Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order by George Johnson (PDF)

Description

Are there really laws governing the universe? Or is the order we see a mere artifact of the way evolution wired the brain? And is what we call science only a set of myths in which quarks, DNA, and information fill the role once occupied by gods? These questions lie at the heart of George Johnson’s audacious exploration of the border between science and religion, cosmic accident and timeless law. Northern New Mexico is home both to the most provocative new enterprises in quantum physics, information science, and the evolution of complexity and to the cosmologies of the Tewa Indians and the Catholic Penitentes. As it draws the reader into this landscape, juxtaposing the systems of belief that have taken root there, Fire in the Mind into a gripping intellectual adventure story that compels us to ask where science ends and religion begins.”A must for all those seriously interested in the key ideas at the frontier of scientific discourse.”–Paul Davies

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This was a wonderful book – couldn’t put it down! The contrast between the Tewa indians and the scientists at Los Alamos made a wonderful backdrop from which to explore the frontiers of current thinking in cosmology and physics. George Johnson is a great writer. Perhaps being from New Mexico enhanced my enjoyment. Anyway, I loved it!

⭐good reading

⭐Love the book

⭐What is endlessly fascinating about this book — which lays out the human search for patterns and meaning — is the quality of the writing. Johnson can turn a sentence like nobody’s business. Highly recommended.

⭐Great thesis tying the human need to find structure and order to science and religion. Atheists can learn from the religion drivers, and religious folks can have a succinct and intelligent review of science.

⭐Holy science

⭐In his book “Fire in the Mind” George Johnson explores the frontiers between religion and science, between chaos and order, and between complexity and simplicity. This exploration forces the reader to rethink what “reality” is. In the process we realize that we “know” very little about reality. Despite the huge databases we are developing we actually have not answered the big questions about existence. Nor are we likely to do so in the near future.Fundamentalists who try to fit earth history (and indeed the history of the whole universe) into 6,000 years are almost certainly wrong. However, because of the nature of science we cannot congratulate ourselves just yet. While our data tell us that the earth itself is several billion years old, we also have made some unsupported assumptions (certainly not as many as the fundamentalists, but more than a few). Even mathematics and physics are not completely free of assumptions that cannot be tested, at least not yet.Researchers such as Murray Gell-Mann and Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute are busily probing the frontiers of complexity and in the process may be starting to get glimpses of just how weird our universe really is. Johnson, who is not a scientist, but a science writer, captures the excitement of this possibly ground-breaking research which may eventually show us a universe much different from that we had previously imagined. Questions arise about our immediate corner of that universe, the part with which we should be the most familiar. Is the evolution of life contingent as Steven Jay Gould might imagine it, or is it inevitably to result in creatures such as ourselves, as Simon Conway Morris believes? Are we just lumbering robots carrying our genes around (as Richard Dawkins has said), or something more significant? Can adaptationist’ “just so stories” explain life? Or are we creating all of our own “reality” because of a deep need for order? My guess is that the answer is somewhere in between these extreme views, but the actual reality (if we ever glimpse it) is probably going to be very strange to us.Johnson has brought up these questions and exposed them to our view, along with the researcher’s views and doubts. It is perhaps the latter that is most instructive because it demonstrates that, despite our often arrogant opinions on the matter, we still don’t really know for sure.

⭐George Johnson has taken on some of the most difficult issues and questions woven into the fabric of science and religion and seperates them into their component threads to be examined by ordinary readers. He explores various world views as seen from the mountains and plateaus of northern New Mexico, truly a Land of Enchantment. The vast majority of modern human beings take most of the information we process each day on faith, no less our ideas of science than our religious verities. Johnson explores these faiths in the context of the pueblos, mountains, cities and research institutions of this ancient land, and presents each of them with no hint of condescension or disparagement. A truly remarkable feat given his subject matter which ranges from bar fights in remote villages to sunsets brilliantly firing the walls of the Sangre de Cristo mountians to the rituals and traditions of the Catholic Church and the Assemblios de Dios, to those of the Tewas and the myths and rites of the most primative peoples of the region. This is the best book exploring the escatologies of science and religion that I have ever read. It makes me anxious to retire so that I can attend lectures at the Santa Fe Institute and explore the mesmerizing landscape of nortern New Mexico. Read it. You will never again think of the struggle between science and religion in the same way.

⭐サイエンスライターが、科学と信仰という深遠な問題に取り組んだ本です。信仰に関しては、カトリックについても触れられていますが、ネイティブアメリカンの信仰がメインの調査の対象となっています。ニューメキシコ州の荒野とそこに住む人々の生活がすてきな文体で綴られています。科学は主に究極の真理の探究を目指すとされる現代物理学が中心に扱われています。（サイエンス物の常であるように）ある程度の心得（たとえば量子論や宇宙論や進化論の基礎）がないと少し困惑する箇所もあるかもしれませんが、もし知識がなかったとしても全体の理解に関しては何ら支障はないと思われます。ニューメキシコという舞台は、実際にプエブロインディアンがまだ住んでいる土地であり、スペイン人のもたらした古いカトリックの風習も残っており、同時に複雑系の研究で有名なSanta Fe Instituteという現代理性の象徴のような施設も同居しているという不思議な場所で、これが物語りとしてうまく作用しています。宗教色が強いアメリカ社会において物議を醸すような事は書かれておりません。人間には皆、まわりの世界に関する真実や秩序を理解したいという強い欲求があり、そういう意味で科学も宗教も共通するものがあり・・・云々という点に落としどころを求めているという意味では、特に独創的な視点も見られません。しかし、本自体はとても誠実に書かれた秀作です。おすすめ。

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