cover image God's Laughter: Man and His Cosmos

God's Laughter: Man and His Cosmos

Gerhard Staguhn. HarperCollins Publishers, $23 (255pp) ISBN 978-0-06-019004-0

Roving from subatomic quarks to black holes, German journalist Staguhn stakes out the vast abyss between modern science's knowledge and the human impulse to find meaning in the great cosmic spectacle. In an elegant, thoroughgoing, occasionally profound inquiry into cosmology and its relation to religion, he associates Einstein's belief in an impersonal God with the wisdom of ancient Taoist philosophers who anticipated discoveries later made by modern scientists. Scanning the attempts by physicists Max Planck and Werner Heisenberg to reconcile science and faith, Staguhn concludes that science, by its very nature, is incapable of unveiling ultimate secrets or telling us whether God exists. He provocatively critiques British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking as a ``scientific mythopoet'' who caters to the public's longing for new certainities and for a complete theory of the universe. Photos. (July)