Scholarly World, Private Worlds

Rating:
Summary: Rational Thinking 101
Review: Karl D. Fezer's Scholarly World, Private Worlds is a must read for all thoughtful people of any worldview. Originally written as a textbook for Fezer's undergraduate college course in Science and Religion, the book's format has been modified to make the book more accessible to a general audience [I knocked it off over a 4-day period during winter vacation]. The book demands much from the reader, so if you don't want to think and question your own thinking, stay away from the book. No potential reader should smugly write-off Fezer's lessons - even if you think your thinking skills are excellent [and maybe especially if you think your thinking skills are excellent] - since everybody needs a refresher course on thinking skills now and then. If you are religious and you think this might be an attempt by Fezer to turn you into a pointy-tailed fire-breathing atheistic secular humanist, fear not. Fezer's mission is to get you to think about your thinking in light of a large number of "generally accepted principles" [which the majority of readers should find generally acceptable]. You can take what you need and leave the rest. If everybody with a different worldview [and Fezer makes the point that everybody has a unique worldview] were to read this book, the arguments wouldn't stop [or become any less heated], but at least they'd stand a chance of being more substantive. I teach science to 9th graders in an area that has many religious fundamentalists and have found that the writings that come out of the National Center for Science Education [a group that Fezer helped to found] have been helpful in the past. It is nice to have this compilation of Professor Fezer's thoughts on thinking to help me teach future generations of citizens and scholars.