cover image SCIENCE AND THE SPIRITUAL QUEST: New Essays by Leading Scientists

SCIENCE AND THE SPIRITUAL QUEST: New Essays by Leading Scientists

Clayton Phillip, Phillip Clayton, . . Routledge, $75 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-415-25767-1

These "essays" are actually interviews and talks from a 1997 meeting in Berkeley, Calif., for a new project called Science and the Spiritual Quest. This initial conference provided the opportunity for 60 leading scientists from around the world to discuss the intersections between their scientific practices and their understandings of religious traditions. Included are brief reflections by well-known scientists on their attempts to reconcile their own religious upbringing with their scientific work. Fields range from astronomy and molecular biology to psychiatry and computer science, and the religious backgrounds range from Muslim to Jewish to atheist. Astronomer Allan Sandage, for instance, contends that science and religion are "separate closets" in the same house, and that both must depend upon models to direct their understandings of the mysteries that lie behind reality. Molecular biologist Martinez J. Hewlett argues that "investigations of material reality should be informed by, not at odds with, investigations of spiritual reality." In one of the collection's most helpful essays, philosopher Michael Ruse (Can a Darwinian Be a Christian?) challenges the writings of three contemporary Darwinians—E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett—by arguing that "nothing in Darwinism absolutely forbids a belief in Christianity." Those familiar with the contemporary dialogue between scientists and theologians will find no new ground broken here. Those unfamiliar with this contemporary conversation will need to look elsewhere for insights, for the collection reads like what it is—a group of scientists sitting around talking to themselves in a language that is often forbidding to outsiders. (July)