Sh'ma on Mystery and Awe: Science and Religion (Sh'ma Journal: Independent Thinking on Contemporary Judaism Book 40)

Sh’ma focuses here on mystery and awe. What began as a conversation many months ago about what science can now teach us about the unknown, and what questions remain for religion, became the setting for an intriguing issue that explores several types of mystery. In addition, we have a couple of essays—by noted Harvard professor Steven Pinker and U.C. San Diego professor Richard S. Cohen—about science and the humanities—and how they serve as endpoints in a larger conversation. Professor of Eitan Fishbane writes, “For in addition to our remarkable ability to solve the puzzles and problems of empirical reality, to employ our rational faculties in the service of human understanding, and in pursuit of the good — we are also filled with a sense of the mysterious character of life and Being, with an awareness that there is so much that eludes our capable rational minds.”