Synopsis
Our attempts to understand the world around us are greatly advanced by scientific research, which holds nearly unlimited potential to address our questions of what? and how? Some scientific fields, however, seem to take a hands-off approach to the big question of why? Why does the universe work the way it does? Why do our brains make us think certain thoughts or feel certain sensations? Why did we evolve the way we did? Some fundamental scientific understanding is necessary before one can venture too deeply into these types of inquiries, which almost inevitably involve larger philosophical and theological implications. The Templeton Science and Religion Reader invites readers to explore some of these fascinating questions and offers them the kind of knowledge they’ll need in order to seriously consider possible answers.
In the Templeton Science and Religion Series, scientific experts from a wide range of fields have distilled their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. The series was launched in 2008 with the publication of the inaugural volume, Medicine, Religion, and Health. Since that time, the series editors J. Wentzel van Huyssteen and Khalil Chamcham have expanded it to nine titles covering everything from paleontology to neuroscience to technology. Now, in The Templeton Science and Religion Reader, the editors have gathered together the very best chapters from these volumes into a single edited collection.
These chapters presuppose no scientific background and are designed to be accessible to the general reader. Each section may have a different focus—a quantum, a star in a galaxy, a bee, or the seat of human intelligence, which some may call the soul—but the editors have done a great service to the reader by juxtaposing these subjects in a way that suggests how each one relates to other entities, including both its own kind and the wider global environment. The end result is a truly cohesive collection that will both broaden and deepen our understanding of these interconnected relations and, in turn, the world around us.
Contributors include Denis R. Alexander, Justin L. Barrett, R. J. Berry, Warren S. Brown, Noreen Herzfeld, Malcom Jeeves, Harold G. Koenig, Javier Leach, Joseph Silk, and Ian Tattersall.
About the Author
J. Wentzel van Huyssteen is Princeton Theological Seminary’s James I. McCord Professor of Theology and Science. His areas of academic interest include theology and science and religion and scientific epistemology. Dr. van Huyssteen serves on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy and the Journal of Theology and Science, and is coeditor of The Science and Religion Series (Ashgate Press). He has written or edited numerous books including The Shaping of Rationality: Toward Interdisciplinarity in Theology and Science and most recently, In Search of Self: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Personhood.
Khalil Chamcham taught for many years at the University of Casablanca and worked at several international institutions. He holds a French doctorate in nuclear physics from the University Claude Bernard, Lyon, France, a DPhil in astrophysics from Sussex University, UK, and a master’s degree in Science and Religion from the University of Oxford, UK. He is currently carrying out his research in astrophysics and in theology, interfaith, and Islamic thought at the University of Oxford.
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