Theology and Science

Since 2007 Drs Andrew Robinson and Christopher Southgate have been funded by the Science and Transcendence Advanced Research Series (www.ctnsstars.org) to pursue their project 'Interpretation and the Origin of Life'. The third round of funding was awarded to only two teams in the world, including the Exeter group.

The project uses the metaphysical semiotics of C.S. Peirce as a springboard for new explorations in the science of the origin of life, and of human evolution, and in the theology of the Trinity.

The results have been published in the June and September 2010 issues of the journal 'Zygon', the September 2010 issue of 'Theology and Science', and also in 'Biology and Philosophy' and 'Biological Theory'.

This work has culminated in Robinson's monograph 'God and the World of Signs', published by Brill in October 2010.

The project has also included a very successful workshop for early - career researchers at Berkeley in June 2010, when young scholars were able to engage with major figures in the science-theology conversation such as Robert J. Russell and Philip Clayton, as well as the anthropologist Terrence Deacon.

April 2011 will see the final meeting of the project, an invited theological consultation in Cambridge, but the work will go on (for example at the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life in July 2011, reporting on RNA biochemistry done in the lab of Niles Lehman). For further details of the project and its publications see www.evolutioncreationsemiotics.org