''The Mind of God'' is a 1992 non-fiction book by

Paul Davies Paul Charles William Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor in Arizona State University and Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institute ...

. Subtitled ''The Scientific Basis for a Rational World'', it is a whirlwind tour and explanation of theories, both physical and

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...

, regarding ultimate causes. Its title comes from a quotation from Stephen Hawking: "If we do discover a

theory of everything A theory of everything (TOE or TOE/ToE), final theory, ultimate theory, unified field theory or master theory is a hypothetical, singular, all-encompassing, coherent theoretical framework of physics that fully explains and links together all asp ...

...it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason—for then we would truly know the mind of

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

." In the preface, Davies explains that he has been interested in ultimate causes since childhood, having annoyed his parents with unending "why's" about everything, with each answer demanding another "why," and usually ending with the reply, "Because God made it that way, and ''that's that!''" In the book proper, Davies briefly explores: the nature of

reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...

belief A belief is an attitude that something is the case, or that some proposition is true. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either true or false. To believe something is to take ...

, and metaphysics; theories of the origin of the

universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. ...

; the laws of nature; the relationship of mathematics to physics; a few

arguments for the existence of God The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...

; the possibility that the universe shows evidence of a deity; and his opinion of the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorem, that "the search for a closed logical scheme that provides a complete and self-consistent explanation is doomed to failure." He concludes with a statement of his belief that, even though we may never attain a

, "the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here."

External links

The publisher's webpage for ''The Mind of God''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mind of God, The 1992 non-fiction books Science books Books by Paul Davies

See also

External links