The Leverhulme Centre (General)

by dhw, Wednesday, December 28, 2022, 12:11 (694 days ago)

The Leverhulme Centre

In CAM, a magazine for alumni of Cambridge University, there is an article announcing the opening of The Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe, which has been set up to investigate the origin and nature of life. “Seeking to understand our place in the cosmos will be putting physicists, chemists and astrobiologists in dialogue with philosophers, theologians and pure mathematicians.” On the subject “what is life?”, the Reverend Dr Andrew Davison, Associate Professor in Theology and Natural Science, says: “It’s not like that has ever been the sole purview of the natural sciences. Novelists, poets, painters and dramatists are interested in the nature of life. Philosophers and theologians are, too. So our goal with the new Centre is to go further than that. For example, what do we even mean when we talk about an ‘origin’? What do we mean when we talk about a ‘pathway’? By considering some of these categories from new angles, can we open up new ways of thinking?”

I don’t know if they’ll be publishing their findings, but it’s exciting to see an official institution being set up to broaden the approach to the fundamental mysteries of life. That was exactly the aim of this website when we opened it nearly 15 years ago. We still haven’t solved the mysteries, but we’ve enjoyed trying! I suspect that the Leverhulme Centre will follow a similar “pathway”!