Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not perfect, but much better than its detractors claim, 14 Aug 2007
If you've read any of the clutter of recent books on evolutionary science or popular atheism, you'll know that Stephen Jay Gould - and particularly this book, Rocks of Ages comes with something of a health warning: Gould, despite great eminence and magisterial publishing history, is seen by a certain clique of like-minded authors within the biological community as being damaged goods and this attempt at popular philosophy, with its central thesis of "Non-Overlapping Magisteria" ("NOMA") - an attempt at peaceful mediation between science and religion - is given short shrift by such authors, and elsewhere tends to be put down to Gould's compromised situation when he wrote it (terminally ill with cancer). Since his death a few years ago, Rocks of Ages has lost an able champion and as a result looks set to disappear quietly beneath the waves of the current, squally debate.
Which is a pity. While I didn't find Gould's particular formulation entirely convincing, his starting point: that it would be a great shame if neither of the two greatest intellectual traditions on the planet could rest without destroying the other, seems to me to be thoroughly pragmatic and worthwhile, since each has an awful lot of merit and utlity if only they could agree a means of peacable separation.
The likes of Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens, of course, will have none of that, and while the great majority of the liberal religious happily would, this only furthers the militant atheists' conclusion that they are therefore right, and the god-botherers must be crushed. Very childish indeed, if you ask me. For the record, I'm not religious myself: just more pleasantly disposed to religious people than some of my atheist confreres.
All the same, I'm not persuaded by NOMA, because, like all the participants in that pointless debate, Gould believes he can hold onto transcendental truth, and is therefore hoist by the same petard: using NOMA simply as a means of deciding which truth is the province of which discipline is as forlorn as the forensic search for any kind of transcendental truth, and worthy of the same criticisms that Rorty, Kuhn, Wittgenstein and others make of that idea.
But enough of what I think. NOMA is, at least, a good try and along the way Gould has written an elegantly phrased, beautifully learned, contemplative, reflective book and made some very pithy observations, that Richard Dawkins might have done well to note.
In particular, the observation that hardly any of the modern religions take young-earth creationism literally. Once it is seen as metaphorical (and this may be heresy in the deep south, but it's been taken as read in all of the churches I've ever been to), the atheistic thrust of Darwin's Dangerous Idea (a wonderful book in other respects) comes to nought. Gould notes that it can only be taken figuratively, if for no other reason than that it makes no sense whatsoever otherwise: the literal text refers to the making of the sun on the fourth "day" - but it's difficult to see how days 1-3 could have been measured! Additionally, pretty much the only place where religion strays more than nonchalantly into the scientific magisterium (certainly the only one you'll find Dawkins obsessing about, since it is his chosen field) is in the creation myth, which as far as I know is over and done with in about ten pages, which leaves much of the balance of the Good Book unscathed.
Erudition of Gould's sort (absent without official leave in the The God Delusion) lives on every page, and the book is worth its value for these alone. The myth of the flat earthers is similarly surprising: read it and see.
Lastly, I found Gould's book valuable because it faces up to and accomodates what, for fundamentalists (of either stripe) is a rather uncomfortable fact: there are millions, if not billions, of thoughtful, well educated, scientifically literate, liberal people who are able to hold to religious devotion and scientific practice contemporaneously, without unease or mental torment. Dawkin's best guess is that these people are systematically deluded: hardly a useful or scientific approach, you would think. Gould's more mature reaction is to say: these are the facts: science has not supplanted religion; these ideas can co-exist in our heads; now how can we reconcile that.
There are better explanations, I believe, of the particulars, but Gould's book is a worthwhile and charming entry all the same.
Olly Buxton
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very disappointing., 5 Jul 2002
Stephen Gould intends to prove that there is no conflict between Science and Religion. However, he does this defining the proper domain (or magisterium, as he puts it) of religion effectively as that which does not conflict with science.Particularly, he muddles into one ball ethics (how one should behave, then meaning of "right and wrong") and religion (the belief in a god or gods, the god's actions, commandments etc.) It is true that science does has nothing to say about ethics, and that many people derive their ethical systems from their belief in their god. But this does not imply the reverse logic that, if science has no conflict with ethics, it has no conflict with the belief systems that inspire that conflict. Science does not havce anything to say about the ethics of (say) abortion, but it does show by observation that no god sends lightning to strike down abortionists. The book is written in SJG's usual readable, albeit wordy, style. However, do not expect great enlightenment from it.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Superficial, 7 April 1999
By A Customer
Because a book is intended to be popular does not mean it can't be written with rigor. Like many intellectuals, Stephen Gould seems to be under the impression that a popular audience can't handle a thesis cogently argued.The topic of the book is the relationship between science and religion, but these terms are never clearly defined. What exactly is science and what is religion? Gould vaguely says that science is how we learn facts about the world, and religion is how we address issues of faith and morals, but the basis of this distinction is never addressed and, in any case, it has the depth one would expect from a high-school student. What about philosophy? Philosophers like to address issues of morals and also fancy themselves able to make factual statements about the world. Indeed, there is the interesting question of under which category Gould's book itself falls. It is not a religious text, nor is it a scientific disquisition. In fact, it is a book of philosophy (the "architectonic science" as Aristotle would say) and so itself bears witness to the superficiality of Gould's categories. Gould also shows an unwillingness to address the clear implications of his thesis, perhaps for fear of offending his popular audience. If science speaks of facts, and religion permitted only to address issues of faith and morals, what of religions like Christianity or Islam that claim historical fact as their foundation? Obviously, Gould's position rules out these religions as categorical mistakes, although he doesn't make this implication explicit. But this is to patronize the popular audience rather than educate it.
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