Barbour, Ian

Ian is a physicist, theologian, author, the Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and Society at Carleton College, and winner of the 1999 Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. A revered pioneer in developing the field of Science and Religion, Ian wrote the influential book, Issues in Science and Religion, first published in 1965. Other books include Religion in An Age of Science and Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. He reflects thus: “Science and religion each ask different kinds of questions, yet one can find similarities. For example, the role of imaginative models when one is dealing with things that cannot be observed directly, maybe it’s an electron in science, God in religion. In either case, one attempts to visualize what may be going on. Thus one has to use imaginative models that do not entirely reflect the full reality. In physics, scientists used to think an electron was a little ball going around a nucleus, whereas now we have to imagine a kind of a wave structure that is beyond visualization. The key point is that our new model leads to predictable results, but we do need some kind of a model from which to derive the theory. It is somewhat similar in religion, one has to take a little bit of a leap and perhaps use more than one model. In religion we have personal models of God and impersonal models of God. In physics we have wave models of an electron and particle models of an election. In neither case do both models fit easily together. One has to use different models in different situations.”