Press Release

Science and the Search for Meaning Perspectives from International Scientists Edited by Jean Staune Foreward by Philip Clayton For Immediate Release Contact: Sharon Kelly Tel. (484) 531-8380 Email: publicity@templetonpress.org Tuesday, September 12, 2006

November 2006—Jean Staune, organizer of some of the most important meetings in science and religion in Europe, reports on the dialogue between science and religion in Science and the Search for Meaning: Perspectives from International Scientists (Templeton Foundation Press, $24.95). In this book, the first English translation of a recent French edition, he presents "audacious and rigorous" articles by fifteen renowned leaders in the science-religion field, among who are four Nobel Prize winners. They represent nine countries and seven religions.

"At no other point in the history of modern science have so many distinct debates converged upon a few central questions," points out Philip Clayton, author of the book's foreword. He identifies these questions as:

• Is the world studied by science the only reality or does it point to a deeper reality?
• Is nature a random and chance process or a project with purpose?
• Can man be fully understood in terms of the natural sciences, or is there a transcendent dimension to human existence?

Each of the authors in this volume responds in a different way, addressing naturalism, materialism, the nature of consciousness, reductionism, and the quest for meaning. Two paradigms emerge, with those who say that God (or direction) can exist in the universe because we can understand certain things, while others say that God exists because we cannot understand the universe altogether. Their reflections on the accessibility and the mystery of the world show the extraordinary abstract revolution that took place in science during the twentieth century and the way this establishes a bridge between science and religion.

Contributors are Nobel Prize winners Christian de Duve, Charles H. Townes, Ahmed Zewail, and William D. Phillips; as well as Paul Davies, Bernard d'Espagnat, Thomas Odhiambo, Ramanath Cowsik, Jean Kovalevsky, Thierry Magnin, Bruno Guiderdoni, Trinh Xuan Thuan, Khalil Chamcham, Michael Heller, and Philip Clayton.

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