Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.56315/pscf12-23twenge
J. Twenge
GENERATIONS: The Real Differences between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents--and What They Mean for America's Future by Jean M. Twenge. New York: Atria Books, 2023. 560 pages. Hardcover; $32.50. ISBN: 9781982181611. E-book; $16.99. ASIN: B0B3Y9RSFP. *"Thinking without comparison is unthinkable. And, in the absence of comparison, so is all scientific thought and scientific research." --Sociologist Guy Swanson, 1971 *Certainly, the ideas behind Swanson's observations guide the work of San Diego State University psychologist Jean M. Twenge, who has published scores of peer-reviewed empirical studies comparing the responses of different birth cohorts (generations) on the same social survey questions over time. Although limited to the United States here, her empirical research mostly compares present attitudes to past ones and compares different generations to each other in the same time frame. She has long been thinking with comparisons. *Twenge's previous book, iGen (2017), drew on publicly available data from four major social surveys to argue convincingly that social media heavily influenced Gen Z (composed of people born between 1995 and 2012), often to their physical and psychological detriment. In her sequel, Twenge seeks to widen the scope and the audience for such research and even purports to predict the future of America. Even if the science of comparing generational cohorts will fall short in predicting the future (as seems likely), readers will benefit from learning about typical traits of different generations or birth cohorts in the United States. *Generations compares six generations of Americans: the Silent generation (born 1925-1945), Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), Generation X (born 1965-1979), Millennials (born 1980-1994), Generation Z (born 1995-2012), and Polars (born 2013-present). Each of the substantive chapters (chaps. 2-7) focuses on a single generation and contrasts its members' average responses on a wide array of social survey questions from twenty-four datasets with a combined number of 39 million respondents. Most readers will be able to identify family, friends, and neighbors from each generation that exemplify some of the attitudes that Twenge labels as distinctive. *Twenge constantly uses charts to show differences between generations and average attitudinal shifts over time. While the book is hefty and full of statistics and charts that can occasionally overwhelm the reader, the prose is mostly lively and sprinkled with humor. The overall impact is to convince the reader that generational cohorts do tend to share outlooks. My copy is studded with post-it flags marking places in the text where her observations surprised me or nailed down something I had only vaguely sensed before. As a member of Generation X, for instance, I was surprised at how many traits identified by Twenge resonated with my own life experiences, and I suspect other readers will have similar "aha" moments for their generation. They
《世代:Z世代、千禧一代、X世代、婴儿潮一代和沉默世代之间的真正差异——以及它们对美国未来的意义》，作者:Jean M. Twenge纽约:阿特里亚图书公司，2023年。560页。精装书;32.50美元。ISBN: 9781982181611。电子书;16.99美元。最佳翻译:B0B3Y9RSFP。*“没有比较的思考是不可想象的。如果没有比较，所有的科学思想和科学研究都是如此。”——社会学家盖伊·斯旺森，1971年*当然，斯旺森观察背后的思想指导了圣地亚哥州立大学心理学家吉恩·m·特温格的工作，他发表了许多同行评议的实证研究，比较了不同出生群体(世代)在同一社会调查问题上的反应。虽然仅限于美国，但她的实证研究主要是将现在的态度与过去的态度进行比较，并将同一时间段内的不同代人进行比较。她一直在用比较来思考问题。*特温格的上一本书《iGen》(2017)利用了四项主要社会调查的公开数据，令人信服地认为，社交媒体严重影响了Z世代(由1995年至2012年出生的人组成)，往往对他们的身心造成损害。在她的续集中，特温格试图扩大这种研究的范围和受众，甚至声称要预测美国的未来。即使比较世代群体的科学无法预测未来(这似乎很有可能)，读者也会从了解美国不同世代或出生群体的典型特征中受益。*《世代》比较了六代美国人:沉默的一代(生于1925-1945年)、婴儿潮一代(生于1946-1964年)、X一代(生于1965-1979年)、千禧一代(生于1980-1994年)、Z一代(生于1995-2012年)和北极星一代(生于2013年至今)。每一个实质性的章节(章)。2-7)聚焦于一代人，并对比了其成员对来自24个数据集的广泛社会调查问题的平均回答，这些数据集共有3900万受访者。大多数读者都能从每一代人的家庭、朋友和邻居中找到一些能体现特温格所标榜的独特态度的例子。Twenge经常使用图表来显示代际差异和随着时间的平均态度变化。虽然这本书很厚，充满了统计数据和图表，有时会让读者不知所措，但它的散文大多是活泼的，点缀着幽默。总体影响是让读者相信，同代人确实倾向于分享观点。我的稿子上贴满了便利贴，标出了她的观察让我惊讶的地方，或者明确了我以前只模模糊糊感觉到的东西。例如，作为X世代的一员，我很惊讶地发现，特温格所识别的许多特征与我自己的生活经历产生了共鸣，我怀疑其他读者也会有类似的“顿悟”时刻。他们还可以重新认识到其他几代人是如何影响美国社会的。*代际人群是如何产生差异的?在第4-19页上，特温格的论点是，技术变革推动了代际差异，而这种差异往往是由个人主义和“低出生率、慢发展、对每个孩子投入更多资源和照顾的慢生活策略”(第18页)介导的。随着死亡率降低、预期寿命延长和技术变革，年轻一代可以从容地完成学业、开始职业生涯、结婚、买房和生孩子——如果他们甚至决定要孩子的话。正如特温格所指出的那样，“到2020年，青少年和20岁出头女性的出生率都是自1918年有记录以来的最低水平——大约是1990年的一半”(第377页)。在年轻一代中占主导地位的慢生活策略，可能是书中描述的最重要的转变，此外还有宗教信仰和行为的减少。*即使学术研究人员可能会对她将“技术”作为一个非常广泛、包罗万象的术语进行吹毛求疵，但不可否认的是，这些趋势正在这些群体中的典型成员身上发生变化。任何认识20多岁或30多岁受过大学教育的年轻人的人都能明显感受到这种影响。与前几代人相比，他们不太可能结婚，不太可能生孩子，不太可能参加宗教仪式，也不太可能持有传统的性别认同观点。与加拿大和其他工业化国家以及更多样化的国家进行跨国比较，可能有助于澄清这种态度和行为的代际转变的原因。*此外，当这本书在最后一章试图预测未来时，感觉很勉强。 特温格自己引用了尼尔·豪(Neil Howe)和威廉·施特劳斯(William Strauss)至少三个失败的预测，他们是代际分析的前辈(第295页)。三十年后的读者应该重新阅读这本书，看看特温格的预言是否站得住脚。有人怀疑，我们会对一些无法预料的趋势感到惊讶。*值得注意的是，对于本杂志的读者来说，宗教仪式和信仰的衡量指标显示，从千禧一代(1980-1994年出生)开始急剧下降，Z一代(1995-2012年出生)继续下降。对于任何关心社会福祉的人来说，这是一个令人不安的趋势。正如特温格所指出的，“人类有一种天生的欲望，去相信比自己更重要的东西，去寻找生活的意义。如果宗教不再扮演这个角色，其他的东西就会取而代之”(第504页)。特温格不禁表达了对美国社会在这里和其他地方的未来的担忧。基督教学者应该加入她的行列。毕竟，我们的信仰是代代相传的。正如诗篇145:4所说:“这代人称赞你的作为;他们传扬你大能的作为。”我们是否未能将这个故事传递给年轻一代?这本书收集了大量证据，证明我们可能是——美国社会可能因此变得更糟。*《世代》最好不要被理解为推动心理科学的尝试，而更应该被理解为一位忧心忡忡的美国心理学家的数据丰富的哀嚎。为了说服我们关心美国社会的未来，特温格比较了成千上万的数据点，美国社会推崇个人主义，损害了集体福祉。那些被召唤去爱他们的邻居的人应该好好研究一下这里的趋势，思考一下他们如何才能更好地关心这些邻居的所有世代。对于我们这些属于“存到万代”王国的人(诗篇145:13)，我们可以从特温格那里学习如何在促进一个不那么个人主义的社会的同时，接触到今天活着的每一代人。*由俄亥俄州坎顿市马龙大学国际政治学教授兼通识教育主任斯科特·瓦克斯(Scott Waalkes)审阅。
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.56315/pscf9-23bishop2
Robert C. Bishop, Michael Silberstein
EMERGENCE IN CONTEXT: A Treatise in Twenty-First Century Natural Philosophy by Robert C. Bishop, Michael Silberstein, and Mark Pexton. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022. 363 pages. Hardcover; $103.65. ISBN: 9780192849786. *Reductionists dream of a day when all scientific truths can be derived from fundamental physics. Bishop, Silberstein, and Paxton show that dream is now dead, or at least it's quite ill. But what will replace it? One answer is "emergence," although that term is ambiguous. In its weak sense, it merely expresses pessimism about our ability to fully understand how microphysics produces all other phenomena. In its strong sense, it means that some entities have a kind of autonomy from physics, with their own "causal powers," including downward causation. Bishop et al. seek to replace strong and weak emergence with "contextual emergence." *Let's start with an example (sec 2.4). Rayleigh-Bénard convection occurs when a fluid is trapped between a heating plate below and a cooler one above. Convection cells emerge as warmer fluid rises toward the top and cooled fluid sinks. While molecular interactions play a part in this, sustained convection is impossible without the macroscopic plates. This behavior is not wholly determined by the fluid's constituent parts but rather by the context in which the fluid exists. *What this and scores of other examples show is that phenomena at a given scale often depend on a host of "stability conditions" at other scales--sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Contra the reductionist, the authors argue that the behavior of entities, properties, and processes at a given level is never wholly determined by events at a lower level. Macroscopic conditions (among other things) play an essential and ineliminable role. If we knew all the truths of nature, we would see that not all dependence is bottom-up. *"But the plates in your example are made of matter," says the critic, "We can reduce those to the behavior of atoms as well." A complete mathematical description without idealizations? "Well, it can be done in principle." Let's consider another example while we wait. Physicists in the Newtonian era devoted much time to the study of planetary orbits. One surprising stability condition is three-dimensional space. In four dimensions, regular orbits that resist small perturbations would be impossible (p. 29). Note that spatial dimensions are not part of the system. They are the context in which the system exists. Three dimensions are a necessary condition for stable orbits but cannot be reduced to the system's constituents even in principle. The properties of the parts do not determine the properties of the whole. This example illustrates why emergent properties are often inexplicable or unpredictable given complete knowledge of lower-level constituents: stability conditions are typically not at some lower level. While some stability conditions are causal and mechanical, like the plates in the convection examp
{"title":"Emergence in Context: A Treatise in Twenty-First Century Natural Philosophy","authors":"Robert C. Bishop, Michael Silberstein","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23bishop2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23bishop2","url":null,"abstract":"EMERGENCE IN CONTEXT: A Treatise in Twenty-First Century Natural Philosophy by Robert C. Bishop, Michael Silberstein, and Mark Pexton. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022. 363 pages. Hardcover; $103.65. ISBN: 9780192849786. *Reductionists dream of a day when all scientific truths can be derived from fundamental physics. Bishop, Silberstein, and Paxton show that dream is now dead, or at least it's quite ill. But what will replace it? One answer is \"emergence,\" although that term is ambiguous. In its weak sense, it merely expresses pessimism about our ability to fully understand how microphysics produces all other phenomena. In its strong sense, it means that some entities have a kind of autonomy from physics, with their own \"causal powers,\" including downward causation. Bishop et al. seek to replace strong and weak emergence with \"contextual emergence.\" *Let's start with an example (sec 2.4). Rayleigh-Bénard convection occurs when a fluid is trapped between a heating plate below and a cooler one above. Convection cells emerge as warmer fluid rises toward the top and cooled fluid sinks. While molecular interactions play a part in this, sustained convection is impossible without the macroscopic plates. This behavior is not wholly determined by the fluid's constituent parts but rather by the context in which the fluid exists. *What this and scores of other examples show is that phenomena at a given scale often depend on a host of \"stability conditions\" at other scales--sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Contra the reductionist, the authors argue that the behavior of entities, properties, and processes at a given level is never wholly determined by events at a lower level. Macroscopic conditions (among other things) play an essential and ineliminable role. If we knew all the truths of nature, we would see that not all dependence is bottom-up. *\"But the plates in your example are made of matter,\" says the critic, \"We can reduce those to the behavior of atoms as well.\" A complete mathematical description without idealizations? \"Well, it can be done in principle.\" Let's consider another example while we wait. Physicists in the Newtonian era devoted much time to the study of planetary orbits. One surprising stability condition is three-dimensional space. In four dimensions, regular orbits that resist small perturbations would be impossible (p. 29). Note that spatial dimensions are not part of the system. They are the context in which the system exists. Three dimensions are a necessary condition for stable orbits but cannot be reduced to the system's constituents even in principle. The properties of the parts do not determine the properties of the whole. This example illustrates why emergent properties are often inexplicable or unpredictable given complete knowledge of lower-level constituents: stability conditions are typically not at some lower level. While some stability conditions are causal and mechanical, like the plates in the convection examp","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.56315/pscf9-23jordan2
Peter N. Jordan
NATURALISM IN THE CHRISTIAN IMAGINATION: Providence and Causality in Early Modern England by Peter N. Jordan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2022. 218 pages. Hardcover; $99.95. ISBN: 9781009211987. *How should religious conviction shape scientific thought? This is the question many early moderns asked themselves, and which Peter Jordan explores in his book. In a close analysis of prominent early modern English theologians and scientists, Jordan weaves together a coherent intellectual outlook that provides important commentary on the relationship between science and religion. *Jordan's selection of early modern Protestantism will not be new to those interested in the relationship between science and religion. Jordan's PhD advisor, Peter Harrison, who oversaw the dissertation from which this book developed, has left his mark on this topic for the last three decades in books such as The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (1998), The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (2007), as well as The Territories of Science and Religion (2015). As a consequence Jordan's guiding assumption, that Christian thought created a context within which early modern science was explained, is not anything novel. What is unique is his recognition that early modern theology was not entirely static or homogenous in its relationship to science. By focusing on shifting ideas of the Christian doctrine of providence, what Jordan highlights is the way in which certain thinkers accommodated the doctrine of providence to embrace new scientific developments, such as mechanism and atomism. As a result, this work reminds us that the area of early modern science and religion, while well studied, still has areas of investigation that may bear important fruit. *The book itself, which contains an introduction, conclusion, and five chapters, is organized into four parts. The first part introduces his analytical term of "providential naturalism," by which he means a perspective on the natural world that integrates Christian commitments to providence and explanations of the natural world. It is because he is analyzing the doctrine of providence that his selection of English Protestants makes sense. As he explains in chapter two, English Protestants developed a well-structured formulation of providence, which explained the wide variety of ways in which God acted within the world, activities which could contain--though were not entirely constrained by--the natural world. The important implication of this, which Jordan explores later in the work, is that the newer developments of science, which did not fit the expected patterns of Aristotelianism, and hence of the expectations of how the natural world should function, could nevertheless find an articulation within a world that was believed to be fundamentally controlled and shaped by God. *The second part provides important contextualization for the development of the theories of providence. In a work looki
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.56315/pscf9-23peterson3
James C. Peterson
{"title":"On Fred Cannon, \"Acts 17:26: God Made of One [Blood]—Not of One Man—Every Ethnic Group of Humans\" (PSCF 74, no. 1 [2022]: 19–38); and William Horst, \"From One Person? Exegetical Alternatives to a Monogenetic Reading of Acts 17:26\" (PSCF 74, no. 2 [2022]: 77–91)","authors":"James C. Peterson","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23peterson3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23peterson3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686693","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.56315/pscf9-23guerrini
Anita Guerrini
EXPERIMENTING WITH HUMANS AND ANIMALS: From Aristotle to CRISPR, second edition by Anita Guerrini. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. viii + 208 pages. Paperback; $28.95. ISBN: 9781421444055. *There has been a haunting thought ever since I began to use live mammals for my research in neurophysiology: "Will my descendants accuse me of cruelty towards animals as much as we do to the scientists under the Nazis?" A number of neurophysiologists have been threatened and attacked to stop their research, and, as a consequence, there are few neurophysiologists left using rhesus monkeys along the West coastline of the US and Canada. Research with rats is increasingly of concern to some, and mice might be the next subject of attention. Research staff and students, who are required to remain on budget with their projects, are put under increasing pressure and stress in order to take better care of their laboratory animals without receiving compensation or support. In the meantime, almost nobody seems to care to know how many animals were sacrificed to develop the celebrated COVID-19 vaccines. Are we, biomedical researchers, ever going to have a resolution to this ethical tension around us? Are we going to be viewed by future historians as the heroes of science--or as abusers of living creatures? *Anita Guerrini's Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR does not answer the question. As the author states in the beginning of her book, her objective is to tell the history of "trial and error, prejudice and leaps of faith, clashing egos and budget battles," to help us evaluate "the value, and the values, of Western science," and to "influence the future." In other words, the purpose of the book is not to make ethical arguments or to appraise a certain aspect of historical development, such as the progress of ethical care for human and animal subjects. It is, rather, to reveal the reality that ethical views and sentiments have changed, collided, merged, and contradicted each other across time and political landscapes. *This text poses questions, implicitly and explicitly, to enable us to address some of the issues and challenges we are facing at present. A first question arises from the history of vivisection (chap. 1). Vivisection refers to experimenting with (mostly dissecting) live animals, and sometimes even humans. This appears for the first time in recorded history back in ancient Greece, meaning it was practiced for two millennia without anesthesia, a discovery not made until the eighteenth century. More strikingly, vivisection was done as part of "edutainment" shows in ancient times. Criticism of the practice was not necessarily about the cruelty but rather about the usefulness of the knowledge obtained from dying or dead animals. The rights or well-being of animals were not much of an issue in the ancient age as human dominion was a firmly held belief. Such an ethical view continued to be dominant until early Mode
{"title":"Experimenting with Humans and Animals: from Aristotle to Crispr, second edition","authors":"Anita Guerrini","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23guerrini","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23guerrini","url":null,"abstract":"EXPERIMENTING WITH HUMANS AND ANIMALS: From Aristotle to CRISPR, second edition by Anita Guerrini. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. viii + 208 pages. Paperback; $28.95. ISBN: 9781421444055. *There has been a haunting thought ever since I began to use live mammals for my research in neurophysiology: \"Will my descendants accuse me of cruelty towards animals as much as we do to the scientists under the Nazis?\" A number of neurophysiologists have been threatened and attacked to stop their research, and, as a consequence, there are few neurophysiologists left using rhesus monkeys along the West coastline of the US and Canada. Research with rats is increasingly of concern to some, and mice might be the next subject of attention. Research staff and students, who are required to remain on budget with their projects, are put under increasing pressure and stress in order to take better care of their laboratory animals without receiving compensation or support. In the meantime, almost nobody seems to care to know how many animals were sacrificed to develop the celebrated COVID-19 vaccines. Are we, biomedical researchers, ever going to have a resolution to this ethical tension around us? Are we going to be viewed by future historians as the heroes of science--or as abusers of living creatures? *Anita Guerrini's Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Aristotle to CRISPR does not answer the question. As the author states in the beginning of her book, her objective is to tell the history of \"trial and error, prejudice and leaps of faith, clashing egos and budget battles,\" to help us evaluate \"the value, and the values, of Western science,\" and to \"influence the future.\" In other words, the purpose of the book is not to make ethical arguments or to appraise a certain aspect of historical development, such as the progress of ethical care for human and animal subjects. It is, rather, to reveal the reality that ethical views and sentiments have changed, collided, merged, and contradicted each other across time and political landscapes. *This text poses questions, implicitly and explicitly, to enable us to address some of the issues and challenges we are facing at present. A first question arises from the history of vivisection (chap. 1). Vivisection refers to experimenting with (mostly dissecting) live animals, and sometimes even humans. This appears for the first time in recorded history back in ancient Greece, meaning it was practiced for two millennia without anesthesia, a discovery not made until the eighteenth century. More strikingly, vivisection was done as part of \"edutainment\" shows in ancient times. Criticism of the practice was not necessarily about the cruelty but rather about the usefulness of the knowledge obtained from dying or dead animals. The rights or well-being of animals were not much of an issue in the ancient age as human dominion was a firmly held belief. Such an ethical view continued to be dominant until early Mode","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.56315/pscf9-23peterson
James C. Peterson
{"title":"Our 75th Anniversary at Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","authors":"James C. Peterson","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23peterson","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23peterson","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.56315/pscf9-23gonzalez
Oscar Gonzalez
{"title":"On Keith B. and Ruth Douglas Miller, \"Taking the Road Less Traveled: Reflections on Entering Careers in Science\" (PSCF 49, no. 4 [1997]: 212–14)","authors":"Oscar Gonzalez","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23gonzalez","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23gonzalez","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
THE PRIMACY OF DOUBT: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World by Tim Palmer. New York: Basic Books, 2022. 297 pages. Hardcover; $30.00. ISBN: 9781541619715. *Tim Palmer, a distinguished physics professor at the University of Oxford, has authored a captivating popular science book exploring chaos in complex systems. Early in his career, he switched fields from mathematical physics to weather forecasting and made significant developments in ensemble weather prediction, revolutionizing our understanding of weather patterns. The author discusses how delving into this realm reveals a chaos geometry, describing difficult-to-understand real-world phenomena. He takes the reader through various complex systems that exhibit a marked sensitivity to initial conditions, like the renowned "butterfly effect." Chaos geometry describes a system that is predictable and stable for a long time, but occasionally veers into new directions. The study of chaotic complex systems challenges traditional notions of predictability. *The book is divided into three parts. Part 1: The Science of Uncertainty explores the concept of chaos geometry. Palmer captivates readers from the start by sharing a true story about a renowned BBC weather forecaster. In 1987 this forecaster infamously failed to predict the most severe storm in 300 years, striking England. This incident highlighted the unsettling truth that complex systems can deviate significantly from historically stable patterns. As a polymath, Palmer generously shares captivating examples and illustrations from fields such as history, philosophy, and art. Part I is solid science and mathematics, but without equations. *Part II: Predicting Our Chaotic World explores Palmer's influential technique to forecast inherently uncertain systems, running models multiple times with slightly different initial conditions. Chaos geometry offers a powerful description of the behavior of these systems. The author focuses on Lorenz's idea that even with infinitesimally small uncertainty, we cannot predict beyond a finite horizon in time. The author extends the concepts from Part I from well-established domains such as climate, to emerging areas such as disease, economics, and conflict. *Part III: Exploring the Chaotic Universe and Our Place in It delves into speculative realms and may appeal to readers of PSCF as it engages with metaphysical inquiries regarding Christian theism. Palmer grapples with perplexing intellectual dilemmas, including free will, consciousness, and the nature of God. In his pursuit to unravel nature's workings, he confronts philosophical and theological quandaries. At its essence, he posits that the universe operates under determinism and challenges the notion that uncertainty in nature is primarily ontological as Bohr espoused, rather than epistemic as advocated by Einstein. Raising a thought-provoking query, the author asks, "Could there be some
{"title":"The Primacy of Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World","authors":"Tim Palmer","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23palmer","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23palmer","url":null,"abstract":"THE PRIMACY OF DOUBT: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change, How the Science of Uncertainty Can Help Us Understand Our Chaotic World by Tim Palmer. New York: Basic Books, 2022. 297 pages. Hardcover; $30.00. ISBN: 9781541619715. *Tim Palmer, a distinguished physics professor at the University of Oxford, has authored a captivating popular science book exploring chaos in complex systems. Early in his career, he switched fields from mathematical physics to weather forecasting and made significant developments in ensemble weather prediction, revolutionizing our understanding of weather patterns. The author discusses how delving into this realm reveals a chaos geometry, describing difficult-to-understand real-world phenomena. He takes the reader through various complex systems that exhibit a marked sensitivity to initial conditions, like the renowned \"butterfly effect.\" Chaos geometry describes a system that is predictable and stable for a long time, but occasionally veers into new directions. The study of chaotic complex systems challenges traditional notions of predictability. *The book is divided into three parts. Part 1: The Science of Uncertainty explores the concept of chaos geometry. Palmer captivates readers from the start by sharing a true story about a renowned BBC weather forecaster. In 1987 this forecaster infamously failed to predict the most severe storm in 300 years, striking England. This incident highlighted the unsettling truth that complex systems can deviate significantly from historically stable patterns. As a polymath, Palmer generously shares captivating examples and illustrations from fields such as history, philosophy, and art. Part I is solid science and mathematics, but without equations. *Part II: Predicting Our Chaotic World explores Palmer's influential technique to forecast inherently uncertain systems, running models multiple times with slightly different initial conditions. Chaos geometry offers a powerful description of the behavior of these systems. The author focuses on Lorenz's idea that even with infinitesimally small uncertainty, we cannot predict beyond a finite horizon in time. The author extends the concepts from Part I from well-established domains such as climate, to emerging areas such as disease, economics, and conflict. *Part III: Exploring the Chaotic Universe and Our Place in It delves into speculative realms and may appeal to readers of PSCF as it engages with metaphysical inquiries regarding Christian theism. Palmer grapples with perplexing intellectual dilemmas, including free will, consciousness, and the nature of God. In his pursuit to unravel nature's workings, he confronts philosophical and theological quandaries. At its essence, he posits that the universe operates under determinism and challenges the notion that uncertainty in nature is primarily ontological as Bohr espoused, rather than epistemic as advocated by Einstein. Raising a thought-provoking query, the author asks, \"Could there be some","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Roy Clouser, \"Three Theological Arguments in Support of Carol Hill\"s Reading of the Historicity of Genesis and Original Sin\" (PSCF 73, no. 3 [2021]: 145–51)","authors":"David L. Wilcox","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23wilcox","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23wilcox","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Peter Rüst (Ruest), \"Creative Providence in Biology\" (PSCF 53, no. 3 [2001]: 179–83)","authors":"Brian Greuel","doi":"10.56315/pscf9-23greuel","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.56315/pscf9-23greuel","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":53927,"journal":{"name":"Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135686722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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