Faith and Wisdom in Science

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 19 MAY 2014

McLeish, a professor of physics from Durham University, attempts to bring together the fields of religion and science in a manner designed to reframe and defuse the current debates between the two disciplines. He presents close readings of the Bible's various creation stories and argues that both disciplines are centered on questioning the nature of the world around us as part of our search for wisdom. McLeish urges readers not to "swallow an inadequate narrative that portrays science as simply replacing an ancient world of myth and superstition with a modern one of fact and comprehension." Biblical texts, he asserts, place particular value "on knowledge of the hidden structure of the world, some... going so far as to identify such an internal grasp of nature with the notion of wisdom itself." McLeish is at his best when describing the scientific process, the passion that many scientists bring to their work, and his belief that "science is more about imaginative and creative questions than it is about method, logic or answers to those questions." Nonetheless, his larger point, that a full reconciliation of religion and science is both possible and necessary, will likely remain out of reach for those who don't come to his text already sharing his underlying assumptions.