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The Faith of Scientists

by Nancy K. Frankenberry, Princeton University Press, © 2008,
523 Pages, $42 (hardcover), ISBN-13: 978-0-691-13487-1

This book is titled The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own Words. In our column on “Scientists and God” we publish a few statements by famous scientists who were believers in God. The problem is that we are taking just a few sentences or a paragraph from a paper or journal without having the full belief system of the scientist. Nancy H. Frankenberry is the John Phillips Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College, and her book examines the faith of famous scientists in more depth.

Frankenberry explains the history of these scientists, what they contributed to scientific knowledge, and what they wrote about their faith. Some are believers in God, others are atheists or agnostics. This book is not an apologetic work, but it is worth reading if you want to know why various scientists believed what they believed.

The book is divided into two parts. Part one is the founders of modern science, and part two is scientists of our time. The founders of modern science presented are Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon, Blaise Pascal, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Alfred North Whitehead. The time period covered is from 1564 (Galileo) to 1947 (Whitehead).

The scientists of our time are Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, Jane Goodall, Steven Weinberg, John Polkinghorne, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, Edward Wilson, Stuart A. Kauffman, and Ursula Goodenough.

This book is very academic with complex comments and explanations. It will appeal to college or self-educated professionals, especially those with science backgrounds. Its greatest weakness is that many of these scientists changed their views during their lifetime, so Frankenberry had to choose articles that she feels contributed to the dialogue between science and faith, whether positive or negative.