This Week:                                                                    
Stuart Kauffman
Creating a Science of the Unknowable

"Agency comes with life, not with molecular reproduction," says Stuart Kauffman.  "I'm convinced that a bacterium swimming up a glucose gradient is an agent. Are we stretching it? Sure, I don't want to attribute consciousness to the bacterium but I don't want to not either." Stretching is second nature to Dr. Kauffman.  Now he's reaching for new descriptions of life, of science, and of God. The direction of evolution cannot be predicted, hence life's directions cannot be predicted.  With agency comes the possibility of creativity and responsibility.

Theoretical biologist, complexity scientist and author, Stuart Kauffman's new book is Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason and Religion. It joins At Home In The Universe and other books intended both for a general audience and for his colleagues at the forefront of emerging science. An early MacArthur Fellow, Dr. Kauffman is one of the world’s leaders in the study of complexity and the Founding Director of the Institute for Biocomplexity and Informatics at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada. Among the original participants in the Santa Fe Institute, Dr. Kauffman is once again on its external faculty. He lectures around the world.

Next Week:                                                                   
John Hope Franklin

Hope for the Future
1:24

Losing hope in the face of adversity is what one's adversaries want.  "One never gives up hope," says John Hope Franklin.  "But you can't just sit around and hope; you have to do something about it.  You have to be prepared, you have to be determined, ... keeping in mind you can overcome whatever the difficulties are."

Among the United States’ preeminent historians, John Hope Franklin is an American historian and scholar. Also a life-long activist, Dr. Franklin was awarded America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his enduring commitment to civil rights. His autobiography, Mirror to America, written at age 90 combines his experience as an African-American with his professional assessment of America’s 20th century fight for civil rights. Earning his PhD at Harvard in 1941, Dr. Franklin is now Duke University's James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History. He served his profession as President of all three of its major historical associations, has countless awards from around the world and chaired the advisory board to President Clinton's Initiative on Race.

This Program with John Hope Franklin will be here at 5:00 PM GMT, Sunday, May 18.

Dr. Kauffman's comments on the relationship between science and religion have been included in a series of such comments by eminent thinkers.  The series is being published as advertisements in many major American periodicals by the Templeton Foundation and is available on their website under the heading:  Does science make belief in God obsolete?

Ask no small questions.

New Eden — just over a year ago Paula led the process of producing two charrettes on the subject of TheoEcology(sm), a process by which religious communities and environmentalist work together to save and restore Earth ... a process extending well beyond religion and sectarian divisions. Both Frederick Ferré and Stuart Kauffman made major contributions to the first charrette.  The output of that charrette (the metaphysical which supplemented the physical focus of the second) is featured in Reinventing the Sacred.