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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.