"This is a biography of six of us-that is, six members of our family, the People of Earth. We meet our characters on a poor farm and a great estate, in a locked institution and an astronomical observatory, at the height of power and the depth of despair. Their search and their struggles are rooted in the coarsest ground of our world but reach out to the Universe. They find for us, in the grit and the stars, the least likely thing in the universe, the Great Improbability. Their story is ours."
Two young women and four men, alone and peculiar, become entangled in deep mystery. Darwin's...

This autobiographical odyssey seeks in places of great striving a "rational faith"--one true to both our highest religious ideas and our advancing sciences. As founder of both charitable and technical businesses, the author leads us to places of the greatest despair and the greatest power on earth. There we meet amazing examples of good and evil, interwoven with contemporary scientists' own searches for meaning, explaining faith and love, truth and life, time and order and beauty. The things we hold sacred are real, after all.

For readers unfulfilled by either conventional religions or...