Galileo once wrote that 'the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, but not how the heavens go'. From the Greeks to the present day, thoughtful people have struggled to reconcile the discoveries of science with religious belief and authority. In the age before Darwin many powerful clerics were also notable scientific scholars and leading scientists were often at least conventionally pious. Observing life ever more closely, an extraordinary generation of English geologists, fossil hunters and naturalists were compelled to accept that their planet was older, more complicated, diverse and cruel than they had previously imagined. Questions about God and the Bible inevitably began to arise. But for these men, unlike for Darwin, science and religion could share a philosophical basis: a careful, rational study of nature, instead of denying God, would confirm that life is, after all, the product of God's unique creation. This belief became known as natural theology. Its greatest exponent was William Paley but the work of others such as John Ray, Robert Plot, William Whiston, Thomas Burnet, John Woodward, Erasmus Darwin and countless more writing between 1665 and 1800 gives us an extraordinary glimpse into minds at the forefront of an epic enquiry. Taking his title from Paley's famous analogy that as a watch requiried a maker, so nature in all its intricacy had to be the creation of a supreme designer, Keith Thomson's wonderful book brings to life their dilemmas, and is a winning portrayal of intellectuals struggling with their belief systems in an age of revolutionary science.

The Watch on the Heath : Science and Religion Before Darwin

Science & Math

Keith Thomson

Biological Sciences

Harpercollins Reference Hbacks

On the heels of Once a Spy, which PW hailed as a "wildly original debut [with] an action-packed story line," Keith Thomson returns with a breakneck thriller that's twice as explosive as the original. In the tradition of Robert Ludlum, with a witty twist, Thomson's second novel featuring a former spy and his son once again poses the question: What happens when a former CIA agent can no longer trust his own mind? Charlie and Drummond Clark are now in Switzerland, hiding out from criminal charges in America and using the time to experiment with treatments to retrieve Drummond's memory. When NSA operative Alice Rutherford, with whom Charlie has fallen in love, is kidnapped, the Clarks must dodge a formidable CIA case officer and his team to get her back.

Twice a Spy: A Novel

BOOKS ON TAPE]

Paradise of the Damned

Hachette

At best museums are dynamic entities in which we not only preserve the past and interpret the present, but where we also launch our dreams for the future. However, if they are so important, why are museums in trouble, with most of them seriously short of funds and some actually failing? We want to keep and use as much as we can of our cultural and natural heritage but find ourselves no longer able to afford to save it all, if indeed we ever could. Professor Keith Thompson examines the state of museums and asks some searching questions: Do we really need all those collections? Must everything be saved? Who are museums for? Who will pay? Who will choose?

Treasures on earth: Museums, collections and paradoxes

Reference

Faber&Faber

What Was Your Great Grandmother's Name? 50 Thoughts On How Canadian Philanthropy Can Transform You, Your Family And Your Community

Moby-Dick for the blog generation. Cat food cannery worker Gus Openshaw has one goal in life: to kill a whale. Not just any whale, but a big, blubbery whale that ate his wife, child, and arm during a vicious and unprovoked attack. With a rickety boat and a heavily restrictive whale-hunting license, Gus sets out to exact his revenge. Along the way, Gus keeps an online journal–a blog–to keep the world informed about his misfit crew, his clashes with pirates, his near-fatal incarceration, and his infatuation with a certain island princess. Complete with author-drawn scrimshaw illustrations, Gus Openshaw’s Whale-Killing Journal is the hilarious documentation of one man’s obsessive pursuit of a giant whale that would make Captain Ahab proud.

Gus Openshaw's Whale-Killing Journal: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Literary

MACADAM/CAGE.

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Books by Keith Thomson