Final Report: Scholarly Work Associated with the Templeton Seminars on Science and Christianity at Oxford University

The Templeton-Oxford Seminars (1999-2001) helped inform this work

I thank the Templeton Foundation for support

©2001 Michael Newton Keas

I. Publications

• [Internet Publication] Negotiating Science: The Rhetoric of Reason and Belief in Scientific Controversies
  
  
• [Internet Publication] Science & Religion Exploration
  
  
• Two interviews in Research News & Opportunities In Science and Theology (Templeton Foundation, forthcoming).
  • John Polkinghorn (winner of 2002 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion), July 26, 2001, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University
  • Ian Barbour (winner of 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion), August 2, 2001, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University
    
    
• CD-ROM Curriculum, "The Cambrian Explosion: Biology's Big Bang," co-authored with Stephen C. Meyer. Discovery Institute Press, forthcoming, 2002.
  
  
• "The Meanings of Evolution," with Stephen C. Meyer in Darwinism, Design and Public Education. Michigan State University Press, forthcoming, 2003.

  ABSTRACT:
  
  Science teachers must define terms with care and use terms with consistency of meaning. The term "evolution," in particular, has many distinct meanings that require skillful handling in order to avoid conflating different ideas and confusing facts with inferences. We shall explore six meanings of the term "evolution" with the aim of helping science educators distinguish facts from inferences, and to distinguish scientifically controversial and uncontroversial senses of the term. In this way we will seek to help teachers teach the real scientific controversies that exist about "evolution" and to help them avoid false controversies over senses of the term that few if any contemporary scientists actually doubt.
  
  Principal Meanings of "Evolution" in Biology Textbooks:

  1. Change over time; history of nature; any sequence of events in nature.
  2. Changes in the frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population.
  3. Limited common descent: the idea that particular groups of organisms have descended from a common ancestor.
  4. The mechanisms responsible for the change required to produce limited descent with modification; chiefly natural selection acting on random variations or mutations.
  5. Universal common descent: the idea that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor.
  6. Blind watchmaker thesis: the idea that all organisms have descended from common ancestors through unguided, unintelligent, purposeless, material processes such as natural selection acting on random variations or mutations; the idea that the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on random variation, and other similarly naturalistic mechanisms, completely suffice to explain the origin of novel biological forms and the appearance of design in complex organisms.

II. Panelist Remarks

• Panelist: "Interdisciplinarity and the Rhetoric of Science and Technology." National Communication Association, November 1999, National Convention, Chicago. Session Sponsor: American Association for Rhetoric of Science and Technology.
  
  
• Author Meets Critics Panelist. Leah Ceccarelli's Shaping Science with Rhetoric: The Cases of Dobzhansky, Schrödinger and Wilson (University of Chicago Press, 2001). National Communication Association, November 3, 2001, National Convention, Atlanta. Session Sponsor: American Association for Rhetoric of Science and Technology.

III. Lectures

• "Is Information Theory Strategic for Biology?" John Templeton Oxford Seminars, July/August 2001.
  
  
• "The Social Construction of Naturalism in 19th-Century Debates about the Cambrian Explosion." April 2000, Michael Polanyi Center, Baylor University, Waco, Texas. "Nature of Nature" Conference.
  
  
• "Flat Earth Mythology and Astronomy from Plato to NATO." Guest Speaker, February 18, 2000, Astronomy Club of Tulsa, Annual Art Sweeny Lectures, "Flat Earth Mythology and Astronomy from Plato to NATO."
  
  

IV. Planetarium Shows

• I co-direct Oklahoma Baptist University's "Cosmology and Cultures" project with a medieval historian, Dr. Glenn Sanders. We are creating planetarium shows for use across the curriculum that deal with the history of cosmology and religion within western and non-western cultural perspectives. We have mostly completed a show on premodern Babylonian-Chinese-Mayan cosmologies and have outlined an approach to our show series that leads up to current cosmological theory. I am currently working on a Big Bang show and a Fine Tuning show. The project is funded by the American Council of Learned Societies. The Templeton Seminars at Oxford have helped me to deal with science and religion issues in our planetarium show series.

V. Course with "Science and Religion" Emphasis

• I am constantly improving the textbook and lab manual for Oklahoma Baptist University's US 311, which covers the philosophy and history of cosmology and physics from antiquity to the 20th century (with much attention to the religious dimension). The 247 page textbook portion of this work-in-progress is available as a PDF file on the web. The 120 page lab manual, not yet available on the web, includes classic experiments such as Galileo's inclined plane demonstration.