People complain that our generation has no philosophers. They are wrong. They now sit in another faculty. Their names are Max Planck and Albert Einstein. Upon appointment as the first president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, Berlin, formed for the advancement of science.
Many studies of research scientists have shown that achievement (at least below the genius level of an Einstein, Bohr, or a Planck) depends less on ability in doing research than on the courage to go after opportunity.
I think more like a quantum Buddhist, in that there is a universal proto-conscious mind which we access, and can influence us. But it actually exists at the funda-mental level of the universe, at the Planck scale.