The publisher, Oxford University Press, should be shot at dawn. This paperback has a miniscule border at the centre of the page which means the reader is unable to read it at all without bending the book back on itself, a physical irritation throughout. After such vast experience they should know by now that the one space that must be large enough is the centre. The outer space of the page is unimportant.
The book itself, I read entirely. The science was badly explained, unclear. In mathematical-physics 1 at theTait Institute I remember doing the simple pendulum at the start and the compound, I think. It is essential to be complete and clear. This was not. I defy anyone to understand why the compound pendulum produces chaotic results.
The section on Job, I found nauseatingly uninteresting. But I did read all of it. The effort to interpret this by Tom, I thought a failure. What annoyed me very much was the interpretation given to the famous opening on John 1. I read it six times in all and learned nothing except that an 'ordering principle' was involved in the meaning of 'logos.' What principle? What ordering? What is its role, if true? I am appalled to think that this was supposed to be helpful. There was no clarity and it was therefore off putting. Of course I have been at this before many times but Tom's book did nothing for me on this.
I thought the later chapters were very tedious, full of citations and surveys of other folks' ideas. There was far too much of this. There was no originality and no clarity.
Only one thing was useful.. My recognition that Sir Karl Popper's 'Objective Knowledge' (1972) which I read three times with immense enthusiasm once I accepted the lack of structure (I had just come from Kant's Ethics) had not been the full story, that others had moved it on. And I remembered a suspicion that things were not quite as Popper had conveyed. Tom revealed this, but not clearly. As I once taught Philosophy of Science that was worthwhile.
I dined in Tom's company at a Theology conference recently, attended his talk and also his lecture at Heriott-Watt which I judged very clear, professional and even unusual in the apparent science going on long before Newton et al: Grosseteste etc.The idea that the two cultures divide of CP Snow et al is unnecessary. I do not agree. There is belief in both, I concede, but I see no reason to join up science and religious belief. Whenever I hear the Nicene Creed in a church and am encouraged to assent to it, I cringe. To me, it seems impossible that anyone could believe such things. I always come out raging at the foolishness of those who do assent. This after 8 Theology Conferences and a near twenty year pilgrimage in search of the Big G as I call 'him.'
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The Publisher should be shot dead for a book that cannot be read easily because it is printed right up to the spine.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 20 March 2018Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 23 October 2014
