People in the book
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Hannes O. Alfven
Swedish cosmologist who, like Fred Hoyle, opposes the Big Bang theory partially
because (in his view) it lends support to the idea of divine creation. Alfven's
plasma cosmology theory holds that the universe started with uniform hydrogen
plasma and eternally recycles energy. It is now generally accepted that this
theory has little evidence supporting it and in fact conflicts with existing
observations. Books include Worlds-Antiworlds: Antimatter in Cosmology.
E.J. Ambrose
Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the University of London and author of
The Mirror of Creation.
Thomas Aquinas
St. Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274), called the Angelic Doctor, was the foremost
Christian philosopher in history. Thomism, the school of thought built around
his work, has attracted disciples from both different religions and no religion.
Born to noble parents, he became a monk in the Dominican Order in 1243. He studied
under Albert Magnus and taught at the University of Paris. Before he died at
the age of fifty, he authored numerous works of philosophy and theology that
came to some 8 million words. The Summa Theologica and the Summa
Contra Gentiles are his two most celebrated books. more
on St. Thomas Aquinas
Werner Arber
Winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine for "the discovery
of restriction enzymes and their application to problems of molecular genetics."
Professor of Microbiology at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
Aristotle
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) studied under Plato in Athens. He was a tutor to Alexander
the Great and started his own philosophical school in Athens. He is the author
of influential works on logic, epistemology, ethics and metaphysics. He rejected
materialist and spiritualist monism and believed in a divinity distinct from
the world. As he saw it, God was Perfect Mind (nous), immaterial, eternal and
good.
Alain Aspect
French quantum physicist whose 1982 experiments verified non-locality in quantum
physics.
Augustine
St. Augustine (354-430) was the bishop of Hippo in North Africa. A doctor of
the Church and prolific writer, he was one of the greatest Christian theologians.
His classic works include City of God and Confessions. He
wrote on the Genesis account of creation and is well-known for his defense of
human freewill and the immateriality of the soul.
Avicenna
Avicenna (980-1037), Abdaallah Ibn Sina, known as "The Supreme Master," was
the greatest of the Islamic thinkers. Born in Bukhara, Persia, he became physician
and adviser to sultans and princes. His Canon of Medicine, written
at the age of 21, was the best-known medical text in Europe and Asia for several
centuries. He authored over a hundred works in medicine and philosophy that
have inspired innumerable commentaries. His most important books in philosophy
were The Healing (al-Shifa) and Demonstrations and Affirmations.
He died in Hamadan in northern Persia. more
on Ibn Sina or Avicenna
Alfred Ayer
Oxford philosopher. He introduced Logical Positivism to the English-speaking
world with his Language, Truth and Logic in 1936. Ayer, who died in
1989, was an empiricist in the line of David Hume and is well known also for
his The Problem of Knowledge. In later life, he admitted that Logical
Positivism was misguided in its main theses.
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Badarayana
Author of the Brahmasutras who is believed to have lived in the first
or second century A.D.
Ian Barbour
American professor of physics and religion who sees consonance between theology
and the sciences. He is the author of numerous works on the meeting-point of
science and religion ranging from Issues in Science and Religion (1966)
to Religion in an Age of Science (1990).
John Stewart Bell
Quantum physicist famous for his Bell's Theorem, a framework for experiments
to determine whether or not classical or quantum descriptions are more accurate
with respect to quantum phenomena. This framework was first introduced in 1964.
David Berlinski
Author of two best-selling books on the history and philosophy of mathematics,
A Tour of the Calculus and The Advent of the Algorithm.
Jeremy Bernstein
Physicist and critic of Fritjof Capra's fusion of Eastern mysticism and
modern physics.
William Blake
Blake (1757-1827) was an English poet and artist. His works include Songs
of Innocence and Jerusalem.
Boethius
Roman philosopher (c.480-c.526) who wrote his famous Consolations of Philosophy
while in prison awaiting execution. He is known for his classic definition
of eternity as "the utter and complete possession of life without end
in one simultaneous act."
David Bohm
British quantum physicist who rejects the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
theory. He has propounded a hidden variables theory in which particles are guided
by pilot waves.
Niels Bohr
Bohr (1885-1962) is the originator of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum
theory. He received a Nobel Prize in 1922 for his contributions to atomic theory
and nuclear physics. He held that seemingly contradictory phenomena at the quantum
level are actually complementary.
Hermann Bondi
A critic of the Big Bang Theory, he (along with Thomas Gold) propounded a Steady
State view of the expanding universe in a 1948 monograph published by the Royal
Astronomical Society.
Max Born
Born (1882-1970) was Director of the Physics Institute at Gottingen University
in Germany and later a professor at the University of Chicago. He is one of
the pioneers of quantum theory and Heisenberg was initially one of his assistants
at the Institute. Along with Pascual Jordan, Born extended Heiseberg's
ideas into what was called matrix mechanics.
F.H. Bradley
Bradley (1846-1924), a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, has been called the
greatest British philosopher between John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell.
He is the best-known British proponent of the philosophy of Idealism.
David Braine
Contemporary British analytic philosopher who has authored monumental treatises
on the human soul and on time, The Human Person: Animal and Spirit
and The Reality of Time and the Existence of God.
C.D. Broad
Broad (1887-1971) was a Cambridge philosopher who authored influential books
in the areas of science, mind, ethics and psychical research.
Louis de Broglie
French aristocrat who became one of the many colorful players in the early days
of quantum theory. He first pointed out that light could act both as particle
and wave. His alternative to the Copenhagen view was supported by Albert Einstein.
Gautama Buddha
Siddhartha Gautama, a warrior prince born in northern India circa 563 B.C.,
became known as the Buddha or Enlightened One after fifty days of meditation
under a bodhi tree on the meaning of life. The Buddha's disciples established
his philosophy as one of the major world religions.
David Burrell
Professor of philosophy at Notre Dame University who is a prolific writer on
the philosophy of God and on Jewish, Christian and Islamic thinkers.
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Albert Camus
Camus (1913-60) is one of the greatest French existentialist philosophers. He
won a Nobel Prize for Literature. In such works as The Myth of Sisyphus,
he introduced his philosophy of the absurd.
Georg Cantor
Cantor (1845-1918) was a legendary mathematician who made major contributions
to the mathematics of infinity, created set theory and propounded the continuum
hypothesis.
Fritjof Capra
Professor of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley whose The
Tao of Physics was an international bestseller. In his view, the findings
of the New Physics establish the claims of Eastern monism.
Arthur Compton
American atomic physicist who helped prove the existence of the light quantum,
the photon.
Nicholas Copernicus
Copernicus (1473-1543) revolutionized cosmology with his thesis that the sun
and not the earth was the center of the universe. The Polish thinker's
"Copernician Revolution" was laid out in his On the Revolutions
of Heavenly Spheres which was published as he lay on his death-bed.
Frederick Copleston
British historian of philosophy who authored a nine-volume history of philosophy.
He also authored numerous other books such as Philosophies and Philosophers
and Religion and the One. He is also known for his debate with Bertrand
Russell on the existence of God.
William Lane Craig
American philosopher who pioneered the kalam cosmological argument in modern
times. His arguments seek to show that the universe had to have a beginning
in time.
Francis Crick
Co-discoverer, in 1953, of the structure of DNA. Crick has also pursued investigations
into the origin of life and the nature of consciousness.
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Charles Darwin
English naturalist who introduced an influential version of the theory of evolution
in his 1859 On the Origin of Species. Darwin held that the development
of any species can be traced to competition within and between species in which
the fittest survive. At one time Darwin was clearly a theist, and in his public
writings he talked of "laws imprinted on matter by the Creator."
But in later life, he became an agnostic and possibly an atheist, writing that
"the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect"; some
have said that the premature death of his daughter had a devastating effect
on his early faith.
Paul Davies
Theoretical physicist at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and author of
numerous works on modern science ranging from About Time and Superforce
to God and the New Physics and The Mind of God.
Richard Dawkins
Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is
the best-known contemporary Darwinist. His theory of the selfish gene is an
influential restatement of evolutionary theory. Works include The Selfish
Gene, The Extended Phenotype and The Blind Watchmaker.
Democritus
Democritus of Abdera (c. 460-370 B.C.), co-founder of the theory of atomism,
held that the only reality was matter. He denied the existence of any mental
reality or deity separate from matter. Democritus held that the world was made
up entirely of an infinite number of tiny atoms that have been in random motion
for all eternity.
Daniel Dennett
Modern defender of materialism, the rejection of any mental reality separate
from the material. In his Consciousness Explained, he argues that consciousness
is nothing more than "the mechanistically functional organization of a
physical system."
Rene Descartes
Descartes (1596-1650) was the French mathematician/philosopher who is sometimes
said to have laid the foundations of modern philosophy by starting his inquiry
with the question of how knowledge can be validated ("Cartesian skepticism").
He was a critic of scholasticism and developed his own theory of a mind separate
from the brain ("Cartesian dualism").
David Deutsch
Contemporary exponent of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics.
He is the author of The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes
- And its Implications.
Paul Dirac
Quantum physicist who first predicted the existence of anti-matter. His transformation
theory showed that Heisenberg's matrix mechanics and Schroedinger's
wave mechanics models of quantum were mathematically equivalent.
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John Eccles
One of the greatest brain scientists of the 20th century and winner of the 1963
Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine. His books on the brain/mind problem range
from The Self and its Brain (with Sir Karl Popper) to The Human
Psyche.
Albert Einstein
Einstein (1879-1955) is generally considered the greatest scientist of the 20th
century. After studies at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, he
worked in the Bern Patent Office. His initial work was in Brownian movement,
statistical mechanics and the photoelectric effect. He is best-known for single-handedly
formulating the theories of relativity, Special Relativity in 1905 and General
Relativity in 1916. The formula most commonly associated with him is e=mc2.
He was appointed a professor at the University of Berlin in 1913 but joined
the Institute of Advanced Studies in Princeton in 1933 after the rise of Hitler.
He won the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on the photoelectric effect.
Loren Eisely (1907-77)
Paleontologist whose works include The Immense Journey, The Firmament
of Time and A Star Thrower. One of his areas of interest was the
evolution of consciousness.
Niles Eldredge
Curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural
History, and Adjunct Professor at the City University of New York. With Stephen
Jay Gould, he introduced the punctuated equilibrium model of evolution. His
books include Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis.
Mircea Eliade
Eliade (born in Romania in 1907, died 1986) was Professor of the History of
Religions at the University of Chicago and one of the best-known commentators
on the history of the religions of the world. His books include Patterns
of Comparative Religion, The Sacred and the Profane and A
History of Religious Ideas. He highlighted the element of the sacred as
an irreducible component of religion.
George Ellis
President of the International Society of General Relativity and Gravitation,
author of numerous works on the evolution and density of the universe and co-author
with Stephen Hawking of The Large-Scale Structure of Space-Time.
Epicurus
Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), like Democritus, believed that the only things that
existed were matter and void. He denied the existence of God and an after-life.
Epicurean ethics holds that everything is permitted.
Hugh Everett
Quantum physicist who originated the Many Worlds hypothesis according to which
there is no collapse of the wavefunction so that all quantum states are equally
real. Every particle is in every possible place in other universes.
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Michael Faraday
Born in 1791, Faraday was a self-taught English physicist. His famous experiments
showed that electricity and magnetism were different expressions of the same
phenomenon. He is the inventor of the dynamo which enabled the conversion of
mechanical into electrical energy. He held that fields were physical realities
and that the universe was a collection of fields. He also made major contributions
to chemistry.
Michael Feigenbaum
American pioneer of chaos and complexity theory.
Paul Feyerabend
Austrian-American philosopher of science who held that all knowledge-claims
are relative. Since science is not a privileged form of knowledge, he argued
that the beliefs of science are no more rational than those of voodoo.
Ludwig Feuerbach
Feuerbach (1804-72) was a German philosopher who espoused thoroughgoing naturalism.
According to him there was no God or personal immortality and nature encompassed
all of reality.
Richard Feynman
Nobel Prize-winning quantum physicist who helped develop the mathematics underlying
quantum electrodynamics, the interaction of electrons and photons. He said famously
that no one understands quantum physics.
Sigmund Freud
Freud (1856-1939) is best known for his theory of the unconscious which attributed
many every day impulses and actions to repressed feelings and desires usually
sexual in nature. Freud's methods and motives in formulating his theories
have been severely criticized in recent years.
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Galileo Galilei
Galileo (1564-1642) challenged Aristotelianism by both locating mathematics
at the center of physics and relying on empirical measurement to test theories.
His telescopic observations led him to support the Copernician theory of the
cosmos and oppose the Ptolemaic establishment view. This led to his famous conflict
with ecclesiastical authorities. In his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief
World Systems, he introduced a theory of the relativity of motion and the
idea of inertia.
Peter Thomas Geach
Emeritus professor of Logic at the University of Leeds in the UK whose contributions
to logic have been supplemented by noted works in the philosophy of religion.
Kurt Godel
Godel (1906-78) is recognized to be the greatest mathematical logician. Among
his many achievements were the Incompleteness Theorems that bear his name: in
essence, he showed that the consistency in terms of number theory of a formal
system cannot be proven within the system. He resolutely opposed empiricism
and held that the axioms underlying mathematics can be known by intuition.
Stephen Jay Gould
The late Professor of Zoology and Curator in Invertebrate Paleontology at Harvard
University, he is the author of numerous works on evolutionary biology. His
posthumously published The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is a summation
of his life work.
Alan Guth
Professor of Physics at M.I.T. and primary originator of the inflationary universe
model, a modification of the Big Bang theory.
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John Haldane
Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, Director of the Centre
for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs and an Executive Council member of
the Royal Institute of Philosophy. Author of several books including Philosophy,
Truth and Meaning and
Mind, Metaphysics and Value and co-author of Atheism and Theism
in the Blackwell Great Debates in Philosophy series.
Stephen Hawking
Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. He has worked in
general relativity with a special focus on black holes, cosmology and quantum
gravity. His A Brief History of Time was one of the most popular scientific
books of the 20th century.
Georg W.F. Hegel
Hegel (1770-1831) was one of the most influential of the German philosophers.
Among his many disciples was Karl Marx. His works include The Phenomenology
of Mind, The Science of Logic and Lectures on the Philosophy
of History. Hegel was an absolute Idealist who held that only the collective
Mind is real and all finite minds are part of this Mind.
Werner Heisenberg
Heisenberg (1901-76) is one of the pioneers of quantum theory. He is best known
for both his Uncertainty Principle, the notion that an observer cannot know
with certainty both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle since
any measurement will require light to hit and thereby disturb the particle,
and matrix mechanics, a system he developed to describe the behavior of quantum
particles.
Paul d'Holbach
Baron Paul d'Holbach (1723-1789) claimed in his Systeme de
la Nature that matter and motion permanently constitute the totality of
the universe. In his view, human beings were machines and their mental life
could be reduced to sensations.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
(1844-1889) One of the greatest English poets of the 19th century whose poetry
became widely known only in the next century. Hopkins, a Jesuit priest, was
deeply influenced by the philosophy of John Duns Scotus.
Fred Hoyle
Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge University
and then first director of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy at Cambridge.
A leading critic of Big Bang cosmology, he proposed the Steady State theory
which calls for continuous matter creation. His works include The Nature
of the Universe.
David Hume
(1711-76) The most influential of the British empiricists. His Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
set forth his skeptical approach to human knowledge and religious belief. He
denied the existence of a self, rejected arguments for God's existence
and claims of miracles and held that morality is based on feeling.
Thomas Huxley
Early advocate of Darwin's evolutionary ideas. He thought of evolutionary
principles as true causes and, like Darwin, was agnostic on the question of
God's causal action in the world.
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Stanley Jaki
Historian and philosopher of science, winner of the Templeton Prize and author
of over twenty books on the relation of science to philosophy and religion.
In his Gifford Lectures, The Road of Science and the Ways to God, he
shows that belief in the divine creation out of nothing of the universe was
essential to the genesis of modern science.
Robert Jastrow
Founder-Director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies and Director
of the Mount Wilson Observatory. His books include God and the Astronomers.
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Immanuel Kant
Kant (1724-1804) was with David Hume one of the most influential critics of
traditional metaphysical and religious ideas. Some of his prominent works include
Critique of Pure Reason, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone
and Metaphysics of Morals. Kant held that we can never really know
anything. All we can know are appearances: "the thing in itself"
remains unknowable. This was his so-called Copernician revolution in philosophy.
He called his view Transcendental Idealism. Kant rejected the traditional arguments
for God's existence.
Stuart Kaufmann
Pioneer of the new science of complexity that explores the order buried in the
most complex systems. His books on complexity include At Home in the Universe:
The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity and The
Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution.
Lord William Kelvin
Born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1824, William Thompson was later made Lord Kelvin
by Queen Victoria for his scientific work. He is best-known for his contributions
to the first and second laws of thermodynamics. He calculated the value of absolute
zero temperature as -273 degrees centigrade; in one system of measurements,
degrees are called kelvins in his honor.
Johannes Kepler
Sometimes called the founder of modern astronomy, this 17th century German scientist
is best known for his three laws of planetary motion.
Thomas Kuhn
MIT professor who introduced a radically new perspective in the philosophy of
science with his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn argues
that most scientists work within the context of certain unquestioned beliefs
that he called a paradigm. A scientific revolution is a paradigm-shift--but
such shifts are not driven by logical grounds.
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Andrew Lang
Lang (1844-1912) was a poet, novelist, historian and anthropologist. His Myth,
Ritual and Religion was one of the pioneering studies in the history of
religion.
Lao Tzu
The author of the Tao Te Ching who is believed to have lived between
the 3rd and the 7th centuries B.C.; some scholars believe that no such person
existed and the work had multiple authors. The work claims that the Tao or the
Way is the source of all things but it is itself non-being or vacuous.
Brian Leftow
Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University and author of Divine Ideas
and Time and Eternity.
Gottfried Leibniz
Born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1646, he developed the differential and integral
calculus independent of Newton. He had a relational view of time and space.
In his Monadology, he advanced the theory that the world is made up
of divinely created monads with complete information about the universe.
John Leslie
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph in Canada whose Universes
was a widely acclaimed restatement of the Anthropic Principle.
H.D. Lewis
Past President of the Mind Association and of the International Society for
Metaphysics and Chairman of the Council of the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
He was head of the department of the History and Philosophy of Religion at the
University of London.
Andrei Linde
Russian co-founder of inflationary cosmology who currently teaches at Stanford
University. His version of inflationary cosmology is called chaotic inflation.
John Lucas
Emeritus Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. One of the leading contemporary expositors
of Godel's Theorem. Works include The Freedom of the Will.
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Sir John Maddox
Editor of Nature magazine for 23 years and now Editor Emeritus. He
was inducted into the American Academy of Science.
Madhvacharya
Madhvacharya (c.1238-1317) was the most fascinating of the Hindu sage-philosophers
and one of the greatest theistic thinkers of all time. Born near Udupi in South
India, he left his family at the age of 16 (some accounts say 12) to take up
life as a religious ascetic. As was common in those times, he had a guru (teacher)
who was responsible for his intellectual and spiritual formation. The guru,
like most of his contemporaries, was under the spell of Advaita (monist)
Vedanta. But from the beginning, Madhvacharya would trust only his own experience
and the principles of reason. Rejecting Advaita on rational and religious
grounds, he systematically laid out the case for theism, eventually convincing
even his guru. He visited the major intellectual centers of the day, debating
monists and drawing attention to the theism of the Hindu scriptures. The primary
basis of the monism of Sankaracharya and Advaita Vedanta was a particular interpretation
of the Vedas and the Upanishads. Madhvacharya authored several
studies of these works to show that they were clearly theistic and were interpreted
as theistic in the first commentaries. By the time of his death he had written
37 books, converted the most prominent Advaita scholars in India to
theism, and assembled eight disciples to carry on his work. His defense of theism
and his critique of monism were continued by numerous subsequent thinkers, most
notably Jayatirtha and Vyasatirtha, the two greatest logicians in the history
of Indian thought. more
on Madhvacharya
Moses Maimonides
Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Rambam), was the most
influential Jewish thinker since, well, Moses. A Jewish saying makes this very
point: "From Moses [of the Torah] to Moses [Maimonides] there was none
like Moses." Born in Cordoba, Spain, he fled to Morocco and then settled
down in Egypt after the intolerant Almohads gained power. In later life he became
the court physician of the Sultan Saladin and the head of the Jewish community
in Cairo. Maimonides' most famous work is Guide to the Perplexed, an
explanation of God's infinite perfection addressed to a disciple who was troubled
by disputes in philosophy and theology. He also authored several classic works
of Jewish law and scriptural commentary. more
on Moses Maimonides
Karl Marx
Marx (1818-83) was the founder of the most influential and destructive political
and socio-economic ideology of the 20th century: variously called Marxism and
Communism. He adapted Hegel's view of history by replacing Hegel's
Spirit/Mind with matter. His most famous work is Das Capital. The ideal
society envisioned by Marx would abolish classes and private ownership of the
means of production.
James Clerk Maxwell
Maxwell (1831-1879) gave mathematical form to Michael Faraday's discovery
of the electromagnetic field. Maxwell's Equations, which describe the
production of electromagnetic energy by accelerating charged particles, are
enduring testaments to his genius.
Julian de la Mettrie
Julien de La Mettrie (1709-1751), a French physician, was the author of L'Homme
Machine, a work in which he claimed that humans were self-moving machines.
Stanley Miller
Pioneering origin of life researcher.
Harold Morowitz
One of the leading contemporary origin-of-life researchers in the US.
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Isaac Newton
Newton, born in England in 1642 on Christmas Day, was one of the two greatest
physicists of all time (Einstein is the other). He unified terrestrial and celestial
dynamics with universal laws that were formulated mathematically. He brought
together Galileo's mechanics and Kepler's laws of planetary motion.
His discoveries include the principles of the differential and integral calculus,
a theory of gravitation and the spectrum of light. His most famous book is his
Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
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Heinz Pagels
One of the best most successful American popularizers of physics, he was Executive
Director of the New York Academy of Sciences and an adjunct professor at Rockefeller
University.
William Paley
Paley (1743-1805) belonged to the tradition of physico-theology. The mechanisms
of the world that could not be scientifically explained, e.g. certain kinds
of motion, were attributed to the direct action of God and cited as evidence
of his design. This is embodied in his famous watchmaker argument. The discovery
of a watch on a moor would suggest the existence of a watchmaker. Likewise,
the intricate mechanisms in nature can only be explained by the existence of
a Maker. Darwin saw Paley as his main nemesis and believed that his theory of
evolution was fatal for Paley's analogy.
Parmenides
(c.480 B.C.) The leader of the Eleatics. He distrusted the evidence of the senses,
held that change and plurality were illusions, and maintained that Reality was
one.
Louis Pasteur
(1822-1895) A great biologist of the 19th century, he developed the germ theory
of disease. He also performed experiments to disprove the idea of the spontaneous
generation of life.
Wolfgang Pauli
Another pioneer of quantum theory. The Pauli Exclusion Principle which stipulates
that two electrons cannot sit on top of one another was formulated by him.
Roger Penrose
Holds the Rouse-Ball Chair of Mathematics at Oxford University. Has applied
mathematics to general relativity and cosmology. Collaborated with Stephen Hawking
in developing the singularity theorems.
Arno Penzias
Winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for the discovery of the cosmic microwave background
radiation that provided evidence for the Big Bang theory.
Steven Pinker
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at
Harvard University. Author of The Language Instinct and How the
Mind Works.
Max Planck
Planck (1858-1947) was the father of quantum physics. His observations of blackbody
radiation led him to announce a theory of the quanta of energy in 1900. The
theory was first experimentally confirmed by Niels Bohr and Robert Millikan.
Planck taught at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Munich for thirty seven
years. He received a Nobel Prize in 1918.
Plato
Plato (429-348 B.C.) was the founder of the Academy in Athens, the world's
first university. Apart from his Apology, which contains the speeches
of Socrates, all his works were Dialogues. Plato argued for the immortality
of the soul. He saw God as a divine craftsman.
Karl Popper
The Austrian-born Popper (1902-1984) was one of the most famous philosophers
of science. His The Logic of Scientific Discovery is one of the better-known
works in the field. He argued that no amount of verification could prove a theory;
at best it could be falsified. He rejected Logical Positivism for being too
narrow.
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S. Radhakrishnan
(1885-1975) Indian philosopher who was also President of the Republic of India.
He was a staunch defender of Advaita Vedanta, the spiritualist monism originated
by Sankaracharya. He was one of the first major expositors of Hindu philosophy
in English.
Ramanuja
(1017-1137) A critic of Sankara's advaita Vedanta who held that there
are three realities: God, souls and matter.
Martin Rees
Astronomer Royal and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy
at Cambridge University. He has made many contributions to astronomy and cosmology
ranging from an analysis of quasar distribution to theories of galaxy formation.
He has also written on the Anthropic Principle.
Michael Ruse
Professor of Philosophy and Zoology at the University of Guelph in Canada and
one of the leading contemporary philosophical defenders of Darwinism. His works
include Taking Darwin Seriously and From Monad to Man.
Bertrand Russell
(1872-1970) British philosopher who wrote for a popular audience. He was a lifelong
critic of religion. Most of his major work in philosophy was done between 1900
and 1920. Principia Mathematica (co-authored with Alfred North Whitehead
between 1910 and 1913) was a significant study of the foundations of mathematics.
His History of Western Philosophy received wide distribution.
Ernest Rutherford
Experimentalist who discovered the radioactive transformation of elements and
then did the 1911 scattering experiments that gave the first glimpse into the
structure of the atom.
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Sankaracharya
(8th century) The south Indian philosopher who developed and popularized the
monist interpretation of the Hindu holy books called advaita Vedanta. Sankaracharya
held that the only reality in the world is Niguna Brahman, an impersonal Absolute
with no attributes. Everything else, including the world and our sense of an
individual identity, is an illusion and enlightenment comes from realizing our
identity with Brahman.
Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980) The most famous of the French existentialists, he was not just a
philosopher but also a playwright, novelist and political theorist. His most
famous exploration of philosophy was his Being and Nothingness (1943);
here he rejected the existence of God. He wrote extensively on human freedom.
Erwin Schrodinger
Austrian founder of the wave mechanics paradigm of quantum theory and of the
idea of the wave function of a particle.
Gerald Schroeder
A scientist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, he is the author
of three best-sellers on science and religion including, most recently, The
Hidden Face of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth.
John Duns Scotus
(1266-1308) A Scottish philosopher who taught at Oxford then at the University
of Paris, he is considered one of the greatest thinkers of medieval times. His
argument for God's existence is a synthesis of the arguments of his predecessors
like Aquinas and Bonaventure and proceeds from the chain of contingent beings
to a First Cause that is also a Necessary Being. He also showed that the essence
of the divine nature is its infinite being.
Josef Seifert
Rector of the International Academy of Philosophy in Liechtenstein. Works include
Back to Things Themselves and What is Life?
B.N.K. Sharma
The leading living authority on the great Hindu philosopher Madhvacharya and
the author of 23 books and 150 research papers on Hindu theism.
Rupert Sheldrake
Cambridge scientist who authored A New Science of Life, a non-mechanist
account of life.
George Gaylord Simpson
Paleontologist who argued that living beings evolve in three ways: speciation,
phyletic evolution, and quantum evolution. His synthetic theory of evolution
combines evolutionary theory with paleontology and other sciences. His books
include The Meaning of Evolution and The Major Features of Evolution.
J.J.C. Smart
Emeritus professor at the Australian National University who has written at
length on philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and metaphysics. He is a
materialist.
John Maynard Smith
Prominent British neo-Darwinist.
Lee Smolin
Founding member and research physicist at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo
Canada. Author of The Life of The Cosmos and Three Roads to Quantum
Gravity.
Baruch Spinoza
(1632-77) Dutch Jewish philosopher who was expelled from the synagogue for his
heterodox views about God. His most controversial book was the Tractatus
Theologica-Politicus. His philosophical output has been variously interpreted.
Most commonly he is said to be a pantheist who identified God with nature.
Paul Steinhardt
A pioneer of inflationary theory who now offers an alternative account of endless
cycles of expansion and contraction of the universe.
Richard Swinburne
Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University. His works include Space and
Time, The Coherence of Theism and The Evolution of the Soul.
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Thomas Aquinas
(1224/5-1274) Called the Angelic Doctor, he was the foremost Christian philosopher
in history. Thomism, the school of thought built around his work, has attracted
disciples from both different religions and no religion. Born to noble parents,
he became a monk in the Dominican Order in 1243. He studied under Albert Magnus
and taught at the University of Paris. Before he died at the age of fifty, he
authored numerous works of philosophy and theology that came to some 8 million
words. The Summa Theologica and the Summa Contra Gentiles
are his two most celebrated books. Aquinas made distinctive contributions in
multiple areas including the questions of God, the soul, human reason and ethics.
J.J. Thomson
Discoverer in 1897 of the electron.
Paul Tillich
(1886-1965) German theologian who taught at Union Theological Seminary, Harvard
University and the University of Chicago. He talked of God as the Ground of
Being. His three-volume Systematic Theology is one of his well-known
works.
Richard Tolman
Proponent of the oscillating universe hypothesis.
Charles Townes
Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physics and inventor of the laser.
Illtyd Trethowan
Monk of Downside Abbey and author of several original works in the philosophy
of religion including Certainty Philosophical and Theological, The Basis
of Belief and Absolute Value.
Edward Tryon
Physicist who asserts that the net energy of the universe is almost zero.
Neil Turok
Co-developer with Paul Steinhardt of the endless cycle hypothesis of the origin
of the universe.
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Alexander Vilenkin
Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Cosmology at Tufts University.
He introduced the ideas of eternal inflation and quantum creation of the universe
from nothing.
Paul Vitz
Professor of Psychology at New York University. His works include Psychology
as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship and The Christian Unconscious
of Sigmund Freud.
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Keith Ward
Regius Professor at Oxford University, his most notable contribution to the
relation of God and science is God, Chance and Necessity.
Steven Weinberg
Josey Regental Professor of Science at the University of Texas, Austin. He received
the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for his work on the electroweak theory. Works
include Gravitation and Cosmology and The First Three Minutes.
John Archibald Wheeler
Quantum physicist who was a student of Niels Bohr. He coined the terms "black
hole" and "it from bit".
Alfred North Whitehead
(1861-1947) British philosopher and mathematician, he is well-known both for
the Principia Mathematica that he co-authored with Bertrand Russell
and Process and Reality, a work that laid the foundations for process
philosophy and theology. In the latter work, he replaces the traditional idea
of "substance" with "process". His concept of a god
who is in a "process" state has been trenchantly criticized by some
contemporary theistic philosophers.
Eugene Wigner
Winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics who made contributions to many areas
of modern physics.
Robert Wilson
Co-discoverer with Arno Penzias of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
and winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize for Physics.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
(1889-1951) A dominant figure in twentieth century philosophy, he is best known
for two books, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical
Investigations. The first book was the main vehicle of the movement called
Logical Positivism while the second sealed its fate. Although he was initially
sympathetic to the ideas that the only valid approach to knowledge was the scientific
one and that only scientific statements were meaningful, Wittgenstein gradually
came to see that the scientific method could not be viewed as the test of truth
in every field of human knowledge. He articulated this insight in his famous
theory of language-games.
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