Thursday, March 15, 2007

Interesting Items

Personal Note: Just got back from a trip. My travel preparations kept me from posting beforehand, and then for some reason Blogger wouldn't work on the computer where I was staying.

Steve Barr has a provocative piece "Faith and Quantum Theory" in the March First Things (subscription required for access). I was hoping to have something substantive to post on it, but then realized I'm still struggling with Steve's explanation of quantum weirdness: I have not come to a coherent understanding of his notion of decoherence (transition from quantum wave-like behavior to particulate classical behavior). Perhaps I'll put together something later.

Cardinal Schönborn has a well-considered piece, "Reasonable Science, Reasonable Faith," in the April First Things. Apparently, it is a condensed version of a talk he gave last month in New York ("Fides, Ratio, Scientia: On the debate over Evolution"). It will be interesting to see if Barr publishes a response, in light of his previous exchanges with the Cardinal!