AMAZING LIGHT: VISIONS FOR DISCOVERY
In the fall of 2005, six thousand miles away from Lake Como, another major scientific conference, “Amazing Light: Visions for Discovery”, (For a full list of participants click here) gathered some of the greatest minds in physics and cosmology. The symposium, held to honor 2005 Templeton Prize winner Charles Townes, was hosted by the University of California, Berkeley and the Metanexus Institute.

In attendance were 19 Nobel laureates and other leading scientists from around the world brought together by the Foundation to discuss the challenges and opportunities for science in the 21st century. Just 48 hours earlier, two of the participants, Roy Glauber and Theodor Hänsch had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Fittingly, for scientists accustomed to thinking on several levels, the “Amazing Light” symposium also celebrated Townes’ 90th birthday as well as marked the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the laser, for which Townes was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1964.

Using Townes’ pioneering scientific discoveries as an example, the three-day event discussed questions that exist on the creative edge of physics and cosmology, as well as the need for producing new technologies and tools—such as the laser—that will generate opportunities for scientific advancement. During the course of the symposium, the group discussed “The Great Unknowns in Physics and Cosmology,” with presentations by leading physicists David Gross, Saul Perlmutter, Adrian Lee, Anthony Leggett, Raphael Bousso and Ignacio Cirac. Discussion centered on the astonishing fact that no one understands the source of most of the gravitational interaction in the universe: What is dark matter? What is dark energy? What is the nature of a vacuum?

The renowned physicist and 2000 Templeton Prize winner Freeman Dyson concluded the symposium, presenting on the “Future of Science,” followed by an all-star interdisciplinary line-up featuring George Ellis, John Searle, William Newsome, Michio Kaku, Paul Davies, Max Tegmark and Gerald Edelman, discussing subjects ranging from free will and consciousness to artificial intelligence and the nature of ultimate reality. The symposium also awarded more than $100,000 to nine innovative physicists under the age of 40, as part of its Young Scholars Competition. A scholarly volume will be published based on further exploration of the symposium’s themes.

At the conference, Townes, a lifelong Baptist well-known in the scientific community for resisting the idea that science and religion are somehow incompatible, said, “I’ve always viewed faith and revelation—two profoundly religious concepts—as equally important in science.” This approach into the nature of insight was noted by Robert John Russell, physicist and Berkeley Graduate Theological Union professor, “Charles Townes has seen that religion and science form a convergent and mutual interaction. In his case, scientific discoveries have been akin to revelation, and faith has necessarily guided his scientific methodology.”
www.foundationalquestions.net/townes

THE GREATEST QUESTION OF ALL TIME.
Given the company involved and the ongoing high-level discussions, the “Amazing Light” symposium presented a rare and important opportunity for the next generation of thinkers to present new programs. So it was fitting that in front of their scientific peers, cosmologists Max Tegmark and Anthony Aguirre announced the creation of Foundational Questions in Physics and Cosmology (FQXi), a new four-year, $6 million dollar program that will provide grants to scientists for research projects. FQXi starts with the premise that while our scientific understanding of the universe has increased enormously over the past century, many fundamental questions remain.

Specifically, the questions FQXi is interested in exploring lie at the frontier of science and represent the most basic foundation of our understanding of the universe. Questions like what, if anything, happened before the big bang? What determined the characteristics of the universe? And what do the fantastically effective but bafflingly counterintuitive laws of quantum mechanics tell us about reality? These and other questions are at the core of FQXi’s mission. These questions and the search for their answers have profound intellectual, practical and spiritual implications for anyone with a deep curiosity about the true nature of the universe. FQXi will give particular emphasis to cutting-edge topics not likely to be supported by conventional funding sources.

Asked if we are living in the golden age of physics, Tegmark said, “Well there’s certainly a lot of gold ahead of us.” For more about FQXi, visit www.fqxi.org.

TEMPLETON ADVANCED RESEARCH PROGRAM
Complementary in spirit to the FQXi mission, but differing in focus, a newly launched $4.6 million research initiative called the Templeton Advanced Research Program (TARP) is asking scholars to design innovative research programs focused on measuring the impact of religion and spirituality. Additionally, TARP is interested in the development of scholarly insights into the forces that shape and expand world religions and the human conceptualization of God.

Recent research on the relationships between religion, spirituality and health suggests that an important connection exists between these fields. But many theoretical and empirical questions remain that need to be examined with unparalleled scientific and methodological rigor. TARP is also interested in research that scientifically explores how religion and spirituality contribute to the virtues and human strengths that reflect humanity’s highest aspirations and noble qualities including, but not limited to: creativity, purpose, perseverance, gratitude, prayer, awe and wonder, personal responsibility, love, honesty, joy, humility and generosity. TARP is also interested in exploring the mechanisms and cultural forces that shape religions and conceptualizations of God. This area seeks inquiries that approach religion and spirituality as an important creative or causal factor in the formation of society.

To provide more detail about the core issues for each of the three areas, TARP commissioned field analyses from distinguished scholars and scientists to evaluate the opportunity in these areas of study, including Stephen Post, Robert Emmons, David Hufford, Andrew Newberg, Richard Sloan, Niels Gregersen, Rodney Stark and David Sloan Wilson.
www.metanexus.net/tarp

WHAT COULD BE KNOWN?
Founded in 1972 by Sir John, the Templeton Prize for Progress Toward Research or Discoveries about Spiritual Realities is the best-known religion prize in the world. Unique among international awards for its scope and generosity, the Prize encourages and honors the thinkers, scholars and scientists who have shown extraordinary originality in research or discoveries to advance knowledge in spiritual matters. Recent winners include Freeman Dyson, Arthur Peacocke, Sir John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies, Charles Townes and John Barrow.

The purpose of the Prize is a simple one: to accelerate human progress toward spiritual discoveries. By creating the Prize, Sir John wanted to emphasize the importance of increasing spiritual discoveries at the same rate as progress in other disciplines, such as medicine and cosmology. As science continues to show us the universe in increasingly complex detail, so too does our awareness of spiritual resources need to grow.

The Prize highlights the core mission of the Foundation: to expand humankind’s spiritual awareness, to explore our understanding of the purpose of life and to promote work in which both science and religion are taken seriously in the quest to more fully understand reality.

Valued at $1.4 million, the Templeton Prize is awarded annually based on the decision of a panel of judges representing the world’s major religions. In establishing the Prize’s monetary value, Sir John stipulated that it always be worth more than the Nobel Prizes as a way to underscore that research and advances in spiritual discoveries can be quantifiably more significant than disciplines recognized by the Nobels. For more about the Templeton Prize, turn visit www.templetonprize.org. or www.templeton.org/science_and_religion

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