Date/Time
Date(s) - October 31, 2016
3:30 pm - 5:30 pm
Location
Simon Fraser University
Categories No Categories
The Oikodome Foundation, the UBC Murrin Fund, Trinity Western University, TWU’s Faith & Science Club, and the CSCA present Dr. Tom McLeish (Prof. Physics, Chemistry, Durham University) in a series of lectures in and around Vancouver.
Tom McLeish is a very accomplished prize-winning biophysics professor at Durham University. In 2014, he published a very important book called Faith and Wisdom in Science (OUP). He shows the common sentiment between the search for/love of wisdom about natural things in Job and other wisdom literature of the Bible and the history of scientific investigations. It stretches the mind and offers a new paradigm that avoids some of the traditional conflicts and narrow thinking of this discussion (on both sides).
McLeish takes a fresh approach to the science and religion debate, taking a scientist’s reading of the enigmatic and beautiful Book of Job as a centrepiece, and asking what science might ultimately be for. Rather than conflicting with faith, science can be seen as a deeply religious activity, and the current form of a deep and continuous thread in human culture. He longs to equip churches to work with science as God’s gift, and for secular scientists to see the search for wisdom about the world in science.
Lecture Tour of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia:
(Click individual links for more event info.)
- Monday, October 31 @ 3:30 PM | Simon Fraser University (Tentative)
- “A Medieval Big Bang Theory – an Interdisciplinary Tale.”
- Tuesday, November 1 @ 7:30 PM | Regent College
- “Science and Religion over Two Millennia – A Long History of Shouting?”
- Wednesday, November 2 @ 4:00 PM | University of British Columbia
- “Investigating the Deep Structure of Modern Science: The Search for Wisdom”
- Thursday, November 3 @ Noon | Trinity Western University in Langley
- Noon-hour discussion with faculty & grad students
- Thursday, November 3 @ 7:00 PM | Trinity Western University in Langley
- “A Modern Scientist in the Footsteps of Job”
Tom McLeish is Professor of Physics at Durham University and also chairs the Royal Society’s education committee. After a first degree in physics and PhD (1987) in polymer physics at Cambridge University, a lectureship at Sheffield University, in complex fluid physics, lead to a chair at Leeds University from 1993.
He has since won several awards both in Europe (Weissenberg Medal) and the USA (Bingham Medal) for his work on molecular rheology of polymers, and ran a large collaborative and multidisciplinary research programme in this field from 1999-2009 co-funded by EPSRC and industry.
His research interests include: (i) molecular rheology of polymeric fluids); (ii) macromolecular biological physics; (iii) issues of theology, ethics and history of science. He has published over 180 scientific papers and reviews, and is in addition regularly involved in science-communication with the public, including lectures and workshops on science and faith. In 2014 OUP published his book Faith and Wisdom in Science. He has been a Reader in the Anglican Church since 1993, in the dioceses of Ripon and York.
From 2008-2014 he served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Durham University. In 2011 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 2012 he was made Vice-President of Science by the Institute of Physics (IoP). You can read his blog here.