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2003
Faculty seminars offer UCSB faculty an
opportunity to meet and talk with our guest lecturers. All seminars
will occur at
Friday lunchtime, 12-2 PM. Preregistration is required; lunch and reading
are provided. Please send
email to Jim Proctor indicating the date(s)
for which you intend to participate.
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Spring
2001 Schedule
Science and Religion: Convergence
or Divergence?
Friday,
March 9, 12:00–2:00 PM, Faculty Club Board Room
Reading: Ian Barbour, Religion
and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues
Ian Barbour has played a central scholarly role in science-religion studies, and was the 1999 recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. This book, a revised version of his 1989-91 Gifford Lectures, outlines Barbour’s fourfold approach to relating science and religion. Barbour’s book serves as an introduction to the field, and highlights some of its current limitations as well.
Friday, April 13,
12:00–2:00 PM , Faculty Club Board Room
Reading: John Hedley Brooke and Geoffrey
Cantor, Reconstructing Nature
John Hedley Brooke, Oxford historian of science and religion, has argued that the relationship between science and religion cannot readily be reduced to convergence or divergence. This book, a revision of his 1995-96 Gifford Lectures with Geoffrey Cantor, documents important episodes in the history of science and religion, from Galileo to the New Age movement.
Friday,
May 11, 12:00–2:00 PM, Faculty Club Board Room
Reading: Freeman Dyson, Infinite
in All Directions
Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson, the 2000 Templeton Prize awardee, is well-known for interpreting fundamental questions of science and provocative forays into religion, ethics and the future. We are very happy that Dyson will speak at UCSB on May 18 as a part of our Templeton Research Lectures program. This book is a revision of Dyson’s Gifford Lectures delivered in 1985.
Friday,
June 8, 12:00–2:00 PM, Faculty Club Board Room
Reading: Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in
the Fullness of Life
Our spring series concludes with the recent book-length thesis by Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion should adopt a principle of respectful noninterference. Gould’s argument formalizes the popular position that science and religion constitute “non-overlapping magisteria,” and as such the two do not conflict. This popular position is, however, problematic, for reasons we will explore together.