific point of view teaches us that there existed ancient stores of wisdom, parts of which were condensed into those writings and traditions which survived during the intermediate period I described earlier. This same Spiritual Science also shows us that today it is again possible not merely to proclaim the old, but to speak of what the human soul can itself achieve by development of the forces and faculties slumbering within it; so that a healthy judgment, even where human beings cannot themselves see into the spiritual world, can understand the findings of the spiritual researcher. ...
If we want to understand the physical nature of man, we look to the relevant findings of physical research. If we want to understand his inner spiritual being, we look to the realm which the spiritual researcher is able to investigate. ... Spiritual Science will show that we can penetrate into a spiritual world; that just as the eye equipped with a microscope can penetrate into realms beyond the range of the naked eye, so can the soul equipped with the means of Spiritual Science penetrate into an otherwise inaccessible spiritual world, where love, conscience, freedom and immortality can be known, even as we know animals, plants and minerals in the physical world.

--- Excerpt from the lecture "The Mission of Spiritual Science" by Rudolf Steiner at  Berlin, 14th October 1909.

Science, derived from the Latin ‘‘scientia,’’ originally meant general knowledge both of the physical and spiritual world. Through the ages, however, the meaning of science narrowed to the description and understanding
(knowledge) of nature (i.e., the physical world). ...
Science has, however, established many fundamental observations and facts of our physical world. For example, atoms exist in a variety corresponding to the elements, as do DNA, bacteria, stars and galaxies, gravity and electromagnetism, natural selection and evolution. Science is our quest for understanding of the physical world,
and we should keep this in proper perspective while admitting to the limits of where our human understanding can reach.
A fundamental question in our quest for knowledge and understanding always will be whether there is a higher intelligence beyond our grasp. ... There are also many other questions, such as those of our consciousness and free will, whether there was indeed a beginning, whether there is a reason or goal of our being, and was it planned, to which science itself cannot give answers. ... I don’t know whether there is a God or creator, or whatever we may call a higher intelligence or being. I don’t know whether there is an ultimate reason for our being or whether there is anything beyond material phenomena. I may doubt these things as a scientist, as we cannot prove them scientifically, but at the same time we also cannot falsify (disprove) them. For the same reasons, I cannot deny God with certainty, which would make me an atheist. This is a conclusion reached by many scientists. I simply admit that there is so much that I don’t know and that will always remain beyond my (and mankind’s) comprehension. Fortunately, I have never had difficulty admitting my limitations (and there are many)....
For me, it is not difficult to reconcile science (and by necessity our limited knowledge) and the possibility (although to me not probability) of a higher being or intelligence beyond our grasp and understanding.

--- An Excerpt from  Autobiographical Reflections of a Nobel Prize Winner George A. Olah