|
Back from Venice School on Science and Religion |
|
Friday, 20 June 2008 17:48 |
|
I've just gotten back (June 4th) after a week at the Venice Summer School on Science and Religion, a six-day conference focused on the issue of "God and the Laws of Nature." The featured speakers were Sir John Polkinghorne, the particle physicist, who spoke on the general topic of the relationship between science and religion; Paul Davies, the physicist and cosmologist, who spoke on the "Goldilocks enigma", or the explanation of the fact that our universe is configured "just right" for intelligent life; and Owen Gingerich, who presented a series of historical reflections on the laws of nature. We had the opportunity to work in small groups with one of the main keynote speakers, and in my case, I was privileged to work with Sir John as our group moderator. As a result of this intensive workshop, and in particular thanks to the critiques of Sir John and Dr. Gennaro Auletta, I was able to discover a number of (non-critical) defects in my conference paper, which I am in the process of revising. My conference paper is entitled "Old Things Made New: Aristotle’s Proof for a First Unmoved Mover in the Context of Modern Theories of Physical Law". The abstract is available for download here. 
|