The MIT physicist Jeremy England, whose research concerns nonliving things that act like living things, is also an Orthodox Jew—and the inspiration for a character in a novel by the bestselling author Dan Brown. In an interview with Rachel Scheinerman, he discusses his reflections on the tensions between science and religion:

There are lots of Jews who are very observant and religious . . . who are also highly technically educated and find modern science very credible. But I think that one has to raise the question of how that level of intellectual comfort is achieved.

One possible way that it can be achieved is by creating a kind of divided mind. . . . And I don’t mean to denigrate that, but . . . I don’t want to have a divided mind. It’s necessary to acknowledge that the Tanakh [tries] to make you uncomfortable with the idea of fixed laws of nature. That’s at least one current within [scripture]. There are [also] countercurrents, [for instance], the Psalmist’s idea of “How many are the things You have made, O Lord; You have made them all with wisdom”—the idea that God made everything in His wisdom and it has a natural order and regularity to it. [T]hese currents are in tension with one another.

Papering over that tension and saying, “It’s easy, we don’t have to worry about it”—that can come at a cost. I think it’s possible to be very committed to the Torah in ways that are very authentic and ancient, and still be fully committed to scientific reasoning. . . . [But] there’s [also] a real, serious danger [of] turning science into not just a way of reasoning about what is predictable about the world, but into a full-blown belief system that has a mystical component to it. . . . [I]t can get very doctrinaire.

Here’s an example. Someone might say, “The rules of the universe are fundamentally mathematical and probabilistic. Furthermore, there is a very parsimonious mathematical theory that is the explanation of everything, and we are just trying to refine our understanding of that model. But the universe is mathematical.” That is, in a sense, a mystical claim. It is beautiful and nourishes the souls of people who devote themselves to it. And it’s very common . . . in my line of work. But I staunchly reject that way of talking, because I think the laws of physics are human contrivances.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.