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Rating: 
Summary: The Soul of Science
Review: A truly scholarly and excellent work! A must have for any serious Christian and/or scientist who is interested in the role Christianity played in fostering the western/modern science. I like the chapter 1 in particular as it gives a well-organized, rational, consise and methodical account on the histroy of science. I agree with one reviewer, though, that this book might seem to be a little bit ponderous for some readers, but it is a must have so you can read it over and over as a good classical textbook. I am a Christian and I hold a Ph.D from Caltech in Electrical Engineering with minor studies in Applied Physics and I am becoming a lecturer in UC San Diego's ECE department next year. If I ever teach a class on the history of science in a university in the future (I am already doing some of that for my church's Sunday school class), this book will definitely be one of my textbook.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly Impressive
Review: I bought this book because I was looking for material that discusses the supposed link between Christianity and the development of science. In my class on western thought and culture my professor said that Christianity was the foundation for the modern scientific method. When I heard him say this, I was extremely skeptical about whether or not it was really accurate, and starting searching for any literature on the subject that I could really trust. I was pleasantly surprised when I found this very well-documented and readable book. This is easily the best treatment of the topic I have ever found. And yes, it did convince me that Christianity really is the mother of science.
Rating: 
Summary: Science & Theology
Review: I heard Nancy Pearcy speak at a lunch at the US Capitol building and because of that experience I bought her book. She is an expert with Christianity and Science and how the two relate, and have been more together than apart for most of history. This book helped me in understanding how evolution came about, and where Darwin was coming from. She takes abstract concepts of atoms and the speed of light, and breaks them down into something the lay reader can understand. This book gives a solid, biblical, yet well-informed view of science today. While it is not a page-turning Dean Koontz thriller, it is a good solid read. 4 stars.Joseph Dworak
Rating:
Summary: Science & Theology
Review: I heard Nancy Pearcy speak at a lunch at the US Capitol building and because of that experience I bought her book. She is an expert with Christianity and Science and how the two relate, and have been more together than apart for most of history. This book helped me in understanding how evolution came about, and where Darwin was coming from. She takes abstract concepts of atoms and the speed of light, and breaks them down into something the lay reader can understand. This book gives a solid, biblical, yet well-informed view of science today. While it is not a page-turning Dean Koontz thriller, it is a good solid read. 4 stars. Joseph Dworak
Rating:
Summary: A bit ponderous, but definitely worth the read.
Review: This is a pretty good, fairly balanced discussion of the role of Christianity in science. The authors discuss the influence of philosophical ideas on science, and vice-versa, from the ancient Greeks to modern DNA research. Their approach is primarily historical, in that they discuss scientific theories in the context of the people who developed them, rather than striking out on their own into research, or even discussing much that remains scientifically controversial until the final chapter. The history they are giving will be new to many, especially skeptics who have been trained to think that science escaped from Christianity like Odesseus from the cave of the Cyclops. This book should be in every church library or pastor's study precisely because that argument is so popular among modern skeptics. Some of the ideas Thaxton and Pearcey introduce in this book were new to me -- the idea that there is some problem about mathematics "working," for example -- and I am still mulling them over. I suspect they may at times be obscuring the difference between "What is true?" and "What can be proven to be true from first principles?" just a little bit. I also had some problems with the last chapter. Their discussion of information theory and the formation of the first cell was too long-winded and short on details. They also relegated what appeared a strong counter-argument -- that primitive RNA may have been able to make use of evolution even before the cell was formed -- to part of a footnote, and then failed to answer it. Perhaps that's what you get when historians pronounce on topics that scientists are still picking over. Still, in that chapter they do give a healthy challenge to materialistic science: "Several decades of origin-of-life experiments have already revealed consistent trends. . . Today we can say quite definitely what atoms and molecules will do when left to themselves. . . and what they will not do is spontaneously organize themselves into the complex structures of life. . . The contemporary design argument does not rest on gaps in our knowledge but rather on the growth in our knowledge . . ." This may not be the final word, but it whets my appetite to continue following the discussion. author, Jesus and the Religions of Man d.marshall@sun.ac.jp
Rating:
Summary: Nice explanation of scientific theory
Review: This is a terrific book on the nature and history of science from a Christian perspective. Pearcey and Thaxton specifically reveal the myth present in much of modern science - that the objective, non-religious approach is the only reasonable way to conduct scientific study. They show how nearly all of the major scientists throughout history were actually motivated by Christian or other religious purposes, and that Christianity - not atheism - contains the appropriate presuppositions to support science. After this fascinating historical study, they highlight prominent aspects of modern science that have some serious philosophical problems - most notably, evolution. They wrap up with some explanations and critiques of non-Euclidean geometry, quantum theories, and others from a Christian perspective. The book is a bit difficult to follow at some points due to the complicated jargon, but overall they do a stellar job making things clear. There are dozens of endnotes throughout, and they are usually relevant and interesting - it just gets annoying sometimes flipping back and forth between the notes at the end of the book and the actual text; notes at the bottom of each page are easier to use. Good content, good readability: great buy.
Rating:
Summary: Well-balanced and well-informed discussion
Review: This was a solid presentation of the history of Science in the context of the rest of human experience. It did an excellent job of refuting the positivist mythos that we grow up with in Science classes, discussing the origin and evolution of ideas, the metaphysical context of scientists, and the biases that we all bring to determining what is truth/what is verifiable in the world around us. The last chapter felt somewhat weaker, but I got the sense that it was because scientists in the topic addressed were still wrestling with the issues and no majority consensus on the concepts had yet been established. I highly recommend this for academics and laypeople alike. It was the first time that I ever saw the basic mathematical logic that brought Einstein to his theory of time dilation. It was so simple and obvious (rather than obscured by a sensationalized example like the Twin Paradox) and the explanation was straightforward. An excellent read; stick with it, it's worth it.
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