Love and Quasars
Last year I was walking out of an introductory physics class when one of my students found out that I'm a pastor as well as a physics professor. She stopped in the hall and stared hard at me. You could almost see the question mark hanging over her head. She said, "How in the WORLD does that work?"
Love and Quasars is my answer, written as simply as I know how, for a non-specialist audience. This book weaves stories, science, and humor together, placing love at the center of all things.
"In Love and Quasars, Paul Wallace does what he does best: offer absolute fidelity to the sciences while speaking authentically to people of faith."
—Mike McHargue, cofounder of The Liturgists, host of Ask Science Mike, and author of Finding God in the Waves
"Paul Wallace's book offers a crowded marketplace something new and important. While beautifully communicating complex science, Wallace interweaves his own story through seasons of faith and doubt. With candor, he leads us to his own liberating vantage point as a Christian and scientist: the necessity of wonder. Deftly dealing with uncertainty and human experience, he dusts off the place of love in the study of science and religion as part of the glorious project of being alive. In Love and Quasars, Paul Wallace has given us a pearl of great price."
—Gillian Straine, physicist, theologian, and author of Introducing Science and Religion
"This is the book I have waited years for someone to write. And Paul Wallace is the perfect person to have written it. As an astrophysicist, Wallace has an incredible ability to help people understand complex issues of science and faith. This book is the ideal companion for anyone seeking insightful new ways to engage both faith and science, and have a lot of fun doing so."
—Doug Pagitt, pastor, radio show host, and author of Outdoing Jesus: Seven Ways to Live the Promise of Greater Than
Stars Beneath Us
For most of my life I thought the only book in the Bible that talked about creation was Genesis. But the obvious contradictions between it and the modern scientific account of the universe left me wondering, as a child and teenager, how to make sense of things.
Stars Beneath Us looks to another, stranger biblical account of creation, one I never read until I was an adult. This creation story turns Genesis on its head and gives us a deep, unexpected, and intimate vision of reality that stands in surprising accord with the cosmos science has revealed to us.
"Paul Wallace is an astrophysicist who writes with magic, seamlessly blending story and theory, biblical texts and scientific concepts. This book will make you think. But also make you laugh. It will not only scratch an intellectual itch in your mind, but will touch your heart, connecting faith and reason in a way you'll actually enjoy—even call fun."
—Andrew Root, Professor at Luther Seminary and author of The Relational Pastor
"Just as surely as atheism follows conventional theism for many people who face the realities of science and the agonies of life, a new kind of faith and a new vision of God can arise from the ashes of a lost and discredited belief. Paul Wallace tells his story of such a loss and recovery in a way that encouraged and inspired me and I believe will do the same for you."
—Brian McLaren, author, speaker, and activist
"Stars Beneath Us appeals to Christians, intellectuals, and those who identify as both. To read this book is to be swept up in Paul Wallace’s quirky, astute, big-hearted way of striving towards mystery, both upon this planet and beyond. This is the only religion-and-science book I have ever devoured in one sitting."
—Sharon Stephenson , Professor of Physics, Gettysburg College
Finding Our Place in the Solar System
Finding our Place in the Solar System, unlike Love and Quasars and Stars Beneath Us, is largely academic in nature. It gives a detailed account of how the Earth was displaced from its traditional position at the center of the universe to be recognized as one of several planets orbiting the Sun under the influence of a universal gravitational force. The transition from the ancient geocentric worldview to a modern understanding of planetary motion, often called the Copernican Revolution, is one of the great intellectual achievements of humankind. This book provides a deep yet accessible explanation of the scientific disputes over our place in the solar system and the work of the great scientists who helped settle them. Readers will come away knowing not just that the Earth orbits the Sun, but why we believe that it does so. The Copernican Revolution also provides an excellent case study of what science is and how it works.
“In an attractively lucid conversational style, and bolstered by loads of helpful diagrams and 20 appendices, this book offers an accessible account of the transformation of humanity’s view of Earth and the solar system brought about by the Copernican Revolution. All the key players appear here—Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Tycho, Kepler, Galileo, Newton—but also Digges, Descartes, Riccioli, Huygens, Hevelius, Hooke, and Herschel. remarkable for its thoroughness both historically and scientifically, it will appeal to any curious mind that enjoys hearing a big, momentous story rigorously told,”
— Dennis Danielson, University of British Columbia
“Here is an admirable book, because it is different. Instead of peering superficially into every nook and cranny of modern astronomy, Timberlake and Wallace carefully explain the foundations of astronomy before the telescope and then show the impact of the Copernican insight and the subsequent remolding of science in the hands of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. An intelligent and detailed insight into the way science works.”
— Owen Gingerich, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics