‘Many things altered in my life when I changed from being a physicist and became a priest, but one significant thing remained the same: the central importance of the search for truth. All my life I have been trying to explore reality. That exploration includes science, but it also takes me necessarily beyond it’.
From the Foreword

A fascinating and absorbing book, accessible even to those readers without a scientific or theological background, John Polkinghorne draws on his own wide-ranging experience as physicist and priest to investigate how both spirituality and science contribute to our understanding of the ‘reality’ in which we live. While looking at many features of our modern, material lives, he explores what it means to be human, and how a crucial search for truth – whether scientific of theological – is to our existence.

Using as entry-points issues of contemporary concern (such as genetic ethics, as well as attitudes between different faiths), Dr Polkinghorne examines what it means to be truly human. He ends this compelling exploration of the beliefs behind our modern lives with an enlightening discussion on the scientific possibilities of a life after death.