Customer Reviews

Far-Future Universe

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A fine collection of papers on a topic of great importance that receives strangely little attention: the relationship between eschatology and the scientific view of the future of the universe. I agree with the review from publisher's weekly: the book is a collection of separate papers and does not yet attempt a synthesis. But it does provide some excellent "raw-material" for a dialogue that has only just begun.
The book is divided into five parts, each of which containing a few chapters: 1. the introductory part; 2. a part concentrating on the physics and the scientific aspects of the future of the universe, with contributions by leading scientists J.D. Barrow, P. Davies, M. Heller, and M. Rees; 3. biology: this part contains a reprint of F. Dyson's well-known paper "time without end", in which Dyson argues that conscious life may be able to continue indefinitely into the future, as well as a fine paper by S. Conway Morris on evolutionary convergence, its link to the physical universe, and possible implications for eschatology; 4. humanity: concentrates on the repercussions of both scientific and religious views of the future of the universe for humanity, contemporary culture and everyday life - personally, I didn't find this part particularly enriching; 5. theology: contains papers by K. Ward, J. Moltmann, R.J. Russell, and G.F.R. Ellis. I particularly liked the last two chapters. R.J. Russell is one of the leading thinkers in science-eschatology and has some good advice of how the insights and methodologies of both science and theology may lead to a fruitful encounter. Ellis' paper "natures of existence" is the one I liked best - he attempts a sort of inventory of the type of things that exist, which he then uses to argue, in my view convincingly so, for a worldview of a strong platonist leaning which takes all "levels" of reality seriously, from the material level of description to the truths of logic and mathematics, to human consciousness, to ethics and values and to theology.

In sum: I would recommend this book to the serious student of science and theology, and especially to university libraries. The quality of the papers in it is mixed, but it contains some gems for which it is worth having.