This year's Brown Symposium at Southwestern University in Texas will focus on "Science and Religion: Conflict or Convergence?" Developed by Ben Pierce, a professor of biology at the school, the symposium will focus on the "engagement model" of science and religion—the idea that, by acting as partners, both fields can benefit from understanding the thinking and findings of the other field.
The two-day event, February 5 and 6, is free and open to the public, and regular readers of this blog will recognize many of the participating scholars, which include Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania; paleobiologist Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge; Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-founder and co-director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology; and David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University. —Heather Wax