In the UK, March 7-16 is National Science and Engineering Week, and to commemorate the occasion, The British Association for the Advancement of Science has created a blog inviting readers to submit the biggest, most profound, unanswered questions they can imagine. There are a number of scientists on board to tackle these questions, and the project seems to be proving very popular so far. Questions, coming from curious submitters ranging in age from 5 to 55+, run the gamut from “Does matter have an intrinsic property to self-organise into ever more complex forms including life?” to “Will there ever be a chewing gum that never loses its flavour?” (surprisingly, this man does not appear to be on the panel of experts).
This Spring, the Templeton Foundation Press will be releasing our own take on The Big Questions, in the form of a new book. We asked Oxford professor Keith Ward — an expert on world religions — to create his top ten list of Big Questions about the intersection of science and various religious traditions. Exploring concepts from Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Hinduism. Judaism, and Christianity alongside the studies of cosmologists, physicians, mathematicians, and philosophers, Ward offers compelling insights into these mysteries in The Big Questions in Science and Religion.
Not surprisingly, readers will find many of the same questions in both the blog above and in Ward’s new book. As the blog’s resident scientists move through the submitted questions (at the moment, it seems that they are being submitted faster than they can be answered), it will be interesting to see how their responses to questions like “How will the universe end?” might compare with say, the teachings of Islam, or how their approaches to a question like “What is the nature of time and space?” compare to those of the various Christian, Semitic, or Indian traditions.
Author Keith Ward
