The Fire in the Equations

by Ferguson, Kitty

• ISBN13: 9780802843555
• ISBN10: 0802843557
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-09-01
• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co

Summary

Since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, many have found science and belief in God irreconcilable. Now, in the final decade of the twentieth century, stunning advances in physics, biology, and the new fields of chaos and complexity have brought the conflict to a crucial stage. More and more, scientists have begun to look for a single fundamental law or truth that underlies the beginning of the universe and its continued existence. But can we truly find either God or a scientific theory that will erase once and for all the notion of God? This strikingly original book expertly yet clearly encapsulates the various cosmological arguments from science, religion, and philosophy for the nonspecialist. Called "a brilliant intermediary between the thinking of the physicist and the thinking of ordinary people" by a German radio commentator, Kitty Ferguson provides a tour de force review of the modern search for fundamental truth, writing in simple, readable prose and using relevant analogies. The result is a provocative, sometimes mind-bending challenge to reconsider the way we think about ourselves, our origin, and our destiny. Moving beyond Stephen Hawking's quest (in A Brief History of Time) "to know the mind of God", Ferguson takes us one step nearer the answer to science's ultimate question: What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?

Author Biography

Kitty Ferguson is an independent scholar and lecturer who lives in Chester, New Jersey. She has also written the bestselling books Tycho & Kepler: The Unlikely Partnership That Forever Changed Our Understanding

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
A Word about Inclusive Language	p. xiv
Acknowledgements	p. xv
'They Buried Him in Westminster Abbey'	p. 1
Seeing Things	p. 4
Is the rational universe an illusion?	p. 12
'In Nature's infinite book of mysteries ...' can we read very much at all?	p. 19
Is objective reality a mirage?	p. 25
Are we really free agents?	p. 30
Is the universe a uni-verse?	p. 33
Almost Objective	p. 35
Where is fancy bred?	p. 37
The spectacles-behind-the-eyes	p. 44
The muse of science: Is truth beautiful?	p. 59
Does truth surpass proof?	p. 63
The elite of science	p. 66
The spirit of the times	p. 69
The essential Godlessness of science	p. 73
At the limits of scientific truth	p. 78
First steps beyond the mind's-eye view	p. 80
Is there anything else?	p. 81
The insidiousness of God	p. 86
The morality of science: Is truth good?	p. 87
Romancing the Creation	p. 89
The uncomfortable concept of a beginning	p. 90
The Gordian knot of singularity	p. 102
The magic of imaginary time	p. 108
The pulsing universe and the arrow of entropy	p. 117
The mysterious wobbling of nothingness	p. 123
'Reality (whatever that may be)'	p. 126
Reality in the absence of apples	p. 129
What place for a creator?	p. 134
The third candidate	p. 137
The mother of all chicken-and-egg stories	p. 139
The Elusive Mind of God	p. 143
God as the embodiment of the laws of physics	p. 145
A presence behind the process	p. 146
The leap to purpose: The God who wishes to drink tea	p. 147
The watchmaker	p. 149
The universe as a 'put-up job'	p. 163
Second Gordian knot: The anthropic principle	p. 164
Hacking at the second Gordian knot	p. 166
The inflationary universe	p. 167
Baby universes to the rescue!	p. 171
Not the ether again!	p. 173
The longing of Johannes Kepler	p. 178
The fiddler on the roof	p. 184
The God of Abraham and Jesus	p. 185
The law-breaker	p. 189
The hard edge of legalism	p. 191
The soft underbelly of legalism	p. 195
The death of the God of the Gaps	p. 204
Chaos meets Control	p. 205
'Top-down' determinism?	p. 221
'IAM'	p. 225
When truths collide	p. 228
The ultimate self-confirming hypothesis	p. 231
The masterful use of parallel perfect fifths	p. 234
Who is the 'I' in 'IAM'?	p. 239
Inadmissible Evidence	p. 241
Public vs. private knowledge	p. 242
Admissible evidence?	p. 245
The spectacles-behind-the-eyes, revisited	p. 246
The cloud of witnesses	p. 247
A game of 'I Doubt It'	p. 251
The Lucy problem	p. 253
'I should not believe such a story were it told me by Cato!'	p. 254
'The Invincible Ignorance of Science'	p. 259
'For the Bible tells me so'--the evidence of scripture	p. 260
Is there proof in the pudding? The evidence of results	p. 263
Armchair truth: The argument from reason	p. 266
The argument from explanatory power	p. 270
The argument from nature	p. 274
The argument from availability	p. 277
Theory of Everything ... Mind of God	p. 279
Notes	p. 284
Bibliography	p. 293
Index	p. 301
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