Institute for the Meanings of Science
“It seems plain and self-evident, yet it needs to be said: the isolated knowledge obtained by a group of specialists in a narrow field has in itself no value whatsoever, but only in its synthesis with all the rest of knowledge and only inasmuch as it really contributes in this synthesis toward answering the demand, τίνες δá½² ἡμεá¿–ς; ‘Who are we?’”
-Erwin Schrödinger
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About
Science is our most powerful source of knowledge; it has answers to issues of fundamental human importance. New forms of knowledge and scientific breakthroughs happen every day, yet this knowledge often has no path to reach those who need it.
The Institute for the Meanings of Science is dedicated to advancing fundamental science and its systematic development by collaboration between leading scientists and scholars in the physical sciences, life sciences, and humanities, while integrating and publishing their insights to create a new culture of scientific literacy and debate.
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The Story
At the end of 2019, the Templeton World Charity Foundation approached philosopher, scholar, and Marginalia’s Editor-in-Chief, Samuel Loncar, Ph.D. (Yale) about the Meanings of Science Project. After meeting and learning about his vision, TWCF granted funding for the project: our first step toward integrating science's deepest insights and making them available to stakeholders like policy makers, scholars from other fields, and the public.
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As we prepared for our Meanings of Science Symposium at Oxford University, COVID-19 caused a global pandemic. The Symposium—bringing together leading scientists, philosophers, and historians—was postponed until Summer 2022 as the world struggled to contain the pandemic and scientists were being asked to provide answers to sociopolitical, philosophical, and cultural concerns.
Everyone looked to the authority of science to solve humanity’s global health crisis. While meeting in person was delayed, publication commenced. In the wake of COVID, bringing the best research about science from the academy to the public took on a new significance.
The project’s central concerns—What is science? What authority should science bear in the making of public policy? and How is the history of science inseparable from democratic societies?—could not have been more timely.
When knowledge is only distributed to a select few, then there can be no integration with other forms of knowledge for the collective good. The Meanings of Science Project publishes original research, featured in essays, reviews, and interviews with current project members, including:
Project Co-Director, Peter Harrison, previous Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University Queensland, AU, former Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, former Fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, and most recently the author of Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age (Cambridge, 2024); Linda Elkins-Tanton, the Principal Investigator (PI) of the NASA Psyche mission and the Arizona State University (ASU) Foundation and Regents Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and author of Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman (HarperCollins, 2022); and Philip Ball, editor at Nature for over 20 years, winner of the Royal Society's Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture (2022), and author of over 25 books, most recently How Life Works: The User’s Guide to the New Biology (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
The Institute for the Meanings of Science is curating a symposium on Peter Harrison’s Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age and a project around Philip Ball’s How Life Works: The User’s Guide to the New Biology, integrating the best insights we have across disciplines to bring cutting-edge thinking about science to the widest possible audience. ​​
Project Members
Philip Ball
Writer, former editor at Nature; winner of the Royal Society's Wilkins-Bernal-Medawar Medal and Lecture (2022);
Marginalia's Contributing Editor for Science and Lead Researcher for the Meanings of Life Project, which is advancing the new scientific vision of life revealed by modern biology; and author of over 25 books, most recently, How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology
Lorraine Daston
Director Emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin; Permanent Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin; regular visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and member of the American Philosophical Society, the German National Academy of Sciences, and corresponding member of the British Academy
Linda Elkins-Tanton
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Principal Investigator of the NASA Psyche mission; the Regents Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University,;and the author of Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman
Stephen Gaukroger
in memoriam
Historian of Philosophy and Science, Professor Emeritus at School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney; former editor of Intellectual History Review; and author of over 20 books, including Civilization and the Culture of Science: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1795-1935
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Peter Harrison
Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy at the University of Queensland, AU; Professorial Research Fellow, University of Notre Dame, AU; former Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion; Fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies (2004-2005); author of seven books, including The Territories of Science and Religion (winner of the 2016 Aldersgate Prize); and the Co-Director of Marginalia's Meanings of Science Project
Vittorio Hösle
Council Member for the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences; Founding Director of the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study; Paul G. Kimball Professor of Arts and Letters in the Department of German and Russian Languages and Literatures and concurrent Professor of Philosophy and of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame; Fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies (2004-2005); winner of the Fritz-Winter Prize of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences; and author of over 20 books, most recently The Philosophical Dialogue
Abraham (Avi) Loeb
Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University; head of the Galileo Project; Founding Director of Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative; and best-selling author whose books include Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth and most recently, Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future in the Stars
Tom McLeish
in memoriam
Physicist and Professor Emeritus of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of York, UK; academic interdisciplinary leader; member of York's Centre for Medieval Studies; and author of Faith and Wisdom in Science, The Poetry and Music of Science and Soft Matter – A Very Short Introduction
Iain McGilchrist
Psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, literary scholar, philosopher, and writer; current Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists; Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; publications in British Journal of Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology, the TLS, The London Review of Books, the LA Review of Books; and the Wall Street Journal, and the author of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Erika Lorraine Milam
Charles C. and Emily R. Gillispie Professor in the History of Science at Princeton University; author of Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America; and Chair of the Editorial Board for Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Lisa H. Sideris
Professor and Vice-Chair in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara; author of Environmental Ethics, Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection; and President-Elect of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture
Nick Spencer
Senior Fellow at Theos; author of Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion and God, The Evolution of the West and Atheists; and Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion
Samuel Loncar
Founder & Director of the Institute for the Meanings of Science; Editor-in-Chief of the Marginalia Review of Books; writer philosopher, research director, applied ethicist, and consultant; forthcoming book, Becoming Human: Philosophy as Science and Religion from Plato to Posthumanism (Columbia UP)