The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion
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- ISBN13: 9780316078450
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“More years ago than I care to reckon up, I met Richard Feynman.” So starts THE LANGUAGE GOD TALKS, Herman Wouk’s gem on navigating the apportion between science and religion. In one rich, compact volume, Wouk draws on tales from his life as well as on key events from the 20th century to take up the eternal questions of why we are here, what purpose faith serves, and how scientific fact fits into the picture. He relates wonderful conversations he’s had with scientists such as Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Freeman Dyson, and Steven Weinberg, and brings to life such pivotal moments as the 1969 moon landing and the Challenger disaster. Brilliantly written, THE LANGUAGE GOD TALKS is a scintillating and lively investigation and a worthy addition to the literature.
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When you write your review, do not give a book report. I have heard or read this statement more than once since writing reviews. For a long time I did write book reports. It was not simple writing why I book impressed me or why a book did not impress me. Thank goodness, I have begun to slowly get off the book report horse and have climbed on to the horse named My Impressions.
Herman Wouk rocked my world in only 183 pages. After reading the words spoken by one of the men who helped make the Atomic bomb, I became a bit loose headed. This intellectual said in so many words Calculus is the language of God. Soon I lost my way. I wandered in a dark, dreary and vague world. I had reached another planet.I was trying to learn Calculus which is a total impossibility for my small brain. I am use to lighter fare. That is all I need on my tiny plate of a mind and/or brain. You see Mathematics and Science are not in my hemisphere. I am having difficulty just remembering the names of the scientists named by Herman Wouk.
In The Language God Talks BY HERMAN WOUK I became impressed by Mr. Wouk’s humility. His humility led me to judge “Calculus” is God’s language. After all, who really has the answers to “why” the Holocaust happened. Why did so many people lose their lives because of one man’s power to make people despise their fellowman? So, wanting to take something away from this scholarly book I chose to refocus on the Jewish people and their ability to live through a traumatic time. I have also read and been momentously stirred by Elie Wiesel’s Night recommended by Oprah. Oprah went overseas with Mr. Wiesel and stood in the concentration camp or camps. I will never forget persons programs.
Anyway Aaron Jastrow is a main character in Winds of War and War and Remembrance written by Herman Wouk. One book became two books which were researched and written in twenty years. I did not read the books. I did see the television series years ago. Here is a part of a diary entry by Aaron Jastrow.
“For the first time in about fifty years I place on phylacteries….gave me no instant intellectual or spirtual uplift….yet I will persist in this while I live. Thus I answer Eichmann. Reb Laizar slapped me out of my Jewish identity, as it were, and an SS officer kicked me back into it.”
Persons words gave me chills because I’ve read about SS officers, Anne Frank’s diary, seen a few movies and read a few additional books about this time of horrors where being a child, a woman or grandfather did not matter to brutal people in power.
With Herman Wouk’s words about the Holocaust I all ears not only on Mr. Jastrow, I also all ears on Tevya, the father and spouse in Fiddler on the Roof who permanently looked up at the heavens and talked or shouted angrily his questions which amounted to “WHY?” I loved Tevya. He is a excellent man. He believes in His Maker. Still, he has questions. I too question and marvel why. I choose to still judge. I have one more quote from Mr. Jastrow.
“My books about Christianity are not lacking merit. But taking it all in all, I have spent my life on the run. Now I turn and stand. I am a Jew.”
Hurrah! After all is said and done no one can take my dignity nor can they take away my identity. All I have to do is choose to stand and fight lacking permanently having a spiritual understanding.
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
The Language God, Talks on Science and Religion by Herman Wouk is not so much about God, but the gentle philosophical musings of the leader as he looks back on his life. He writes about his meeting with a theoretical physicist, Richard Phillips Feynman, which seemed to have reasonably an impact on his life. The leader obviously has an interest in the heavens, but in a secular way, as he discusses space exploration. He describes his witness to the liftoff of Apollo 11 and what he believes is the future of space travel.
I was reasonably stirred as I read his account of viewing the Dead Sea Scrolls in an underground wing of Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. This was not an simple book for me to read and know, but I will accept the blame as my own shortcoming. Herman Wouk is an intellectual – and I am not.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
From the epigraph:
“It doesn’t seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe [...] can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for excellent and evil — which is the view that religion has. The stage is too huge for the drama.” –Richard Feynman
In THE LANGUAGE GOD TALKS, 94-year-ancient (!) Herman Wouk explores that cosmological stage and that human drama, and does it mostly through tales, including memoir.
He starts with science and the Huge Bang, setting the enormity of the stage by recapping space exploration (including the race-for-space and the shuttle disasters) and the telescope’s estimation/definition of the universe. He includes anecdotes about prominent scientists, including their theology (or not), particularly physicist Richard Feynman, who Wouk met while researching the Manhattan Project for his 1970s WWII novels (The Winds of War and War and Remembrance). Then he moves to the Tiny Bang (the birth of the mind, exemplified best through art, he says) and explores dramas in his own life through prompts from Tevya, Confucius, Job, and characters in his novels.
It’s a tiny book with an agile, imaginative voice that’s simple to read. But it’s not automatically simple to know — vignette-ish and symbolic, with a whole-is-greater-than-its-parts feel that invites a re-read. I came to this book new to Wouk, and developed an admiration, even a fondness, for him, and an interest in his previous works. This book seems directed to pop-sci fans and religious believers, but I reflect philosophers and lovers of literature (especially persons familiar with Wouk) will like it more.
(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.)
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5