2006 LSI SUPPLEMENTAL GRANT AWARDS

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Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr., Thomas Fowler and Eric Weislogel

Fundación Xavier Zubiri LSI
Fundación Xavier Zubiri
Madrid, Spain 
Chairperson:  Diego Gracia, Ph.D.
http://www.zubiri.net/

As I mentioned last year, this society, before it even became a grantee of LSI, probably deserved the recognition of a Supplemental Grant Prize.  The members of this group pretty much single-handedly began organizing—not only their own institution, which is never a small feat—but their entire country to begin promoting a healthy and rigorous science and religion dialogue.  In a short period of time, they organized a mini-network of 8 local societies (now 9) among some of their nation’s top educational institutions, together with some influential intellectual foundations and academic networks.  This year, they’ve opened up three major endeavors for promoting the constructive engagement of science and religion.  First, they have committed to publishing a regular section on the popular and well-syndicated webmagazine, tendencias21.net, “The Electronic Journal of Science, Technology, Culture, and Society.”  This e-journal is among the top 80,000 websites in terms of most visits—and if for some reason that does not impress you, just remember that there are over 85.6 million individual domains on the Internet.  That puts it in the top sliver of the top 1%.  This society’s “tendencies in religion” section is heavily engaged in the science and religion dialogue, and is well-written, well-edited, and well-designed.  I opened it today to find, above the scroll, a picture of Ian Barbour and a story about this very conference.  The second initiative of this society has the aim of helping to develop a network of local societies in Central and South America, and connecting it to the Spanish sub-network that is already at work.  They have contacted over 100 universities in the region, and are actively developing relationships with 49 institutions.  They are planning to incentive participation in the science and religion dialogue by holding a well-publicized essay contest with subsequent publication.  Third, this society—along with the other societies in Spain—is working on a joint research project under the umbrella theme of “Human Evolution.”  Networking, research, publication, local activities—this society is energetic and creative and very effective.

Award Accepted by : Thomas Fowler
Thomas Fowler is president and founder of the Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America. He works closely with the Fundación Xavier Zubiri in Madrid. He has taught physics, mathematics, engineering, logic, and philosophy at several colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. At present, he is on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He has authored numerous studies on Zubiri’s thought and translated two of Zubiri’s works, Nature, History, God and Sentient Intelligence. He is editor and founder of The Xavier Zubiri Review, a journal devoted to Zubiri’s philosophy. He is doing research for a book on Zubiri and the problem of causality, a topic on which he has published several articles. He also works as a consultant to the U.S. Government in scientific and technical matters. In addition to his continuing work on Zubiri, he recently completed a book on the evolution controversy, a subject of life-long interest to him.
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Site last updated Wednesday, June 7, 2006