After reading the valuable contributions posted on the Meta Listserver, and listening to the many enlightening and often inspiring presentations at the New York concurrent State of the World 2000 and Future Visions meetings, I suggest the following as important issues that should be taken up, and could form the basis of interlinked research and…
Human consciousness and uniquely human behavioural distinctives are the end products of a phylogenetic history shared with other hominids, plus a lengthy and uniquely human ontogenetic development. Human behavioural distinctions include the ability to infer abstract causality, abstract theory construction, language embodied in culture, morality, artistic endeavour and spirituality. Our basic thesis here is that…
Part IScience and religion are two major long-term themes of human thought-indeed two dominating aspects of human culture, each making major contributions to how we live and think. At issue here is the way we understand ultimate reality and humanity: the very nature of existence. This plays a crucial role in how we see ourselves…
Introduction The historical interaction of science and religion in the West can be seen as tension between faith and rationality, with the rise of science steadily driving out irrationality and replacing it with the clear light of reason. Part of the change was the replacement of emotionally based faith by evidentially based proof, leading to…
1. No: Counter examples to this thesis include Isaac Newton: the initiator of modern science: Laws of Motion, Theory of Gravity John Dalton: developed Atomic Theory: chemist James Clerk Maxwell: the fore-runner of present day physics: the Unification of electricity and magnetism Georges Lemaitre: developed Physical theory of the expanding universe: “the primeval atom” Arthur…
GEORGE ELLIS WINS 2004 TEMPLETON PRIZE NEW YORK, MARCH 17 – George F.R. Ellis, a leading theoretical cosmologistrenowned for his bold and innovative contributions to the dialogue betweenscience and religion and whose social writings were condemned by governmentministers in the former apartheid regime of his native South Africa, has won the2004 Templeton Prize. The announcement…
The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time. Cambridge University Press, 1973; paperback edition 1974; reprinted 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1986. By Stephen Hawking and George F. R. Ellis. This was written at a strategic time in the development of General Relativity Theory, summarising the new causal and topological methods and discoveries made between 1965 and…
STATEMENT BY GEORGE F. R. ELLIS At The Templeton Prize News Conference, March 17, 2004 I am simultaneously humbled and delighted at the award of the Templeton Prize. I feel greatly honoured by the choice the judges have made. I am a scientist by profession, specialising in general relativity theory (that is, Einstein’s theory of…
1: Introduction Two recent contributions have advanced understanding of brain function: Gerald Edelman’s Neural Darwinism (Edelman 1989, 1992, Edelman and Tononi 2001), dealing with how brain development and function can be well understood in terms of a process of natural selection applied to neural connections, and Jaak Panksepp’s Affective Neuroscience (Panksepp 1998, 2001), addressing how…
Dear Colleagues, Science & Ultimate Reality In recent years much attention has been given to the possibility of unifying the various forces of nature within a quantum mechanical framework and to the formulation of a so-called theory of everything. (See the paper posted in this thread by Lee Smolin.) The quest being carried on by…