Overview

Andrew Steane reconfigures the public understanding of science, by drawing on a deep knowledge of physics and by bringing in mainstream philosophy of science. Science is a beautiful, multi-lingual network of ideas; it is not a ladder in which ideas at one level make those at another level redundant. In view of this, we can judge that the natural world is not so much a machine as a meeting-place. In particular, people can only be correctly understood by meeting with them at the level of their entire personhood, in a reciprocal, respectful engagement as one person to another. Steane shows that Darwinian evolution does not overturn this but rather is the process whereby such truths came to be discovered and expressed in the world. From here the argument moves towards other aspects of human life. Our sense of value requires from us a response which is not altogether the same as following logical argument. This points us towards what religion in its good forms can express. A reply to a major argument of David Hume, and a related one of Richard Dawkins, is given. The book finishes with some brief chapters setting religion in the context of all human capacities, and showing, in fresh language, what theistic religious response is, or can be, in the modern world.

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9780191863370

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Reviews

This is a highly personal book, presenting a theological, philosophical, and moral vision in lyrical and sometimes highly idiosyncratic form...Not, I think, since David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God (2013) have I both laughed out loud in delight as I read a book, and more than once been moved to tears. -- Andrew Davison, University of Cambridge, Modern Theology offers reflections and analysis of great interest for those involved in the scienceandtheology dialogue ... the author offers a courageous attempt to develop an updated version about religion's meaning from a more scientific perspective actually the physicist's viewpoint. Such an attempt could help us better conceive how science and religion dialogue when we assume the particular point of view held by the scientist, and less the theological patterns. -- Lluis Oviedo, European Society for the Study of Science and Theology Steane offers important contributions to the philosophy of science in terms of seeing it as part of a holistically constituted human enterprise. -- Mark Q, Metascience [a] profound book -- David Lorimer, Paradigm Explorer This volume's insightful and appealing consideration of the relationship of science and religion will appeal to thoughtful readers regardless of their position regarding this question -- CHOICE This volume's insightful and appealing consideration of the relationship of science and religion will appeal to thoughtful readers regardless of their position. -- Professor Samuel C. Pearson (emeritus), Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville An important contribution towards a humane view of the machinery of science by a leading physicist. -- Nicolas Gisin, University of Geneva This is a bold, original, imaginative and 3-dimensional book, infused with honesty and humility. -- Paul Ewart, University of Oxford This is a deeply personal, poetic and philosophical book by a professional physicist who wants to divert rivers of fresh water to the desiccated discourse of late modern world-views. His urgent patience in addressing poorly-founded atheist arguments, makes compulsive reading. Insistent that the world of relativity, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics that he loves is perfectly receptive of meaning, purpose, freedom and love, this is a read for anyone who cherishes the miracle of being human. -- Tom McLeish, University of York

Author Information

Andrew Steane, Full Professor, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, UK Andrew Steane is a Professor of Physics at Oxford University and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. His research includes experimental and theoretical Quantum Computing, atomic physics, and Special Relativity. He co-discovered quantum error correction. His research group, co-led by David Lucas, has pioneered the ion trap approach to quantum computing. He is the author of two undergraduate physics textbooks, and of Faithful to Science: the role of science in religion (OUP 2014). He was awarded the Maxwell Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics (2000). He is married to Emma Steane; they have three children.

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