Science and the secrets of creation

Former teacher Ian Breckenridge wants to investigate ‘the exquisite choreography of life, the intimate mystery of time, the puzzles of infinity and deep complexity, strange kinship of matter and energy, and the biochemical wizardry underwriting the human quest to make sense of this’.

All well and good — as far as it goes.

For, in Magnificent, Rational, Strange: A beginner’s guide to the universe (Iff Books, UK £11.99 / US $15.95, December 2021), Breckenridge writes from a strictly materialist standpoint, saying his book will ‘try to limit itself to the reality of the material world, leaving other realities — moral, psychological, aesthetic, theological — as far as possible to one side’.

Is this really fair to the ‘beginner’? I think not.

I’d contend that the ‘beginner’ needs to know that the ‘reality’ of the material world is being expanded under the advancement of post-materialist science, bringing with it all those questions of morality, psychology, aesthetics and theology, and the prospect of a new scientific paradigm in the twenty-first century, with which Breckenridge fails to, or chooses not to, engage.

He takes the reductionist-materialist view that the brain generates consciousness, seemingly unaware of the profound questioning which this outdated concept has undergone in…