PROFESSOR | RESEARCH | DISCUSSION
Contact person:
Dr. William Grassie,
Voice: (610)486-6859
E-mail: grassie@voicenet.com
Web: http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~grassie
February 8, 1996 - Thursday
February 8 , 1996 - Thursday
Dr. Mark Richardson, Science and Religion Program Director, John Templeton
Foundation
"Science and Religion in Dialogue"
Penn Hillel, 202 South 36th Street
February 21, 1996 - Wednesday
Dr. M. Susan Lindee, History and Sociology of Science and Technology,
University of Pennsylvania
"Sacred DNA: Identity, Immortality and the Human Genome Project"
Penn Christian Association, 3601 Locust Walk.
February 27, 1996 - Tuesday
Dr. Norbert Samuelson, Jewish Studies and Philosophy of Religion, Temple
University
"Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation"
Penn Hillel, 202 South 36th Street.
March 5, 1996 - Tuesday
Dr. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Princeton Theological Seminary
"Deconstructing the Postmodern Challenge to Science and Religion"
Houston Hall, Bodek Lounge, 3417 Spruce Street
March 28, 1996 - Thursday
Dr. Khalid Blankenship, Islamic Studies, Temple University
"Islam, Modernity, and Postmodernity"
Houston Hall, Bodek Lounge, 3417 Spruce Street
April 10, 1996 - Wednesday
Dr. Eugene D'Aquilli, Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania
"Neuropsychology of Reality or Why God Won't Go Away"
Penn Newman Center, 3720 Chestnut Street
April 18, 1996 - Thursday
Dr. Beverly Rubik, Founding Director, Center for Frontier Sciences
"Towards a Science of Love and Prayer"
Penn Newman Center, 3720 Chestnut Street
April 25, 1996 - Thursday
Dr. Sol Katz,
Professor of Physical Anthropology, Krogman Growth Center, University of
Pennsylvania
"New Perspectives on the Interface between Science and Religion"
Penn Christian Association, 3601 Locust Walk
Title: "Science and Religion in Dialogue"
Location: Penn Hillel, 202 South 36th Street
Description: Richardson will speak about the state of the relations
between religion and science in our culture today: Is dialogue and interaction
possible? He will also talk about various kinds of activity that are currently
going on in the U.S.
Bio: Mark Richardson is Asst. Professor of Philosophical Theology at
the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley , Ca. , and regularly teaches
courses on aspects of the relationship between theology and science. He
is also directing a major initiative at the interface of science and religion
for the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (Berkeley), sponsored
by the Templeton Foundation. Richardson is Editor of the CTNS Bulletin,
a publication of scholarly articles and book reviews in science and religion,
and is co-editor of Science and Religion: History, Method and Dialogue,
to be published by Routledge Press and available this spring.
Locaction: Penn Christian Association Auditorium, 3601 Locust
Walk
Description: Most cultures have recognized some entity that is relatively
independent of the body, but that gives the body life and power. This entity
commonly persists when the body is gone, and contains all the essential
elements needed to bring the body back, for example on the day of the resurrection
of the dead, the final day of judgment. In this talk, I explore how imagery
of the soul has made its way into the scientific and popular discourse surrounding
the Human Genome Project, the effort to map and sequence all human DNA.
I suggest that in contemporary American popular culture DNA appears as relatively
independent of the body, giving the body life and power, and containing
within it everything needed to bring the body (the self) back. DNA thus
functions as the comtemporary equivalent of the human soul. What does this
help us understand about science, religion, and contemporary notions of
identity and selfhood?
Bio: M. Susan Lindee is an assistant professor of the History and
Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She has studied
twentieth century American biology, focusing particularly on the political
and social contexts that have shaped scientific ideas about the human body.
She is the author, with sociologist of science Dorothy Nelkin, of "The
DNA Mystique: The gene as a cultural icon" (1995 W.H. Freeman) and
also of a study of post-war radiation genetics, "Suffering Made Real:
American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima" 1994 Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Title: "Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation"
Location: Penn Hillel, 202 South 36th Street
Description: Samuelson will present a comparative study of the conceptions
of the origin of the universe in Jewish philosophy (past and present) and
contemporary astrophysics, with a view to using this material to draw some
general judgments about epistemology, ontology, religion, and the interrelationships
between religion, philosophy, and science.
Bio: Norbert M. Samuelson is a professor of religion and the director
of the Jewish Studies Program at Temple University. He has published six
books and more than ninety academic articles in the field of Jewish philosophy.
His published books include Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Pres, 1994), The First Seven Days: A Philosophical
Commentary on the Creation of Genesis (Atlanta: University of South Florida,
1992), An Introduction to Modern Jewish Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press,
1989), The Exalted Faith of Abraham Ibn Daud (Cranbury, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 1986), and Gersonides on God's Knowledge (Toronto, Pontifical
Institute of Mediaval Studies, 1977). He edited Studies in Jewish Philosophy:
Collected Essays of the Academy for Jewish Philosophy (Lanham, 1987), and
together with David Novak, Creation and the End of Days (Lanham, 1986).
He is the current secretary of the American Theological Society, and a founder,
past chair, and current secretary-treasurer of the international Academy
for Jewish Philosophy. His other academic affiliations include the American
Academy of Religion, the American Philosophical Association, the Association
of Jewish Studies, and the Society for Values in Higher Education.
Location: Houston Hall, Bodek Lounge, 3417 Spruce Street
Description: In this lecture the focus will be on the extreme epistemological
complexity of the relationship between religion and science, two of the
most dominant forces in our culture today. Dr. van Huyssteen will argue
that this complexity is aggravated by, on the one hand, the postmodern pluralist
challenge, and on the other hand, the fact that so much of the new physics
and contemporary cosmology seems to be overlapping with what traditionally
is seen as the exclusive domain of religion.
In the light of this special challenge it will become clear that a meaningful
dialogue between theology and science will be possible only if both modes
of reflection are willing to move away from overblown foundationalist epistemologies
and, for theology at least, also from the intellectual coma of fideism.
Van Huyssteen argues for a model where theology and science, although very
different modes of reflection, do share the richness of the resources of
human rationality. This will enable us to finally answer three important
questions:
1) Are there good reasons for still seeing the natural sciences as our best available example of human rationality at work?
2) If so, does the rationality of religion and of theological reflection in any way overlap with scientific rationality?
3) Even if there are impressive overlaps between these two ways of thinking, how would the rationality of science and the rationality of religious reflection be different?
Description: Although Islam is viewed as an alien challenge by
some Western thinkers, it is not usually taken seriously by them as a possible
competitor in the realm of modern or postmodern thought. That is because,
as a religious system, it was automatically and completely excluded from
consideration by the optimistic progressivist and materialist ideology of
modernity, which dismissed all premodern systems of thought as backward,
unscientific, and hence illegitimate for present-day purposes. But the failures
of modernity in the twentieth century undermined the confidence of the intellectuals
in modernism, and this loss of confidence has eventually spread throughout
all sectors of society, notwithstanding the attempts of the established
order to breathe life into the belief in progress and material optimism.
The collapse of the dominance of modernism as an exclusive ideology monopolizing
claims to the truth has opened the door to postmodern pluralism.
While many Muslims believe that postmodern pluralism, because of its alleged
nihilism, is just another attempt by the West to force another colonial
Western discourse of control on the Muslims, the end of the intellectual
predominance of the discourse of modernism suggests rather an opportunity
for Islam to make its case. Although it is true that the large number of
Muslims, most of whom are poor, illiterate, and marginal to the modern world
would not be accounted a material asset by many, Islam has many other resources
that are unique to it, including its ancient scriptures, which, because
of the structure of Islam, cannot be interpreted as anything less than God's
word by Muslims. Such resources, because they are lacking in the thought
universe of the Western elite, may be able to make a contribution on the
moral plane where many Westerners feel adrift. That certain reinterpretations
in the light of the present situation may be needed is no insurmountable
obstacle, but the fissiparious tendencies within Islam unleashed by the
growth of modern institutions is a serious challenge, one that is perhaps
more of a threat to Islam than the enormous disparity in material strength
between non-Muslim powers and the Muslims.
Bio: Dr. Khalid 'Abdulhadi Yahya Blankenship is an assistant professor
in Islamic Studies at Temple University's Department of Religion. Blankenship
received his doctorate in History from the University of Washington in Seattle
and has taught in Houston, Texas and Cairo, Egypt. He has numerous publications
and translations, including The End of the Jihad State, 1994 and The History
of al-Tabari, Volume XXV, 1989 and XI, 1993. Dr. Blankenship is a frequent
speaker on Islam in academic and religious venues throughout the United
States and presented papers in Morocco, India, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,
and Malaysia as well.
Location: Penn Newman Center, 3720 Chestnut Street
Description: An attempt at a definition of religion is presented
both from an historical perspective and from a transdisciplinary one involving
philosophy, anthropology, and especially neuropsychology. A neuropsychological
analysis involving the evolution of the neural mechanisms underlying religious
phenomena is proposed as an overarching explanatory system. Two major components
of religion are then so analyzed: first, the aspect of religion aimed at
control of the environment is examined as a neuropsychological system of
self-maintenance, and secondly, the production of altered state of consciousness
is considered as a a neuropsychological system of self-transcendence. Finally,
the reality states of mystical experience are considered vis a vis the criteria
of the relity of "baseline" experience.
Bio: Eugene D'Aquili is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry
at the University of Pennsylvania and has authored and co-authored five
books and numerous papers relating on biogenetic structuralism to philosophy
of science, religious phenomenology, and neuroepistemology. D'Aquili graduated
from Villanova in 1962 in dual major in philosophy and science. In 1966
he received his MD from the University of Pennsylvania, having been awarded
the Priestley Prize for Original Scientific Research. He also did a four
year psychiatric residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
D'Aquili went on to get a Ph.D in Anthropology in 1979.
Title: "Towards a Science of Love and Prayer"
Location: Penn Newman Center, 3720 Chestnut Street
Description: New discoverise at the edge of science show powerful
interconnections between mind, body, and spirit and challenge older views
that the universe and life operate like dead machines. Life is interconnected
not only materially, but in subtler ways via subtle energies and realms
of mind and spirit that extend far beyond the boundaries of our skin. For
example, experiments show that healers can affect organisms or potients
in the laboratory -- or remotely across many miles -- through prayer and
intentionality to heal. Even ordinary people show some capacity to affect
the material realm outside of themselves with the power of their own mind/spirit.
All life forms emit very weak electromagnetic signals that may be transmitting
biologically meaningful information. For the most part, these findings have
been disregarded by conventional science, although they reflect the knowledge
prevalent in ancient cultures. Research in these areas of science not yet
mainstream -- the frontier sciences-- is therefore validating the perennial
wisdom and holistic cosmology of our ancestors. Such research may also pave
the way for the reunion of matter and spirit in our own times. Dr. Rubik
will present highlights in these new scientific discoveries in non-technical
language and the stories of their courageous discoverers who face extraordinary
obstacles in their pursuit of the subtle realms of nature that remain largely
unexplored.
Bio: Beverly Rubik earned her doctorate in biophysics at the University
of California at Berkeley in 1979. During the 1980s she was a faculty member
at San Francisco State University in science and NEXA, the science-humanities
convergence program. She was also a faculty member in Matthew Fox's program,
the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names College
form 1985 - 1988. In 1988, she relocated to Philadelphia to serve as the
founding director of the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple University,
which gathered over 3,300 affiliates in 58 countries under her leadership
and earned a national and international reputation for its bold exploration
of maverick topics in science and medicine. Her publications include the
founding of a journal, Frontier Perspectives, and a book, The Interrealationship
Between Mind and Matter (1992), both edited by Dr. Rubik. Author of over
50 scientific papers on subtle energies, homeopathy, acupuncture, bioelectromagnetics,
consciousness studies, and other areas of frontier science, Rubik was a
member of the Advisory Panel to the Office of Alternative Medicine of the
National Institute of Health (NIH), a NIH panel chair on bioelectromagnetic
applications in medicine, and a member of the editorial board and contributing
author to the NIH Report, Alternative Medicine: Expanding Medical Horizons.
In late 1995, Rubik left Temple University and continues her work as an
independent scholar.
Title: "New Perspectives on the Interface between Science
and Religion"
Location: Penn Christian Association, 3601 Locust Walk.
Description:
Bio: