God's Biologist [Hardcover]

Beyond the fact that he was one of that seemingly rare breed, a scientist who takes religion seriously, I knew very little about Sir Alister Hardy until I read this book. But now, so well does his biographer bring him to life, I feel privileged to have become closely acquainted with this unusual and attractive man.

David Hay provides a very full description of Hardy's social and economic background and childhood. He follows closely his schooling and progress to the University of Oxford, the interruption of his studies early in the Great War, when he gladly accepted a commission in the Cyclists Battalion, and portrays the significant effect this experience had on his outlook. We learn of his research work for the Fisheries Ministry, particularly his pioneering work on the distribution of plankton in the oceans and its effect on the location and movement of fish. We are given full details of the development of his academic career and his many achievements and awards.

Hay has made good use of his unfettered access to Hardy's papers and correspondence . Through all this detail a clear picture emerges of a lively, able and energetic man possessed of a great sense of fun with an ability to make warm relationships with the miners he met in the army and the trawlermen on his research voyages as much as with fellow scientists and academics. But Hay's interest in Hardy is centred not so much on his personal characteristics bas on their common concern about the relationship between science and religion, and what light this might shed on the religious experience of ordinary people.

Hardy was quite reticent about his religious and spiritual beliefs so that their late emergence came something of a surprise to his fellow scientists. When he was in his eighties Hardy began an autobiography which was he never finished or published. There Hay discovered the pledge which Hardy made as a young man when he left the university to join the army early in the First World War. It was then that he made a solemn vow that, if he survived the conflict, he would devote his life to "bringing about a reconciliation between evolution and the spiritual awareness of man". This preoccupation only emerged publicly with Hardy's Gifford Lectures in 1963. By that time he had retired from his university posts, joined the Unitarian Church and soon afterwards founded the Religious Experience Research Unit at Manchester College in Oxford. ( Hay himself became Director of the Unit in 1985).

Those scientists and philosophers who hold religious beliefs tend to argue represent two different of perceiving reality and that there is no necessary conflict between them. By contrast Hardy thought there was every connection. He sought to demonstrate that there was a transcendent reality which most believers and non-believers experienced at some time in their lives. He maintained that this reality has a central part to in biological evolution and human togetherness. Spiritual experience came to be characterised by Hay and his colleagues in their work for Hardy's Unit as `a generalised awareness of intimate relationship to reality whether other people, the environment , to the depths of oneself or to God'. This experience they named `relational consciousness'.

In a long postscript the author argues strongly that the growth of European Individualism from the Enlightenment has resulted in a widespread resistance to the notion of human spirituality as a positive biological phenomenon. He asserts that this has made a straight jacket for human decency and mutual trust. We must hope that the work begun by Alister Hardy and carried forward by David Hay and others will be widely disseminated. It has the potential to produce more open mindedness towards transcendent realities and help to provide a firm basis for real human and environmental solidarity.

Sir Alister Clavering Hardy, FRS was an English marine biologist, expert on zooplankton and marine ecosystems. He was known to generations of scientists as one of the world's foremost marine biologists and a great teacher and advocate of Darwinism. The academic awards he received for his work in Zoology included an Oxford D.Sc., Fellowship of the Royal Society and the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society for his work on marine and aerial plankton - and in 1957 he was knighted for his work in marine biology.
He founded the Religious Experience Research Centre in 1969, after retiring as a professor at Oxford University.

Hardy was the first Professor of Zoology at the University of Hull from 1928 - 1942. In 1942, he was then appointed Professor of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen, where he remained until 1946, when he became Linacre Professor of Zoology in Oxford, a position he held until 1961. In 1940, Hardy was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Dating from his boyhood at Oundle School, Hardy had a lifelong interest in spiritual phenomena, but aware that his interests were likely to be considered unorthodox in the scientific community, apart from occasional lectures he kept his opinions to himself until his retirement from his Oxford Chair. During the academic sessions of 1963-4 and 1964-5, he gave the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen University on the evolution of religion, later published as The Living Stream and The Divine Flame. These lectures signalled his wholehearted return to his religious interests. In 1969 he founded the Religious Experience Research Unit in Manchester College, Oxford. The Unit began its work by compiling a database of religious experiences and continues to investigate the nature and function of spiritual and religious experience at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

This long awaited biography by David Hay is a delight to read. He is well placed to write this book, as he trained as a zoologist and worked for several years in cooperation with Sir Alister Hardy's RERU, taking over as Director in 1985. He currently holds an Honorary Senior Research Fellowship in the Department of Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Sir Alister is also remembered for his pioneering work in the scientific study of religious and spiritual experience by setting up the RERC at Oxford's Manchester College in 1969. Again a strong Unitarian link here! How apt that one of the stained glass windows in the chapel declares - Elargissez Dieu! - a quotation from Diderot, roughly translated as Set God free! or Broaden your concept of God!

This is a delightful book to read, both in its objectivity. My only slight niggle was David Hay's off hand dismissal of Hardy's interest in psychic phenomena and only a passing reference to his links with the Society for Psychical Research without even mentioning he was a past President (1965-9). Otherwise this is a highly recommended book.

"God's Biologist" is about a fun-loving, exuberant man who became an award-winning life-sciences professor and proponent of evolution theory who at the peak of his career, flitted off to become the world's most enthusiastic student of religious experience. The author's writing skills and inclusion of photographs make the book accessible to a wide audience. His insistence on excellence in scholarship and attention to detail make his writings useful to a narrower audience of scholars.

In writing a Hardy biography, the author needed to explore evidence within the three major themes of personality, science and religious experience. His own credentials, interests, preferences and assessment of what was feasible caused him to write as if he ranked these three themes in importance, with religious experience first, science second and personality third.

Readers who expect to see a typical mass-audience book might need to raise their sights and do a little more work than expected to be amply amused and rewarded. Based on their own credentials, interests and experience, scholars might have significant differences concerning how the author impresses them or satisfies their needs.

While trying to represent a cross-section of the people I have met during my eighty years of life on planet earth, I am giving Hay's biography of Alister Hardy four out of five stars. If I represented only myself, I would give the same book two stars. This is partly because I am well steeped in knowledge of Hardy's efforts in science and religious experience. It also is explained by my utter fascination with Hardy's personality as it was revealed during the ten weeks I spent in his presence on a very small and crowded schooner.

The time was the summer of 1965. I had just finished my first year in the graduate oceanography program at Oregon State University. The ship was Stanford University's Te Vega. Hardy was a guest scientist chosen from outside my native America. Three American faculty members and twelve graduate students chosen from around the world completed the sixteen-member scientific party. A crew of similar size ran the ship.

I was ten years older than most of the other graduate students and had been exposed to many different leadership styles, the behavior of people under stress and living in high population densities aboard US Navy ships. Compared to the people I had associated with in my Navy and football past, Alister Hardy's behavior patterns seemed less guarded, less brazen, more sensitive and driven by creativity.

I have tried with little success to write about Alister Hardy's personality, so I can understand the author's failure to impress me in this category. The best of what I have tried describes how Hardy could smile with his eyes without curling his lips. That's not much, but it suggests something important. He tried to assert himself and demand respect while reassuring students he was not threatening them.