THE COSMIC BLUEPRINT
Paul Davies
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988
224 pp., $17.95
THE MIRACLE OF EXISTENCE
Henry Margenau
Boston: Shambhala, 1987
143 pp., $9.95
ONE WORLD
The Interaction of Science and Theology
John Polkinghorne
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986
114 pp., $7.95
"Truth is never pure, and rarely simple."
--Oscar Wilde
Since the seventeenth century, the quest for knowledge has primarily centered around attempts to explain the phenomena of life by reducing human experience to the basic laws and methods of physics, chemistry, and biology. In the twentieth century, however, physicists, biologists, and neurophysiologists have proposed theories that challenge traditional scientific method. Consequently, revised beliefs have arisen about the nature of reality and the degree to which the laws of one kind of experience can be applied to others.
Over the past decade, a new literature has developed that attempts to identify a paradigm for investigating reality that more fully takes into account the diversity of human experience. This holistic paradigm operates from the assumption that both the subject interrogating the world and the objective world itself form a context in which the parts and the whole derive meaning from each other.
A primary source for this new paradigm has been quantum mechanics, because its laws necessitate a departure from the dualistic Cartesian worldview upon which science has been based since the Enlightenment. Some of the founders of quantum theory, such as Erwin Schrödinger, turned to the ideas of Eastern religion, seeking deeper understanding of the meaning of modern scientific discoveries. But it was not until the early seventies, when Fritjof Capra published the Tao of Physics, that the cornerstone was set for the emergence of a paradigm that narrows the gap between the theological, philosophical, and scientific pictures of the world. Since then, many eminent scientists, such as Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine, have presented theories of reality that are informed by the emerging holistic ideas of physics and biology, and and that reflect some of the holistic notions of both Eastern and Western religious and philosophical systems.
The three books reviewed here generally focus upon the relationship between physical and metaphysical modes of thought by proposing three central points: (1) that traditional science's reductionist approach needs modification; (2) that no sharp line distinguishes mind from matter; and (3) that science points to something beyond itself.
Reductionism
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