Science in the Face of Religion and Mysticism

Most serious scientists spend a good part of their waking hours amid papers and preprints, equations and equipment, conducting experiments, talking about graphs and data, arguing about ideas and theories, teaching, and writing grant proposals. But if they browse in bookstores or glance in the book review sections of journals, they cannot escape a fascinating phenomenon in the scientific landscape: books proclaiming the extrarational implications of science are proliferating. Religion and mysticism are inching their way back into the arena of science whence (some thought) they had been gradually weeded out during the past two centuries. The analogy may sound unorthodox, but it is not unlike the return with a vengeance of microbes and fire ants after sustained efforts at eliminating them with antibiotics and pesticides.