Let There Be Light: Modern Cosmology and Kabbalah: A New Conversation Between Science and Religion
Can religion answer any of the questions raised by science? Can science answer the questions posed by religion? Smith, an observant Jew who is a senior scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, brings us a work that is "deliberately not... scholarly." It aims to educate and enlighten readers while attempting to fuse an entry-level explanation of the vast and fascinating subject of cosmology with the elusive elements of the Kabbalah. Despite a fluid and uncomplicated organization, Smith fails to communicate with his target audience—those either unfamiliar with or uninterested in science and religion. His unwieldy prose, riddled with parenthetical allusions to former or pending chapters, and littered with qualifications, makes the science hard to follow for even the most avid fans of popular science magazines. Admittedly, his discussion of the Kabbalah is "a modest extraction of a few relevant ideas," but his cursory extrapolations confuse rather than clarify. If enthusiasm could make this an accessible read, Smith could well have succeeded. Unfortunately, readers may feel left in the dark after wrestling their way through his lecture. (Nov.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.