From Newton and Galileo to Einstein and Aristotle, from St. Augustine and the Buddha to contemporary theological thought,...
One of our most reliable interpreters of science offers a slender book of ruminations that venture wide and deep.
Theoretical physicist Lightman (Practice of the Humanities/MIT; Screening Room, 2015, etc.) rarely ponders a scientific principle or development without considering its significance in human terms, an approach that is very much in the tradition of Lewis Thomas. Lightman focuses on the logical and mathematical underpinnings of the material world as it relates to concepts of “reality” and to spirituality broadly defined. Throughout, the author makes his points clearly. Discussing the finality of death vs. notions of immortality, for example, he writes, “I accept that science and the scientific view of the world may not encompass all of existence….Still, I ask for some kind of evidence for all things I believe.” So remarkable is the material world we experience, the author suggests, that humans persist in finding supernatural explanations for its wonders. Lightman also acknowledges that while “the materiality of the world is a fact…facts [alone] don’t explain the experience.” To him, after millennia of philosophical and theological speculation, the most profound questions about the origins of the universe may open themselves to science or may have no answers that seem possible. Lightman makes cogent, generally unassailable arguments, provided readers share his basic precepts. He weighs in on free will vs. determinism, the vitalistic vs. mechanistic concepts of human life, the multiverse, the grandeur of consciousness, and the illusion of “self.” A leitmotif of the book is humanity's innate desire for absolutes, even though few exist in a relative world. Lightman locates those that do in science and philosophy rather than religion.
From Newton and Galileo to Einstein and Aristotle, from St. Augustine and the Buddha to contemporary theological thought, Lightman presents a distilled but comprehensive survey of the search for meaning, or the lack thereof, in our longing to be part of the infinite.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-87186-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A short, obscure poem very relevant to the chaotic 21st century.
A historian of the ancient Mediterranean world exhumes a controversial poem from the story of Job to help reconcile God’s existence with global calamity.
A retired professor emboldened with age and stirred to action by recent natural disasters, Fisher translated and wrote this work to underscore the importance of dealing with suffering without resorting to fantasy. Because suffer Job did. Recall that the pious man had it all–seven sons, three daughters, a loving wife and his health, not to mention tens of thousands of livestock. Egged on by Satan, who questioned Job’s piety, God took it all away. Framed by Job’s debate with three God-fearing friends, The Rebel Job finds Job in the nadir of his despair, ranting against his very birth, the injustice of his situation and the notion of a just God. This is the second of what Fisher refers to as the two books of Job–Job I and Job II. Embraced by orthodox religious leaders and conservative politicians, the author argues, Job I advances the idea of a just God who rewards good and punishes evil. The latter rages against the concept of divine justice. Unlike the Old Testament Book of Job, this poem does not conclude with God overcompensating Job for his losses and granting him a 140-year lifespan. On the contrary–Fisher’s Job ends on a suitably agnostic note with the protagonist asking, “Who can know the thunder of his might?” The author points out that while we may not fully understand the nature of God, we must love and help the powerless. Thankfully, Fisher pads the 30-page poem with relevant philosophical references–to Nietzsche’s death of God concept, 20th-century works of Joseph Roth and Archibald MacLeish and a keen anecdote of how famous Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel decried God’s incapacity to stop Nazi death camps. It’s these keen references that make the book much more relevant and contemporary than it would have been on its own.
A short, obscure poem very relevant to the chaotic 21st century.Pub Date: June 5, 2006
ISBN: 978-1-4257-1496-3
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Bawer wants to rouse liberal America from its lazy indifference to the rising tide of Christian fundamentalism. A literary and cultural critic, Bawer has written on spirituality in modern fiction (The Aspect of Eternity, 1993) and normality in the lives of gay men and lesbians (A Place at the Table, 1993). Now he turns his critical sights on the history, reigning personalities, and ominous future prospects of Christian fundamentalism in America. Bawer traces fundamentalism back to the 19th-century English theologian John Nelson Darby, who first articulated the doctrine of dispensational premillennialism—a periodization of sacred history that will culminate in a thousand-year reign of Christ—and to C.I. Scofield, who incorporated Darby's ideas as commentary in his Scofield Reference Bible. Bawer goes on to critique Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Hal Lindsey, James Dobson, and Bill McCartney (head of the much- publicized Promise Keepers). He subsumes these men under the larger rubric of a wrathful ``Church of Law,'' which he contrasts with the more truly Christian ``Church of Love,'' best represented by the late Harry Emerson Fosdick, famed liberal preacher at Riverside Church in New York City. That the most distinguished American representative of the Church of Love is dead is just Bawer's point: Nonlegalistic Christians must find their voice again before the legalistic ones steal Jesus away. But with his love/law dichotomy, Bawer succumbs to the very type of black-and-white thinking he decries in fundamentalists. The dichotomy is especially unfortunate in that it both perpetuates an ancient Christian prejudice against law that has often spent itself on Judaism and Hebrew scripture, and distorts religious experience, which some scholars have understood to include both loving and wrathful dimensions. Bawer lightens his critique with stretches of autobiographical narration, but the overriding (and unrepentant) tone of fulmination lends his book the feel of a sermon that has gone on too long.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-517-70682-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
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