The 12^th International Conference of
	ISSEI	In cooperation With
	International Society for the Study of European Ideas

Section I: History, Geography, Science

and

Section V: Religion, Philosophy, Anthropology, Psychology, Language

Workshop: God, Jews and Gentiles: Creating the Universe, writing Science

Chair: Ranjit Chatterjee

Writers probe science, literary and philosophical texts guide scientists. Some–Isaac Newton, David Nieto, Niels Bohr, Jorge Luis Borges, David Bohm, Ursula Le Guin--may be singled out: their intellectual energy makes philosophy and imaginative fiction interact with theories and practice of science. Greek theoria derives from the word for vision, something prefigured before practical action. Hebrew scripture blends with experiment in Newton’s outlook. Niels Bohr, a Jew in Jewish terms, drew lifelong inspiration from Pol Møller’s Adventures of a Danish Student, a novel of ‘epistemological relativism,’ later his own vision in physics. On being knighted by the Danish government, Bohr chose the Taoist yin yang, symbol of complementarity, for his coat-of-arms. The Talmudist and eminent scholar of Maimonides, Hakham José Faur, to honor his most esteemed writer of fiction, dedicated an essay to Jorge Luis Borges. Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction extends to geometry, basic to science, hence to science itself. The engineer Wittgenstein, who wrote with detachment on Darwin, Einstein, Gödel, and the foundations of mathematics, once remarked of a Cambridge don: he doesn’t even know literature; how could he possibly know philosophy?

The session hopes to bring together six to eight papers on interactions between religion and traditional activities such as literature, philosophy and science, with the above-mentioned examples to suggest further themes.

Ranjit Chatterjee

ranjitc@umd.edu

cell: (301) 648-4073

fax: (301) 495-0258

1316 Fenwick Lane, #1303

Silver Spring, MD 20910

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