What do you think?
Rate this book
Quantum Leap: How John Polkinghorne Found God in Science and Religion
Using key events in the life of physicist Sir John Polkinghorne, this is an introduction to the central ideas that make the relationship between science and religion such a fascinating field of investigation An engaging biography-cum-appraisal of John Polkinghorne's life and work, this book uses his story to approach some of the most important questions in life, including How should a scientist view God? Why do we pray, and what do we expect from it? Does the universe have a point? and What happens after death? Sir John Polkinghorne is a British particle physicist who, after 25 years of research and discovery in academia, resigned his post to become an Anglican priest and theologian. Since then he has written more than 20 books exploring the relationship of science and theology. As a physicist, he participated in the research that led to the discovery of the quark, the smallest known particle. Here, both his religious and scientific beliefs are explored in full detail. A 2011 Crossings Book Club selection.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
5 people are currently reading
90 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 3, 2020
John Polkinghorne was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for distinguished service to science, religion, learning, and medical ethics—a rare occurrence since intellectuals are rarely knighted; and in 2002 he was awarded the Templeton Prize, one of the world’s largest cash honors, for his contributions to religion. In his professional research, Polkinghorne was part of the team that began to challenge the longstanding conclusion that the smallest known particles that made up atoms were protons and neutrons. Experimental evidence suggested that there was something “inside” protons and neutrons, which were eventually labeled quarks and gluons. He said, “I didn’t discover the quark. My team made mathematically well-formulated models to show patterns if there were these things called quarks. The role my team played in quark understanding is that we made them mathematically respectable.”
Polkinghorne knew he could hold his own in a debate against [Stephen] Weinberg. What he wanted to communicate was that religion doesn’t tell science what to think, but religion makes science intelligible. Religion gives insight. The physical world of science is where the laws of nature hold, but the physical world of science is only part of ultimate reality. In the spiritual world is a deeper reality. (14)
Galileo became the poster boy for the incompatibility of science and religion, despite his own eloquent insistence that there was no such incompatibility. (19)
At a memorial service for [Carl] Sagan in St John the Divine Cathedral in Manhattan, the Revd Joan Campbell said, ‘He would say to me with a smile, ‘You’re so smart. Why do you believe in God?’ And I would say to him, ‘You’re so smart. Why don’t you believe in God?’”^23 (26)
Both science and faith are means by which we seek to understand ultimate realities. But they are different in how they look at those realities and what questions they ask. Polkinghorne likes the homey and quintessentially British example of making a pot of tea: A person observes a kettle of water on a stove and asks, “Why is the water in the kettle boiling?”
One answer—the sort provided by a scientist—is that burning gas is creating heat, which raises the temperature of the water to the boiling point. Another answer is that the kettle is boiling on the stove because I am making tea—and would you care to have a cup of tea with me? Both responses are valid and in touch with reality. Polkinghorne says, and they certainly don’t need to cancel one another or even compete. In fact, the two explanations complement each other, providing a more complete picture of the tea-making enterprise, answering more questions, and giving the activity a rich and satisfying description. The two explanations are “friends, not foes” he says. (33)
[Then in seminary, he visited hospitals and one day] …recalled one woman who could not bring herself to her husband’s bedside during his painful experience. The former mathematical physicist gently took her hand, led her to her husband’s bedside, and sat with the two of them until the suffering eased. “There was no magic word or magic action that would make everything all right, but there was a modest kind of tacit and respectful alongsideness that could be offered, both through presence and through prayer,” he said. (59)
Prayer is central to religion. It is complex and confusing, despite what a 2009 New York Times Magazine article reported. That writer quoted a rabbi who said that prayer comes down to saying four things: “Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!” ^4 (65)
The worldview that emerged in the wake of Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity and the later discoveries related to electricity and magnetism was mechanical. The world was a grand machine… Just as one could not imagine opening up the back of a clock and changing something without totally disrupting the clock, so the world seems closed to the possibility of God’s intervention in the natural course of events. (73)
More recent discoveries, however, have changed that perspective and now the mechanical metaphor seems inadequate: “Though there are some Newtonian clocks, most of [the world] is made of clouds.”^13 The “cloud” metaphor carries the idea that the pieces of the world fit together loosely, with lots of flexibility and even unpredictability.
“Christian theology must always seek to find a middle way between two extreme and unacceptable pictures of God’s relationship to creation [deism & Jinni in a bottle],” Polkinghorne said.^15 (74-5)
In prayer, [we are] aligning our wills with God’s will. When several people commit to aligning their wills with God’s will, that collective spirit acts like laser light, he said, where the light is very intense because the many waves of light work together in the same wave pattern (the crests of the waves are the same, and so are the troughs). The mutual alignment makes the laser beam more powerful. All the waves are in step. When they are not in step, the waves and troughs cancel each other out and the result is a weak beam. “In prayer we are seeking a laser-like coherence between human will and divine will, and when those two wills are aligned, I believe things can happen that would not happen if they were at cross-purposes.”^17
Polkinghorne had already wrestled with the idea that light is both a wave and a particle, two fundamentally contradictory viewpoints, which resembles the dual nature of Christ. Scientists hold on to perplexing paradoxes all the time. (89)
Do miracles occur outside of established natural laws? Polkinghorne points to superconductivity. Electrical conduction is a common phenomenon that works consistently most of the time; one common feature of such conduction is that the resistance of the metal causes it to heat up, and energy is lost. But at certain temperatures, in certain metals, things change suddenly and this resistance disappears. We call this superconductivity—current now flows freely. And, in certain superconductors, the presence of additional metals allows the superconduction to take place at much higher temperatures. (Scientists are working hard to find a superconductor that will work at room temperature, which would be a major technological breakthrough that would all but eliminate the waste heat generated by devices like computers and cellphones.)
The laws of nature don’t change when a conductor turns into a superconductor, or when new metals are added to existing superconductors. But the consequences change in unexpected ways. “A regime changed, but not the laws themselves,” he said. Polkinghorne sees Jesus’ resurrection as a new regime, accompanied by a new phenomena. “The uniqueness of the resurrection is in its singularity, which lies in its timing within history, as the foretaste of what awaits all of us—the restoration of unending life.” (95-96)
Wright said that scientists can believe in the resurrection because the event “transcends but includes what we call history and what we call science… Insofar as I understand scientific method, when something turns up which doesn’t fit the paradigm you’re working with, one option at least, perhaps when all others have failed, is to change the paradigm, not to exclude everything you’ve known to that point but to include it within a larger whole.”^25 (97)
When Polkinghorne talks about God to people who don’t believe—“I admit that it is hard for some to make the leap from physics to God”—music is a good intermediary step. From a physical, or scientific, perspective one can explain how music “happens;” sounds originate from vibrations—in vocal cords, or string made of nylon, horse hair, steel, or a dried animal skin drawn tightly across a hollow log. The vibrations move into the air and are carried by the molecules in the air, as they vibrate. These vibrations spread out from the source and eventually into the ear canals of listeners. Here they vibrate the tissues within the ear, sending an electrical signal to the brain, which decodes the signal and determines whether the sound is pleasant. That’s music, at least one version of it. But of course, that’s not the whole story.
“Your understanding is limited if all you know is the scientific reduction,” Polkinghorne said. “Music is more than the release of neurosensors in the brain. There is timeless mystery to music. It’s central to the world of metaphysics." (101-102)
(To use for the Fine-Tuning Argument—for God’s Existence):
Imagine that you have been given a UCM—a Universe Creating Machine. [See notes on this section in other file.]
The UCM is an impressive piece of equipment. You are mesmerized by the number of knobs on it. Each knob specifies the scientific structure of the world you want to create. You’re drawn to the gravity knobs because (105) gravity seems so much simpler than some of the others that have names like “fine structure constant” and “electromagnetic coupling strength.” Do you want the kind Isaac Newton discovered in our universe, or some other kind? Do you want weak gravity, so the earth would be like the moon, where humans can cavort like children on a trampoline? Do you want gravity like it is now? Or do you want it much stronger, so it would be hard to get up from your chair?
How about another one of the big knobs on the machine—the one labelled “electromagnetism?” …the force that holds atoms and molecules together, and we are made of atoms and molecules. (106)
There are other forces of nature…to make sure your universe functions in some sensible way. There is a so-called “strong” force that holds protons and neutrons together.
You’ll have to decide if you want a vast universe with trillions of stars, like ours, or if you’d want something more manageable.
Start with the Big Bang…The expansion rate has to be set precisely. Too slow and gravity would have pulled everything back into a black hole. Too fast and all the matter would disperse and there would be nothing but isolated atoms spread throughout a vast and lifeless cosmic darkness.
Stars play a surprisingly important role in making the universe habitable. (107)
If you change any of the knobs on your UCM, you will lose the capacity to make carbon, and you'll have a universe with no life in it.
The balance of gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces has made the sun burn in a uniform manner for all this time. If that balance is disturbed by changing the settings on your UCM, then stars burn too cool to provide adequate energy, or they burn too hot and fast to provide the energy needed for life.
The forces of nature must also collaborate so the stars explode at the end of their lives—otherwise these essential elements will remain in the dead corpse of the star. Every atom of our bodies comes from these ashes…turn the knobs a bit and the stars don’t explode at the end of their lives.^2 (109)
Tony Hewish, a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer, says the accuracy of just one of the forces—the setting on its UCM knob—is comparable to getting the mix of flour and sugar right to within one grain of sugar in a cake ten times the mass of the sun.^4 Or it’s the equivalent of getting a hole in one in golf when the distance between the tee and the hole is thirteen times the distance between Earth and Pluto.
Freeman Dyson, another great scientist who had the soul of a poet put it like this in his biography Disturbing the Universe: “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”^6
It’s possible, of course that the Something Else is just (110) an accident. One speculation is that there really is an actual UCM out there and it has created trillions of other universes and continues to do so, like a magical popcorn maker that can’t be turned off. (“multi-verse”)
Polkinghorne is skeptical that the multi-verse explanation actually explains anything. He likes to quote the philosopher John Leslie, who tells the following parable.
Imagine that you are about to be executed by firing squad. You are marched to the execution area, tied to a stake, and see ten expert marksmen raise their guns and aim them at you. The leader yells “Fire!” and you hear the shots. Then something dawns on you. Nothing hurts—you’re still here—you survived!
Naturally you would wonder exactly how that happened. Few of us would walk away, shrug our shoulders, and say, “Well, that was a close one!” Most of us would want an explanation. Leslie offers two explanations. First, there were so many other executions that day, and marksmen can’t hit their targets every single time, so it was just a mathematical fluke, highly unlikely, quite unbelievable, but within the laws of probability. Fate was on your side, so good for you. Second, the marksmen intended to miss. They, not fate—whatever that is—were on your side.^7
This, says Polkinghorne, is a way to look at why life is possible in this universe and why we are here. It’s not satisfying to simply say, “Well, we’re here,” and leave it at that. It’s possible that there are many universes…since it’s all done by “fate”—that allowed for carbon-based life. (111)
It’s also possible that this is the only universe there is…we can choose which explanation seems more satisfactory.
Those who look at the universe as fine-tuned, just-right for life, call this condition the Anthropic Principle.
Only a cosmos at least as big as ours could endure for the fourteen
billion years necessary for evolving carbon-based life. You need ten billion years for the first generation stars to make the carbon, then about four billion years for evolution to yield beings of our sort of complexity. It’s a process that just can’t be hurried.^9
Nor can it be attributed to good luck.
“…Were there trillions of experiments to get this fine tuning? That’s highly speculative. It’s a metaphysical guess either way. There are an infinite number of even integers, but none of them has the property of oddness.” This is an important analogy. Just because you have a UCM that produced an infinity of universes does not mean you will produce all possible universes.
The machine would have to be “tuned” itself in some way to guarantee that it covered the relevant possibilities.
“You have to say that either there is a Divine Mind or that we hold the winning lottery ticket.”
He chaired a committee that oversaw the code of practice for fetal tissue research on Parkinson’s disease. Polkinghorne also chaired a national review board that dealt with policies related to substance abuse…[also] as a member of the Human Genetics Commission, which evaluated the ethical consequences of recent advances in human genetic research. He chaired the committee on genetic testing, developing guidelines to prevent people from being subjected to genetic testing without their knowledge, and to develop regulations on the use of genetic information. (123)
Polkinghorne knew he could hold his own in a debate against [Stephen] Weinberg. What he wanted to communicate was that religion doesn’t tell science what to think, but religion makes science intelligible. Religion gives insight. The physical world of science is where the laws of nature hold, but the physical world of science is only part of ultimate reality. In the spiritual world is a deeper reality. (14)
Galileo became the poster boy for the incompatibility of science and religion, despite his own eloquent insistence that there was no such incompatibility. (19)
At a memorial service for [Carl] Sagan in St John the Divine Cathedral in Manhattan, the Revd Joan Campbell said, ‘He would say to me with a smile, ‘You’re so smart. Why do you believe in God?’ And I would say to him, ‘You’re so smart. Why don’t you believe in God?’”^23 (26)
Both science and faith are means by which we seek to understand ultimate realities. But they are different in how they look at those realities and what questions they ask. Polkinghorne likes the homey and quintessentially British example of making a pot of tea: A person observes a kettle of water on a stove and asks, “Why is the water in the kettle boiling?”
One answer—the sort provided by a scientist—is that burning gas is creating heat, which raises the temperature of the water to the boiling point. Another answer is that the kettle is boiling on the stove because I am making tea—and would you care to have a cup of tea with me? Both responses are valid and in touch with reality. Polkinghorne says, and they certainly don’t need to cancel one another or even compete. In fact, the two explanations complement each other, providing a more complete picture of the tea-making enterprise, answering more questions, and giving the activity a rich and satisfying description. The two explanations are “friends, not foes” he says. (33)
[Then in seminary, he visited hospitals and one day] …recalled one woman who could not bring herself to her husband’s bedside during his painful experience. The former mathematical physicist gently took her hand, led her to her husband’s bedside, and sat with the two of them until the suffering eased. “There was no magic word or magic action that would make everything all right, but there was a modest kind of tacit and respectful alongsideness that could be offered, both through presence and through prayer,” he said. (59)
Prayer is central to religion. It is complex and confusing, despite what a 2009 New York Times Magazine article reported. That writer quoted a rabbi who said that prayer comes down to saying four things: “Gimme! Thanks! Oops! and Wow!” ^4 (65)
The worldview that emerged in the wake of Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity and the later discoveries related to electricity and magnetism was mechanical. The world was a grand machine… Just as one could not imagine opening up the back of a clock and changing something without totally disrupting the clock, so the world seems closed to the possibility of God’s intervention in the natural course of events. (73)
More recent discoveries, however, have changed that perspective and now the mechanical metaphor seems inadequate: “Though there are some Newtonian clocks, most of [the world] is made of clouds.”^13 The “cloud” metaphor carries the idea that the pieces of the world fit together loosely, with lots of flexibility and even unpredictability.
“Christian theology must always seek to find a middle way between two extreme and unacceptable pictures of God’s relationship to creation [deism & Jinni in a bottle],” Polkinghorne said.^15 (74-5)
In prayer, [we are] aligning our wills with God’s will. When several people commit to aligning their wills with God’s will, that collective spirit acts like laser light, he said, where the light is very intense because the many waves of light work together in the same wave pattern (the crests of the waves are the same, and so are the troughs). The mutual alignment makes the laser beam more powerful. All the waves are in step. When they are not in step, the waves and troughs cancel each other out and the result is a weak beam. “In prayer we are seeking a laser-like coherence between human will and divine will, and when those two wills are aligned, I believe things can happen that would not happen if they were at cross-purposes.”^17
Polkinghorne had already wrestled with the idea that light is both a wave and a particle, two fundamentally contradictory viewpoints, which resembles the dual nature of Christ. Scientists hold on to perplexing paradoxes all the time. (89)
Do miracles occur outside of established natural laws? Polkinghorne points to superconductivity. Electrical conduction is a common phenomenon that works consistently most of the time; one common feature of such conduction is that the resistance of the metal causes it to heat up, and energy is lost. But at certain temperatures, in certain metals, things change suddenly and this resistance disappears. We call this superconductivity—current now flows freely. And, in certain superconductors, the presence of additional metals allows the superconduction to take place at much higher temperatures. (Scientists are working hard to find a superconductor that will work at room temperature, which would be a major technological breakthrough that would all but eliminate the waste heat generated by devices like computers and cellphones.)
The laws of nature don’t change when a conductor turns into a superconductor, or when new metals are added to existing superconductors. But the consequences change in unexpected ways. “A regime changed, but not the laws themselves,” he said. Polkinghorne sees Jesus’ resurrection as a new regime, accompanied by a new phenomena. “The uniqueness of the resurrection is in its singularity, which lies in its timing within history, as the foretaste of what awaits all of us—the restoration of unending life.” (95-96)
Wright said that scientists can believe in the resurrection because the event “transcends but includes what we call history and what we call science… Insofar as I understand scientific method, when something turns up which doesn’t fit the paradigm you’re working with, one option at least, perhaps when all others have failed, is to change the paradigm, not to exclude everything you’ve known to that point but to include it within a larger whole.”^25 (97)
When Polkinghorne talks about God to people who don’t believe—“I admit that it is hard for some to make the leap from physics to God”—music is a good intermediary step. From a physical, or scientific, perspective one can explain how music “happens;” sounds originate from vibrations—in vocal cords, or string made of nylon, horse hair, steel, or a dried animal skin drawn tightly across a hollow log. The vibrations move into the air and are carried by the molecules in the air, as they vibrate. These vibrations spread out from the source and eventually into the ear canals of listeners. Here they vibrate the tissues within the ear, sending an electrical signal to the brain, which decodes the signal and determines whether the sound is pleasant. That’s music, at least one version of it. But of course, that’s not the whole story.
“Your understanding is limited if all you know is the scientific reduction,” Polkinghorne said. “Music is more than the release of neurosensors in the brain. There is timeless mystery to music. It’s central to the world of metaphysics." (101-102)
(To use for the Fine-Tuning Argument—for God’s Existence):
Imagine that you have been given a UCM—a Universe Creating Machine. [See notes on this section in other file.]
The UCM is an impressive piece of equipment. You are mesmerized by the number of knobs on it. Each knob specifies the scientific structure of the world you want to create. You’re drawn to the gravity knobs because (105) gravity seems so much simpler than some of the others that have names like “fine structure constant” and “electromagnetic coupling strength.” Do you want the kind Isaac Newton discovered in our universe, or some other kind? Do you want weak gravity, so the earth would be like the moon, where humans can cavort like children on a trampoline? Do you want gravity like it is now? Or do you want it much stronger, so it would be hard to get up from your chair?
How about another one of the big knobs on the machine—the one labelled “electromagnetism?” …the force that holds atoms and molecules together, and we are made of atoms and molecules. (106)
There are other forces of nature…to make sure your universe functions in some sensible way. There is a so-called “strong” force that holds protons and neutrons together.
You’ll have to decide if you want a vast universe with trillions of stars, like ours, or if you’d want something more manageable.
Start with the Big Bang…The expansion rate has to be set precisely. Too slow and gravity would have pulled everything back into a black hole. Too fast and all the matter would disperse and there would be nothing but isolated atoms spread throughout a vast and lifeless cosmic darkness.
Stars play a surprisingly important role in making the universe habitable. (107)
If you change any of the knobs on your UCM, you will lose the capacity to make carbon, and you'll have a universe with no life in it.
The balance of gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces has made the sun burn in a uniform manner for all this time. If that balance is disturbed by changing the settings on your UCM, then stars burn too cool to provide adequate energy, or they burn too hot and fast to provide the energy needed for life.
The forces of nature must also collaborate so the stars explode at the end of their lives—otherwise these essential elements will remain in the dead corpse of the star. Every atom of our bodies comes from these ashes…turn the knobs a bit and the stars don’t explode at the end of their lives.^2 (109)
Tony Hewish, a Nobel Prize-winning astronomer, says the accuracy of just one of the forces—the setting on its UCM knob—is comparable to getting the mix of flour and sugar right to within one grain of sugar in a cake ten times the mass of the sun.^4 Or it’s the equivalent of getting a hole in one in golf when the distance between the tee and the hole is thirteen times the distance between Earth and Pluto.
Freeman Dyson, another great scientist who had the soul of a poet put it like this in his biography Disturbing the Universe: “The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.”^6
It’s possible, of course that the Something Else is just (110) an accident. One speculation is that there really is an actual UCM out there and it has created trillions of other universes and continues to do so, like a magical popcorn maker that can’t be turned off. (“multi-verse”)
Polkinghorne is skeptical that the multi-verse explanation actually explains anything. He likes to quote the philosopher John Leslie, who tells the following parable.
Imagine that you are about to be executed by firing squad. You are marched to the execution area, tied to a stake, and see ten expert marksmen raise their guns and aim them at you. The leader yells “Fire!” and you hear the shots. Then something dawns on you. Nothing hurts—you’re still here—you survived!
Naturally you would wonder exactly how that happened. Few of us would walk away, shrug our shoulders, and say, “Well, that was a close one!” Most of us would want an explanation. Leslie offers two explanations. First, there were so many other executions that day, and marksmen can’t hit their targets every single time, so it was just a mathematical fluke, highly unlikely, quite unbelievable, but within the laws of probability. Fate was on your side, so good for you. Second, the marksmen intended to miss. They, not fate—whatever that is—were on your side.^7
This, says Polkinghorne, is a way to look at why life is possible in this universe and why we are here. It’s not satisfying to simply say, “Well, we’re here,” and leave it at that. It’s possible that there are many universes…since it’s all done by “fate”—that allowed for carbon-based life. (111)
It’s also possible that this is the only universe there is…we can choose which explanation seems more satisfactory.
Those who look at the universe as fine-tuned, just-right for life, call this condition the Anthropic Principle.
Only a cosmos at least as big as ours could endure for the fourteen
billion years necessary for evolving carbon-based life. You need ten billion years for the first generation stars to make the carbon, then about four billion years for evolution to yield beings of our sort of complexity. It’s a process that just can’t be hurried.^9
Nor can it be attributed to good luck.
“…Were there trillions of experiments to get this fine tuning? That’s highly speculative. It’s a metaphysical guess either way. There are an infinite number of even integers, but none of them has the property of oddness.” This is an important analogy. Just because you have a UCM that produced an infinity of universes does not mean you will produce all possible universes.
The machine would have to be “tuned” itself in some way to guarantee that it covered the relevant possibilities.
“You have to say that either there is a Divine Mind or that we hold the winning lottery ticket.”
He chaired a committee that oversaw the code of practice for fetal tissue research on Parkinson’s disease. Polkinghorne also chaired a national review board that dealt with policies related to substance abuse…[also] as a member of the Human Genetics Commission, which evaluated the ethical consequences of recent advances in human genetic research. He chaired the committee on genetic testing, developing guidelines to prevent people from being subjected to genetic testing without their knowledge, and to develop regulations on the use of genetic information. (123)
November 2, 2012
Keeping in mind that this is a book about John Polkinghorne rather than by him, it is a wonderful read. It describes Polkinghorne's career in theoretical physics, his switch to the priesthood, his career as an Anglican priest, his re-entry into academia, and his "retirement." Although this book was not written by Polkinghorne, it is filled with enough Polkinghorne quotations from the numerous interviews that the authors had with him and from his previous books that it almost feels like it was written by him. It touches on many of the ideas that Polkinghorne has discussed in his own 35 books.
In Chapter 1 (Intellectual Suicide), the authors describe the New Atheists' case via the writings of Stephen Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and E. O. Wilson, intermingled with Polkinghorne's responses.
Chapter 2 (Room for Reality) describes his youth, education, and career as a theoretical particle physicist and his decision to switch to theology at age 49.
Chapter 3 (Droplets of Grace) covers prayer and Polkinghorne's prayer life, largely in the context of the illness and death of his wife of 51 years. It including a discussion of whether prayer can change things.
Chapter 4 (Regime change) tells of his experiences and feelings as the vicar of the only church in a small village near Canterbury and his attitude toward being able to celebrate the Eucharist. This chapter also covers miracles and the topic of science and the resurrection. Polkinghorne argues that scientists hold on to perplexing paradoxes all the time (particle vs. wave nature of light, quantum physics) and argues that "We live in a subtle world and both science and theology need to be subtle in their accounts of it."
Chapter 5 (Here and There) includes a discussion of the Anthropic Principle and what it shows and what it doesn't show.
Chapter 6 (Law and order) deals with medical ethic issues that Polkinghorne helped the UK to address. It also touches on the problems resulting from taking the Bible too literalistically versus accepting an evolving understanding of the Scriptures.
Chapter 7 (Life after Life) deals with what constitutes human identity, particularly that which continues after physical death and mentions his personal opinion that "God's offer of love and mercy is withdrawn at death. We still have a free will after death. We're still human beings."
Chapter 8 (In Particular) includes a very nice discussion of the possible role of science in interfaith dialogue by beginning with how each faith understands how the discoveries of modern science relate to their traditional theological understandings. It also includes speculation about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe and its implications.
The book leads up to Polkinghorne's three conclusions regarding the grand questions that religions ponder:
1. Belief in God is rational. Such a belief might be incorrect, but it is not a delusion.
2. No real conflict exists between science and Christianity, though there are unanswered questions about how they relate.
3. Most objects in the universe are not just machines set in motion after the Big Bang and running on their own. We live in a world of true becoming, where the future is not just an inevitable consequence of the past.
Overall, this book is an enjoyable, easy-to-read introduction to or refresher on Polkinghorne. The six pages of end notes include references to many of his books for anyone who wishes to further pursue his take on science and religion. Unfortunately, the publisher's word processor left something to be desired: lines of words are run together frequently. Hopefully that can be fixed in future printings.
In Chapter 1 (Intellectual Suicide), the authors describe the New Atheists' case via the writings of Stephen Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and E. O. Wilson, intermingled with Polkinghorne's responses.
Chapter 2 (Room for Reality) describes his youth, education, and career as a theoretical particle physicist and his decision to switch to theology at age 49.
Chapter 3 (Droplets of Grace) covers prayer and Polkinghorne's prayer life, largely in the context of the illness and death of his wife of 51 years. It including a discussion of whether prayer can change things.
Chapter 4 (Regime change) tells of his experiences and feelings as the vicar of the only church in a small village near Canterbury and his attitude toward being able to celebrate the Eucharist. This chapter also covers miracles and the topic of science and the resurrection. Polkinghorne argues that scientists hold on to perplexing paradoxes all the time (particle vs. wave nature of light, quantum physics) and argues that "We live in a subtle world and both science and theology need to be subtle in their accounts of it."
Chapter 5 (Here and There) includes a discussion of the Anthropic Principle and what it shows and what it doesn't show.
Chapter 6 (Law and order) deals with medical ethic issues that Polkinghorne helped the UK to address. It also touches on the problems resulting from taking the Bible too literalistically versus accepting an evolving understanding of the Scriptures.
Chapter 7 (Life after Life) deals with what constitutes human identity, particularly that which continues after physical death and mentions his personal opinion that "God's offer of love and mercy is withdrawn at death. We still have a free will after death. We're still human beings."
Chapter 8 (In Particular) includes a very nice discussion of the possible role of science in interfaith dialogue by beginning with how each faith understands how the discoveries of modern science relate to their traditional theological understandings. It also includes speculation about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe and its implications.
The book leads up to Polkinghorne's three conclusions regarding the grand questions that religions ponder:
1. Belief in God is rational. Such a belief might be incorrect, but it is not a delusion.
2. No real conflict exists between science and Christianity, though there are unanswered questions about how they relate.
3. Most objects in the universe are not just machines set in motion after the Big Bang and running on their own. We live in a world of true becoming, where the future is not just an inevitable consequence of the past.
Overall, this book is an enjoyable, easy-to-read introduction to or refresher on Polkinghorne. The six pages of end notes include references to many of his books for anyone who wishes to further pursue his take on science and religion. Unfortunately, the publisher's word processor left something to be desired: lines of words are run together frequently. Hopefully that can be fixed in future printings.
September 20, 2011
A bit too wandering a bio for my taste.
July 31, 2020
2.5 stars, rounded up.
I expected to love this book, as the subtitle and blurb led me to believe that it chronicled Polkinghorne's discovery of the existence of God through his scientific work, and ultimately his salvation. I had purchased this at a Christian bookstore as well, so was surprised that it is essentially a biography of the physicist, who had been a practicing Anglican for his entire life. While he did leave his prestigious position within Cambridge to become a priest, it was misleading to market the book by saying he found God through science. The book devotes a great deal of time discussing other notable physicists and scientists and their personal beliefs regarding God. In a relatively short book, I'm not sure why this was included. While the authors did describe Polkinghorne's faith and scientific accomplishments, I wish they had gone more in depth on both topics. I come away from this book feeling like Polkinghorne is ambiguous and noncommittal to his religious convictions, which I'm assuming is not accurate due to his decision to pursue priesthood.
While I believe his life warrants a biography, this was not well written and frankly was boring at many points. I also took issue with my edition having many instances of poor formatting, with multiple sentences not having any spacing between the words.
I expected to love this book, as the subtitle and blurb led me to believe that it chronicled Polkinghorne's discovery of the existence of God through his scientific work, and ultimately his salvation. I had purchased this at a Christian bookstore as well, so was surprised that it is essentially a biography of the physicist, who had been a practicing Anglican for his entire life. While he did leave his prestigious position within Cambridge to become a priest, it was misleading to market the book by saying he found God through science. The book devotes a great deal of time discussing other notable physicists and scientists and their personal beliefs regarding God. In a relatively short book, I'm not sure why this was included. While the authors did describe Polkinghorne's faith and scientific accomplishments, I wish they had gone more in depth on both topics. I come away from this book feeling like Polkinghorne is ambiguous and noncommittal to his religious convictions, which I'm assuming is not accurate due to his decision to pursue priesthood.
While I believe his life warrants a biography, this was not well written and frankly was boring at many points. I also took issue with my edition having many instances of poor formatting, with multiple sentences not having any spacing between the words.
January 5, 2025
Great brief spiritual biography that is a good introduction to the life of John Polkinghorne. Once you read this, go to Polkinghorne's own book, "The Faith of a Physicist".
December 29, 2011
Readers of this journal [Perspectives of Science and Christian Faith] will need no introduction to John Polkinghorne. He is the author of over thirty books on science and faith, including an autobiography; so it was with some surprise that I discovered this new biography. This, however, is no traditional biography. Nelson and Giberson attempt to “tell the story of Polkinghorne, and along the way … unfold some bigger issues” (p. 7).
We are presented with the life of Polkinghorne, from his birth in 1930, the death of his brother during World War II, his education at Trinity College, Cambridge, his career in particle physics, through the ordination process in the Anglican Church, to parish life in Kent, and back to academia in Cambridge. In between this, we are introduced to many of the key ideas of Polkinghorne. These include the relationship of science and faith, the nature of reality, the resurrection of Jesus, the role of prayer, miracles, the problem of suffering and pain, and life after death.
As I read, I kept getting a sense of déjà vu. There is little or no new material here, but what we have is a well-constructed summary of Polkinghorne’s books interspersed with biographical details. Interviews have been conducted with Polkinghorne of which we have a few extracts, but the majority is material gleaned and edited from Polkinghorne’s writings. This is a strength of the book; it provides a good introduction to Polkinghorne. It is also its weakness as it provides no new information or insight.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency toward the hagiographic—very little or no criticism of Polkinghorne is presented. This is a shame as some of Polkinghorne’s views will be controversial to many Christians, particularly his view of post-mortem salvation. The strength of this approach is that the authors let Polkinghorne “speak” for himself; the weakness is that we are left wondering what Nelson and Giberson’s views are.
At times, what is presented here is a rationalistic, almost evidentialistic, view of Polkinghorne. This is even suggested by the book’s subtitle, “How John Polkinghorne Found God in Science and Religion.” It seems to imply that we find God, rather than that he finds us: “it’s the evidence that leads a physicist to believe in the equations, and it’s the evidence that leads a person of faith to believe in God” (p. 183).
This well-written book will provide an amuse-bouche or a taster into the life and work of Polkinghorne. It is strong on description but weak on evaluation. The book is not aimed at readers of this journal who have thought through issues of the integration of science and faith; rather, it is aimed at those who think that being a Christian and a scientist involves “intellectual suicide,” or is as logical as being a “vegetarian butcher” to use Polkinghorne’s phrase. There are five pages of endnotes, but no index and no list of Polkinghorne’s books.
For those who want to know more about Polkinghorne’s life, I suggest obtaining a copy of his autobiography From Physicist to Priest. For more on his view of the interaction of science and faith, a good first place is his Quarks, Chaos and Christianity and then his Reason and Reality.
We are presented with the life of Polkinghorne, from his birth in 1930, the death of his brother during World War II, his education at Trinity College, Cambridge, his career in particle physics, through the ordination process in the Anglican Church, to parish life in Kent, and back to academia in Cambridge. In between this, we are introduced to many of the key ideas of Polkinghorne. These include the relationship of science and faith, the nature of reality, the resurrection of Jesus, the role of prayer, miracles, the problem of suffering and pain, and life after death.
As I read, I kept getting a sense of déjà vu. There is little or no new material here, but what we have is a well-constructed summary of Polkinghorne’s books interspersed with biographical details. Interviews have been conducted with Polkinghorne of which we have a few extracts, but the majority is material gleaned and edited from Polkinghorne’s writings. This is a strength of the book; it provides a good introduction to Polkinghorne. It is also its weakness as it provides no new information or insight.
Unfortunately, there is a tendency toward the hagiographic—very little or no criticism of Polkinghorne is presented. This is a shame as some of Polkinghorne’s views will be controversial to many Christians, particularly his view of post-mortem salvation. The strength of this approach is that the authors let Polkinghorne “speak” for himself; the weakness is that we are left wondering what Nelson and Giberson’s views are.
At times, what is presented here is a rationalistic, almost evidentialistic, view of Polkinghorne. This is even suggested by the book’s subtitle, “How John Polkinghorne Found God in Science and Religion.” It seems to imply that we find God, rather than that he finds us: “it’s the evidence that leads a physicist to believe in the equations, and it’s the evidence that leads a person of faith to believe in God” (p. 183).
This well-written book will provide an amuse-bouche or a taster into the life and work of Polkinghorne. It is strong on description but weak on evaluation. The book is not aimed at readers of this journal who have thought through issues of the integration of science and faith; rather, it is aimed at those who think that being a Christian and a scientist involves “intellectual suicide,” or is as logical as being a “vegetarian butcher” to use Polkinghorne’s phrase. There are five pages of endnotes, but no index and no list of Polkinghorne’s books.
For those who want to know more about Polkinghorne’s life, I suggest obtaining a copy of his autobiography From Physicist to Priest. For more on his view of the interaction of science and faith, a good first place is his Quarks, Chaos and Christianity and then his Reason and Reality.
July 17, 2013
This book taught me an illustration explaining how religion and science can coexist: they are two ways of answering the same questions. Polkinghorn presents the question, "why is the water in the kettle on the stove boiling?" A scientist might answer by explaining that heat is transferring between the stove-top and the kettle to the water and that it has raised the kinetic energy of the water above water's boiling point. Another person might answer that the water is boiling because he is going to have a cup of tea and offering you one as well.
I liked learning how Polkinghorn justified that there is no conflict in having both faith in God and belief in science. This book also exposed me to some of the big questions that I will likely face as I enter a career in science as a man of Christian faith. Overall, I had never heard of Polkinghorn before so I thought it was a good introduction to who John Polkinghorn is.
I liked learning how Polkinghorn justified that there is no conflict in having both faith in God and belief in science. This book also exposed me to some of the big questions that I will likely face as I enter a career in science as a man of Christian faith. Overall, I had never heard of Polkinghorn before so I thought it was a good introduction to who John Polkinghorn is.
August 8, 2012
Not the best introduction to John Polkinhorne (for that it's best to read the man himself) but an interesting and engaging background to the man and his thought. Typesetting went wrong in places in my edition.
August 14, 2013
This is an excellent book for anyone interested in how faith and science can work together and the life of John Polkinghorne. A well written book that tackles a lot of big questions, shows both sides of the arguments, and refrains from being 'preachy' about things. I loved it.
February 7, 2012
An engaging read. However the chapters tended to be too long and meandering in content. Overall I enjoyed this book.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews