| Founded | 2004 |
|---|---|
| Location | La Jolla, CA, United States |
| Key people | Roger Bingham, co-founder and director Terrence Sejnowski, advisory board chair |
| Area served | Global |
| Method | Video sharing |
| Motto | More programs, more candles, more light. |
| Website | |
The Science Network (TSN) is a non-profit, web-based organization concerned with science and its impact on society.
The mission of The Science Network (TSN) is to build an online science and society agora, or public square, dedicated to the discussion of issues at the intersection of science and social policy. By engaging a diverse community of concerned constituencies in conversation, on and offline through signature meetings, video programming, and in developing partnerships with public television stations, TSN (http://thesciencenetwork.org/) is creating a scientific no-spin zone - a trusted destination free from the tyranny of the sound bite.
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TSN's signature series Beyond Belief is an annual meeting which brings together a community of scientists, philosophers, scholars from the humanities, and social commentators. Speakers at these meetings have included Steven Weinberg, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Harry Kroto, Neil de Grasse Tyson, and Stuart Kauffman.
Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival, the first of The Science Network's annual Beyond Belief symposia, held from November 5 to November 7, 2006, was described by the New York Times, as "a free-for-all on science and religion," which seemed at times like "the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told." According to participant Melvin Konner, however, the event came to resemble a "den of vipers” debating the issue, "Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?”[1]
The event was conceived as a response to the efforts of the Templeton Foundation to reconcile science with religion, according to its underwriter Robert Zeps, who told an interviewer, "I am not anti-Templeton in the sense of funding scientists to say mean things about religion. I simply believe that all study should be free of any particular agenda besides learning...Most take the position that the religious right are just nuts who are loud but frankly undeserving of a response...I believe that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and pretty much all of the tech age wealth is firmly on the side of science and they need to step up .and say so in a way that is heard by the anti-science lobby."[2]
Many conference participants leveled strong criticism at the activities of the Templeton Foundation, including claims that it attempted to blur the line between science and religion and that it funded "garbage research" aimed at showing a healing effect of prayer.[1] The conference devoted its final session to "the negative effects of introducing religion into medicine." A Templeton spokesperson responded by warning against “commercialized ideological scientism," the effort to profit from promoting science as the only guide to truth.[1]
NewScientist summed up the topics to be discussed as a list of three questions:[3]
Speakers included physicists Steven Weinberg, Lawrence Krauss, author Sam Harris, biologist Joan Roughgarden, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.[1]
Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 was the second annual symposium and was held from 31 October to 2 November 2007 at the Frederic de Hoffmann Auditorium of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.[4]
Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark was the third annual Beyond Belief symposium. This event was organized by The Science Network and held from 3 October to 6 October 2008 in La Jolla, CA.[5]