Milinda’s Questions

Prologue

A blogger can learn some interesting things by looking at her stats. (Yes, the feminine pronoun is intentional; I was in grad school long enough that PC-speak comes naturally to me.) I’ve just signed up for Google Analytics, which I hope will tell me all kinds of neat things about who’s visiting this site and why. It takes a little while for G.A. to start working, though, so for the time being I’ll stick with my trusty old Webalizer data.

As nearly as I can determine, so far during the month of August this site has been hit 144 times by people following links from other blogs, 117 times by people using search engines, and 8 times from a category I’ll call “metablogs.” As for the other blogs, Victor Reppert’s Dangerous Idea edges out Bill Vallicella’s Maverick Philosophy 57 to 44 (but since the link at D. Idea just refers people over to the Maverick, Bill is really responsible for generating the traffic.) Interestingly, third place (9 hits) goes to a site that I’ve never written anything about: Steve Esser’s Guide to Reality.
Steve describes himself as follows:

I am a layperson interested in philosophy and science…. This blog centers on my efforts to identify and develop an improved philosophical worldview.

I recognized a kindred spirit in that statement when I first read it quite some time ago, so much so that I put up a link on my sidebar. It remained there through the months when this blog was almost entirely dormant; from time to time I glanced in and thought “This is interesting. I really should spend more time here.” Time to make good on those pious intentions.

On August 1, almost a month ago now, Steve put up a post that alluded to ongoing controversies about the Templeton Foundation. Rather than attempt to describe the Foundation’s mission and activities, or the substance of the controversy, I’m merely going to post some links to the main installments in the conversation, along with brief quotations and/or summaries; the whole thing will, I hope, provide a cursory introduction to the issues involved.

The Templeton Thread

In March of 2005, The Templeton Foundation awarded its annual Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion to Nobel laureate physicist Charles Townes. A few days later, Prof. Lawrence Krauss of Case Western U. complained in the New York Times’ Science section that

Dr. Townes’s . . . prime contribution to religion appears to be his proudly proclaiming his belief in God as revealed through the beauty of nature.

I confess that my immediate reaction was the same as it has been to all of Templeton’s recent awards to scientists. If this is the most significant progress in religious thought, beating out the work of distinguished theologians throughout the world, then it is a sad reflection on such progress. Of course, I rather believe that it reflects on the foundation’s misguided goals and methods.

In April of 2005, on his blog Preposterous Universe, U. of Chicago physicist Sean Carroll presented his reasons for refusing to participate in a Templeton-sponsored conference:

The point is that the entire purpose of the Templeton Foundation is to blur the line between straightforward science and explicitly religious activity, making it seem like the two enterprises are part of one big undertaking.

(BTW, Carroll provides a link to a well-worth-reading paper called “Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists”, which he had presented at an earlier Templeton-sponsored event.

In October 2005, the inauguration of the Foundational Questions Institute is announced. Its stated purpose is to “to catalyze, support and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology.” For the time being, the Templeton Foundation is its sole source of funding.

The 2006 Templeton Prize is awarded to John Barrow in March of that year. Syracuse U. physics professor Mark Trodden had this reaction:

I can’t for the life of me see how it is intellectually tenable to consider religion and science as complementary, and it does dismay me to see people for whom I have great respect falling into the other camp. When one accepts money or prizes from the Templeton Foundation, one’s name becomes inextricably linked - not only logically, but also explicitly, on their web site – with their philosophy, their goals and all their efforts.

In the ensuing discussion on the group physics blog Cosmic Variance, Anthony Aguirre, an astronomer and board member at the Foundational Questions Institute, presented his views on the controversy. His point, basically, was that the Templeton folks attached no strings to their grant money, so he saw no harm done by accepting it; moreover, the FQI is actively seeking other sources of funding. Most of the participants in the conversation seemed satisfied with this.

At about the same time, science writer John Horgan wrote a piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education expressing his misgivings about having accepted Templeton money as one of the Foundation’s Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellows in Science and Religion. The piece provides a lot of valuable background information about the Foundation’s origins, its current leadership, and the experiences that various people have had participating in its programs. The piece is available online at 3rd Culture.

On July 31 of this year, the Foundational Questions Institute announced its first round of grants. The reaction in the blogosphere was immediate. Columbia math professor Peter Woit was disappointed with the grants on purely scientific grounds. One of the award recipients, Matt Liefer, posts his thoughts about winning at Quantum Quandaries.

And finally, Steve’s post at Guide to Reality, which clued us in to all this. One thing Steve picks up on: apparently there’s been a recent change in the Templeton Foundation’s mission statement. Here’s the new statement:

The mission of the John Templeton Foundation is to serve as a philanthropic catalyst for scientific discovery on what scientists and philosophers call the ‘Big Questions.’ Ranging from questions about the laws of nature to the nature of creativity and consciousness, the Foundation’s philanthropic vision is derived from Sir John’s resolute belief that rigorous research and cutting-edge scholarship is at the very heart of new discoveries and human progress.

Steve suggests that this may be at odds with the statement on another page at the Foundation’ site:

The John Templeton Foundation was established in 1987 by renowned international investor, Sir John Templeton, to encourage a fresh appreciation of the critical importance — for all peoples and cultures — of the moral and spiritual dimensions of life.

Steve’s own suggestion, with which I wholeheartedly concur:

Another way to approach these issues would be more philosophical than scientific — looking for middle ground between the science-inspired worldview of metaphysical naturalism versus religious worldviews. But I’ve long thought that if this was the goal, then the foundation should have supported academic philosophy more explicitly alongside physics on the one hand and theology on the other. Disciplines such as philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics, for instance, have (in my opinion) a crucial role to play if you want to find such common ground between worldviews. Perhaps I can be encouraged by the reference to “philosophers” in the mission statement above.

Concluding random remarks

– This brief summary doesn’t do any of these posts justice; for one thing, a number of them have spawned lengthy discussions (~80 posts) of a very high quality. For example, in some of them participants hash out the boundary lines between science, religion and metaphysics: not everyone agrees with Steve and me about the importance of philosophical method in sorting out these issues, but you can find some clear and enlightening statements about the way scientists are prone to construe the terrain.

– Another Templeton-sponsored project is MeaningOfLifeTV, a regular feature over at Slate, in which Robert Wright interviews a variety of prominent public figures. Seems to me that many of the questions and reservations about the Foundation’s other projects can fruitfully be directed at the Slate interviews as well.

– As for whether the Templeton Foundation is being deceptive or disingenuous about its true goals: I suspect that, as is the case with most human organizations, the people who run the place aren’t in complete agreement among themselves about what they think they’re up to.

– Finally, and very briefly: the biggest reservation I have about projects like those the Templeton Foundation undertakes isn’t the worry that they’re engaged in covert proselytizing. It’s that not much gets said. Here’s John Horgan describing a 1993 conference he attended:

The meeting was supposed to be a dialogue between neuroscientists . . . and religious figures . . . . But the dialogue was nominal; each side listened politely to the other’s presentations without really commenting on them. Several areligious scientists told me privately that they did not want to challenge the beliefs of religious speakers for fear of offending them and the Templeton hosts.

Which, in my experience, is all too often the way it goes.