What is the relationship between religious belief and the study of nature, between theology and science? This is the fundamental preoccupation of the three different studies in Einstein, Polanyi, and the Laws of Nature.

By exploring the highly original yet little-known thought of Michael Polanyi, Jaeger highlights the inherent personal investment in any quest for knowledge, including the scientific enterprise, thus raising the question of the objectivity of human knowledge. Considered to be the most incredible mind of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein saw scientific research as the fruit of the “cosmic religion.” His response to the question of the relationship between faith and science also receives the close analysis it deserves. Finally, Jaeger is interested in science’s propensity to use the concept of laws of nature, an idea also found in the Bible. She paves the way for interdisciplinary dialogue by examining the similarities and differences.

The synthesis of these three complementary studies brings out the collaboration between belief and knowledge, thus establishing a bridge between two noble human activities: faith and scientific research. It will interest all serious followers of the ongoing science and religion dialogue.

Lydia Jaeger holds a permanent lectureship and is the academic dean at the Institut Biblique de Nogent-sur-Marne, an interdenominational Evangelical Bible college near Paris. After completing postgraduate studies in physics and mathematics—including research in theoretical solid state physics—at the University of Cologne (Germany) and in theology at the Seminary for Evangelical Theology in Vaux-sur-Seine (France), Lydia Jaeger obtained her PhD in philosophy at the Sorbonne on the possible links between the concept of laws of nature and religious presuppositions. She is an associate member of St. Edmund’s College and the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. She is also the author of five books and several articles on the relationship between Christianity and the natural sciences.