gic, concern with the practical sciences such do about Darwin?". I shall offer a few gen- as mining, and the revival of interest in eral comments on these latter chapters: (1) mathematics and the exact sciences. Para- Olson is primarily an historian of ideas. celsus and Christian utopian writers such Within this restriction, he is superb, offer- as Andreae, Campanella, and Francis Bacon ing sophisticated philosophical analyses constitute the climax to Olson's account of and insights. However, institutional devel- the role of Christian humanism in trans- opments and more general historical con- forming science. Olson summarizes the ef- texts hardly figure at all in these chapters. fect of Christian humanism on science (2) The general trend in them is a shift from thusly: "The notion of spiritual perfection religion influencing science to religion react- and of material improvement have gradually ing to it This trend is not particularly noted become disassociated from one another in by Olson but is there for the reader to see the modem world... But it is worth remem- and is no doubt related to the growing insti- bering that at the origins of the modern tutional autonomy and then professionaliza- scientifico emphases on experiment and gain- tion of science in the eighteenth and nine- ing natural knowledge for application in teenth centuries. the world lay a serious religious impulse asso- Olson's book does not have any conclud- crated with Christian humanism" (Olson, ing punch line comparable to Grant's on p. 55, my italics). the role of religious and institutional con- Although Olson is certainly aware of hos- tile interactions between religion and texts of the high Middle Ages as pushing science, he is more interested in charting western European science towards world the positive ones. So Chapter 3 on "Science leadership. Rather, he ends by paraphrasing and Catholicism in the Scientific Revolu- John Hedley Brooks, the distinguished his- tion" focuses on the role of the Jesuits in torian of religion and science, on the com- furthering science through teaching and re- plexity of the interactions between the two search. And Chapter 4 ("Science and Reli- enterprises. gion in England, 1590-1740") details the Had these books appeared in mid-twen- well-studied impact of the various strands tieth century, my review would almost cer- of British Protestantism on the uptake of tainly not have begun with the acrimonious science in seventeenth-century England. "warfare" motif. It looked then as if science Of particular interest to me was the role had moved into an authoritative position of the Elizabethan, Richard Hooker, in de- vis-a-vis religion regarding natural knowl- vising an inclusive religious ideology that edge. One of the fascinating cultural devel- highlighted natural theology (the use of nat- opments of the second half of the twentieth ural knowledge to display the manifest glory century has been the upsurge of aggressive of God and His creation) and probabilistic religious fundamentalism, often anti-science interpretation of tenets of both religious in sentiment, and a concomitant response and natural knowledge. from a- or irreligious supporters of science. It would extend this review unacceptably Where this will all lead, in our age of cyber- to recount the rest of Olson's rich narrative space and clones, is anyone's guess. It seems in any detail. There are chapters on: Newto- clear to me that a third volume in this se- nian religious beliefs and eighteenth-cen- quence will soon be called for. tury reactions, general philosophical and re- ligious reactions to the rapidly developing SEYMOUR H. MAUSKOPF sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (curiously, Marx receives barely a mention), developments in geology and theories of the origins of the earth, and fi- IVAR EKELAND, The Best of All Possible nally a chapter on reactions to Darwin's the- Worlds. Mathematics and Destiny. Chica- ory of evolution strangely tided "What to go and London: The University of Chica- go Press, 2006. 207 pp., ISBN 0-226- There is no one out there to watch over us. 19994-0. We are an animal species like so many others which have appeared and disap- This book, written by a distinguished peared on Earth, and our Sun is a star like mathematician, begins with Galileo: a sym- countless others in the universe. There is no bol of the scientific revolution. He does to hint in the laws of physics or biology of any time "what the great geometers of antiquity special provision to take care of us" (p. 145) did to space: he turns it into a homogeneous A look at human history with the help of and measurable quantity" (p. 5). Thucydides and Guicciardini leads the What follows is very far from a conven- author to claim that "...history is as chaotic tional story about the development of science as any physical system and there is no God- till now, as Ekeland's history of science has a given or natural order" (p. 164). well-defined protagonist: Maupertuis' least The successive chapter 9 (The common action principle. goocl) concludes that: "Our journey ends The author shows how this idea, which in a world where God has receded, leaving he regards as the first expression of the con- humankind alone in a world not of its cept of optimization, progressively evolves. choosing. Technological progress, however, A turning point is "Hamilton's discovery has enabled us to play God, by shaping our that the quantity of action is not minimized environment and ourselves, on a scale but made stationary. From then on, the which has now reached the planet and is least action principle became a purely math- growing at an unprecedented pace. What ematical tool, the usefulness of which was do we want to do with this power? What not fully understood until the twentieth kind of world do we want to create, among century" (pp. 74-75). the many possible ones? This is an entirely Every reader will surely enjoy the reading new question, which humanity faces in an of chapters 4 and 5 where the author, with entirely new situation" (p. 180). the help of simple examples (a circular bil- Chapter 10 (A personal conclusion) is liard table, an elliptic billiard table, a gener- rather puzzling, because its firm plea for al billiard table) explains, in a concrete and "a race of intellectual conquerors" who profound way, how the properties of pre- "will settle in the valley of spiritual abun- dictability and stability are especial to in- dance" (p. 191, a quotation from Musil) is tegrable systems. A non elliptic billiard ta- not so obviously connected to what pre- ble gives an unpredictable system, "where cedes. non single cause can be found for a single event: everything, always, has to be taken "The least action principle ended up into account" (p. 97). looking very different, but more interesting, The exposition of Poincare's new ideas than Maupertuis had suspected. The meta- of using the stationary action principle physics have gone, but the physics and the (the natural evolution of the least action mathematics are deeper and better" principle) to find closed trajectories of non- (p. 183). On the other hand, "Fermat, Huy- integrable systems is another gem of this in- gens, Euler, Lagrange, would have been teresting book. thrilled at the progress we have made in un- Chapter 6 signs a provisional end: by derstanding nature. Unfortunately, they means of Feynman, Maupertuis' vision of would probably have expected the develop- the real world as the best of all possible ment of human society to match the pro- ones disappears (p. 121). "Nothing much gress of scientific knowledge, and they is left of Maupertuis' dream. If not in phy- would have to be sorely disappointed" (ibi- sics, where are we to find the best of all pos- dem). sible worlds? Perhaps in biology? Let's give The abundance of quotations, and of it a try" (p. 128) quotation inside quotations, in this personal What the author reaches might appear as conclusion, that calls for the use of reason rather discomforting: "Nature is indifferent. to free people from all kinds of bondage