Synopses & Reviews
Each age has its own crisis—our modern experience of science-religion conflict is not so very different from that experienced by our forebears, Keith Thomson proposes in this thoughtful book. He considers the ideas and writings of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, two men who struggled mightily to reconcile their religion and their science, then looks to more recent times when scientific challenges to religion (evolutionary theory, for example) have given rise to powerful political responses from religious believers.
Today as in the eighteenth century, there are pressing reasons for members on each side of the religion-science debates to find common ground, Thomson contends. No precedent exists for shaping a response to issues like cloning or stem cell research, unheard of fifty years ago, and thus the opportunity arises for all sides to cooperate in creating a new ethics for the common good.
Review
“An engaging, thought-provoking work that engages big questions and important issues in an accessible manner.”—Frank Cogliano, author of Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s Foreign Policy
Review
“Frank, readable, and engaging. . . . Thomson has built a case for the pairing of science and religion to play a critical role in anchoring the intellectual questions of any age.”—Susan Kern, author of The Jeffersons at Shadwell
Review
“This fresh and insightful book unpacks the science and religion debate with special attention to Thomas Jefferson and Charles Darwin, two of the greatest thinkers who helped make the modern world. Keith Thomson's approach is generous, personal, informative, and stylish: a real treat for readers who may not have come across his work before.”—Janet Browne, author of Charles Darwin: Voyaging and Charles Darwin: Power of Place
Review
“In this lucid account of the rise of religious doubt and how Jefferson and Darwin wrestled with it, Keith Thomson delivers an eloquent plea for more and better education in science and religion. His call for the participation of ‘rational moderates’ could not be more timely.”—Christopher Lane, author of The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty
Review
“Informative and engaging”—Publishers Weekly
Review
“Refreshingly modest and nondogmatic . . . a fresh approach . . . [the] book brims with lively anecdotes.”—John Horgan, Wall Street Journal
Synopsis
The great Piltdown fraud, the mystery of how a shark swims with an asymmetric tail, the debate over dinosaur extinction, the haunting beauty of a loon on a northern lake--these are only a few of the subjects discussed by Keith Stewart Thomson in this wide-ranging book. At once instructive and entertaining, the book celebrates the aesthetic, literary, and intellectual aspects of science and conveys what is involved in being a scientist today--the excitement of discovery and puzzle solving, the debate over what to read and what to write, and the element of promotion that seems to be necessary to stimulate research and funding.
Keith Thomson, a well-known biologist who writes a column for the distinguished bi-monthly magazine American Scientist, here presents some of his favorite essays from that periodical in a book of three parts, each introduced by a new essay. In the first section, "The Uses of Diversity," he ponders such questions as why we care passionately and expensively about the dusky seaside sparrow and how and why we rescued the flowering tree Franklinia from extinction. The second section, "On Being a Scientist," includes an autobiographical account of Thomson's life and his views on what makes being a scientist special and interesting. The last section, "The Future of Evolution," gives examples of how the study of evolution is entering one of the most dramatic stages in its own development.
Thomson presents science as a great intellectual adventure--a search of why things are as they are--most rewarding when it is accompanied by an appreciation of the subtleties and aesthetic qualities of the objects studied. His book will enable nonscientists to open their minds to the pleasures of science and scientists to become more articulate and passionate about what they do.
Synopsis
These charming essays by an eminent biologist and columnist for the American Scientist] celebrate aesthetic, literary, and intellectual aspects of science and convey what is involved in being a scientist today. Keith Thomson describes science as a great intellectual adventure-a search for why things are as they are-most rewarding when it is accompanied by an appreciation of the subtleties and aesthetic qualities of the objects studied. His book will enable nonscientists to experience the pleasures of science and scientists to become more articulate and passionate about what they do.
Synopsis
A distinguished scholar urges scientists and religious thinkers to become colleagues rather than adversaries in areas where their fields overlap
About the Author
Keith Thomson, professor emeritus of natural history at the University of Oxford and Executive Officer, American Philosophical Society, is an author, biologist, and historian of science. He has written extensively on the history of evolutionary ideas, on Charles Darwin, and most recently on Thomas Jefferson’s interests in science and nature. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.