Robert Pollack - Böcker

Are there parallels between the "moment of insight" in science and the emergence of the "unknowable" in religious faith? Where does scientific insight come from? Award-winning biologist Robert Pollack argues that an alliance between religious faith and science is not necessarily an argument in favor of irrationality: the two can inform each other's visions of the world. Pollack begins by reflecting on the large questions of meaning and purpose-and the difficulty of finding either in the orderly world described by the data of science. He considers the obligation to find meaning and purpose despite natural selection's claim to be a complete explanation of our presence as a species-a claim that calls upon neither natural intention, nor design, nor Designer. Next, the book focuses on matters of free will, from the choice of a scientist to accept evidence, to the choice of a religious person to accept a revelation, to a patient's loss of free will in medical treatment.Here Pollack addresses questions of ethics and offers a provocative comparison of two difficult texts whose contents remain incompletely understood: the DNA "text" of the human genome and the Hebrew record of Jewish written and oral law. In closing, Pollack considers the promise of genetic medicine in enabling us to glimpse our own future and offers a reconsideration of the possible utility of the so-called placebo effect in curing illness. Whether refuting a DNA-based biological model of Judaism or discussing the Darwinian concept of the species, Pollack, under the banner of free inquiry, presents a genuine, vital, and well-argued assay of the intersection of science and religion.

Are there parallels between the "moment of insight" in science and the emergence of the "unknowable" in religious faith? Where does scientific insight come from? Award-winning biologist Robert Pollack argues that an alliance between religious faith and science is not necessarily an argument in favor of irrationality: the two can inform each other's visions of the world. Pollack begins by reflecting on the large questions of meaning and purpose-and the difficulty of finding either in the orderly world described by the data of science. He considers the obligation to find meaning and purpose despite natural selection's claim to be a complete explanation of our presence as a species-a claim that calls upon neither natural intention, nor design, nor Designer. Next, the book focuses on matters of free will, from the choice of a scientist to accept evidence, to the choice of a religious person to accept a revelation, to a patient's loss of free will in medical treatment.Here Pollack addresses questions of ethics and offers a provocative comparison of two difficult texts whose contents remain incompletely understood: the DNA "text" of the human genome and the Hebrew record of Jewish written and oral law. In closing, Pollack considers the promise of genetic medicine in enabling us to glimpse our own future and offers a reconsideration of the possible utility of the so-called placebo effect in curing illness. Whether refuting a DNA-based biological model of Judaism or discussing the Darwinian concept of the species, Pollack, under the banner of free inquiry, presents a genuine, vital, and well-argued assay of the intersection of science and religion.

This book contains a selection of papers presented at the ?rst annual workshop of the TYPES Working Group (Computer-Assisted Reasoning Based on Type Theory, EU IST project 29001), which was held 8th - 12th of December, 2000 at the University of Durham, Durham, UK. It was attended by about 80 researchers. The workshop follows a series of meetings organised in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, and 1999 under the auspices of the Esprit BRA6435 and the - prit Working Group 21900 for the previous TYPES projects. Those proceedings were also published in the LNCS series, edited by Henk Barendregt and Tobias Nipkow (Vol. 806, 1993), by Peter Dybjer, Bengt Nordstrom, and Jan Smith (Vol. 996, 1994), by Stefano Berardi and Mario Coppo (Vol. 1158, 1995), by Christine Paulin-Mohring and Eduardo Gimenez (Vol. 1512, 1996), by Thorsten Altenkirch, Wolfgang Naraschewski, and Bernhard Reus (Vol. 1657, 1998), and by Thierry Coquand, Peter Dybjer, Bengt Nordstrom, and Jan Smith (Vol. 1956, 1999). The Esprit BRA6453 was itself a continuation of the former Esprit - tion 3245, Logical Frameworks: Design, Implementation, and Experiments.The articles from the annual workshops under that Action were edited by Gerard Huet and Gordon Plotkin in the books Logical Frameworks and Logical En- ronments, both published by Cambridge University Press. Acknowledgements We are very grateful to members of Durham's Computer Assisted Reasoning Group, especially Robert Kiessling, for helping to organise the workshop. Robert's contribution was key to the success of the meeting.