Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism

”[The book] will present the reader used to encountering the debates in an exclusively Christian context with an intersting counterpoint. Both the similarities and the unique aspects of Christian and Jewish responses to Darwinism are instructive.“–Oren Harman “Reports of the National Center for Science Education”“How refreshing…to encounter a treatment of the challenge of Darwinism to the Jewish faith, in a new collection of essays edited by Geoffrey Cantor and Marc Swetlitz… . It will be a much welcomed result if this collection not only spurs further research into Jewish encounters with modern science and evolution, but also research into the encounters of other religions and systems of faith with modern science and evolution. As always, Darwinism can teach us much about the natural world; our own reactions to its powerful ideas can teach us no less about ourselves.”–Oren Harman “Reports of the National Center for Science Education,”“I feel that this volume will provide fresh perspectives and new ideas to consider for scholars interested in the interaction of evolution and religion.”–Daniel Stoebel “Quarterly Review of Biology”“The shelf of books about Christians and Darwinian evolution is vast… . About Jews and Darwinian evolution there is now one book. Happily, it is a very good one… . An excellent introduction to the subject, demonstrating its interest and importance with unfailing sophistication.”–Noah Efron “Isis”“These exceptional essays reveal both the depth of the theological issues raised by evolution and the breadth of Jewish responses, yielding a singularly important examination not only of Judaism but of the increasingly complex contemporary interaction of science and religion.”– “Choice”“This collection of ten essays supplies an additional and valuable dimension to the literature on the complex relationship between the theory of evolution and religion….[The] book expands our understanding of the diversity of opinions on the relationship of scientific ideas to religious positions. The colection also provides an interesting exploration of how Judaism confronted modernity, as well as how various European writers used evolution to support their concepts of race, racism, and anti-Semitism.”–Paul Lawrence Farber “Journal of the History of Biology”

Geoffrey Cantor is professor of the history of science at the University of Leeds. Marc Swetlitz has taught history of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Oklahoma.

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