Physicist-priest wins $1.7 million prize - March 13, 2008
A Polish physicist and priest has won the annual million-dollar Templeton Prize for “progress toward research or discoveries about spiritual realities”.
Michael Heller walks away with $1.7 million for investigating questions including whether the Universe needs to have a cause (press release). This is the largest annual prize given to an individual (just bigger than the $1.6m Nobel), and comes from the same foundation that has previously funded studies into whether prayer can heal the sick, and how a nun's religious experience looks under a brain scanner.
“I always wanted to do the most important things, and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence,” Heller told the New York Times.
According to the London Times:
His theories do not so much offer proof of the existence of God as introduce doubt about the material existence of the world around us. He specialises in complex formulae that make it possible to explain everything, even chance, through mathematical calculation.
Physics World says Heller has worked on various branches of cosmology and mathematics, and is currently working on non-commutative geometry. From Physics Today:
Heller’s current work focuses on noncommutative geometry and groupoid theory in mathematics which attempts to remove the problem of an initial cosmological singularity at the origin of the universe. "If on the fundamental level of physics there is no space and no time, as many physicists think," says Heller, "noncommutative geometry could be a suitable tool to deal with such a situation."
He says he will use the money to set up a centre for the study of science and theology in Poland.
“He’s one of the key contributors in the international scholarly community dedicated to the creative dialogue on science, theology, and philosophy,” says Robert John Russell, director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley (Christian Science Monitor).
New Scientist’s Short Sharp Science blog admits to some unease about the Templeton Prize, about which it says: “It’s as if rather than fighting against science the way some religious factions - like creationists - do, they figure, we'll just buy science and use it for our own ends.”
Multimedia
Vatican radio interview
AP video report
Image: Templeton Prize
Comments
RE: Science can and will understand Religion, and vice versa, in the 21st century!
I thought the New Scientist’s Opinion editor Amanda Gefter’s premonition on the Templeton Prize—as a way of her misunderstanding of Science and Religion dialogue as “It’s as if rather than fighting against science the way some religious factions (like creationists) do, they figure, we'll just buy science and use it for our own ends,”—was unfounded and outmoded.
Obviously, she missed the fact that recently a scientific study into religious belief, has been launched at Oxford, with a hefty grant of £1.9 million, for the development of the study of the cognitive science of Religion—a scientific approach to why humans believe in God and other issues around the nature and origin of religious belief—was awarded by the John Templeton Foundation to the Oxford Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Centre for Anthropology and Mind, as reported here: http://www.huliq.com/51080/scientific-study-religious-belief-launched#comment-2910 and it says, “It will be used to draw together and promote the latest scientific ideas about the meaning of religion and its origin in the human mind.”
I fully support the qualified Oxford researchers for their endeavors well undertaken into the 21st century—the century of Science of our Human Mind and Emotion (or Religion) indeed!
Author "Decoding Scientism" (work in progress since July 2007).
Posted by: Mong H Tan, PhD | March 13, 2008 10:35 PM
Looking at the press release and the prize winner's position statement, I confess that I find it reassuring that someone is spending the time "asking about the root of all possible causes."
However, while the investigation of primitive nature requires deep consideration, one should quickly recognize that there are natural limits to such consideration and that one is either bound to beating one's head against the wall or the question is simply irrelevant.
I know where it comes from but it is troubling if "by doing [this work] we are back in the Great Blueprint of God's thinking the universe" it meant in any other manner than metaphor.
That said, I speak as a poorly funded explorer of basic science and I am happy to see some funding at least finding its way to foundational matters, even if I do question the merit of that work.
Posted by: Steven Ericsson-Zenith | March 14, 2008 08:50 PM
It is plausible that the universe and multiverse, as we humans perceive them, 'could' be an illusion or simulation created by something residing beyond the entire structure, but the employment of the concept of god in all religions (i.e., superstitions) is just a childish way of expressing "I don't know the answer." What a complete waste of money funding such a useless garbage pseudo-science.
Posted by: rex | March 17, 2008 10:28 PM
Recently a friend of mine who is an Australian businessman asked me to review his theory on the evolution of the sun and the process of planetary formation.
I did but I have no specific expertise in the physics and the theories of the evolution of our planetary systems. I was wondering if some of you who have a lot of knowledge in this area can you have a look at his theory. Please send him a response through his mail link on his website if you would like.
Thanks
http://www.aptheory.info/theory.html
Posted by: aptheory | March 28, 2008 10:36 PM