MAX PLANCK. - Thinker and scientist, b. Kiel 23 Apr. 1858, d. Göttingen 4 Oct. 1947.
He succeeded in 1887 G. R. Kirchhoff in the Berlin chair, and in 1907 L. Boltzmann in the Vienna chair. He was Nobel laureate in physics (1918) and pontifical academician (1936).
He devoted himself chiefly to thermodynamics. But he is famed for the quantum theory (v. QUANTITÀ, theory of). In philosophy P. admits the existence of a real world; science contributes to knowledge of it by eliminating the anthropomorphisms of our sensations, though it can never succeed in doing so simultaneously (La conoscenza del mondo fisico, Italian trans. by E. Persico, 3rd ed., Turin 1943, pp. 9, 42, 155, 188, etc.). P. is opposed to indeterminism (ibid., pp. 127, 237). He affirms that “science and religion are not in conflict but need each other to complete one another in the mind of a man who thinks seriously” (ibid., p. 137). “Science thus leads to a point beyond which it cannot guide us,” and man “arriving at this point is therefore compelled to seek another guide, which he finds only ... by substituting religious faith for scientific knowledge” (ibid., p. 135).