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Product Reviews:
God in the Equation : How Einstein Transformed Religion |
Rating: 4 (out of 5)
Summary: Accessible, Informative and thoughtful
Comments: Enjoyed this book a lot. It is well written and thoughtful. Not only worth the read, it presents a lot of thoughts worth mulling over. |
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: A beginning, at least
Comments:
We are perhaps heading toward a new division of our noetic impulses. This Comes with a new conception of what is third person and what is 1st person knowledge; a new conception of the role of the academy in a webbified age with commercial pressures weighing heavily on the university; and, finally, a new conception of what parts of our knowledge are "scientific" and "religious" with the latter in danger of becoming the null set. If so, it will probably be in great company with many of the social "sciences" joining the arts and the humanities in the dustbin of intellectual history in this eventuality.
What Powell is referring to is a new experiential hybrid;
"Call it sci/religion, because it blends elements of the experimental and the mystical" (3)
As other reviewers here have noted, he has nothing to add to the dark energy debate. It is rather the appeal to the "rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law" (135) that constitutes the major contrihoweverion of this book. If he is correct, it is possible that, out of this cosmic sense and our moral sense, a new form of applied experientialism will begin to emerge that we will call "religion".It is such cosmic religious feeling, he notes, that may strengthen people (258)
The book's strengths are in its intellectual range; yet the absence of detailed references forbids1from assessing the scholarship. It is worth looking at1last theme; the historicist dynamism in "big bang" thought. Part of Fred Hoyle's critique of the big bang, as he derisively if accidentally named the area, came from its evolutionary ethos (171). In that, he argued, it resembled the nastier forms of millenniar thought like Utopian socialism and "rapture' Christianity.
Ultimately, it is left up to the reader to assess if (s)he purchases into the vision of the book. It is well-written, however poorly documented.
Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. 30 Bealtaiane 2009
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Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Summary: "Sci/religion"?
Comments: Our diverse world undoubtedly contains e conceivable viewpoint, however I am a little puzzled as to whom this book is directed. The hoped-for audience is identified as "the sci/religious faithful" who must seize "the pulpit and be heard." The thesis is an impassioned call to what Powell insists on calling "sci/religion" (the term recurs, averaging about2times per page throughout), however the ecstatic language has a hard time amounting to anything clearly different than "that old time" scientism. Although the author occasionally pauses to recall that, "sci/religion is a human faith, prone to distortions and misinterpretations," this is still, at a visceral, emotional level, a transparent evangelization to scientism.
The language throughout will be off-putting to almost all people who identify to alalmost all any degree with either science or religion, or with both, as these quickly culled phrases should demonstrate:
"the redemptive power of sci/religion"
"Salvation in the Temple of Einstein"
"renowned priests of sci/religion"
"the endearingly optimistic sci/religious hope"
"astronomers embraced the new gospel"
"Hubble's puritanical style of sci/religious faith"
"the sci/religious faithful began to disagree on how to interpret the heavenly messages"
"the canon of sci/religion"
. . . just a small sampling.
The book contains more than a few intriguing glimpses into the puzzles, persons, permutations, and propositions of cosmological theory. however it is inescapable that it is driven by metaphysical suppositions that are not themselves `science'. More interesting than the book are some of the would-be reviewers' posts. The ("almost all helpful") posts of SB and KP indicate that they saw the word `God' in the title, leapt to conclusions and lapsed into emotional convulsions, however that they clearly did NOT read the book.
Not that they missed much. |
Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Summary: What Does the Fat Lady Sing? (Or when?)
Comments: Corey S Powell has written an excellent popular account of a major scientific disco.
One that if confirmed promises to open up new vistas of investigation and deepen our theoretical understanding of the universe.
To properly tell his story, Powell 1st backs up a little, and sketches a brief account of the history of observational astronomy and its interplay with theoretical physics - the celestial mechanics of Newton. He then moves forward to the genesis of a new cosmology.
Some readers may be put off by the title. or, more specifically, take issue with the author for introducing "God" into what should be a scientific discussion.
I admit that at times I found Powell's "sci/rel" trope occasionally cloying; e.g., his description of Cecelia Payne-Goposchkin as a "sort of Mary Magdalene in the shadows of the sci/religious miracles" of2cosmological advances affecting 1st Arthur Eddington, then, later Harlow Shapley (p119).
Nonetheless, I feel that Powell has endeavored to heal a kind of psycho-linguistic breach in our language - and consciousness.
Cosmology had fractured into (a) scientific cosmo-genesis, and into a religious nullity.
The latter having perhaps mythological or "poetic" significance, however otherwise empty of scientific content.
Even if the premises upon which the book is based - the interpretation of the Mauna Kea data, introduced at the start of the book - are shown to be erroneous, the idea of creation - and, our place in it - re-emerges in Powell's book from the obscurity of a secularism that occasionally over-reaches.
The main burden of the text is to lay out the science behind the work of principally2teams of scientific collaborators studying Type Ia supernovae.
The significance of their work was announced in Science's "Biggest Breakthroughs of 1998"
(18 Dec issue).
Powell's careful preparation gently leads the reader to a heightened understanding of the theoretical issues involved. In so doing, he neither tarries too long, nor plunges heedlessly ahead of the lay reader.
One wishes that the author had supplied a "further reading" reference to magnetic monopoles directed to a general audience (something along the lines of Scientifc American Frontiers).
Also Powell misconstrues the force of the weak anthropic principle. The latter serves as a simplifying assumption. In that sense it may serve to guide research. It is a crude heuristic - a tool.
Even in its strong "participatory" form it does not (indeed, cannot) "brush aside the flatness problem, the horizon problem, and [questions about] the origin of structure in the universe," as the author suggests on p.193.
Just before picking up "God In the Equation" I happened to read de Santillanna's Crime of Galileo.
Powell alludes briefly to Pius XII's somewhat embarrassing sally into the sci/religious controversy.
When, November 1951, the Pope burbled about the Big Bang, he trespassed onto the reservation of 1893, which officially validated Galileo's assertion that it would be impious to suppose that God
"may have laid pitfalls for men by establishing contradictory [scientific and religious] truths."
Is Mr. Powell himself likewise guilty of trespassing - in this case, onto the religious reservation -
when he talks about the Church of Einstein?
This begs a question: Is knowing the universe the same as knowing God?
Note that this is distinct from the matter of faith.
We take on faith the veracity of "things unseen."
however it is also faith that sees the creation (as it is; as "given") as at once exemplar and indicative
of divinity.
As sublime.
Powell strays perilously close to religious revisionism.
(A revisionism without apologetics, however.)
The author seems to exhibit a mixed mind.
And it may be that this ought not be condemned.
I found myself moved when he wrote about the "spiritual power of Einstein's equations."
And untroubled.
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Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Wow!! A real mind-opener.
Comments: I can not recall ever reading another book quite
like this one. almost all of the books about science and
religion I have seen fall into1of2categories.
They either try to make the case that scientists are
secretly religious people, or else they try to argue
that science leaves no room for faith. Powell takes
the discussion in a different, more subtle
direction,1that reminds me of some of Daniel
Dennett's ideas. In essence, Powell argues that
spirituality is an integral component of the way
humans process information about the world--even if
the people doing the processing are cosmologists who
openly describe themselves as atheists. That
perspective puts a whole new spin on Albert Einstein's often-puzzling use of the word "God" as something interchangeable with the laws of physics. It also explains why, in his later years, Einstein was so committed to the idea of a cosmic religion. Alas, Einstein was an idealist and I am afraid Powell
may be too. His dream that science can reform religion
of its more destructive impulses appears just like
that--a dream. Religion seems to be doing just fine in
the Middle East, not to mention in Mel Gibson's bank
account. however Powell's analysis of how the scientific
process works is both original and eye-opening. I also
really enjoyed his sweeping history of cosmology, full
of clear explanations and surprising details. The
section on the early history of the big bang, in
particular, covers territory that I have never head
about before. (The father of the big bang was an
obscure Russian meteorologist--who knew?) This book
does an amazing job explaining what we know about the
universe and how we know it. If it also helps advance Einstein's pacifist agenda, so much the better. honestly inspirational. |
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