Customer Reviews

God in the Equation : How Einstein Transformed Religion

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I hold a degree in physics and am currently in the process to become a priest so I read this book with great interest. I was not impressed with Powell's writing. I was put off by the numerous instances of exaggeration and projecting unknown personal motivations on historical characters. Powell's argument flowed like papers I wrote in high school and college with gross shading of facts and very little honest apprasial of opposing viewpoints. I also had a hard time accepting the cumbersome sci/religion as a real word. I hope it never catches on. There are much better texts on the thrilling topic of science and religion than God in the Equation.

I can't recall ever reading another book quite
like this one. Most of the books about science and
religion I've seen fall into one of two categories.
They either try to make the case that scientists are
secretly religious people, or else they try to argue
that science leaves no room for faith. Powell takes
the discussion in a very different, more subtle
direction, one that reminds me of some of Daniel
Dennett's ideas. In essence, Powell argues that
spirituality is an integral component of the way
humans process information about the world--even if
the people doing the processing are cosmologists who
openly describe themselves as atheists. That
perspective puts a whole new spin on Albert Einstein's often-puzzling use of the word "God" as something interchangeable with the laws of physics. It also explains why, in his later years, Einstein was so committed to the idea of a cosmic religion.

Alas, Einstein was an idealist and I'm afraid Powell
may be too. His dream that science can reform religion
of its more destructive impulses looks just like
that--a dream. Religion seems to be doing just fine in
the Middle East, not to mention in Mel Gibson's bank
account. But Powell's analysis of how the scientific
process works is both original and eye-opening. I also
really enjoyed his sweeping history of cosmology, full
of clear explanations and surprising details. The
section on the early history of the big bang, in
particular, covers territory that I've never head
about before. (The father of the big bang was an
obscure Russian meteorologist--who knew?) This book
does an amazing job explaining what we know about the
universe and how we know it. If it also helps advance Einstein's pacifist agenda, so much the better. Truly inspirational.

Corey S Powell has written an excellent popular account of a major scientific discovery.

One that if confirmed promises to open up new vistas of investigation and deepen our theoretical understanding of the universe.

To properly tell his story, Powell first backs up a little, and sketches a brief account of the history of observational astronomy and its interplay with theoretical physics - the celestial mechanics of Newton. He then moves forward to the genesis of a new cosmology.

Some readers may be put off by the title. or, more specifically, take issue with the author for introducing "God" into what should be a scientific discussion.

I admit that at times I found Powell's "sci/rel" trope occasionally cloying; e.g., his description of Cecelia Payne-Goposchkin as a "sort of Mary Magdalene in the shadows of the sci/religious miracles" of two cosmological advances affecting first Arthur Eddington, then, later Harlow Shapley (p119).

Nonetheless, I feel that Powell has endeavored to heal a kind of psycho-linguistic breach in our language - and consciousness.

Cosmology had fractured into (a) scientific cosmo-genesis, and into a religious nullity.

The latter having perhaps mythological or "poetic" significance, but otherwise empty of scientific content.

Even if the premises upon which the book is based - the interpretation of the Mauna Kea data, introduced at the start of the book - are shown to be erroneous, the idea of creation - and, our place in it - re-emerges in Powell's book from the obscurity of a secularism that occasionally over-reaches.

The main burden of the text is to lay out the science behind the work of principally two teams of scientific collaborators studying Type Ia supernovae.

The significance of their work was announced in Science's "Biggest Breakthroughs of 1998"
(18 Dec issue).

Powell's careful preparation gently leads the reader to a heightened understanding of the theoretical issues involved. In so doing, he neither tarries too long, nor plunges heedlessly ahead of the lay reader.

One wishes that the author had provided a "further reading" reference to magnetic monopoles directed to a general audience (something along the lines of Scientifc American Frontiers).

Also Powell misconstrues the force of the weak anthropic principle. The latter serves as a simplifying assumption. In that sense it may serve to guide research. It is a crude heuristic - a tool.

Even in its strong "participatory" form it does not (indeed, cannot) "brush aside the flatness problem, the horizon problem, and [questions about] the origin of structure in the universe," as the author suggests on p.193.

Just before picking up "God In the Equation" I happened to read de Santillanna's Crime of Galileo.

Powell alludes briefly to Pius XII's somewhat embarrassing sally into the sci/religious controversy.

When, November 1951, the Pope burbled about the Big Bang, he trespassed onto the reservation of 1893, which officially validated Galileo's assertion that it would be impious to suppose that God
"may have laid pitfalls for men by establishing contradictory [scientific and religious] truths."

Is Mr. Powell himself likewise guilty of trespassing - in this case, onto the religious reservation -
when he talks about the Church of Einstein?

This begs a question: Is knowing the universe the same as knowing God?

Note that this is distinct from the matter of faith.

We take on faith the veracity of "things unseen."

But it is also faith that sees the creation (as it is; as "given") as at once exemplar and indicative
of divinity.

As sublime.

Powell strays perilously close to religious revisionism.
(A revisionism without apologetics, however.)

The author seems to exhibit a mixed mind.
And it may be that this ought not be condemned.

I found myself moved when he wrote about the "spiritual power of Einstein's equations."

And untroubled.

It's hard to get much bigger than the themes in this
book: how did the universe begin, how will it end, and
is there any way to find spiritual satisfaction
through science? Amazingly, this writer pulls it off.
The first part of the book covers historical ideas
about the universe, bringing people like Galileo and
Newton to life as complex, passionate thinkers. The
later chapters get into modern cosmology, covering the
big bang and some of the current far-out ideas about
"dark energy" and other universes.

Those of us laymen who would like to be conversant with the latest issues in science are too frequently faced with a choice between over-simplifications or complex books that lie reproachingly in our bookshelves. Someday we'll finish them, we promise ourselves. Even better, we hope that someday we'll actually understand what we read.

This book is not too long to tackle, and addresses complex ideas in clear language that makes the concepts capable of understanding. And one feels that, should something become fuzzy in one's mind as time passes, it wouldn't be hard to go back to the index and refresh one's understanding without having to plough through a dense forest of forgotten concepts.

God really is only in the equation in this book; God in the commandment isn't considered. But cosmology really is the book's focus and strength. Isaac Asimov wasn't so hot on religious concepts either. But how he is missed for making science comprehensible. That's Corey Powell's strong point too. Maybe he should tackle more science topics and fill in a part of the void that Asimov left.

The editorial review above notwithstanding, this book essentially mischaracterizes Einstein's own declared statements on the God issue: " . . . I am, and have always been, an atheist."

How, therefore, can Einstein be seen as a prophet of a new form of religion? If we confront his own statements honestly, we must realize that he can't in any traditional sense of "prophet," because Einstein was a self-announced non-theist. But there is historical precedent for the non-theist being later defined otherwise: Gauthama, the original Buddha, reached what he called enlightenment as a form of realization that priests had no actual divine authority because there was no "divine authorizor." But his own statements were increasingly ignored as he became deified by his followers, who progressively redefined him.

Einstein is simply being redefined, in this book, as something other than he declared himself to be. But since he is no longer around to defend his view, he may indeed be installed by others as some form of prophet of a religious philosophy.

I rated this book as a three instead of a one because, though it fundamentally misrepresents a key issue, it is nonetheless well organized, engagingly presented and thought-stimulating.

Enjoyed this book a lot. It is well written and thoughtful. Not only worth the read, it presents a lot of thoughts worth mulling over.

We are perhaps heading toward a new division of our noetic impulses. This includes a new conception of what is third person and what is first person knowledge; a new conception of the role of the academy in a webbified age with commercial pressures weighing heavily on the university; and, finally, a new conception of what parts of our knowledge are "scientific" and "religious" with the latter in danger of becoming the null set. If so, it will probably be in good company with many of the social "sciences" joining the arts and the humanities in the dustbin of intellectual history in this eventuality.

What Powell is referring to is a new experiential hybrid;

"Call it sci/religion, because it blends elements of the experimental and the mystical" (3)

As other reviewers here have noted, he has nothing to add to the dark energy debate. It is rather the appeal to the "rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law" (135) that constitutes the major contribution of this book. If he is correct, it is possible that, out of this cosmic sense and our moral sense, a new form of applied experientialism will begin to emerge that we will call "religion".It is such cosmic religious feeling, he notes, that may strengthen people (258)

The book's strengths are in its intellectual range; yet the absence of detailed references forbids one from assessing the scholarship. It is worth looking at one last theme; the historicist dynamism in "big bang" thought. Part of Fred Hoyle's critique of the big bang, as he derisively if accidentally named the area, came from its evolutionary ethos (171). In that, he argued, it resembled the nastier forms of millenniar thought like Utopian socialism and "rapture' Christianity.

Ultimately, it is left up to the reader to assess if (s)he buys into the vision of the book. It is well-written, but poorly documented.



Seán O Nualláin Ph.D. 30 Bealtaiane 2009

Our diverse world undoubtedly contains every conceivable viewpoint, but I'm a little puzzled as to whom this book is directed. The hoped-for audience is identified as "the sci/religious faithful" who must seize "the pulpit and be heard." The thesis is an impassioned call to what Powell insists on calling "sci/religion" (the term recurs, averaging about two times per page throughout), but the ecstatic language has a hard time amounting to anything clearly different than "that old time" scientism. Although the author occasionally pauses to recall that, "sci/religion is a human faith, prone to distortions and misinterpretations," this is still, at a visceral, emotional level, a transparent evangelization to scientism.

The language throughout will be off-putting to most people who identify to almost any degree with either science or religion, or with both, as these quickly culled phrases should demonstrate:
"the redemptive power of sci/religion"
"Salvation in the Temple of Einstein"
"renowned priests of sci/religion"
"the endearingly optimistic sci/religious hope"
"astronomers embraced the new gospel"
"Hubble's puritanical style of sci/religious faith"
"the sci/religious faithful began to disagree on how to interpret the heavenly messages"
"the canon of sci/religion"
. . . just a small sampling.

The book contains more than a few intriguing glimpses into the puzzles, persons, permutations, and propositions of cosmological theory. But it is inescapable that it is driven by metaphysical suppositions that are not themselves `science'. More interesting than the book are some of the would-be reviewers' posts. The ("most helpful") posts of SB and KP indicate that they saw the word `God' in the title, leapt to conclusions and lapsed into emotional convulsions, but that they clearly did NOT read the book.

Not that they missed much.

That would be the cosmological constant that Einstein referred to as "the biggest mistake of my life"? Not that he in any way intended it to be considered as an intelligent agent, as the author here would seem to wish us to believe.

Personally I'd recommend reading something that isn't completely duplicitous instead, but maybe that's just my preference not to be misled, deceived or manipulated when I read a book.