The Zygon Center for Religion and Science

Emergence: A Better Vision of Nature, Science, and Religion?

A Research Conference organized by the Zygon Center for Religion and Science in
collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara

September 28-30, 2006

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
1100 East 55th Street, Chicago IL 60615

Email: [email protected] Main Website: www.zygoncenter.org

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Register Online Housing Information Directions to the Lutheran School of Theology Questions Conference Program Conference Speakers	Registration Form Driving Directions and Map Conference Program

Scientists discuss it, philosophers define and evaluate it, and theologians get excited about it. The term emergence keeps popping up almost everywhere.

For some, it seems to be the magic wand that explains (almost) everything. Others understand emergence to furnish the ultimate justification of ontological naturalism, thus leading to a non-theistic or anti-theistic worldview. Others again invoke emergence as a rational way of bringing immanence and transcendence together, thus arguing for the plausibility of theistic worldviews.

For some, emergence is all about hierarchies and levels of order. Their guiding metaphor is the ladder. Others view emergence as a feast of interconnectedness in and between systems of systems. Their guiding metaphor is dance. Is one view more right than another? Are we asking the right questions about emergence? What answers are available? What questions should be asked in further research?

These are some of the questions that will be explored at this research conference organized by the Zygon Center for Religion and Science in Chicago. The conference is being held in collaboration with the University of California Santa Barbara, where a major research project entitled ‘New Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion' is moving towards completion.

Registration:
printable registration form
Registration is limited to 50 participants, so please register early.
The conference fee is $75. This fee covers conference material, a reception on Thursday evening, 2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, and dinner. Payment may be made through Paypal by filling in the form below. You may also call the Zygon Center at 773-256-0670. There, payment may be made by check or credit card. If paying by check, call to register and send in a check or click for a printable form and mail together with a check or credit card information. You may also FAX the printable form to (773) 256-0682.

Your registration is valid when you receive a confirmation email from ZCRS.

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Housing information:

Housing is available at the Ramada Inn Lake Shore in Hyde Park about 1.5 miles from the Lutheran School of Theology, where the conference will take place. A group of rooms is blocked off at a group rate. Call 773-288-5800 for reservations.

There is also housing available a few blocks from the school at the International House on the University of Chicago campus. This housing contains shared bathrooms. You may call 773-753-2280 for more information.

Directions to the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
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From the north, west, or south, take any expressway to I-55 North. Exit at Lake Shore Drive South and continue to the 53rd Street Exit. Turn left at the first traffic light, Hyde Park Boulevard, and proceed to 55th Street. Turn right onto 55th Street. Travel 3/4 mile and turn right onto University Avenue. LSTC is located on the corner of University and 55th Street.

From the east, take I-94 to the Stony Island exit. Go north on Stony Island to 56th Street (about 5 miles). Stony Island ends at 56th Street. Turn left, go under the viaduct and turn right onto Lake Park Avenue. Turn left at the first traffic light. This is 55th Street and drive to University Avenue. The seminary is located on the corner of University and 55th Street.

Questions?

Contact the Executive Coordinator at the Zygon Center for Religion and Science at 773-256-0670 Monday-Thursday 8:30 am – 4:30 pm or email [email protected].

Conference Program:
printable program

Conference Speakers (in order of appearance):

Barbara King
Barbara J. King is Professor of Anthropology at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. A biological anthropologist, she has studied monkey behavior in Africa, and ape communication among the gorillas housed at the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park. She is the author of The Dynamic Dance, published by Harvard in 2004; her new book, to be published by Doubleday in January, is called Evolving God.

Jim Proctor
James D. Proctor serves as a Professor of Environmental Studies at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR. Dr. Proctor, who received his Ph.D. in geography from Berkeley in 1992, also holds degrees in environmental science and religious studies. Research interests concern attitudinal and theoretical dimensions of nature, science, and religion, and the relationship between religion, modernity, and authority. Dr. Proctor directed Science, Religion, and the Human Experience, a three-year series at UC Santa Barbara funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Dr. Proctor has published in a wide variety of academic journals, and is editor of several related books.

Greg Peterson
Gregory R. Peterson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at South Dakota State University, where he currently serves as program coordinator. Dr. Peterson’s primary area of research is in religion and science, with special attention devoted to the biological and cognitive sciences and their implications for religious and philosophical approaches to human nature. Author of over 30 articles on religion and science in books, encyclopedias, and journals, he has published the book Minding God: Theology and Cognitive Science (Fortress 2002). Dr. Peterson has spoken on religion and science issues nationally, is the book review editor for the journal Zygon, and is a co-chair for the Science, Religion, and Technology Group for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion.

Leo Kadanoff
Leo P. Kadanoff, professor of physics and mathematics at the University of Chicago, is a theoretical physicist and applied mathematician who has contributed widely to research in the properties of matter, the development of urban areas, statistical models of physical systems, and the development of chaos in simple mechanical and fluid systems. His best-known contribution was in the development of the concepts of "scale invariance" and "universality" as they are applied to phase transitions. More recently, he has been involved in the understanding of singularities in fluid flow.

John Albright
Dr. John Albright is visiting professor of religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Dr. Albright retired in 2004 from Purdue University Calumet (Chicago area campus) where he was head of the Chemistry and Physics department since 1995. Prior to his position at Purdue, Dr. Albright spent more than 30 years at Florida State University. At FSU he taught not only physics courses but also graduate courses in humanities which bridged the “two cultures” gap. Dr. Albright was also Southeast Regional Director of the Templeton Course Program in 1994 and he continued in this capacity (1995-1999) after moving to Chicago.

Robert Ulanowicz
Robert E. Ulanowicz is Professor of theoretical ecology with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Solomons, Maryland. Educated as a chemical engineer, Dr. Ulanowicz's chief interest has been the quantification of the phenomena of growth and development as they transpire in ecosystems. Toward this end, he developed numerous algorithms for analyzing networks of ecosystem trophic exchanges and eventually sought a deeper understanding of the nature of causalities at work in living systems. His formulation of an "ecological metaphysic" provides a far more neutral background for theistic belief than heretofore had been possible under the conventional Newtonian worldview.

Brooke Parry Hecht
Brooke Hecht, Ph.D. is a Research Associate with the Center for Humans and Nature, Chicago. Brooke grew up in the forests of Connecticut and, later, within view of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. At age 15, she spent a summer in a remote mining camp in Australia, which awakened her awareness of the natural world and offered inspiring insights into how humans and their environments are interconnected. Since then, Brooke has explored multiple facets of biological and ecological science, from the scale of genes to biomes.

Brooke earned her B.A. in biology at Dartmouth, focusing her studies on plant molecular genetics. She then returned to Australia for her Master of Science degree at the University of Melbourne, where her research assessed the adequacy of rainforest buffer zones in forests logged for timber production. She continued her research on the effects of disturbance on ecosystem dynamics during her Ph.D. in ecosystem ecology at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Brooke’s doctoral field work took her to Iceland, where she identified early warning indicators of shifts in ecosystem resistance to disturbance in boreal forests subjected to anthropogenic and natural stressors.

Brooke’s interests extend beyond the biological world into spheres of human thought, psychology, and spirituality. Taken together, her interests fuel her commitment to interdisciplinary work on the sustainability of natural and human communities.

Anne Foerst
Dr.theol. Anne Foerst has been assistant professor for computer science at St. Bonaventure University since Fall 2005. From 2001 until 2005 she was on the faculty as visiting professor for theology and computer science. Prior to her position at St. Bonaventure, she worked as a research scientist at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was also affiliated with the Center for the Studies of Values in Public Life of Harvard Divinity School.

She also writes for popular media to bring the question on religion and science to a broader audience. Her research centers mostly on questions of embodiment and social interaction as central elements in human cognition, on questions of personhood and dignity, and on how to bring theology back into the public discourse in secularized, high-tech Western cultures. Her first book "God in the Machine: What robots teach us about humanity and God" was published by Dudham: a part of the Viking-Penguin group, in Fall 2004 and came out as paperback last Fall.

Her research interests are centered around the question on the nature of personhood and humanness; after exploring the biological mechanisms of humans in her book, she is concentrating now on the questions of sexuality as bonding mechanism and conflict resolution to establish objective criteria for personhood.

Warren Brown
Warren S. Brown is Professor of Psychology at the Graduate School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he is Director of the Lee Travis Research Institute. He is also a member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute. He is actively involved in experimental neuropsychological research, particularly related to functions of the corpus callosum in relationship to human higher cognitive and social processes. Brown has coauthored more than 70 research publications and over 100 presentations at scientific meetings. Brown served as editor of Whatever Happened to the Soul: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (with Nancey Murphy and Newton Malony; Fortress Press, 1998) and Understanding Wisdom: Sources, Science, and Society (Templeton Press, 2001).

Antje Jackelén
Antje Jackelén is Associate Professor of systematic theology/religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and Director of the Zygon Center for Religion and Science. She was born and raised in Westphalia, Germany, and studied theology in Bethel and Tübingen (Germany) and Uppsala (Sweden). In 1980 she was ordained in the Church of Sweden and served in parish ministry until 1996. She earned her PhD (Dr. Theol.) from Lund University in 1999. Dr. Jackelén serves on the boards of major religion-and-science organizations and is a founding member of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) and the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR). Her publications include books in German and Swedish as well as numerous articles in theology and religion-and-science, published in various languages. In 2005 an English translation of Zeit und Ewigkeit. Die Frage der Zeit in Kirche, Naturwissenschaft und Theologie (Neukirchener, 2002) was released: Time And Eternity: The Question Of Time In Church, Science, And Theology, Templeton Foundation Press.

Philip Hefner
Dr. Hefner directed the Zygon Center from its beginnings in 1988 to 2003. Hefner received his PhD in theology from the University of Chicago. He is currently an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), professor emeritus of systematic theology, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and editor-in-chief of the Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. Hefner has written 8 books and more than 150 articles. His most notable book, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, Religion (Fortress Press, 1993) received the Templeton Foundation's Best Books in Religion and Science Award. He has also given many lectures over the years, with his most recent appearances being a series of lectures for the Metanexus Institute in 2003-2004 centering on the theme of created co-creator and being the featured speaker at the 2006 Goshen Conference on Religion and Science.

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