What follows is a review of the book "Faith in Science: Scientists Search for Truth," edited by W. Mark Richardson and Gordy Slack. The book contain= s engaging biographies and interviews with a dozen scientists who participate= d in the Science and Spiritual Quest program <http://www.ssq.net>. SSQ, now in its eighth year brought together over 120 scientists from diverse disciplines and religious traditions on four continents to promote an exploratory and authentic dialogue on matters of faith and the spirit of science.

SSQ will host a reunion and reception for participants in the project on Sunday, June 1, 2003 as part of Metanexus=B9 annual conference "Works of Love= :
Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Altruism." The five-day conferenc= e runs from May 31 through June 5 outside Philadelphia and includes some 40 renowned plenary speakers and some 70 paper presenters from over 23 countries. Reduced registration fees end on May 1. Space is limited for this extraordinary gathering, which includes an opportunity to participate in this SSQ Reunion. For more information, go to<http://www.metanexus.net/conference2003>.

The review is written by Bonnie Howe, herself a Program Associate for Scientist Relations at Science and the Spiritual Quest program of the Cente= r for Theology and the Natural Sciences <http://www.ctns.org>. Howe joined the program staff in 2000. She holds a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies (New Testament, ethics and social theory), from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

-- Editor

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Review of "Faith in Science: Scientists Search for Truth," ed. W. Mark Richardson and Gordy Slack. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.

For anyone interested in issues at the interface of science and religion, this collection of interviews comes highly recommended. Chief among the merits of this volume is its level of engagement. It is the people involved in this project who insure that the level of this conversation will be deep and its range wide. Ian Barbour's Foreword is a foretaste, in that regard: he situates these interviews in historical perspective and in the current science-religion conversation. In case the reader has been unaware that there is an ongoing, lively, international, cross- and interdisciplinary conversation about faith and science, the Barbour piece serves as an invitation and an anchor for the discussion to follow. Christian theologian W. Mark Richardson (General Theological Seminary, New York) then announces the book's agenda in his introduction, with a reminder that Western science and Western monotheism belong to the same family. Science as we know it arose from the major monotheistic cultures. Faith in Science constitutes evidence that the science-religion connection persists, or rather that connections, plural, abound.

The core of the book is a set of interviews of twelve scientists conducted by philosopher Philip Clayton (recently at Harvard Divinity Schoo= l and the California State University at Sonoma; currently at Claremont Schoo= l of Theology) and science writer Gordy Slack. These interviews are direct results of the ongoing conversations among scientists facilitated by the Science and the Spiritual Quest program (now in its seventh year) under the auspices of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, a pioneer in the field of science and religion. They are taken from the proceedings of a 1997 meeting in Berkeley, where an international pool of sixty scientists met to discuss the relationships between their scientific work and their religious and spiritual lives. Interviewers Clayton and Slack demonstrate admirable skills. They set a philosophically sophisticated tone and manage at the same time to invite the scientists to talk at a more personal, intimate level, without letting them descend into grandstanding or evoking defensive apologetic. Each knows the science-religion territory so well tha= t little time is lost in the preliminaries. Each knows the science well enoug= h that the scientists relax; they trust that they are being heard and understood. The nuances of each scientist's perspective surface in the interaction. Clayton and Slack probe; they push and encourage scientists to refine their thinking and their statements.

It is also the caliber of scientists that makes the depth of engagement her= e possible. Their caliber as scientists is beyond dispute; two of the twelve are Nobel laureates, most of the rest are at the top of their fields. But, clearly, they have also been chosen for inclusion in this volume for their ability to articulate and explore their faith or spiritual quest as it interfaces with their lives as scientists. The twelve come from a range of scientific disciplines and of religious stances and spiritualities, and their level of spiritual-religious maturity or of commitment to a particula= r tradition varies. There are Islamic scientists who speak more of complementarity between modes of knowing than of conflict between science and religion. Physicist and cosmologist Bruno Guiderdoni (Paris Institute o= f Astrophysics), for example, says:

"There is no crisis between science and religion. There was nothing like Galileo's case in Islam. . . . So, as a Muslim, I fee very comfortable in m= y scientific activity because I can interpret my research work as the pursuit of knowledge for this world as the exploration of the richness and beauty o= f God's creation." (74)

And Physicist Mehdi Golshani (Sharif Univeristy of Technology, Teheran, Iran) says, "I consider physics a sort of worship - nothing else." (122) As Clayton probes for distinctions between Western natural theology and this Islamic view, the sophistication and depth of Golshani's approach is revealed.=20

Others among the twelve are Jewish, Roman Catholic, Anglican. Spiritual struggle is displayed and addressed; the various approaches and traditions are honored. A Christian pastor's son, now an eminent cognitive scientist, who struggles to connect the kind of meaning and significance for which emerging cognitive science is finding empirical evidence with the kind of meaning that his tradition of origin offered to ground social ethics and interpersonal significance. Psychiatrist and behavioral geneticist Kenneth Kendler, a reform Jew who also engages daily in Buddhist meditation, reflects deeply in his talk with Gordy Slack on the differences between wisdom and knowledge, specifically as these surface in psychiatric practice and research.

Taken together, these interviews constitute profound evidence for faith in science in several senses. They exhibit phenomenological evidence that at least some ranking scientists integrate deep faith and excellent science. I= n addition, the conversations turn, time and again, to points of personal struggle. There is struggle to find integration between one's life in science and one's religious tradition, to resolve epistemological issues, t= o reconcile belief in human freedom with evidence of bio-genetic determinism.

The conversation is revelatory, as well, of the faith that science itself entails. There are choices to be made at the confluence of science and religion, to be sure. But the choices cannot be distilled into one between purely rational science and a (supposedly irrational) life of faith. Scienc= e relies on doctrines, tenets, rituals, and customs which must be taken on faith, and no one seriously arrogates unto him- or herself absolute objectivity anymore. There is, then, an implicit (and sometimes stated) critique of scientism here, an exposure of the beliefs implicit in reductionistic science.

Certain themes are woven across the interviews: The role of reason in religion can be larger than people generally assume. The role in science of intuition and of faith is more pervasive than has been assumed. A significant number of scientists - especially physicists - have shifted their focus from experimental questions to addressing fundamental theoretical questions and moved on to highly speculative exploration. "Science" is no longer simply about gathering data, if it ever was. The scientific probe can move from physics to metaphysics or from bio-genetic description to touch topics in ethics and social theory that - at least in the West -- once seemed relevant only to scholars of religion.

Another research result of the Science and the Spiritual Quest project is the discovery that there are multiple models of science-religion-faith interaction. Computer scientist, theologian, and artificial intelligence researcher Anne Foerst says that an underlying Cartesian mind-body split entails that all the traditional science-religion models - conflict, contrast, contact, confirmation - are flawed. New models must be generated, then, and this book displays some efforts in that project.

The book should be of interest to anyone interested in the science-religion dialog, but scientists and theologians ought especially to find it provocative and perhaps evocative. That is, these conversations could be evocative of further discussion; in fact, they have potential to b= e excellent classroom discussion starters and the book could serve well as a sourcebook for courses in religion, the history of science, and in epistemology. Clayton and Slack have provided models, as well, for how to deepen discussion and help people refine their thinking about the science-religion interface.

In the middle of his talk with physicist Arno Penzias, Slack quotes Wittgenstein: "We feel that when all scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely unanswered." To this, Penzias replies: "The meaning of life is not in science. The meaning of lif= e has little to do with how good our description of the world is. The description of the world we have today is remarkable . . . . [but] with all of this scientific progress we've made, the addition to our understanding o= f meaning is not all that hot." But when Slack offers the same Wittgenstein quote to another scientist, a very different response is forthcoming. That is the beauty and the challenge of this book.

If one comes away from the encounter with this array of approaches with any clarity, it is that, at the science-religion interface, humility and modest= y are appropriate. It is also clear that these issues are important and that they are not going away - and that some of our finest minds (meaning person= s with fine minds!) and deepest spirits are engaged in working on them. We have so much yet to learn about the universe; our spiritual quests have jus= t begun.

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Published   2003.04.28