The centerpiece in each year of the proposed program is the Templeton Research Lecture Series. These lectures, 4 to 5 each year by a single lecturer, will be open to the public, heavily publicized, prepared for delayed web-cast, and published in a book. The Templeton Fellow each year will also participate in a campus open forum, meet several times for discussions with the steering committee, and speak informally to groups of high school students and teachers that we will gather specifically for that purpose.

FOURTH YEAR TEMPLETON RESEARCH FELLOW:

Jennifer Michael Hecht, Poet, Author, Historian

http://www.jennifermichaelhecht.com/

Thu March 6: "Cosmic Cosmopolitanism"
We may soon be living with the fact of life outside our solar system, but the cosmic cosmopolitanism will be temporally staggered. We have only just become capable of listening to the skies. We may soon hear of life out there, but the message will have been sent a long time ago. The context of humanity changes when changes when cultures intermix. Finding Ancient Roman texts in the 1300s led Italy to produce the Renaissance. This lecture will consider how cultures through history have responded when confronted with a message in a bottle. The lecture will also posit how we are going to feel about this lonely kind of company and what that might lead us to do. It will also look at those people in history who have been able to think about these alien issues, especially Epicurus, Lucretius, Bruno, and Kant.

Tues March 11: "The Speed of Life and Hoarders of Magnitude"
Animals on earth experience the world on different scales of time, but many live short fast lives. The laws of physics dictate the sizes of organisms but there could be intelligent life that is much larger or smaller than we are. How do we feel about scale in beings on Earth? Our prejudices on the issues of speed and scale will be further complicated as we find out more about what is out there. This lecture will seek to isolate some generative questions.

Thu March 13: "Smarter Than Us"
If visitors from outer space actually arrive here, they are likely smarter than us; or at least technologically more sophisticated. That will put us in the position of the animals of Earth, or of the indigenous populations of the world that met with "exploring" Europeans. How are we going to feel about that? If they have more developed morality than we do, they will respect us, even though we are inferior and/or less powerful. However, if they do have better morality, they may not want us to keep slaughtering other earth animals. That might make us wish we had never found them. Some people like being taken care of and some people don't. Some people are used to being suspected and disliked, or coddled as cute but dumb, while others would find that a big shock. When others take care of you, you are spared anxiety but burdened by humility. This may seem strange, but I think most of humanity will prefer the humility to the anxiety. How will scientists feel? How will artists feel? How will ministers, priests, and rabbis feel? How will police officers feel? Will they find us entertaining? Sexy? Will they tease us about our taste in music? Will they make us share the planet with the other animals? Will they clean our cage?

THIRD YEAR TEMPLETON RESEARCH FELLOW:

George Ellis, Theoretical Cosmologist
University of Cape Town, Mathematics Dept.
Academic webpage: http://www.mth.uct.ac.za/~ellis/

Lectures scheduled for April 24, 25 and 26th 2007
7:00pm at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona

Topics:

• "Aliens and the Universe: Who else is out there?"
• "Alien Physiology and Intelligence"
  
• "Alien Society and Values"
  

SECOND YEAR TEMPLETON RESEARCH FELLOW:

Simon Conway Morris
Paleobiology
University of Cambridge

"Life’s Solution: The Predictability of Evolution and its Implications (across the Galaxy, and beyond)" - A professor of earth sciences at the University of Cambridge examines how the process of natural selection has led to myriad examples of convergent traits in life on Earth, with important implications for the possible forms of extraterrestrial life.

• "The Ubiquity of Evolutionary Convergence: From Molecules to Societies"
• "Eyes to See, Brains to Think: The Inevitable Evolution of Intelligence"
• "Meeting the Aliens: Galactic Hide and Seek?"
• "Darwin’s Compass: How Evolution Discovers the Song of Creation"

FIRST YEAR TEMPLETON RESEARCH FELLOW:

Francisco J. Ayala
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of California, Irvine
Academic Web Page: http://ecoevo.bio.uci.edu/Faculty/Ayala/Ayala.html

• "Out of Africa: The Origins of Modern Humans and the Biological Insignificance of Race and Ethnicity"
  
• "The Evolutionary Transcendence of Humankind: Cultural Evolution vs. Biological Evolution"
  
• "Beyond Biology: From Biology to Ethics and Religion"
  
• "Between Utopia and Hades: Cloning, Genetic Engineering, and the Future of Humankind"
  
• "Intelligent Design vs. Natural Selection: God of the Gaps vs. God of Transcendence"