Michael Faraday believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible. His whole life, both inside the laboratory and out,
was dominated by his faith as a member of the Sandemanians, a small Protestant sect in Britain. His science was inseparable
from his religion.
Faraday's faith influenced several aspects of his science: his motivation for research; his theoretical orientation; the
experimental problems he pursued; his interpretation of phenomena; and his public communication of science.
The Sandemanians believed in both moral law and physical law, and it was the latter belief that made Faraday's science
thematically religious. For Faraday, humans could seek no higher goal than to reveal God's laws of creation. Faraday's devotion
guided his patient and detailed observations and, on occasions, his great caution in asserting his conclusions.
Faraday saw religion as independent of science. He did not subscribe to the popular natural theological arguments
of his day, that one could prove God's existence from observations themselves. Religion was primary. While science might indeed
reveal God's wisdom, our knowledge of or faith in God surely did not depend on it.Faraday commented extensively on the "economy"
of nature, by which he meant God's unified design.His conception of unity also involved symmetry of action. So, when he saw
a wire revolving around a magnetic pole, he suggested that a magnetic pole should also revolve around the wire.
His suggestion was later confirmed by an experiment.
