“ In this beautifully and intelligently written book, Ferguson not only reports on some of the intellectual tremors jolting the world of thinking women and men, but also considers the basic questions with penetrating analysis, yet at a very readable level. . . . An excellent book.” —Choice
Heralded for its readability and scholarship, The Fire in the Equations offers a fascinating discussion of scientific discoveries and their impact on our beliefs. The book’s title is derived from Dr. Stephen Hawking’s pondering, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”
Originally published in the U.S. in 1995, it provides an excursion through new theories of quantum physics and cosmology, ranging from the nature of time, the big bang, the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics, laws of nature, and their possible relation to God, chaos theory, black holes, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, particle physics, Darwin's theory of evolution, and the role of God in all these equations. It even raises such questions as “how God might answer prayers” from the point of view of physics.
While she gives no absolute answers, Kitty Ferguson takes the reader through a world of paradoxes and improbabilities, explaining how believing in a pre-determined universe and free will as a theory of human behavior is possible. She concludes that what we know about science doesn't necessarily make God inevitable, but does not rule God out either.
“ In this beautifully and intelligently written book, Ferguson not only reports on some of the intellectual tremors jolting the world of thinking women and men, but also considers the basic questions with penetrating analysis, yet at a very readable level. . . . An excellent book.” —Choice
"Ferguson weaves science, philosophy, and theology together with verve and clarity." – John Polkinghorne, Queen’s, Cambridge
"This is a clear account of the ultimate question." – Stephen W. Hawkings
Preface / xi A Word about Inclusive Language / xiv Acknowledgments / xv 1 ‘They Buried Him in Westminster Abbey’ / 1 2 Seeing Things / 4 Is the rational universe an illusion? / 12 ‘In Nature’s infinite book of mysteries . . .can we read very much at all? / 19 Is objective reality a mirage? / 25 Are we really free agents? / 30 Is the universe a uni-verse? / 33 3 Almost Objective / 35 Where is fancy bred? / 37 The spectacles-behind-the-eyes / 44 The muse of science: Is truth beautiful? / 59 Does truth surpass proof? / 63 The elite of science / 66 The spirit of the times / 69 The essential Godlessness of science / 73 At the limits of scientific truth / 78 First steps beyond the mind’s-eye view / 80 Is there anything else? / 81 The insidiousness of God / 86 The morality of science: Is truth good? / 87 4 Romancing the Creation / 89 The uncomfortable concept of a beginning / 90 The Gordian knot of singularity / 102 The magic of imaginary time / 108 The pulsing universe and the arrow of entropy / 117 The mysterious wobbling of nothingness / 123 ‘Reality (whatever that may be)’ / 126 Reality in the absence of apples / 129 What place for a creator? / 134 The third candidate / 137 The mother of all chicken-and-egg stories / 139 5 The Elusive Mind of God / 143 God as the embodiment of the laws of physics / 145 A presence behind the process 146 The leap to purpose: The God who wishes to drink tea / 147 The watchmaker / 149 The universe as a ‘put-up job’ / 163 Second Gordian knot: The anthropic principle / 164 Hacking at the second Gordian knot / 166 The inflationary universe / 167 Baby universes to the rescue! / 171 Not the ether again! 173 The longing of Johannes Kepler / 178 The fiddler on the roof / 184 6 The God of Abraham and Jesus / 185 The law-breaker / 189 The hard edge of legalism / 191 The soft underbelly of legalism / 195 The death of the God of the Gaps / 204 Chaos meets Control 205 ‘Top-down’ determinism? / 221 ‘I AM’ / 225 When truths collide / 228 The ultimate self-confirming hypothesis / 231 The masterful use of parallel perfect fifths / 234 Who is the ‘I’ in ‘I AM’? / 239 7 Inadmissible Evidence / 241 Public vs. private knowledge / 242 Admissible evidence? / 245 The spectacles-behind-the-eyes, revisited / 246 The cloud of witnesses / 247 A game of ‘I Doubt It’ / 251 The Lucy problem / 253 ‘I should not believe such a story were it told me by Cato!’ / 254 ‘The Invincible Ignorance of Science’ / 259 ‘For the Bible tells me so’—the evidence of scripture / 260 Is there proof in the pudding? The evidence of results / 263 Armchair truth: The argument from reason / 266 The argument from explanatory power / 270 The argument from nature / 274 The argument from availability / 277 8 Theory of Everything . . . Mind of God / 279 Notes / 284 Bibliography / 293 Index / 301 Back to Tabs
Kitty Ferguson, a former professional musician with a life long interest in science, is an independent scholar and lecturer who lives in Cambridge, England, and South Carolina. She has also written the best-selling books Black Holes in Space Time and Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything.
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