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Title: The Scientific & the Divine: Conflict and Reconciliation from Ancient Greece to the Present by James A. Arieti, Patrick A. Wilson, James L. Golden ISBN: 0-7425-1397-1 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield (Non NBN) Pub. Date: March, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliance in Print
Comment: Patrick A. Wilson is one of the co-authors of this book, and I can personally vouch for one thing--his knowledge of the history and meaning of both philosophy and theology is immense, to say the least. His knowledge spans the ages, and his powers of understsanding and interpretation simply cannot be rivaled anywhere. In short, he is one of the greatest philosophers alive today, and he may even be the greatest one of them all. He is the ultimate academic intellectual, and his philosophical analyses in this book attest to this fact. For just as his students are lucky in the extreme to have him as their Professor, you the reader will be equally lucky in the extreme to read this brilliantly worded text. There are pearls of wisdom on almost every page, and the overall tone of the book is reminiscent of the tone of the very greatest philosophical works that have been written throughout history. This book deserves to be counted as one of these "all-time" philosophical gems.

Rating: 3
Summary: Can't judge it by its cover....
Comment: A beautiful and dramatic cover for a rather bland and too frequently superficial text: two pages on Newton, two on Galileo, a little bit on Thomas Kuhn, etc. Of course in this manner the book can manage to touch on quite a range of topics and authors, but cannot present cogent arguments or enough information for the reader to decide.

Although designed as a textbook, its idiosyncrasies greatly diminish its value for the classroom. More time is spent on the presocratics, for example, than on the scientific revolution; several pages each are devoted to discussing particular medieval thinkers, and very few to present-day scientific theories. ("Relevance" was clearly not the highest value in designing this text.)

Regarding the "conflict and reconciliation" in the title, the authors ultimately subscribe to a kind of agnosticism: "Maybe-- maybe not." While conceding the universal importance of science, they seem to find little in religious faith beyond its cultural value, so questions of conflict or reconciliation appear in the end to be of little consequence.

I must admit that I had hopes when I read the publisher's advertisements, but after reviewing the text I will certainly not be assigning it in my course.