FRIEND us on Facebook or check back to be notified when recordings of the entire Conference are available. 

… is a transdisciplinary inquiry into the origins and meaning of the cosmos, cross-fertilized by scientific, philosophical, and theological perspectives centered on an exploration of the question most foundational to each:

why is there something, rather than nothing at all?

• Participation is strictly limited and by invitation only, as a way to establish a milieu optimally conducive to an extended and deep conversation among the scholars participating—fewer than eighty—comprising distinguished physical scientists, theologians, and philosophers whose academic interests vitally impinge on this most foundational intellectual theme. Please apply (link to apply page) if you would like to be invited.

• Each participant is encouraged to make it a point to speak as accurately and profoundly as possible within her field, while striving to find ways do to so as intelligibly as possible to the others.

• The intention is not to produce a science-philosophy-theology hybrid product, nor to make scientists religious, nor to tutor theologians in scientific method, but rather to evoke innovative philosophy and theology more conscious of scientific perspectives in their full range and depth, and to invite scientists to consider the implications underlying apparent nature of the physical manifestation of the cosmos.

• The overall intention is to step gingerly beyond existing theories and established perspectives into unmapped regions where participants can both share and discover new ground on which insights, methods, and findings about ultimate matters might ultimately converge.

• In doing so, the hope is to initiate a significant and vital encounter among the three great magisteria dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental truth.

• The ultimate measure of success will be the initiation of a truly fruitful collaboration between the three great magisteria—science, philosophy, and religion—whose respective explanatory modes could come to complement one another, to begin to account for the mystery and meaning of the cosmic creation in ways fuller than that which any one magisterium can produce on its own.

Major activities

Generous funding from the John Templeton Foundation and Yale University will support a three-day invitational scholarly discourse in October at Yale. Distinguished scientists, philosophers, and theologians whose fields include a consideration of the mysteries of the cosmic creation and its ultimate source and destiny will assemble for an extended transdisciplinary conference to be presented at Yale University 6-7-8-9 October 2011 (Thurs-Sun.). The Conference will be preceded by several months of gradually increasing online interchange among the principal participants, and followed by a publication by a major academic press and extended online conversation. During and preceding this gathering a series of complementary activities will be conducted including a research working group at Yale and the whyisthereanything.org website that will serve as the online journal for all work produced or submitted.

The three-part interchange—online dialogue, conference at Yale, and post-conference publication—will be organized around six foundational questions equally of interest to scientists, philosophers, and theologians from their respective standpoints:

1. What is the state of the inquiry into this most foundational question: why is there something, rather than nothing?

2. How and why did the Universe (and the reality that encompasses it) come to exist?

What precedes or sources it?

3. What is the origin and nature of Time—both sequential and present Time?

4. Is the Universe unique? What could account for its “fine tuning”?

5. Does Creation imply Creator? What are the Alternatives?

6. Is it even possible to answer these questions? Could it ever be possible?

The speakers, respondents, and other invited Conference participants include scholars numbered among the world’s most accomplished in their respective fields. Rarely has such a noteworthy, diverse, yet complementary constellation of scholars been gathered in a way that affords the opportunity for such a historic interchange.

Project Organizers

The project director and Conference chair is Professor Priyamvada Natarajan of Yale’s departments of Astronomy and Physics. Her fellow co-P.I.’s for the project are: Denys Turner, the Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology and Professor of Religion in the Department of Religious Studies; and Michael Della Rocca, Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy and immediate past chair of that department. Project coordination is by James Clement van Pelt, co-founder and program coordinator of the Yale Divinity School’s Initiative in Religion, Science & Technology. Key project advisors include Harold Attridge, Reverend Henry L. Slack Dean of the Yale School of Divinity and Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament; and Steven Girvin, Yale’s Deputy Provost for Science and Technology and the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics & Applied Physics.

President Richard Levin and Maurice “Hank” Greenberg cut the ribbon at the dedication ceremony for the new building October 12, 2009.

Yale’s new Maurice R. Greenberg Conference Center is a state-of-the-art facility supporting the University’s burgeoning agenda of international programs. Designed by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale School of Architecture, the Center serves as a meeting place where established and emerging leaders in academia, government, education, and industry from throughout the world can deliberate on matters of global importance.

Among the highlights of the building’s design are a sloping amphitheater with 80 microphoned desk stations, with interpretation booths, classrooms, seminar rooms, and a kitchen. An upper level of the lobby can function as a reception space for as many as 90 guests, and a wood-paneled dining room with vaulted ceilings, recalling the character of Yale’s residential colleges, can serve equally for large or small gatherings. Like all new construction on campus, the Greenberg Conference Center was designed to meet the standards of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. Yale has applied for a gold-level LEED rating.

A glass-paneled walkway links the Greenberg Conference Center to the nearby Betts House, headquarters of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, the Yale World Fellows Program, and the Office of International Affairs.

Maurice Greenberg is the chair and chief executive officer of C.V. Starr and Company, a privately held firm with insurance agencies and a portfolio of global investments. He retired as chair and CEO of American International Group Inc. (AIG) in 2005 after a 40-year tenure at that company. In addition to contributing to the conception and construction of the Greenberg Conference Center, he is the lead benefactor of the Greenberg Yale-China Initiative.