Confirmed Speakers
(Click Name to See Bio and Abstract)
Bios and Abstracts
In May 2001, Stacey Ake began her current position as the Assistant Editor of Metanexus: The Online Forum for Science and Religion at the Philadelphia Center for Religion and Science, having just completed a semester as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, USA. In 1996, she received a PhD stipendium from the Danish Basic Research Foundation to study at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Center at the University of Copenhagen, where she was later employed as a guest researcher, lecturer, and translator from 1997-2000. Ake also worked with the Spontaneous Order of Life group at the Niels Bohr Institute and the Biosemiotics group at the Institute for Molecular Biology. She has a PhD in Biology (1994) as well as an MA (1994) and a PhD (1999) in Philosophy from the Pennsylvania State University.
In her philosophical work, Ake is attempting to show continuity from the biological to the spiritual in the evolution of human consciousness while simultaneously trying to keep the tension of discontinuity. The relationship between language and consciousness, with its moral or ethical implications and its religious ramifications, is her preferred playground, for she finds that the interstitial areas are the richest and most inviting.
"No Matter, Never Mind": Interpretation Matters, Interpretation Minds
How do we know what we know, and how do we know that we know it? This two-pronged question is not merely fundamental to epistemology, it is, in fact, fundamental to science as a process. Currently, the paradigm is such that statistical significance and repeatability are two of the most important verification ("and how do we know that we know it") techniques. In some sciences, however, much that we call "data" is left open to the scientist as "nature interpreter". In this case "how we know what we know and how do we know that we know it" rest upon one person, the scientist. One area where this "nature interpreter" approach still predominates is in the area of neuroscience, in its psychiatric-psychological aspect. When one is observing a patient as part on one's research, one is observing a "subject" (the patient) who is called a subject but is in fact an object of study. So, unlike other types of science (geology, for instance) where a subject (the geologist) might be said to be truly observing an object (namely, a rock), in the neurosciences we have a subject (the researcher) observing a subject (the researched). So, what does this mean for neuroscience? In my talk, I want to explore some of the issues of the hard and softness of human biology where neuroscientific research is concerned.
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John D. Caputo is the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University
where he has taught since 1968. His most recent books are On Religion (Routledge,
2001), a book written for a wider non-specialist audience, and More Radical
Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are (Indiana, 2000), which continues his
project of building a working relationship between hermeneutics and deconstruction.
He is also the editor of Blackwell Readings in Continental Philosophy: The Religious
(2001). He has also co-edited Questioning God (Indiana, 2001) and God, the Gift
and Postmodernism (Indiana, 1999), which are collections of studies based upon
a series of conferences he co-directed at Villanova featuring Jacques Derrida
in dialogue with Jean-Luc Marion and other major postmodern religious thinkers.
He is the author of Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques
Derrida (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), winner of a Choice "Outstanding
Academic Book Award," and The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion
without Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). He is also the
author of Against Ethics: Contributions to a Poetics of Obligation with Constant
Reference to Deconstruction (1993), which is an attempt to formulate a postmodernist
ethics; Demythologizing Heidegger (1993), a critical reappraisal of Heidegger;
and Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic Project
(1987), which revisits hermeneutics in the light of deconstruction.
Recently a number of books have begun to appear about his work: Religion With/out
Religion: The Prayers and Tears of John D. Caputo, ed. JamesH. Olthuis (London
and New York: Routledge, 2001); Passion for the Impossible: John D. Caputo in
Focus, ed. Mark Dooley (Albany: SUNY Press, forthcoming); The Very Idea of Radical
Hermeneutics, ed. Roy Martinez (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1997).
His other works include Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics
(1982) and The Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought (1978, 1986), and he
is coauthor (with James Marsh and Merold Westphal) of Modernity and Its Discontents
(1992), all with Fordham University Press. In addition, he has co-edited a volume
on Foucault entitled Foucault and the Critique of Institutions (1993). He is
past Executive Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential
Philosophy, and Editor of the book series, "Perspectives in Continental
Philosophy" (Fordham University Press). He is past president of the American
Catholic Philosophical Association, a past member of the National Board of Officers
of the American Philosophical Association, and of the Executive Committee of
the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. He has held research
fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1992-93) and from
the American Council of Learned Societies (1983-84).
Radical Hermeneutics Matters-All the Way Down
By "radical hermeneutics" I mean a theory of radical interpretation,
and by radical interpretation I mean that interpretation goes all the way down,
that there are no uninterpreted facts of the matter that settle silently at
the bottom that can be unearthed by patiently peeling away the layers of interpretation.
To say that interpretation matters all the way down is not to say that "anything
goes;" it is simply to recognize that we are not God. The charge of "relativism"
thrown up against theories of radical interpretation is a confusion and an obfuscation.
"Relativism" is a red herring used by the God-and-apple-piety crowd;
it does service for thinking when the discussion gets too complicated.
When it is rightly framed the debate about interpretation matters is not between
"relativism" and "objective truth" but between conditional
and unconditional understanding. True understanding is never unconditional,
but always a matter of finding the right conditions under which understanding
can take place-like possessing the complex preconditions involved in understanding
an ancient language and a long gone historical context. Understanding is always
interpreting, and to interpret means to locate and acknowledge the relevant
presuppositions. Absolutely unconditional understanding means understanding
under no conditions. Just so: Under no condition is this possible: we are not
hardwired to assume an absolute standpoint. We are not omniscient eternal beings
outside every context. We are not God, but what Soren Kierkegaard liked to call
"poor existing individuals," people who pull on their pants one leg
at a time. Understanding always has a point of view, otherwise it has no point
and it has no view.
The radicals who attacked the World Trade Center, for example, were not radicals
of the sort I am describing, but exactly the opposite. They had among other
things swallowed a bad line about how to read, about how to understand what
one reads, and about what it means to say that a text is sacred. The latter
is a complicated business. It involves getting to know what the conditions were
under which the text was written, what has changed since then, and above all
sorting out what is human and what is divine in the text-what has the ring of
God about it and what has the ring of men (sic!). Killing in the name of God,
killing because God is on your side, is the human-all too human-part of these
texts, which has to be sorted out from the divine side.
The Bible itself warns us that idolatry is one of the most fundamental perversions
of the God relationship: confusing a golden calf with the living God, confusing
humankind made in the image of God with a God made in the image of humankind,
confusing our politics, our preferences, our institutions, our hierarchies,
our power-plays, our religion, our gender, our egos, or our science with God.
That's idolatry. If hermeneuticists could be said to have a religious view of
life, interpretation would constitute a powerful and systematic critique of
idolatry. Two potential idols to worry about are science and religion, both
of which are humanly constructed interpretations, one of the world, the other
of the relationship between the world and God. When physicists explain the world
in terms of the principles of a mathematical science, that's an interpretation.
When the unknown authors of the opening pages of Genesis carved out highly Mesopotamian
myths about the genesis of the kosmos, that was an interpretation as well, but
it was not a theory. It was an imaginative and poetic act of affirming God's
lordship over things, but it was not a testable mathematical theory. They were
both interpretations, but only one was a theory. Neither was an uninterpreted
fact of the matter. The overarching point in any debate between science and
religion is to get one level or layer of interpretation out of the way of the
other so that each one can get a clean shot at doing what it does, the one imagining
our relation to God in poetico-religious categories, the other calculating (with
no little imagination) the way the world runs in mathematical categories. They
don't conflict because they don't compete and they don't compete because their
interpretative schemas don't play on the same plane.
The problem in scientific interpretation is figuring out what is good science
without being too rigidly rule bound, lest you dismiss ground-breaking discoveries
as mere anomalies. The problem in religious interpretation is figuring out what
is divine and what is human, what is a human construction and what is from God.
The solution to these problems is not available in some overarching formula
that covers everything. But the precondition to finding a solution is to keep
in mind that interpretation goes all the way down, so that the notion of absolute
scientific truth or absolute religious truth, as if physicists were but the
mouthpiece of nature, or religious people were but the mouthpiece of God, makes
no sense.
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Philip Clayton holds a PhD in both philosophy and religious studies from Yale University. He has taught at Haverford and Williams Colleges and until 2001 was Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the California State University, Sonoma. He has been guest professor at the Divinity School, Harvard University, Humboldt Professor at the University of Munich, and Senior Fulbright Professor, again at the University of Munich. Clayton is a past winner of the Templeton Book Prize for best monograph in the field of science and religion and a winner of the first annual Templeton Research Prize. His primary research interest concerns the ethical, social and metaphysical issues that arise at the intersection of contemporary science and religion.
Clayton is the author of The Problem of God in Modern Thought (Eerdmans, 2000),
God and Contemporary Science (Edinburgh University Press, 1997); Explanation
from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion (Yale University
Press, 1989; German edition, Rationalität und Religion, 1992); and Das
Gottesproblem, vol. 1: Gott und Unendlichkeit in der neuzeitlichen Philosophie
(Schöningh Verlag, 1996). He has edited and translated several other volumes
(including Quantum Mechanics and Science and the Spiritual Quest) and published
some 50 articles in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the world's religious
traditions. His current research interest lies in developing a theology of emergence,
to be published next year as The Emergence of Spirit.
Clayton is currently Principal Investigator of the "Science and the Spiritual
Quest" project (SSQ) at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences
in Berkeley, California. SSQ has brought together over 100 top scientists from
around the world to explore the connections between science, ethics, religion
and spirituality. Other major public events (past or future) sponsored by SSQ
include: Silicon Valley, Harvard University, the UNESCO World Headquarters in
Paris, Granada, Bangalore, and Tokyo.
The Fall from Objectivity: How Interpretation Entered
into the (Scientific) World ... And with it Religion
Tthis keynote address outlines the overarching theme of the conference. The
focus on interpretive questions represented a fall from innocence for the scientific
project. Of course, in this "fall" science no more ceased to be science
than Adam and Eve ceased to be human after theirs; yet in another sense, everything
changed. The talk outlines the major areas of transformation, tracing the "hermeneutization"
of the natural and social sciences in the 20th century and the implications
of this shift for the present century. At the same time, Clayton criticizes
postmodern thinkers who attempt to derive the full equivalence of science and
theology from the so-called fall from objectivity. In place of the alleged identity
of science and theology, he offers a typology of the "four tiers of interpretation"
that help to locate each of the disciplines of knowledge. Each "tier"
sets an agenda, a rhetoric, and a specific set of tasks for the debates between
science and religion that are located within it.
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Menachem Fisch
Professor Menachem Fisch teaches history and philosophy of science at Tel Aviv
University, and is Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced
Judaic Studies, Jerusalem. He has held visiting research positions at Queen's
College, Oxford; Trinity College, Cambridge (UK), the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin,
the Dibner Institute for Advanced Study in the History of Science and Technology,
MIT, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He has published widely
on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on confirmation
theory and rationality, on talmudic theology and on the philosophy of talmudic
halakhic (legal) reasoning. In his most recent work he explores the possibilities
of articulating a pluralist political philosophy from within the assumptions
of halakhic Judaism, and of a viable theory of rational appraisal in the face
of latter-day radical relativism. He is author of William Whewell Philosopher
of Science, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991, Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic
Culture, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1997 and "Ethical Diversity,
Tolerance, and the Problem of Sovereignty: A Jewish Perspective", forthcoming
in R. Madsen and T. Strong (eds.) Ethical Pluralism in Contemporary Perspectives,
Princeton University Press. Menachem Fisch is President of the Israel Society
for History and Philosophy of Science, and Chairman of the Israel Academy of
Science's National Committee for History and Philosophy of Science.
Humble Reasoners: Science and the Jewish Covenants
of Learning
Enlightenment visions of human reason measured rationality in terms of epistemic
trustworthiness. Science was hailed the paradigm rational endeavor by all for
the way it succeeded in amassing great bodies of truth by applying proven methods
to reliable data. Science is still considered a paradigm of rationality, but
our understanding of rationality has much changed. The achievement of science
is no longer measured by the proven reliability of its theories, methods, or
data, as by the critical scrutiny to which they are subjected. Rationality,
philosophers have come to realize, is not a matter of proven confidence in what
we know, but of a humble, self-doubting, yet constructive awareness of our tendency
to err. According to the earlier model nature reveals her secrets to science;
according to the second, although science certainly advances, there is never
a moment of revelation. In view of our current understanding of science the
well-known early enlightenment "two books" analogy would appear to
collapse: while in His "Book of Words" God reveals its truth to humankind,
His "Book of Works" seems to leave us forever guessing. Judaism, however,
offers a radically different view of the revelatory nature of its sacred texts,
which I shall argue, comes intriguingly close to our current understanding of
science. The lecture will explore the theological foundations of this type of
humble, confrontational religiosity, and the role it might play, alongside science,
in a world caught between dogmatism and radical relativism.
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S. Nomanul Haq is currently on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania
with appointments in two departments-the History of Art, and History and Sociology
of Science. Among his courses at Penn is the very popular "Science, Religion,
and Magic," the largest course in the history science program which is
cross-listed with Religious Studies.
Haq studied physics as an undergraduate at England's Hull University, and then,
at University College London, the history of philosophy and of science as well
as Islamic studies. At the doctoral level, he went as a London University transfer
student to Harvard, where he did his graduate work in the history of Arabic
science, and Near Eastern languages and civilizations.
A member and advisor of several international academic bodies and institutions,
Haq has held faculty positions at Tufts, Brown, and Rutgers, and has published
widely. His book Names, Natures, and Things-a work in the history of alchemy-has
already appeared in two editions, published by Kluwer of the Netherlands. He
is General Editor of the book series Studies in Islamic Philosophy of the Oxford
University Press, and is a co-editor of a work on science-religion dialogue,
God, Life, and the Cosmos, an Ashgate publication. Among numerous others, Professor
Haq has published in periodicals such as Daedalus; Isis; the Journal of the
American and Oriental Society; the Oxford Journal of Islamic Studies, and Dialog;
and he has contributed to the Blackwell Companion to Environmental Philosophy;
Routledge History of Islamic Philosophy; the Encyclopaedia of Islam; the Oxford
Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World; and the New York Times.
Constructing the Universe: Imagination, Reality,
and Metaphor
Does science-or, more broadly, human perception-construct the physical world?
Or does the physical world, the cosmos, exist as reality independent of a knowing
subject? If science is a process of human constructions, a process consisting
in an imaginative interpretation of certain disjointed physical phenomena, then
what is the difference between science and science fiction? If science is imaginative
interpretation, is this imagination free and unbridled? Or is it constrained
by certain limitations that reality itself imposes? If so, then what is the
nature of the bridles controlling scientific imagination? Do moral questions,
transcendental issues, and religious faith form some of the constituent elements
of these bridles? Does the power of scientific ideas lie outside ideas?
These are some of the central questions the lecture will explore from a historical
and Islamic philosophical vantage point. Essentially, it will examine how these
questions have been treated in the Islamic tradition, and how they would be
resolved in that tradition.
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Antje Jackelén
Antje Jackelén, Th.D., studied theology in Bielefeld-Bethel and Tübingen,
Germany, and Uppsala, Sweden. She was ordained for ministry in the Church of
Sweden in 1980. She held positions in parish ministry and participated in the
continued education of priests and the training of ordinands. She received her
Ph.D. in systematic theology from Lund University, Sweden in 1999. Dr. Jackelén
has been a member of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology
(ESSSAT) since it began in 1990. She has served as the ESSSAT secretary, as
member of the organizing committees for several European Conferences on Science
and Theology, and as editor of ESSSAT-News. She is a council member of ESSSAT.
From 1999-2001, she served as regional director for Europe of the Science and
Religion Course Program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences,
Berkeley, CA. Since 2001 Dr. Jackelén teaches systematic theology/religion
and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and works with the
Zygon Center for Religion and Science in Chicago. Her publications include books
in German and Swedish as well as numerous articles in theology and religion-and-science
issues. Her most recent book is entitled Time and Eternity. The Concept of Time
in Church, Natural Sciences and Theology (published in German by Neukichener,
2002).
The Art of Suspicion-Hermeneutics in Religion-and-Science
The lecture examines the role of hermeneutics for the dialogue between religion and science. I discuss Christian theological hermeneutics with a special emphasis on a Lutheran contribution to the hermeneutical discourse. The key text presented is the Heidelberg Disputation from 1518 with its distinction between a theology of glory (theologia gloriae) and a theology of the cross (theologia crucis). It is held that the concept of otherness which is inherent in Reformation thinking and which is central to recent discourse in hermeneutics provides important resources for the dialogue between disciplines.
The relevance and need of critical hermeneutics in the science and religion
dialogue is illustrated with three examples. I present the Newton/Clarke-Leibniz
debate as an example of uncritical interaction between religion and science.
Here, interpretation matters because of the human need to form and express consistent
worldviews. The second example refers to the theory of paradigm as en example
of critical hermeneutics. In spite of the criticisms directed towards the Kuhnian
theory of paradigm, the concept itself has developed a flexible life of its
own and influenced the science-and-religion discourse. The final example intends
to illustrate the significance of the use of concepts borrowed from science
as heuristic tools in theological thinking. This exemplification takes the shape
of a tentative analysis of an understanding of creation theology in terms of
complexity.
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Mustafa Abu Sway
Dr. Mustafa Abu Sway is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Islamic Studies,
and Director of the Islamic Research Center at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem
/ Palestine. He is also the coordinator for the MA program in Contemporary Islamic
Studies.
He graduated from Bethlehem University (BA, 1984), Boston College (MA, 1985 & Ph.D. 1993). Dr. Abu Sway taught at the International Islamic University-Malaysia 1993-95, where he was the chairperson of the Dept. of Philosophy, International Institute for Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC) 1995-96, and joined Al-Quds University in 1996.
He is one of the winners, along with Dr. Khaled Salem from Al-Quds University, of the Science and Religion Course Award 2001 from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley, CA.
He has published two books: Islamic Epistemology: The Case of Al-Ghazzali (Dewan
Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1995), and Fatawa Al-Ghazzali (ISTAC, 1996). He also co-authored
the Islamic Education Book (7th Grade) for the Palestinian Ministry of Education
(published in 2001).
Dr. Abu Sway has authored numerous papers on Al-Ghazzali, Imam Al-Nursi, Islam
and Globalization, Islam and the Environment, and the Scientific Interpretation
of the Qur'an.
Dr. Abu Sway is active in interfaith dialogue for many years. He contributed a paper "Ibrahim in the Islamic Scriptures" to Abraham in the Three Monotheistic Faiths (Jerusalem: PASSIA, 1998).
Modern Science and the Hermeneutics of the "Scientific Interpretation"
of the Qur'an
The essence of divine revelation, including the message of the Qur'an, is that of guidance. Nevertheless, there are verses, in the Qur'an, that contain references to natural phenomena. The context in which these references take place indicates that these natural phenomena are meant to be signs pointing in the direction of God. Spirituality, therefore, is the telos of such references. The advancement in modern science provided new horizons for these references. In addition, there are verses that, if interpreted literally, appear to be epistemologically inclusive of science per se. Such belief led many Muslim scholars to state that the Qur'an includes all spheres of knowledge.
The history of the interpretation of the Qur'an spans over fourteen hundred centuries. It reflects the various positions that Muslim scholars adopted regarding the scientific content of the Qur'an. Modern contact with Europe, which began with Napoleon Bonaparte's "expedition" in 1798 to Egypt, put new scientific data at the disposal of Muslim scholars who hastened to interweave them into their exegesis of the Qur'an. It should be noted that the same approach applies to the traditions [i.e. ahadith] of the Prophet. Examples of both will be discussed. This paper will critically review the development of the "Scientific Interpretation" of the Qur'an.