Description
Where does the universe come from? Where is it going? What is its purpose? From the beginnings of human thought, these questions have been asked while mythologies and religions, and philosophers and scientists, have continued to answer them.
In this wonderfully clear-sighted and accessible book, Gerhard Staguhn begins with the preclassical and classical thinkers and goes on to describe the revolutionary scientific contributions of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. Arriving at Einstein and relativity, Staguhn sees the new turn in the relationship between science and religion: the teachings of the Tao and other Eastern systems can now be discussed in a context that includes the seemingly supernatural mysteries of quantum mechanics inherent in the nuclear physics of Planck and Heisenberg. And still later, there are lucid descriptions of recent hypotheses of creation, featuring red giants, white dwarfs, black holes, quarks, descriptions of an expanding and contracting universe, and of the big bang and other theories.
We know more with every passing day, and yet the more we know, the more full knowledge seems to recede. A Jewish proverb has it that when man thinks, God laughs. Perhaps what stymies us, the author provocatively speculates, is the divine humor of a cosmos that withdraws into ever-deeper secrecy when confronted by human efforts to understand it.
ISBN:9780060190040
