What Remains To Be Discovered

by John Maddox, Martin Kessler Books, The Free Press, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020, 1999, 434 Pages

Our book of the month is a very unusual and interesting book. Its title suggests that the book will tell us some of things that science has left to explain. The author is the editor emeritus of Nature, a major science magazine. The unique thing about the book is that as it explains what remains to be discovered in science, it does a remarkable job of explaining what we have already learned. The explanations are accurate and for the most part understandable to the reader with some background in the sciences.

The book is divided into three areas:

  1.  Matter-the origins of the Cosmos and the implications of quantum mechanics and relativity.
  2. Life-origins of life, genetic questions, and the newest theories of evolution
  3. Our World-studies of the brain, new developments in mathematics and computer theory, and threats to our survival such as AIDS, global warming, and astronomical catastrophes.
This is a very useful book to all kinds of readers. God and creation are mentioned and held up as options in a relatively neutral way. Those who want to understand the issues in science in today's world will find the book to be a thorough academic review of the issues. The book is totally a scientific approach-not theological at all and with very little philosophy. One interesting feature of the book is that as it approaches questions that science has no answer to, God is mentioned as a possible option. Those who want current areas of study where God's activity may be a direct cause of what we see will find useful cases in this work. Those cases are not a "god of the gaps" type of exercise, but a recognition that there are some areas that science can not address.

We recommend this book as a useful contemporary resource of those issues currently being studied in science. It will probably not be useful for most apologetic applications, and it is not easy reading for those with limited scientific background. 

Back to Contents Does God Exist?, NovDec99.