book_review
The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication and Explanation, by John Horgan The Free Press, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-684-85075-3; $25.00; 326 pages Contents Introduction I-Witnessing 1. Neuroscience’s Explanatory Gap 2. Why Freud Isn’t Dead 3. Psychotherapy and the Dodo Hypothesis 4. Prozac and Other Placebos 5. Gene-Whiz Science 6. Darwin…
Although it is a well-written book and Robert Wright is a clever journalist with a bent for spinning evolutionary just-so stories, he forgot to test his hypothesis. As a consequence he has paid the price by being wrong.
Review of Jeffery G. Sobosan, Romancing the Universe: Theology, Science, and Cosmology (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1999). Sobosan is a theologian and I a physicist, so I began with trepidation concerning the depth and accuracy of his scientific writing. Thankfully, my prejudice was baseless—Sobosan references current mainstream theories of quantum physics,…
Counter-Revisionism in the History of American Science and ReligionBOOK REVIEW OF: When All the Gods Trembled: Darwinism, Scopes and American Intellectuals By Paul K. Conkin Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998 Pp. xi + 185. $24.95. ISBN: 0-8476-9063-6 Contents: Preface Introduction: Christian Cosmologies Chapter 1: What Darwin Wrought Chapter 2: Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and Modernists Chapter…
Review ofJohn F. Haught, God After Darwin: A Theology of Evolution, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999, 221 pp., $25.00, ISBN 0-8133-6723-9. I suppose it’s the residual effect of original sin, but I enjoy reviewing books I disagree with more than ones I agree with. After all, who wants to spend 1500 words inventing new ways…
Review of: Genes, Genesis and God: Values and Their Origins in Nature and Human History, Holmes Rolston III, 1999 Cambridge University Press, 432 pages, $59.95 hardcover, $18.95 paperback Holmes Rolston III is a philosopher, and Genes, Genesis and God derives from his set of Gifford Lectures, a distinguished series given at the University of Edinburgh…
Review: Niels Henrik Gregersen and J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, eds., Rethinking Theology and Science: Six Models for the Current Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998) viii+ 240 pp. Reviewer: Paul Allen (Ph.D. cand., University Saint-Paul, Ottawa, Canada) Theology and the natural sciences are engaged in dialogue during exciting times. But the excitement is felt…
In the summer of 1850, the Englishman Alfred Tennyson galloped past the opposition and was appointed Poet Laureate. He was not an obvious choice, but his triumph was made nigh inevitable by the smashing success of his new poem: In Memoriam. Written as a tribute to a college friend, Arthur Hallam, who had died some…
Review ofBlackmore, Susan. The meme machine. Oxford, 1999. 264 p bibl index ISBN 0-19-850365-2 $25.00 Ever since theologians conceived of God as the ultimate cause of everything, formulating perhaps the first TOE (Theory of Everything), the reductionist urge has continued to tempt the human mind to explain the staggering complexity we see around, not just…
The book provides the practicing neuroscientist ample food for thought, but it is also accessible to the educated layperson. The neurobiology is only moderately detailed, and the writing style is lucid and elegant.