Floris Cohen is regarded the world over as one of the foremost authorities on the emergence of modern science in seventeenth-century Europe, which he analyzed in his How Modern Science Came Into the World. He now investigates, in ten portraits, the tussle between knowledge and faith, sharing with us his own thoughts on his scientific heroes. Based on an in-depth analysis of the history of science, he shows us the diverse ways in which scientists have come to terms with their sense that a higher power exists.

What has science left us of religion? Nothing? Everything? A meagre remnant or the very essence? In Troubling Knowledge Floris Cohen describes how scientists, from Galileo to Kepler and Darwin, wrestled with that question, and how they found their way despite being drawn to both science and religion. He has sought out scientists who felt an affinity for faith while realizing that it was impossible to find rational foundations for that faith.

They include many major figures: Galileo, Pascal, Newton, Kant, Max Weber and Einstein, and from our own times Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. By analysing their lives, work and belief in God, Cohen reveals the relationship these great scientists had with religion.