Steering Committee

All significant decisions for New Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion will be jointly made by a steering committee of fourteen UCSB faculty—drawn from affiliations ranging from the Institute for Theoretical Physics to Religious Studies—and three external faculty. The committee of 17 members includes:

Francesca Bray, Anthropology: Professor Bray works on the history and anthropology of science, technology and medicine both in pre-modern China and in the contemporary West. She is interested in the interactions between material and mental processes in the production of knowledge and authority; this has led her inter alia to study technology and gender in imperial China, the power of models of “scientific agriculture”, and the moral or material grounds on which opposition to GMOs is considered justified by different actors. She also has a strong interest in which societies are allowed to claim to have a “history of science”, and on what grounds. Her two main projects at present are a study of the politics of domestic technologies in contemporary California and their global effects; and co-editing a collection of papers on the relation between graphic representation and text in Chinese technical works that include medical treatises, mining handbooks, mathematical works and guides to Buddhist contemplation.
Thomas Carlson, Religious Studies: Thomas A. Carlson received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1995 and is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches courses in religion and modern philosophy, contemporary theory, and the history of Christian thought and culture. He is author of Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God (University of Chicago Press, 1999), an investigation of negative and mystical theologies in light of deconstructive and phenomenological thought, and translator of several works by Jean-Luc Marion, including God without Being (University of Chicago Press, 1991), Reduction and Donation: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Northwestern University Press, 1998), and The Idol and Distance (Fordham University Press, 2001).
Philip Clayton (School of Religion, Claremont Graduate University): Philip Clayton holds a Ph.D. in both Philosophy of Science and Religious Studies from Yale University. Having taught at Haverford College, Williams College, and the California State University, he is currently Ingraham Professor at the Claremont School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at the Claremont Graduate University. Clayton has been guest professor at the Divinity School, Harvard University; Humboldt Professor at the University of Munich; and Senior Fulbright Fellow, also at the University of Munich. He is a past winner of the Templeton Book Prize for best monograph in the field of science and religion and a winner of the first annual Templeton Research Prize. Clayton is the author or editor of 16 books, including The Problem of God in Modern Thought; God and Contemporary Science; Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion; Quantum Mechanics: The Problem of Divine Action; Evolutionary Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective; In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheism and Science; and Science and the Spiritual Quest. He has published some 60 articles in the philosophy of science, metaphysics and theology. His current research interest lies in developing a theology of emergence, to be published next year as The Emergence of Spirit. Since 1999, Dr. Clayton has been Principal Investigator of the Science and the Spiritual Quest program at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences.
David Cleveland, Anthropology/Environmental Studies: David A. Cleveland is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and in the Environmental Studies Program, University of California, Santa Barbara. He is also Co-Director of the Center for People, Food and Environment. He received a Ph.D. in anthropology and an M.S. in genetics from the University of Arizona. Cleveland is an agricultural anthropologist whose experience includes research on agriculture and human population dynamics with Kusasi farmers in northeast Ghana, West Africa, research on crop varietal repertoires with Hopi farmers of North America, sustainable agriculture planning, including safeguarding of farmer crop varieties, with Zuni farmers of North America, and research with small-scale farmers of Oaxaca, Mexico on perceptions and management of their maize varieties. His current research is with farmers and professional plant breeders in several different locations, comparing their knowledge and practice in terms of the potential for collaborative plant breeding, and the potential effects of genetically engineered crop varieties.
Leda Cosmides, Psychology: Leda Cosmides is best known for her work in pioneering the new field of evolutionary psychology. She developed her interest in rebuilding psychology along evolutionary lines while an undergraduate at Harvard, where she got her A.B. in biology (1979) and her Ph.D. in cognitive psychology (1985). Cosmides did postdoctoral work with Roger Shepard at Stanford and was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, before moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has been on the faculty since 1991. Cosmides won the 1988 American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research, the 1993 American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology, and a J. S. Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. In 1992, with John Tooby, she published The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, an edited volume designed to be a state of the art survey of the new field. Leda Cosmides is currently Professor of Psychology at UCSB. She and John Tooby founded and co-direct the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology.
Helen Couclelis, Geography: Helen Couclelis is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds a Doctorate from the University of Cambridge and an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Utrecht. Prior to joining the Geography Department at UC Santa Barbara in 1982, she spent several years as a professional planner and policy advisor in Greece. She has held visiting appointments at the Department of Civil Engineering of the University of Waterloo, the Institute of Urban and Regional Development of the University of California at Berkeley, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University. The research interests of Dr. Couclelis are in the areas of geographic information science, urban and regional modeling and planning, spatial cognition, and the philosophy of science. Recent publications include work on models of urban dynamics, on the representation of spatial concepts in both human minds and in computers, and in the geography of the information society. She is a co-editor of the journal Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design. She has co-edited A Ground for Common Search (with P. Gould and R.G. Golledge) and Geographic Information Research: Bridging the Atlantic (with M. Craglia). She was Associate Director of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) from 1993 to 1996 and currently serves on the executive committee of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science (CSISS).
Matthew Fisher, Institute for Theoretical Physics: Professor Matthew Fisher holds a permanent appointment at UC Santa Barbara’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests concern condensed matter theory, specifically strongly correlated systems and other demonstrably macroscopic (i.e., emergent) manifestations of quantum mechanics. Professor Fisher has recently been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS): Fisher was cited for his seminal contributions to the vortex-glass phase, the superconductor-insulator transition, and the theory of electron fractionalization, which have greatly deepened our understanding of strongly-correlated electron materials. One common thread in these research areas is the important role played by quantum fluctuations, induced by either strong disorder or strong interactions.
Catherine Gautier, Geography/Institute for Computational Earth System Science: Catherine Gautier is Professor of Geography at UC Santa Barbara, and former Director and Principal Investigator at the Institute for Computational Earth System Science, which serves to provide a distributed, interdisciplinary computer environment for the promotion and support of research and research education in Earth system science. Gautier is Head of the Earth Space Research Group. Gautier’s training (Ph.D, University of Paris) is in physics, geophysics, and meteorology. Her research interests concern radiative transfer, earth radiation budget and cloud processes, large scale hydrology and surface/atmosphere interactions, global processes, and earth system sciences. Gautier teaches courses in earth system science, climate change, and environmental policy.
Anita Guerrini, History/Environmental Studies: Anita Guerrini is an Associate Professor with a joint appointment in History and Environmental Studies. She has degrees in History from Connecticut College and Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from Indiana University. Her research interests concerns the life sciences in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She has published three books: Natural History and the New World, 1524-1770 (American Philosophical Society, 1986); Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment: The Life and Times of George Cheyne (Oklahoma, 2000); and Experimenting with Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights (Johns Hopkins, 2003), as well as two dozen articles and many book reviews. Her current research focuses on public anatomy and animal use in science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She also has ongoing projects on environmental history and restoration and on the procurement of primates in 20th century science. She has recently been accepted to an NIH-funded program at Dartmouth College on the ethical, legal, and social implications of the human genome project. Her teaching interests include early modern history and history of science and medicine, disease and the environment, and research ethics.
Barbara Holdrege, Religious Studies: Barbara Holdrege is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds a Ph.D. in the comparative history of religions from Harvard University. Her research focuses on South Asian and Jewish traditions and methodological issues in the comparative study of religion. Professor Holdrege serves as the Director of UCSB’s Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space, a multidisciplinary research center dedicated to fostering the development of innovative technologies concerned with the analysis of sacred space, with a particular focus on the religions and cultures of Asia. Her current research in the area of South Asian pilgrimage traditions is concerned with expanding the applications of geographic information systems and technologies beyond the earth sciences and social sciences into the humanities and developing geospatial models for mapping cultural and historical data. Her publications include Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture; Ritual and Power; and two forthcoming volumes, Mapping the Bodies of Krishna: From Absolute Form to Lotus Footprints, and Beyond Hubert and Mauss: Genealogies of Sacrifice in Hindu and Jewish Traditions.
Susan Mazer, Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology: Dr. Mazer is Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned her B.S. in Biology at Yale University (in 1981) and her Ph.D. in Botany at the University of California, Davis (1986). She conducted her postdoctoral research as a Smithsonian Research Fellow at the National Museum of Natural History (Washington, D. C.), evaluating adaptations of seeds to natural habitats, before joining UCSB's faculty in 1988. Dr. Mazer's research focuses on detecting evolutionary processes in wild plant species and on the longterm patterns generated by natural selection. Her research includes studies of genetic and environmental influences (i.e., "nature vs. nurture") on seed quality, growth, and reproduction in wild plants, and of the role of natural selection in generating biological diversity. She applies the methods of quantitative genetics, developmental biology, comparative biology, evolutionary ecology, and ecological genetics at a variety of scales: from the individual to the population to the community. Dr. Mazer has conducted field work on wild plants in habitats ranging from the Amazonian rainforests of Peru to the deserts and high Sierras of California. She served as Executive Vice-President of the International Society for the Study of Evolution (1999 - 2002), has been a member of numerous National Science Foundation research review panels, and has served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Evolutionary Biology. She has authored over 50 primary research articles in the fields of evolutionary genetics, natural selection, and plant reproductive biology.
Nancey Murphy (Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary): Nancey Murphy is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University (philosophy and psychology) in 1973, the Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley (philosophy of science) in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987. Her first book, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Cornell, 1990) won the American Academy of Religion award for excellence and a Templeton Prize for outstanding books in science and theology. She is author of six other books, including Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics (Westview, 1997); and On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (with G.F.R Ellis, Fortress, 1996). She has co-edited six volumes, including Whatever Happened to the Soul?: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (with Warren Brown and H.N. Malony, Fortress 1998); and Neuroscience and the Person: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action (with Robert Russell, Theo Meyering, and Michael Arbib). Her research interests focus on the role of modern and postmodern philosophy in shaping Christian theology, and on relations between theology and science. She is on the Board of Directors of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and former chair of the board. Murphy is an ordained minister in the Church of the Brethren.
Michael A. Osborne, History/Environmental Studies: Professor Osborn's graduate training is in science and history of science. He moved to UCSB after a postdoctoral year in Paris funded by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and was promoted to associate professor in 1994. Since 1994 he has held a joint appointment with the Mathematical, Life, and Physical Sciences Division's Environmental Studies Program. He has held fellowships at Princeton University‚s Davis Center for Historical Studies (1991), the Centre Alexandre Koyré in Paris (1999-2000), and the Center for the Humanities at Oregon State University (1994-1995). He offers classes on religion and Darwinism, global environmental problems, and science and philosophy. Graduate students he mentors work on: Spanish medicine in the New World; the use of African troops by French forces in World War I; medicine and religion in contemporary America; genomics, religion and biomedical ethics in America; religion and the philosophy of science. His first book, Nature, the Exotic, and the Science of French Colonialism (1994), dealt with biological science and natural history in France and the French Empire. A co-edited volume on the social history of science, technoscience, and imperialism appeared as volume 4, no. 2 (1999) of Science, Technology & Society: An International Journal Devoted to the Developing World. Another book, entitled A Medicine of Place and Race, examines the emergence of tropical medicine.
Jeffrey Schloss (Biology, Westmont College): Jeffrey Schloss, Ph.D. studied biology and philosophy as an undergraduate at Wheaton College, pursued postbaccalaureate study in field biology at the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan, and received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Washington University. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Wheaton College, Jaguar Creek Tropical Research Center, and is currently Professor of Biology at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA and Director of Biological Programs for the Christian Environmental Association. He has been a Danforth Fellow, a AAAS Fellow in Science Communication, and a Discovery Fellow. His twofold research interests include ecophysiological strategies of poikilohydric organisms and evolutionary theories of altruistic morality. His most recent project, a collaborative volume from Oxford Press, is Altruistic Love: Scientific & Theological Perspectives.
Raymond Smith, Geography/Institute for Computational Earth System Science (ICESS): Raymond Smith is Professor Emeritus of Geography at UC Santa Barbara and Research Professor at ICESS. He is former Department Chair of Geography and was the founding Director of ICESS an interdisciplinary Organized Research Unit founded to provide computational excellence in research related to Earth system science. Between 1996-2002 he was the lead Principal Investigator of the Palmer Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program aimed at understanding the marine ecology of the Southern Ocean. Smith was recently awarded the International Jerlov Award, granted by the Oceanography Society, for outstanding contributions to optical oceanography and environmental science. He is author or co-author of more than 150 peer reviewed articles about optical, physical and biological oceanography, marine ecology, and earth system science. His current research is focused on climate variability and ecological response, and he has recently co-edited (with Greenland & Goodin) a book on this subject.
Bruce Tiffney, Geological Sciences: Professor Tiffney is fascinated by the evolution of plants viewed in the broadest of terms, and thus involving their fossil record. He believes that facts and theories are inseparable and thus his research embraces both classical descriptive systematics based on anatomy and morphology, and the establishment of broader, more speculative, hypotheses. His systematic specialty involves detailed comparative studies of fossil fruits and increasingly greater scope, including patterns of phytogeography, plant-animal interactions and the broad-scale evolution of land plants. As a result, at any one time he generally is pursuing several disparate research areas. Additionally he is interested in the history of paleontology, and its relationship to the growth of "scientific" enquiry in western society.
Anthony Zee, Institute for Theoretical Physics: Professor Anthony Zee holds a permanent appointment at UC Santa Barbara’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. His historical research interests concern high energy physics, condensed matter physics, and mathematical physics. A particular interest is field theoretical description of quantum systems. Field theory allows us to extract the long distance physics of strongly correlated quantum systems. In particle physics, the long distance field theory is known and people are trying to identify the short distance structure responsible. In condensed matter physics, on the other hand, the physics on the lattice scale is known but one might like to derive the effective long distance field theory and to determine the quantum numbers of the elementary excitations. In recent years, Professor Zee’s work has focused on the application of field theory to the gauge theory of high temperature superconductivity, to the quantum Hall fluids and the double-layered Hall system, and to the theory of random matrices and disordered systems. Many concepts from particle physics, such as gauge theory, topological action, confinement, magnetic monopoles, have all proved to be relevant. Professor Zee has recently authored Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell, a text on quantum field theory to be published by Princeton University Press. He has also authored several popular books, including Fearful Symmetry which touches on some issues regarding the aesthetic foundation of fundamental physics, and Einstein’s Universe, nominated for a Pulitzer prize in nonfiction.