The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own Words

Overview

The Faith of Scientists is an anthology of writings by twenty-one legendary scientists, from the dawn of the Scientific Revolution to the frontiers of science today, about their faith, their views about God, and the place religion holds--or doesn't--in their lives in light of their commitment to science. This is the first book to bring together so many world-renowned figures of Western science and present them in their own words, offering an intimate window into their private and public reflections on science and faith.

Leading religion scholar Nancy Frankenberry draws from diaries, personal letters, speeches, essays, and interviews, and reveals that the faith of scientists can take many different forms, whether religious or secular, supernatural or naturalistic, conventional or unorthodox. These eloquent writings reflect a spectrum of views from diverse areas of scientific inquiry. Represented here are some of the most influential and colossal personalities in the history of science, from the founders of science such as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein, to modern-day scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Jane Goodall, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Edward O. Wilson, and Ursula Goodenough. Frankenberry provides a general introduction as well as concise introductions to each chapter that place these writings in context and suggest further reading from the latest scholarship.

As surprising as it is illuminating and inspiring, The Faith of Scientists is indispensable for students, scholars, and anyone seeking to immerse themselves in important questions about God, the universe, and science

Editorial Reviews

Originating as a classroom anthology and retaining the format of one, this book offers chronologically organized sets of primary-source readings from 21 famous scientists from Galileo to Ursula Goodenough. Editor Frankenberry (John Phillips Professor of Religious Studies, Dartmouth Coll.) excerpts from books, letters, diaries, interviews, essays, and speeches and provides a brief introduction and further readings for each figure. The bulk of the book focuses on 20th-century scientists. Readers may see the title as something of a misnomer, as "faith" may not be the proper word to apply to many of the belief systems discussed herein. Overall, however, this is one classroom anthology that will hold wider appeal to general readers. Apart from dogmatic approaches, John Marks Templeton and Kenneth Seeman Giniger's Spiritual Evolution: Scientists Discuss Their Beliefs is the only similar work in this area, and Frankenberry's new collection is very different and broader in scope. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.--Darby Orcutt, North Carolina State Univ. Libs., Raleigh Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Author Information

Bio of Nancy K. Frankenberry

Nancy K. Frankenberry is the John Phillips Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College. Her books include "Radical Interpretation in Religion" and "Religion and Radical Empiricism".

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Additional Info

Imprint

Princeton University Press

Filesize

3.59 MB

Number of Pages

542

eBook ISBN

9781400829804