A worthwhile contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of religion and rationality.
A scientist takes a philosophical stand against the idea that science has a monopoly on reason.
The territorial contest between science and religion is as old as their existences. Modern discussion on the topic often includes the presumption that science, and science alone, can deliver a rational rendering of the world. Debut author Rickards, a physicist, labels this presumption “scientism”—the hubristic assertion that an atheistic science can solve every mystery. The author argues that, in their best forms, both science and religion are evidence-driven enterprises, and that, when properly understood, each improves the other. He also says that science is rife with claims of the existence of theoretical entities, but that it’s blind to the purpose of things and to the existence of free will, thus diminishing the value of human life by willfully misinterpreting the nature and dignity of personhood. In the final analysis, he says, scientism turns out to be a species of “idol worship,” a disfigured faith of its own that hypocritically rejects all other faiths: “Indeed, contrary to widespread misconception, like genuine science, God-made religion is founded and built upon many falsifiable claims.” Rickards’ aim, he says, isn’t to denigrate science, but to restore its appropriate role within a “unified religion-science and faith-reason duality worldview.” His explorations are diverse and far-reaching; for example, he discusses quantum mechanics, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the creation story in the book of Genesis, and Pascal’s Wager. The author’s erudition is breathtakingly broad, and the prose is lively, clear, and consistently avoids hyper-technical academic jargon, though it does sometimes flirt with stridency. His book is also a quirky effort—for instance, it includes several song lyrics that the author composed, largely about his religious devotion. As the first of a planned four-volume collection, it’s a challengingly long study, and it could have avoided repetition in order to be more concise. A synopsis at the start would have been very helpful, given the complexity of the arguments that follow. Still, this is a philosophically nimble work that seeks to end the dispute between faith and reason by demonstrating their natural allegiance.
A worthwhile contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of religion and rationality.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5127-3490-4
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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