Darwin in Istanbul

The Darwin anniversary symposium in Istanbul, April 23-24, received widespread coverage in the Turkish press.

In late April, Istanbul hosted its first-ever international scientific meeting on the subject of evolution. Organized by the Faraday Institute of the University of Cambridge, with funding from the Templeton Foundation, the gathering consisted of a two-day scholarly symposium and a public event to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

The symposium, which was attended mainly by biology faculty and graduate students from Turkish universities, focused on new developments in evolutionary biology and also the historical and present-day challenges of teaching evolution in Turkey. The public event, which was attended by over 400 Turkish students, began with a discussion of "Darwin the Man" and also included a performance of Re:Design, a play based on the correspondence between Darwin and the American naturalist Asa Gray. The evening concluded with a panel discussion, featuring four well-known biologists, and a Q&A session with the students, all of which was recorded for broadcast on Turkish national television.

The conference received widespread coverage in the Turkish press, including the mass-circulation daily newspaper Hurriyet and the Turkish edition of Newsweek. A special website, in both Turkish and English, was created for the conference at www.Darwin200Istanbul.org to provide information about evolution and Darwin’s life.

New Vision 400

The New Vision 400 Conference, a celebration of four centuries of human discovery since the invention of the telescope, took place in Beijing in October 2008. With the support of the Templeton Foundation, scientists and scholars from across North America, Europe, and Asia met for four days in the Chinese capital to discuss the past and future of telescope technology, new challenges in astronomy, and the role that our vastly expanded knowledge of the universe has played in reshaping human beliefs and worldviews.

The New Vision 400 Conference began with a public event at the Great Hall of the People featuring Nobel laureate Tsung-Dao Lee of Columbia University, another Nobel Prize-winner, Riccardo Giacconi of Johns Hopkins University, and Geoffrey Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley. Video of their talks can be found at the NV400 website, along with a short documentary film on the history of the telescope, produced especially for the conference. The first several sessions of the conference were devoted to a range of technical subjects in astronomy and astrophysics, but participants also addressed various "Big Questions" related to the social and intellectual impact of the telescope, with particular attention to historical differences between Europe and Asia and to current debates about the nature of the cosmos and its significance for humankind. Abstracts of all the papers presented at the conference can be found here.

The NV400 conference was the Templeton Foundation's first major initiative in China and included the announcement of "Beyond the Horizons," a $2-million grant program for cutting-edge research in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. A joint project of the Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, it will offer three rounds of RFPs from 2009 to 2011.

For more about NV 400, see the December 10, 2008 issue of the Templeton Report.

The Foundational Questions Institute

Established in 2006 under the leadership of Max Tegmark of MIT and Anthony Aguirre of UC-Santa Cruz, the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) seeks to "catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources." This past July, FQXi awarded $2.68 million to support 33 different projects. An expert review panel used a two-step process to choose the winners from 191 applications from 11 different countries.

Among the grantees were Raphael Bousso, a professor at UC-Berkeley, for a project titled "Why Is the Universe Large?" ($60,000); Jonathan Dowling of LSU for work on "Quantum Measurement in the Timeless Universe" ($102,000); and Andrei Linde of Stanford for research on "Multiverse, Inflation, Life, and Probabilities" ($164,000). A. Garrett Lisi, an independent physicist recently profiled in the New Yorker, received a grant for work on what he refers to as his "exceptionally simple theory of everything" ($77,000).

With the support of the John Templeton Foundation, the four-year project has awarded, to date, a total of approximately $5 million in grants in two phases, as well as a number of mini-grants for travel, lecture programs, workshops, and other small projects initiated by FQXi members. Part of the support from JTF has been used to form a network of scientists interested in addressing the most difficult questions about the ultimate nature of the universe. In 2006, the group met in Iceland, and there is another conference planned for the summer of 2009. To continue to identify new areas for research and more potential researchers, FQXi has also just launched a $50,000 essay contest. The Institute will award as many as 21 prizes of up to $10,000 for original work discussing "The Nature of Time."

For more about FQXi, see the October 1, 2008 issue of the Templeton Report.

Science and Religion in Islam

Opening panel (from left to right): Keith Ward, Charles Townes, Mustapha El Mourabit, Roald Hoffmann, and Nidhal Guessoum

The Interdisciplinary University of Paris (IUP), whose Science and Religion in Islam program was launched in 2004 with support from the John Templeton Foundation, held a major conference in Doha, Qatar this past spring in collaboration with the Al Jazeera Center for Studies (the think tank of the Arabic television network Al Jazeera). The conference, titled "Science, Cultures, and the Future of Humanity," was funded by Al Jazeera, which also gave the event extensive coverage, reaching millions of Arab viewers.

For Dr. Jean Staune, founder and general secretary of the IUP, the gathering in Doha was a unique opportunity "to create dialogue and debate between Muslim experts in science and religion and their Western counterparts." Conference participants included:

• Roald Hoffmann of Cornell University, the 1981 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
• Nidhal Guessoum, a physicist at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
• Bruno Abd-al-Haqq Guiderdoni, an astrophysicist who directs the Observatory of Lyon, France
• Charles Townes of the University of California-Berkeley, winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics
• Denis Alexander, director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Cambridge University
• Keith Ward, the former Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University and a Fellow of the British Academy
• Mehdi Goshani, an Iranian philosopher and theoretical physicist, and
• Mustapha El Mourabit, an epistemologist and biologist and the director of the Al Jazeera Center for Studies

The conference concluded by issuing the "Doha Declaration," which proclaims that "the so-called 'warfare between science and religion' is unnecessary and destructive—to religion, to science, and to the future of our species and our planet." For more information about the conference, see the July 23rd issue of the Templeton Report.

The World Science Festival

New York City was swimming in science from May 28 to June 1 as host of the inaugural World Science Festival. During the five-day event, more than 120,000 people attended 40 sold-out programs, ranging from lectures by Nobel Prize winners to a street fair for kids. The John Templeton Foundation was a proud supporter of the festival's Big Ideas Series. The five JTF-sponsored discussions featured eminent scientists like Brian Greene, Lawrence Krauss, William Phillips, Leonard Susskind, Francis Collins, Harold Varmus, and Paul Nurse.

WSF Big Ideas Series:

• Echoes from the Beginning: A Journey through Space and Time
• Invisible Reality: The Wonderful Weirdness of the Quantum World
• Faith and Science
• What it Means to be Human
• Beyond Einstein: In Search of the Ultimate Explanation

The New York Times praised the World Science Festival as "a new cultural institution" and noted that the JTF-sponsored discussion of "What it Means to be Human" was "the panel that everyone wanted to be on." The Festival received extensive media coverage, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Newsweek, Scientific American, Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight, BBC World Service, and The Colbert Report.

Videos of the Big Ideas Series will be available online in the coming months. Please sign up here to receive notification.

Templeton Prize

The Templeton Prize honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works. It is the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual, currently valued at 820,000 pounds sterling (more than $1.6 million). The Prize was created by global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton and first awarded in 1973.

The Templeton Prize

The Role of Spiritual Development in Growth of Purpose, Generosity and Psychological Health in Adolescence

Dr. Richard M. Lerner, Director
Institute for Applied Research in Youth Development
Tufts University (Medford MA)

This research grant supports a cross-sectional study of spirituality and positive development during adolescence. The project includes: the gathering of a national group of scholars who will define the measures and methods, the implementation of a collaborative research study spanning the second decade of life, and the dissemination of findings. Also, the grant supports the preparation for the launch of a national longitudinal study of spirituality and youth development beginning in 2008-09.

The Purpose Prize™: Americans Leading with Experience

Marc Freedman, Founder and President
Civic Ventures (San Francisco CA)

This grant helped launch a major initiative, in partnership with the Atlantic Philanthropies, to invest in a generation of individuals in the second half of life who are marshalling their accumulated experience to tackle some of America's most urgent issues. The annual Purpose Prize^TM awards $100,000 each to five social entrepreneurs age 60 or older who are creating innovative programs to improve their communities.

More about this grant »
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Purpose Prize for Social Innovators Over 60 is open for nominations »

EVENT: Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World

A debate, dialogue, and discussion with Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath

The Ethics and Public Policy Center and The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University will host a debate between writer Christopher Hitchens and Oxford University professor Alister McGrath on the role of religious belief in the modern world.

Thursday, October 11, 2007 5:30 - 7:00 PM Georgetown University Gaston Hall 2nd Floor in Healy Hall   In The News Sparring Over Things Unseen: Hitchens vs. McGrath: A Matchup Made in Heaven? Good Question. The Washington Post, 12 Oct 2007

Alister McGrath

Christopher Hitchens

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Establishing an Institute for Research on Unlimited Love

Professor Stephen G. Post, President
Institution for Research on Unlimited Love [IRUL]
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland Ohio)

This grant helped to establish the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love [IRUL]. Through scientific research, education and publications, the Institute's aim is to significantly increase humanity's understanding and knowledge of what is commonly called unconditional love. The Institute has held a competitive awards program for high-level scientific research, and it has convened several conferences to examine the science, theology, and praxis of "love for the other."

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Slavery, Emancipation and Human Progress

A Free Public Lecture

26 April 2007, 8.00pm Central Hall Westminster, London

Professor David Brion Davis
Pulitzer Prize-winning Yale historian and leading authority on slavery

With Responses By
Professor Jeremy Black, University of Exeter
Professor David Hempton, Harvard Divinity School

Watch the Webcast

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Templeton Prize

The Templeton Prize is a cornerstone of the John Templeton Foundation's international efforts to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for discovery in areas engaging life's biggest questions. Officially known as the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries About Spiritual Realities, it is the world's largest annual monetary award given to an individual, currently valued at 800,000 pounds sterling (more than $1.5 million). The Prize was created by global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton and first awarded in 1973.

The Templeton Prize

Charles Taylor writing about Life's Big Question

Cogito.org: Website and Newsletter for Young People Gifted in Mathematics and Science

Dr. Linda Brody, Director, Study of Exceptional Talent
Center For Talented Youth [CTY]
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore MD)

This grant supports the establishment of a state-of-the-art website and newsletter to attract and engage the world's brightest young people between the ages 8-18 interested in the areas of mathematics and science. This project includes online conversations with award-winning scientists and medal winners, news information on upcoming worldwide competitions and enrichment programs, and access to professional journals through Johns Hopkins University library system.

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FQX Foundational Questions in Physics and Cosmology

Professor Max Tegmark
Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge MA)

Professor Anthony N. Aguirre
Department of Physics
University of California Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz CA)

This grant established the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) and the Foundational Questions Consortium (FQXc) for networking, and the sponsoring of research grants, mini-grants, contests and conferences. Their focus is on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.

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