The abbey said it was unconcerned about his atheism. The dean said: “It is entirely fitting that the remains of Professor Stephen Hawking are to be buried in the abbey, near those of distinguished fellow scientists.
“Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the abbey in 1727. Charles Darwin was buried beside Isaac Newton in 1882.
“Other famous scientists are buried or memorialised near by, the most recent burials being those of atomic physicists Ernest Rutherford in 1937 and Joseph John Thomson in 1940.
“We believe it to be vital that science and religion work together to seek to answer the great questions of the mystery of life and of the universe.”
Hawking’s ashes will be given a space in the nave near the quire screen. There will be a memorial stone, although whether it will include, as he requested, his most famous equation — the formula predicting that black holes still emit radiation — remains unclear.
“Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the abbey in 1727. Charles Darwin was buried beside Isaac Newton in 1882.
“Other famous scientists are buried or memorialised near by, the most recent burials being those of atomic physicists Ernest Rutherford in 1937 and Joseph John Thomson in 1940.
“We believe it to be vital that science and religion work together to seek to answer the great questions of the mystery of life and of the universe.”
Hawking’s ashes will be given a space in the nave near the quire screen. There will be a memorial stone, although whether it will include, as he requested, his most famous equation — the formula predicting that black holes still emit radiation — remains unclear.
Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the abbey in 1727
DEAGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES
The decision to give him a place among the nation’s greatest scientists is an extremely rare honour.
The abbey long ago ran out of room to bury people: the last person whose ashes were interred there was Sir Laurence Olivier in 1989.
However, given Hawking’s status as one of the most renowned scientists in his field, the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, decided to make an exception.
The funeral for Hawking, who died on March 14 at the age of 76, will be held in Cambridge this month. The congregation of 500 is likely to include scientists such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the worldwide web, and Brian Cox, as well as Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, who played the professor and his first wife, Jane, in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything.
The decision to give him a place among the nation’s greatest scientists is an extremely rare honour.
The abbey long ago ran out of room to bury people: the last person whose ashes were interred there was Sir Laurence Olivier in 1989.
However, given Hawking’s status as one of the most renowned scientists in his field, the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, decided to make an exception.
The funeral for Hawking, who died on March 14 at the age of 76, will be held in Cambridge this month. The congregation of 500 is likely to include scientists such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who created the worldwide web, and Brian Cox, as well as Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, who played the professor and his first wife, Jane, in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything.
He was an atheist who said that belief in the afterlife was nothing more than a fairy story for people afraid of death.
However, now that he has gone on to his hereafter, whatever form that may take, Professor Stephen Hawking is to have his own permanent resting place in the heart of Westminster Abbey.
His ashes are to be interred in the abbey near the grave of that other great physicist Sir Isaac Newton, most probably during a thanksgiving service later this year.
Stephen Hawking's ashes will be interred in Westminster Abbey near the grave of Sir Isaac Newton in what is an extremely rare honour
Although he was an atheist, Hawking did not have the dogmatism of Richard Dawkins. He certainly was not averse to invoking the name of God. In his bestselling 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, he described what it would mean for scientists to develop a “theory of everything” — a set of equations that described every particle and force in the entire universe. “It would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God,” he wrote.
Later he would argue that there was no need to have a creator. As he once explained, his famous phrase about the mind of God was essentially a metaphor. “You can say the laws [of physics] are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of His existence.”
On the other hand, he was relaxed enough about religion to find himself in 2008 at the Vatican with a group of scientists being blessed by Pope Benedict.
The Pope, who clearly had a different view from Hawking about the relationship between cosmology and God, told the audience at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences that science was the pursuit of knowledge about God’s creation. “There is no opposition between faith’s understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical sciences,” he said.
The abbey said that Hawking’s atheism was “not a consideration” in the decision to have him interred there. “It is to honour his life and work.”
Although the abbey is a royal peculiar, subject to the Queen rather than any bishop or archbishop, it is understood that the dean took the decision without consulting the Queen. It is not known yet whether she will attend the thanksgiving service, which is expected to be held in the autumn.
Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/abbey-burial-for-hawking-s-ashes-x5r233p50
No comments:
Post a Comment