A meeting  with a professor of Chemistry from California at the University of Lviv

On the 11th of September on the Faculty of Chemistry of Lviv University a meeting with Dr.Bryan Enderle, a prominent professor of chemistry Davis University, California, was held.  All comers had a chance to listen to a world-popular lecture on the topic “Chemistry and the sense of existence”.Above all, Bryan Enderle is a specialist in organometallic compounds, a lecturer of general chemistry course for the Davis University students and has a Master’s degree in Theology.  He started the lecture with a look over the model of an atom structure by Niels Bohr and continued with a more philosophical view on the topic.

The themes, to which Dr. Bryan Enderle referred, concerned philosophical comprehension of the surrounding reality by a man and the main theses concerned the question about what the reality is and whether the human understanding of it is right.

According to Bryan Enderle, philosophists, scientists and theologians have different ideas about the reality which makes it difficult to find the golden mean, so that this concept could be practical and meaningful.

During the lecture, special attention was paid to the peculiarity of the difference between science and the worldview. He argues that scientists are the first to explore the natural world, and the worldview is a philosophy of life, therefore, science and the world cannot be equated. Ideological problems, in particular, include the question of the relation of matter to the supernatural, the universe as an open or closed system, etc. Professor Enderle’s scientific and philosophical understanding of these theses highlighted one of the key topics of his report, namely: this science can be used in different worldviews, but it is not an outlook as such.

It should be noted that the meeting took place in an interactive form. Students had the opportunity to discuss common problems and find solutions for the proposed situations. In concrete examples, Bryan Enderle explained his vision of abstract concepts and problems. In particular, based on hypothetical situations, the audience expressed their opinion about whether a person can comprehend the essence of being, the reality and nature of the universe. One of the main ideas of the speaker was the idea that all things around and processes associated with a probability, and the worldview is based on assumptions.

The lecture provoked an active discussion, during which students had the opportunity to chat with scholars.