The Fire in the Equations
Science, Religion, and the Search for God
Kitty Ferguson
- Price:
- $16.95
- ISBN 13:
- 978-1-932031-67-6
- Size:
- 6 x 9
- Page Count:
- 320
- Date Published:
- April 1, 2004
- Price:
- $9.99
- ISBN 13:
- 978-1-59947-039-9
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“ In this beautifully and intelligently written book, Ferguson not only reports on some of the intellectual tremors jolting the world of thinking women and men, but also considers the basic questions with penetrating analysis, yet at a very readable level. . . . An excellent book.” —Choice
Heralded for its readability and scholarship, The Fire in the Equations offers a fascinating discussion of scientific discoveries and their impact on our beliefs. The book’s title is derived from Dr. Stephen Hawking’s pondering, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”
Originally published in the U.S. in 1995, it provides an excursion through new theories of quantum physics and cosmology, ranging from the nature of time, the big bang, the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics, laws of nature and their possible relation to God, chaos theory, black holes, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, particle physics, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the role of God in all these equations. It even raises such questions as “how God might answer prayers” from the point of view of physics.
While she gives no absolute answers, Kitty Ferguson takes the reader through a world of paradoxes and improbabilities, explaining how it is possible to believe both in a pre-determined universe and in free will as a theory of human behavior. She concludes that what we know about science doesn’t necessarily make God inevitable, but does not rule God out either.
“An enlightened and readable exploration of the theological questions that inevitably arise out of reflection on this century’s physics and astronomy.” —The Washington Times
“Ferguson is by turns whimsical, poetic, reverent, theological and authentically speculative in her study, which could be used as a wonderful text for any group or classroom wanting to think in a deeply interdisciplinary way about the body, the soul, the spirit and their relation to the laws of the universe.”—San Antonio Express-News
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Back to TabsFerguson weaves together science, philosophy, and theology with verve and clarity.
– John Polkinghorne, Queen’s, Cambridge
This is a clear account of the ultimate question.
– Stephen W. Hawkings
Preface / xi
A Word about Inclusive Language / xiv
Acknowledgements / xv
1 ‘They Buried Him in Westminster Abbey’ / 1
2 Seeing Things / 4
Is the rational universe an illusion? / 12
‘In Nature’s infinite book of mysteries . . .can we read very much at all? / 19
Is objective reality a mirage? / 25
Are we really free agents? / 30
Is the universe a uni-verse? / 33
3 Almost Objective / 35
Where is fancy bred? / 37
The spectacles-behind-the-eyes / 44
The muse of science: Is truth beautiful? / 59
Does truth surpass proof? / 63
The elite of science / 66
The spirit of the times / 69
The essential Godlessness of science / 73
At the limits of scientific truth / 78
First steps beyond the mind’s-eye view / 80
Is there anything else? / 81
The insidiousness of God / 86
The morality of science: Is truth good? / 87
4 Romancing the Creation / 89
The uncomfortable concept of a beginning / 90
The Gordian knot of singularity / 102
The magic of imaginary time / 108
The pulsing universe and the arrow of entropy / 117
The mysterious wobbling of nothingness / 123
‘Reality (whatever that may be)’ / 126
Reality in the absence of apples / 129
What place for a creator? / 134
The third candidate / 137
The mother of all chicken-and-egg stories / 139
5 The Elusive Mind of God / 143
God as the embodiment of the laws of physics / 145
A presence behind the process 146
The leap to purpose: The God who wishes to drink tea / 147
The watchmaker / 149
The universe as a ‘put-up job’ / 163
Second Gordian knot: The anthropic principle / 164
Hacking at the second Gordian knot / 166
The inflationary universe / 167
Baby universes to the rescue! / 171
Not the ether again! 173
The longing of Johannes Kepler / 178
The fiddler on the roof / 184
6 The God of Abraham and Jesus / 185
The law-breaker / 189
The hard edge of legalism / 191
The soft underbelly of legalism / 195
The death of the God of the Gaps / 204
Chaos meets Control 205
‘Top-down’ determinism? / 221
‘I AM’ / 225
When truths collide / 228
The ultimate self-confirming hypothesis / 231
The masterful use of parallel perfect fifths / 234
Who is the ‘I’ in ‘I AM’? / 239
7 Inadmissible Evidence / 241
Public vs. private knowledge / 242
Admissible evidence? / 245
The spectacles-behind-the-eyes, revisited / 246
The cloud of witnesses / 247
A game of ‘I Doubt It’ / 251
The Lucy problem / 253
‘I should not believe such a story were it told me by Cato!’ / 254
‘The Invincible Ignorance of Science’ / 259
‘For the Bible tells me so’—the evidence of scripture / 260
Is there proof in the pudding? The evidence of results / 263
Armchair truth: The argument from reason / 266
The argument from explanatory power / 270
The argument from nature / 274
The argument from availability / 277
8 Theory of Everything . . . Mind of God / 279
Notes / 284
Bibliography / 293
Index / 301
Back to TabsScience and Theology News
05/01/2006
Kitty Ferguson says that science and religion can coexist symbiotically. Asserting that modern science does not interfere with the existence of a personal and miraculous God, she says in The Fire in the Equations (2004) that science is unable to lend to either believers or atheists irrefutable public proof of their positions. Ferguson is a scholar of physics, mathematics, astronomy and theology, and has written about black holes and the world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking. Also a professional musician, Ferguson studied at the Julliard School and both conducted and performed before switching to science writing.
Journal of Chemical Education
06/01/2005
f you are an atheist, you have to ask where the universe and the big bang come from. If you are a theist, you have to wonder where the creator, God, comes from. Science is helpless in answering the question of God’s existence and His role in the world, but its successes surely change the manner in which the questions are formulated. Stephen Hawking, distinguished for his contributions into the nature of black holes, has attempted, fruitlessly in my opinion, to formulate a way in which the universe creates itself. It’s the fire in the equations he has derived which makes in his mind the universe come into being. Kitty Ferguson, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, professional musician and latter day science writer, has taken this as the title of her fascinating, accessible book on the interrelationship of science, philosophy and God. I don’t think there is a question that anyone has ever asked about God that isn’t addressed in this book.
If you enjoy Kitty Ferguson’s book, you will undoubtedly like Chet Raymo’s paean to pantheism,Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection between Science and Religion, and Charles P. Henderson’s brilliant defense of theism, God and Science: The Death and Rebirth of Theism.