The Poetry and Music of Science

Have you ever felt that science and faith are locked in an endless argument — one that forces you to ‘pick a side’? Let There Be Science, by David Hutchings and Tom McLeish, begins with this very question. It invites you to drop the shouting match, sit down, and actually listen. The authors, both scientists and Christians, argue that the long-assumed war between science and faith is not only exaggerated — it’s entirely misplaced. Christianity, they claim, has not hindered science; it has nourished and motivated it from the very beginning.

Through a blend of gripping scientific stories and biblical reflection, Hutchings and McLeish set out to show that God loves science and that science, in turn, needs God. Their claim is sweeping but grounded: that science is not an alien, secular experiment, but one of humanity’s most beautiful gifts from the Creator — a tool entrusted to us for exploring, restoring, and understanding the world and ourselves.

From Conflict to Conversation

The book opens with humour and humility. Dave Hutchings, a physics teacher, writes about the predictable confusion of students who, upon discovering his Christian faith, incredulously blurt out, “But you’re a science teacher!” Their disbelief isn’t unusual; like many people today, they’ve inherited the myth of conflict — the idea that science and Christianity are incompatible ways of seeing the world. Hutchings and McLeish are determined to show that this myth, cemented by popular voices such as Richard Dawkins, misses centuries of creative harmony between faith and scientific exploration.

From the earliest astronomers to Isaac Newton himself, many of history’s greatest scientific breakthroughs sprang from a desire to understand and honour the creativity of God. The authors weave their scientific insights with deep theological reasoning, demonstrating that the biblical worldview — far from opposing science — actually gives it purpose, motivation, and moral direction.

The Big Picture: Science as a Gift and an Invitation

At the book’s heart lies one unifying idea: science is both a gift from God and an invitation to relationship. The authors claim this is why human beings, uniquely among creatures, can do science at all. We are, as the Bible puts it, made in God’s image — beings capable of curiosity, imagination, and the pursuit of wisdom. When we study the patterns of nature, investigate the mysteries of matter, or gaze in wonder through telescopes and microscopes alike, we’re not turning away from God; we’re tracing the fingerprints of his design.

This idea reframes the very act of science. To ask “what is science for?” becomes a theological question as much as a technical one. In the biblical story, science is part of humanity’s calling to explore and steward creation. We do not study the world to control or exploit it — but to participate in bringing about reconciliation and restoration: with nature, each other, ourselves, and God.

The Long Story: Faith at Science’s Foundations

Hutchings and McLeish take readers on a captivating time-travel journey through scientific history, showing that science is older and more human than we think. Contrary to the common tale that science “arrived” only after casting aside religion, the authors reveal examples of scientific reasoning and experimentation stretching back thousands of years — long before the so-called Enlightenment. From the biblical patriarch Job pondering meteorology to medieval bishops conducting optical experiments, faith communities have consistently nurtured curiosity about nature.

They remind us that figures like Grosseteste, Bede, and Roger Bacon were not exceptions — they were part of an enduring tradition that saw studying the natural world as an act of worship. The authors even show how the Bible itself contains moments of observation, questioning, and testing — early glimpses of experimental thinking long before the term “scientist” existed. In this light, science appears not as a rebellion against faith, but as its offspring.

Faith in the Laboratory

Moving from history to practice, the book explores what faith actually looks like in the laboratory. It doesn’t mean smuggling Genesis into physics papers, but rather approaching science with humility, compassion, and hope. The book highlights the human story behind every experiment — one filled with perseverance, error, creativity, and even suffering. Scientists, like faith practitioners, rely on trust and wonder. Their work thrives on moral courage, humility before evidence, and love for truth — virtues shared deeply by the Christian life.

The authors tell moving stories: of Ignaz Semmelweis, whose discovery of handwashing cost him everything; of Johannes Kepler, whose fascination with geometry and divine beauty intertwined; and of modern physicists who describe their discoveries as glimpses of divine order. Faith gives scientists not just moral grounding but endurance — the conviction that truth-seeking is worth the pain because reality is inherently meaningful.

Reconciliation: The Purpose of Science

By its end, Let There Be Science reveals its ultimate thesis: science itself is a ministry of reconciliation. Every experiment, from curing disease to studying the stars, participates in mending broken relationships — between humans and nature, reason and wonder, faith and doubt. Christians believe that God, through Jesus, is reconciling the whole cosmos to Himself; science, properly understood, is one strand in that redemption story. To love science, then, is to love the Creator and His creation.

This vision frees you from the false choice between belief and reason. It replaces the tired battle between “God vs. science” with a richer story: one in which curiosity is sacred, discovery is worship, and knowledge becomes compassion. Science is not the enemy of faith — it is its echo, its offspring, and one of its most beautiful expressions.

Most of us grew up assuming that science was born only when religion began to die — that curiosity replaced superstition and logic silenced the priests. Hutchings and McLeish dismantle this myth. They show that scientific thought did not emerge despite faith but because of it. Though modern narratives often credit thinkers like Galileo or Newton with liberating reason from religion’s grip, the authors trace a far older, richer lineage — one that runs through biblical reflection, Christian monasteries, and medieval universities.

Science Before the Enlightenment

The authors begin their historical case with figures usually ignored in science popularizations. The early Jewish and Christian Scriptures, they note, repeatedly depict people asking questions about the natural world. Job, Daniel, and the prophets observe weather, minerals, medicine, and animal life. Even the story of Daniel’s diet — a ten-day experiment testing the benefits of vegetables over royal delicacies — shows a rudimentary scientific mindset.

They also point to early church writers like Gregory of Nyssa and Bede as proto-scientists who experimented with light, water, and air to understand God’s creation. Long before Galileo dropped objects from towers, medieval monks were already testing theories of motion, optics, and geology. Far from being anti-intellectual, Christian communities preserved and cultivated learning through centuries of turmoil. The world’s first universities — Paris, Bologna, Oxford — were founded in Christian Europe precisely to pursue that love of wisdom about nature that Scripture calls “Wisdom.”

Faith as a Fertile Soil for Discovery

Why did science flourish in Christian cultures? The authors argue that biblical faith uniquely nurtured the conviction that the universe was both intelligible and worth understanding. In polytheistic myths, nature is often chaotic and unpredictable. In atheistic systems, it can be meaningless. But in the Christian vision, creation is rational because it was made by a rational Creator, and it’s good because He declared it so. This worldview gave birth to a scientific mindset grounded in trust — that experiments would yield patterns because reality has order.

When Robert Grosseteste — bishop, theologian, and early experimentalist — studied light and optics, he saw physical laws as glimpses of spiritual truth. Johannes Kepler described astronomers as “priests of God in the book of nature.” Isaac Newton titled his magnum opus Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy — treating physics not as godless mechanism but as an act of worship that revealed divine wisdom. These scientists worked not in defiance of faith, but in joyful obedience to its summons: “Let there be light.”

By showing that science was never solely modern nor secular, the authors redraw the family tree of knowledge. When you next hold a smartphone or marvel at a medical breakthrough, you’re witnessing the legacy of believers who saw curiosity as a divine calling. Science, they argue, began as theology’s child — and may still thrive best when it remembers its parentage.

Why can humans — and only humans — decode the workings of the cosmos? Hutchings and McLeish explore this question through what they call the gift and invitation. Science, they write, is possible because we are designed for it. We possess an innate hunger to understand, to ask how things work, to create patterns of meaning. These drives reflect what Scripture calls the image of God: the unique capacity to think, imagine, and bring hidden things to light.

Threads of Wonder: From Silk to Silicon

The authors illustrate human ingenuity through unlikely but mesmerizing stories — silk weavers, mathematicians, and computer pioneers. The evolution from Chinese silk to Jacquard’s punched-card loom to Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine to modern computers paints a portrait of continual human creativity. Each step, they note, expresses the deep impulse to explore order within complexity — to “love wisdom about nature,” which is precisely what science (from Latin scientia) means.

They connect these advances to biblical imagination. Job’s vivid poetry about miners seeking “hidden treasures” beneath the earth anticipates this scientific spirit: the call to bring light into darkness. The pattern that unites the stories of Euclid, Kepler, and modern coding isn’t accidental — it’s the mark of creatures awakening to their calling as discoverers in God’s creation.

Comprehensible Universe, Comprehending Minds

Einstein once said the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. The authors agree — and add Job’s ancient follow-up question: “Who has put wisdom in the mind?” They answer: God has. Faith explains not just why the world exhibits mathematical order, but why we have minds capable of perceiving it. To study science, then, is to respond to an invitation — to use our God-given intellect to participate in His ongoing act of understanding.

This insight transforms both religion and research. You are not a random accident decoding random patterns. You are a mind made for meaning, part of a creation designed for knowability. When Hutchings and McLeish describe scientific inquiry as worship, they aren’t being poetic. They’re naming your vocation: to think God’s thoughts after Him — one experiment, one revelation at a time.

Science advances through revolutions, but so too does faith. In their chapter on revolutions, Hutchings and McLeish use both physics and theology to show that progress — whether intellectual or spiritual — requires the courage to change one’s mind. They recount how the elegant certainty of classical physics was shattered by quantum mechanics, demanding an intellectual humility that mirrors the spiritual process of repentance.

From the Black Knight to Quantum Light

To illustrate stubbornness, the authors evoke the famous Monty Python ‘Black Knight’ scene — a delusional warrior insisting he’s undefeated even after losing all his limbs. It’s a perfect metaphor for scientists clinging to old theories despite disconfirming evidence. The hero of this story isn’t denial, but renewal. When 19th-century physics confronted contradictions — like light behaving both as a wave and a particle — visionaries like Planck, Einstein, and Bohr didn’t ignore the data; they reimagined reality itself.

What emerged was quantum mechanics: weird, unsettling, but undeniably true. This willingness to start again, to sacrifice beloved models for deeper truth, is scientific repentance. And, the authors argue, it’s exactly what Christian faith demands of its followers: to be transformed by the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2).

Faith and Evidence: Parallel Patterns of Change

The book parallels scientific revolutions with biblical ones. Asaph’s crisis in the Psalms, Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus — each shows a person facing evidence that challenges cherished assumptions. In science as in faith, growth requires letting truth overturn our comfort. Richard Dawkins caricatures faith as “belief against evidence,” but Hutchings and McLeish point out that the Bible consistently portrays the opposite: belief refined by truth-seeking. Christians, trained by the discipline of repentance, may even be better equipped than many to handle revolutionary evidence in science.

When scientists like Faraday, Maxwell, and Planck combined rigorous inquiry with deep devotion, they embodied this union of humility and confidence. Both faith and science thrive on the same golden principle: follow the evidence — even if it changes everything.

Behind every discovery lies struggle. Science is not a straight line of triumphs; it’s a path of failure, endurance, and, often, pain. Hutchings and McLeish portray this not as a flaw, but as a mirror of life — and of faith. The story of Ignaz Semmelweis, the obstetrician who discovered handwashing but died disgraced, becomes a parable of suffering for truth. Despite mockery and rejection, Semmelweis’s insight eventually saved millions. His life, the authors suggest, illustrates the Christian rhythm of Good Friday and Easter Sunday: suffering giving birth to redemption.

Science on the Long Saturday

Drawing from philosopher George Steiner’s meditation on “Holy Saturday” — the time between crucifixion and resurrection — they suggest that scientists inhabit this tension constantly. Research is full of waiting: between failure and discovery, gloom and light. Every unsolved question, every elusive experiment, feels like sitting between “disaster and rebirth.” Only hope, they argue, keeps science alive.

Einstein’s decades-long search for a unified theory mirrored this faith-filled perseverance. So does the ongoing hunt for a Grand Unified Theory today, where physicists persist despite contradictions between relativity and quantum mechanics. Hope — in the meaningfulness of reality — sustains them. And that hope, Hutchings and McLeish argue, is theological at its core. The biblical vision of a world under restoration gives purpose to scientific persistence: one day, chaos will yield to order, knowledge to wisdom, pain to joy.

In this view, the laboratory becomes a chapel of hope. Every researcher who endures uncertainty participates, knowingly or not, in a sacred pattern — the faith that truth is worth the suffering, and that discovery is a kind of resurrection.

Why does chaos so often give rise to beauty? Why does randomness produce order? The authors see in this scientific paradox a profound echo of divine creativity. Through stories ranging from coin flips to quantum mechanics, they show that unpredictability doesn’t mean meaninglessness — it’s part of how the world works and how God makes it flourish. Even Scripture, they note, recognizes this strange harmony: from Job’s storms to Jesus calming the sea, God shows control not by removing chaos, but by using it to create new life.

Chaotic Laws, Harmonious Design

Consider the butterfly effect, weather patterns, or molecular motion. Mathematics reveals that even in randomness, patterns persist. Lorenz’s chaos theory and Maxwell’s statistical mechanics prove that disorder can produce stability. Hutchings and McLeish argue that this is no accident: God designed a world that is both free and lawful. Chaotic systems allow creativity and diversity within a framework of dependability — much like human free will within divine providence.

They connect this insight to theology: just as molecules jostle unpredictably yet create predictable fluids, human lives — full of uncertainty — can still form coherent stories under God’s care. The cosmos reflects its Creator’s mind: dynamic, complex, and ultimately ordered.

When you stand amid life’s unpredictability, you are living inside this divine design. Chaos and order are not enemies but collaborators. As Habakkuk declared, even when harvests fail, “yet I will rejoice.” That is the heartbeat of science and faith alike: the recognition that the storm and the stillness belong to the same God.

If answers bring closure, questions create discovery. Hutchings and McLeish celebrate questioning as the engine of both science and faith. They remind us that the Bible itself is a book of more than 3,000 questions — beginning with God asking Adam, “Where are you?” and culminating in Jesus asking his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Good questions, they argue, are sacred sparks that ignite understanding.

Curiosity that Transforms

The authors recount stories of “beautiful questions” that changed history: a child asking Edwin Land why she couldn’t see photos instantly (birthing the Polaroid camera); Einstein asking what light would look like if he rode it; a researcher wondering if cancer could be lured out of the brain instead of fought within. Each shows that the best scientists — like the best believers — refuse to stop asking why.

Faith, far from suppressing questions, thrives on them. The prophets, psalmists, and apostles all wrestled aloud with God, challenging suffering, injustice, and mystery. Jesus himself answered questions with more questions, inviting honest seekers into dialogue rather than dogma. To question sincerely, Hutchings and McLeish argue, is itself an act of faith — a belief that there is meaning to be found.

For you, this means inquiry and worship can be one. The next time you wonder how something works — from quantum particles to your own conscience — you are participating in humankind’s oldest prayer: “Why?”

In perhaps their most moving insight, Hutchings and McLeish claim that love, not logic, is science’s ultimate power source. Borrowing from the emotional depth of Scripture and even Star Trek’s Spock, they show that science without love becomes sterile. Love fuels perseverance, empathy, and joy — the very qualities that keep us searching for truth even when reason alone would quit.

Scientific Love in Action

From Copernicus nurturing his fragile heliocentric model despite ridicule, to modern scientists like Brian Greene and Stephen Hawking describing physics as “romance and passion,” the authors show that discovery is sustained by affection — for truth, beauty, and humanity. Love drives the courage to explore the unknown and the tenderness to admit error.

They connect this directly to Christian teaching. The Bible’s portrait of love — patient, kind, persevering — mirrors the virtues of great science. When researchers dedicate lives to curing disease or building better futures, they embody the same creative love that Scripture says flows from God. For the Christian scientist, then, research itself can be an act of worship: to study creation is to love both the Creator and neighbour.

Love, they conclude, is science’s truest energy source. Equations describe how the universe works; love explains why we bother to find out.

After ten chapters, Hutchings and McLeish reveal their most revolutionary idea: science is not just a human achievement — it's part of God’s plan to heal creation. In the biblical narrative, sin fractures four relationships: with God, each other, ourselves, and the natural world. The reason we long to understand and restore the world through science, they argue, is that we are participating in this larger reconciliation story.

Four Broken Bonds, One Restoring Calling

Using the story of the Prodigal Son, they illustrate how God welcomes humanity back into relationship, not only through faith but through vocation. When you heal disease, study ecosystems, or design safer technologies, you are helping repair those fractures. Science becomes ministry — a continuation of God’s creative and redemptive work. Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians (“God was reconciling the world to Himself”) gain scientific significance: reconciliation includes the physical cosmos.

This vision redefines purpose. Science isn’t merely about progress or profit; it’s about peacemaking. Its proper goal, the authors insist, is to reconcile — to reconnect wonder with stewardship, intellect with humility, and humanity with the divine design it once forgot.

In their closing reflection, Hutchings and McLeish return to their opening metaphor — walking across a room cluttered with assumptions about science and faith. Now, they show what lies on the other side: a place of dialogue, humility, and shared wonder. Science, they write, must become fully human again — more transparent, inclusive, and compassionate. Faith, in turn, must reclaim science as part of its worshipful engagement with the world.

Making Science Human

The authors challenge both the “unhuman” image of scientists and the elitism of the modern academy. Like reformers who translated Scripture for all, they call for a translation of science into accessible, public language — a “priesthood of all discoverers.” Examples such as YouTube educators and citizen science projects show how science can once again be communal. Everyone, not just professionals in white coats, is invited to explore truth and beauty.

Faith and Science, Shoulder to Shoulder

Finally, the authors urge Christians to rejoice in science as God’s gift, not to fear it. They envision churches blessing both missionaries and scientists alike, seeing both as reconcilers in God’s world. Science, pursued with love and humility, becomes a practice of faith — answering the very first divine command: “Let there be light.”

In this closing moment, the call is simple but profound: stop shouting across the room. Walk toward one another — believers toward scientists, scientists toward believers — and rediscover that both the microscope and the Bible point to the same truth: a Creator who delights in revealing Himself through discovery.