LAUSR

simply stated dogmatically as if self-evident. Gross offers only three highly selective block quotes in three pages to make his case, only one of which – from the self-proclaimed atheist Dawkins – actually supports his case. Then follows an encomium to the sublime power of the story of Abraham and Isaac, a lament for the decreasing belief in a Christian God throughout the West, and the conclusion that “science can say nothing about the meaning of life or of the good life” (384). For those answers, Gross implies, we must rely not on the sublime speculations of science but on the on the revelations of the Bible. The reaction to this prophetic voice in The Scientific Sublime will undoubtedly be highly polarized. For my part, I commend the work Gross has done to bring to light the workings of the sublime in the writings of some of the most influential scientists of our time, but I wholly reject his insistence on replaying the tired narrative of the zero-sum game between science and religion. If there is a decline in religion, it is not because science has dared to stimulate the imagination, speculate about the unknown, and consider the possibility that the power of reason is without limits when stimulated by curiosity, hope, wonder, and care; it is because too many religions put chains around experience, look with contempt and fear at the possibility of change, and condemn those who dare think otherwise of hubris or as heretics. For this is what happened to Giordano Bruno, whose haunting statue still looms over the Campo dei Fiori in Rome where he was burned alive for imagining an infinite universe. I say let us unfetter these bonds and invite the scientific mind to wander the paths of these endless expanses, wherever they lead. Perhaps they will lead us to dead ends; such is the way of speculation. But perhaps by pursuing their intuitions without constraint or apology, they may stumble upon new ways of seeing God in the stars or experiencing the divine in ourselves.