Fire in the mind
Subtitle: science, faith, and the search for order
By: George Johnson.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 379
Subjects: Johnson, George, 1952 Jan. 20-; Hermanos Penitentes.; Religion and science.; Tewa philosophy.; Science -- Philosophy.; New Mexico -- Description and travel.
Description: In this stunningly original book, set among the mountains and canyonlands of northern New Mexico, George Johnson explores the human hunger for pattern, the innate drive to find (or impose) order in our capricious world. In this land of strange juxtapositions where magic and science, religion and reason, constantly bump up against each other, Johnson introduces us to an amazing diversity of people who see the world through varied lenses, who find vastly different pictures in the night sky.

Just north of Santa Fe, the Tewa pueblo of San Ildefonso sits at the bottom of the plateau on which stands the laboratory city of Los Alamos. While the people of San Ildefonso carry out secret ceremonies in their kivas and dance to the rhythms of the seasons, the physicists of Los Alamos struggle with some of the most complex ideas of quantum theory, particle physics, and a new science called the physics of information, which seeks to understand the very source of pattern and order in the world.

Los Alamos and San Ildefonso are just two pieces in this jigsaw puzzle of world views. In the dizzying heights of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) Mountains, the faithful flock to an old Catholic church for samples of holy soil said to cure all ills. Descending from this land of miracles to the foothills around Santa Fe, we visit a revolutionary think tank called the Santa Fe Institute.

Here scientists are focusing their research on questions that seem to hover within the penumbra between science and religion: How, from the random jostling of molecules, did life arise and evolve to the point where it can contemplate its own beginnings? Are we accidents of the universe - miracles - or is there a reason for us to be here?
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 353-363) and index.
Table of contents: label: Preface
title: Kivas, Moradas, and the Secrets of the Nuclear Age; label: Part 1
title: Four Magic Mountains; label: Chapter 1
title: Phaedrus's Ghosts; label: Chapter 2
title: The Depth of the Atom; label: Chapter 3
title: The Height of the Sky; title: Tesuque Interlude: The Riddle of the Camel; label: Part 2
title: "The Cold, Gray Cave of Abstraction"; label: Chapter 4
title: The Demonology of Information; label: Chapter 5
title: The Undetermined World; label: Chapter 6
title: The Democracy of Measurement; label: San Ildefonso Interlude
title: The Mystery of Other Minds; label: Part 3
title: "A Fever of Matter"; label: Chapter 7
title: The Dawn of Recognition; label: Chapter 8
title: The Arrival of the Fittest; label: Chapter 9
title: In Search of Complexity; label: Chapter 10
title: In the Eye of the Beholder; label: Truchas Interlude
title: The Leap Into the Unknown; label: Conclusion
title: The Ruins of Los Alamos; title: Acknowledgments; title: Notes; title: Bibliography; title: Index