John Polkinghorne

View Larger
Image

Theology in the Context of Science

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Quantum Physics and Theology: An Unexpected Kinship

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Living With Hope: A Scientist Looks at Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

Other editions: Softcover - 2003

View Larger
Image

Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter With Reality

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Belief in God in an Age of Science

John Polkinghorne

In this thought-provoking and highly acclaimed book, a theoretical physicist and theologian focuses on the association between science and theology, contending that the inquiries of these "intellectual cousins" are parallel.

More About this Book

Other editions: Softcover - 2003, Hardcover - 1998

View Larger
Image

John Polkinghorne

Do we live in a world that makes sense, not just now, but totally and forever? If, as scientists now predict, the universe is going to end in collapse or decay, can it really be a divine creation? Is there a credible hope of a destiny beyond death? In this engaging and intellectually scrupulous book, a leading scientist-theologian draws on ideas from science, scripture, and theology to address these important questions. John Polkinghorne carefully builds a structure of the hope of the life to come that involves both continuity and discontinuity with life in this world--enough continuity so that it is we ourselves who shall live again in that future world and enough discontinuity to ensure that the second story is not just a repetition of the first.
Polkinghorne develops his argument in three sections. In the first, he considers the role of contemporary scientific insights and cultural expectations. In the second, he gives a careful account of the various testimonies of hope to be found in the Bible and assesses the credibility of belief in Jesus’ resurrection. In the final section he critically analyzes and defends the Christian hope of the life of the new creation.

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Healing Through Prayer: Health Practitioners Tell the Story

John Polkinghorne; Larry Dossey; Herbert Benson

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

The Analytic S-Matrix

John Polkinghorne; R. J. Eden; P. V. Landshoff; D.I. Olive

More About this Book

Other editions: Hardcover - 1966

View Larger
Image

Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Faith, Science, and Understanding

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

Other editions: Hardcover - 2000

View Larger
Image

Faith in the Living God: A Dialogue

John Polkinghorne; Michael Welker

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Ordinary Differential Equations Using Matlab

John Polkinghorne; David Arnold

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context

John Polkinghorne

Science has been very successful at discovering the structure and history of the physical world. However, there is more to be told of scientific fact that can be gained from impersonal experimental tests. This balanced account, written from the perspective of a physicist and a minister, goes beyond science to consider the human context in which it operates and to pursue a wider understanding of ourselves and our world.

More About this Book

Other editions: Hardcover - 1996

View Larger
Image

Searching for Truth: Lenten Meditations on Science and Faith

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Scientists As Theologians

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker

John Polkinghorne

"Based on his 1993-94 Gifford Lectures, Polkinghorne's task here is to ask challenging questions of the contemporary scientific worldview and to show how the range of possible answers carries beyond biology to spirit and beyond physics to God. . . . The single most important work of his theological corpus".-- First Things.

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Quarks, Chaos & Christianity: Questions to Science and Religion

John Polkinghorne

In a crystal clear discussion of science and religion and their logical friendship in the search for truth and understanding, Polkinghorne draws on discoveries made in atomic physics to make credible the claims of Christianity, and helps refine Christian perceptions through the knowledge that the new science brings. He discusses belief in God, chaos, evolution, miracles, and prayer, and gives an answer to the question: Can a scientist believe?

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

Serious Talk: Science and Religion in Dialogue

John Polkinghorne

Although now an Anglican priest and head of one of the prestigious colleges in Cambridge University, John Polkinghorne has spent most of his adult life working as a theoretical physicist. He is therefore uniquely qualified to set forth the relationship between science and religion in a way that takes the two disciplines seriously. Professor Polkinghorne argues that the habits of thought that are natural to the scientist are the same habits of thought that can be followed in the search for a wider and deeper kind of truth about the world. He calls this "bottom-up" thinking, that is, starting not with general principles but with the particularity of experience, and asking what is sufficient to explain the phenomena and give an understanding of what is going on. Serious Talk begins with the search for an acceptable meeting point for science and religion. Following this are examinations of specific theological issues approached in the spirit of such a meeting point: creation, the role of chance, God's engagement with time, the anticipation of a destiny awaiting humanity beyond death, and the end of the universe.

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

The Faith of a Physicist: Reflections of a Bottom-Up Thinker The Gifford Lectures for 1993-4

John Polkinghorne

Is it possible to think like a scientist and yet have the faith of a Christian? Although many Westerners might say no, there are also many critically minded individuals who entertain what John Polkinghorne calls a "wistful wariness" toward religion--they feel unable to accept religion on rational grounds yet cannot dismiss it completely. Polkinghorne, both a particle physicist and Anglican priest, here explores just what rational grounds there could be for Christian beliefs, maintaining that the quest for motivated understanding is a concern shared by scientists and religious thinkers alike. Anyone who assumes that religion is based on unquestioning certainties, or that it need not take into account empirical knowledge, will be challenged by Polkinghorne's bottom-up examination of Christian beliefs about events ranging from creation to the resurrection. The author organizes his inquiry around the Nicene Creed, an early statement that continues to summarize Christian beliefs. He applies to each of its tenets the question, "What is the evidence that makes you think this might be true?" The evidence Polkinghorne weighs includes the Hebrew and Christian scriptures--their historical contexts and the possible motivations for their having been written-- scientific theories, and human self-consciousness as revealed in literary, philosophical, and psychological works. He begins with the words, "We believe," and presents understandings of the nature of humanity, showing, for example, that Cartesian theory, evolution, and natural selection do not tell the entire story of what humans are about, especially in light of many sources that attest to our spirituality. Moving through the Creed, Polkinghorne considers the concept of divinity and God as creator in discussions that cover the Theory of Everything, the Big Bang Theory, and the possibility of divine presence within reality so that God is not simply an outside observer. Chapters on Jesus analyze the different ways events are described in the Gospels and the way motivation for belief is conveyed--for example, how do these writings explain why a young man killed in public disgrace could inspire a following, when other major world religious leaders lived to become highly revered elders in their communities? "Faith seeking understanding" is, according to Polkinghorne, like the scientific quest. Both are journeys of intellectual discovery in which those who survey experience from an initially chosen point of view must be open to correction in the light of further experience. "Religion," he writes, "has long known that ultimately every human image of God proves to be an inadequate idol." The Faith of a Physicist, based on the prestigious 1993 Gifford Lectures, delivers a powerful message to scientists and theologians, theists and atheists alike.

More About this Book

Reason and Reality: The Relationship Between Science and Theology

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

Science and Providence: God's Interaction With the World

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

View Larger
Image

The Quantum World

John Polkinghorne

"[Polkinghorne] offers much insight in this thoroughly delightful little book into the nature of the conceptual problems at the heart of the twentieth centurys most successful theory. . . . I wholeheartedly recommend The Quantum World. . . ."--Tony Hey, New Scientist "A delightful book, written at a popular level but without any misleading over-simplification."--Roger Penrose, The Times Higher Education Supplement "The author's life as well as his oeuvre, especially this lovely little book, bear testimony to the fact that . . . science and nature can coexist in harmonious complementarity."--Abraham Pais, Nature

More About this Book

Other editions: Hardcover - 1984

Rochester Roundabout: The Story of High Energy Physics

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book

Science and Creation the Search for Understanding

John Polkinghorne

More About this Book