The Center for the Study of Science and Religion (CSSR), now known as the Research Cluster on Science and Subjectivity (RCSS), focuses on the intersection between the humanities and natural sciences, supported by the Columbia University Department of Biology. The CSSR was founded in the summer of 1999 by Robert Pollack, Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, Adjunct Professor of Religion at Columbia University, and Adjunct Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York. [1] It serves as a forum for the examination of issues that lie at the boundary of two complementary ways of comprehending the world; namely, religion and science. [2]
Initially founded as an interdisciplinary center spanning multiple departments, the center received $100,000 from the Templeton Foundation, $25,000 from the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and $10,000 from the Fetzer Institute, supporting lecture series and a Columbia University Irving Medical Center's writer-in-residence program, which ultimately invited poet Michael Ondaatje to teach a seminar series. [1]
With these grants, existing within the framework of the Columbia University Earth Institute, the CSSR hosted numerous speaker series examining the dual-perspectives of religion and science on biological and ecological questions. Notable lectures include a 2003 lecture by Jeffrey Sachs on the influence of the relationship between geography and religion in the Middle East, [3] a 2003 film screening on artificial intelligence, introduced by Sharon Olds, [4] and a 2008 panel on the evolution of the human genome, featuring Philip Kitcher and Patricia Williams. [5] [6]
Holistically, the CSSR sponsored one major symposium about every two years, and four or more guest lectures each semester. [7] These symposia include:
CSSR and Columbia University Press oversaw publication of the Columbia Series in Science and Religion. [13] In sum, the academic direction and programming of the center were set by the Director and associated Professors, in order to educate the student body in the relationship between religion, science, and sustainability. [14]
In academic year 2014–15, the CSSR was relocated from The Earth Institute to the Columbia Center for Science and Society, where it was assigned a place as a Research Cluster, retaining a symbolic link to the CSSR with its new name: the RCSS. [15] The RCSS secured generous funding, most notably from Harvey Kruegar (a 1951 graduate of Columbia College and 1954 graduate of Columbia Law School), ultimately facilitating numerous undergraduate-led projects at the intersection of science, service, and subjectivity. [16] Empowering undergraduates as project leaders became the operating model for the RCSS during this time period. [17] Starting in the FY23-24 school year, the RCSS is led by Lili Yamasaki, serving as the second director. [18]
Notable undergraduate student projects include organizing a speaker event with Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel, on the relationship between the arts and sciences, [19] the creation of the Black Undergraduate Mentorship Program within the Columbia University Department of Biology, [20] the formation of a clinical volunteering program with the local Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center entitled At Your Service, [21] and a partnership with the Columbia University Double Discovery Center to teach underserved high school students a molecular biology laboratory course, entitled Glass Half Full or Empty: Illuminating the Human Transcriptome. [22]
The RCSS oversees the production of an undergraduate-produced publication, primarily featuring journal entries from each of the undergraduate project leaders. [23]
Eric Richard Kandel is an Austrian-born American medical doctor who specialized in psychiatry, a neuroscientist and a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. He was a recipient of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. He shared the prize with Arvid Carlsson and Paul Greengard.
The Gifford Lectures are an annual series of lectures which were established in 1887 by the will of Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford at the four ancient universities of Scotland: St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh. Their purpose is to "promote and diffuse the study of natural theology in the widest sense of the term – in other words, the knowledge of God." A Gifford lectures appointment is one of the most prestigious honours in Scottish academia.
Michael Ruse is a British-born Canadian philosopher of science who specializes in the philosophy of biology and works on the relationship between science and religion, the creation–evolution controversy, and the demarcation problem within science. Ruse currently teaches at Florida State University.
Simon Conway Morris is an English palaeontologist, evolutionary biologist, and astrobiologist known for his study of the fossils of the Burgess Shale and the Cambrian explosion. The results of these discoveries were celebrated in Stephen Jay Gould's 1989 book Wonderful Life. Conway Morris's own book on the subject, The Crucible of Creation (1998), however, is critical of Gould's presentation and interpretation.
Holmes Rolston III is a philosopher who is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Colorado State University. He is best known for his contributions to environmental ethics and the relationship between science and religion. Among other honors, Rolston won the 2003 Templeton Prize, awarded by Prince Philip in Buckingham Palace. He gave the Gifford Lectures, University of Edinburgh, 1997–1998. He also serves on the Advisory Council of METI.
Ian Graeme Barbour was an American scholar on the relationship between science and religion. According to the Public Broadcasting Service his mid-1960s Issues in Science and Religion "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion."
Francisco José Ayala Pereda was a Spanish-American evolutionary biologist and philosopher who was a longtime faculty member at the University of California, Irvine, and University of California, Davis.
First published in 1981 by Elsevier, Principles of Neural Science is an influential neuroscience textbook edited by Columbia University professors Eric R. Kandel, James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. Jessell. The original edition was 468 pages; now on the sixth edition, the book has grown to 1646 pages. The second edition was published in 1985, third in 1991, fourth in 2000. The fifth was published on October 26, 2012 and included Steven A. Siegelbaum and A.J. Hudspeth as editors. The sixth and latest edition was published on March 8, 2021.
Yohanan Friedmann is an Israeli scholar of Islamic studies.
The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion is an interdisciplinary academic research institute based in Cambridge, England. It is named after the 19th-century English scientist Michael Faraday, the pioneer of electromagnetic induction.
Caroline Walker Bynum, FBA is a Medieval scholar from the United States. She is a University Professor emerita at Columbia University and Professor emerita of Western Medieval History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She was the first woman to be appointed University Professor at Columbia. She is former Dean of Columbia's School of General Studies, served as president of the American Historical Association in 1996, and President of the Medieval Academy of America in 1997–1998.
Robert Elliot Pollack is an American academic, administrator, biologist, and philosopher, who served as a long-time Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University.
Justin L. Barrett is an American experimental psychologist, Founder and President of Blueprint 1543, a nonprofit organization. He formerly was the Director of the Thrive Center for Human Development in Pasadena, California, Thrive Professor of Developmental Science, and Professor of Psychology at Fuller Graduate School of Psychology. He previously was a senior researcher and director of the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
Dr. Denis Alexander has spent 40 years in the biomedical research community. He is an Emeritus Fellow of St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge and an Emeritus Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge which he co-founded with Bob White in 2006.
The Veritas Forum is a non-profit organization that works with Christian students on college campuses to host forums centered on the exploration of truth and its relevancy in human life, through the questions of philosophy, religion, science, and other disciplines. The organization, named after the Latin word for truth, aims to "create university events engaging students and faculty in exploring life's hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ to all of life." The first Veritas Forum was held at Harvard University in 1992. By 2008, 300,000 students had attended over 300 forums at 100 campuses across the US, Canada, France, England, and the Netherlands. In the 2010–2011 academic year, Veritas Forums were held at over 50 institutions of higher education. Veritas Forums are available for viewing online, and the organization has published several books with InterVarsity Press.
Donald A. Yerxa is an American author, editor, and historian.
The Trotter Prize is awarded at Texas A&M University and is part of an endowed lecture series. It is awarded "for pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and inference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature" and includes The Trotter Lecture which "seeks to reveal connections between science and religion, often viewed in academia as non-overlapping, if not rival, worldviews.
Gordon Walter Semenoff, ,, is a theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is known for his research on quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, statistical mechanics and string theory and is particularly famous for his co-invention, together with Antti Niemi, of the parity anomaly in odd-dimensional gauge field theories and for his pioneering work on graphene. He is also well known for development of thermal field theory, the application of index theorems and their generalizations in quantum field theory and string theory, notably with respect to the duality between string theories and gauge field theories.
The New York University Department of Philosophy offers B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in philosophy, as well as a minor in philosophy and a joint major in language and mind with the NYU Departments of Linguistics and Psychology. It is home to the New York Institute of Philosophy, a research center that supports multi-year projects, public lectures, conferences, and workshops in the field, as well as outreach programs to teach New York City high school students interested in philosophy.
Denise Kandel is an American medical sociologist and epidemiologist, Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Psychiatry at Columbia University and Head of the Department of Epidemiology of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. She is known for her epidemiological longitudinal studies on the sequence of first-time use of various legal and illegal drugs, carried out beginning in the 1970s and continuing until at least 2016.