Elon physics professor Pranab Das oversees more than $6 million of grant funds supporting scholarship around the world. As the leader of three major initiatives funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Das is probing the limits of human understanding on questions that have existed for millennia.
Das is principal investigator for the Global Perspectives on Science and Spirituality (GPSS) programs, two unique projects that have supported work by top scholars, research groups and institutions in Asia and Eastern and Central Europe. These programs feature leading thinkers worldwide bringing new perspectives to the complicated, multidisciplinary study of science and the human spirit.
For example, scholars at the Nanzan Institute in Japan are unpacking the core Japanese concept of kokoro, an untranslatable word with deep implications for human interactions and our lives in an age of science and technology. A team at Charles University in Prague is exploring biosemiotics, a rich analytic approach that adds a new facet to the otherwise mechanistic traditions of the biological sciences. And large groups at several universities in China are deeply involved in bringing Daoist and Confucian traditions to bear on the creation of new, practical forms of environmental ethics.
Through his work, Das’ view of the interdisciplinary study of science and religion has changed.
“Science and religion may or may not be a formal field of study at this time,” Das says. “There are theologians who naturally focus on theological issues in science – for example the relationship between science and technology and their particular system or faith community. And I think there are people in science who should be particularly cognizant of the religious and spiritual aspect of what they’re doing. But I see this field as part of a broader context, perhaps calling it “science and society” or “the human spirit and science and technology.”
Das began his GPSS work in 2003 and completed the first phase in 2006, funding yearlong work by scholars in China, India, the Czech Republic, Russia, Japan, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Korea. Based on the success of that effort, his team successfully competed for a large follow-up grant for the “Major Awards Program” that provided substantial long-term funding to seven intense study efforts, Das has coordinated grants competitions attracting applications from more than 150 scholars worldwide, panels of outside experts and peer review, international workshops and conferences for applicants and awardees and on-site visits and reviews of award winning research teams around the globe.
In evaluating studies, awarding grants and reviewing scholarly output, Das has taken on the role of dispassionate critic, looking for the best concepts and avoiding the influence of his personal interests and beliefs.
“My role has been that of a judge, not an enthusiast,” Das says.
Those evaluative skills have served Das well in landing another major grant to lead an international project. He is principal investigator and executive editor of the International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) Library Project. Its aim is to assemble a foundational library of texts in the field of science and religion, and to create a stand-alone volume of critical essays on each book. Beginning this year, the ISSR will award about 150 complete sets of volumes to colleges, universities and centers around the world.
Das and his ISSR colleagues have taken on the mammoth job of sorting through thousands of books, assessing their comparative value in representing scholarship in the field. The role of editor has put Das in a rare position as a scholar, the challenge of coming to grips with a vast, multi-disciplinary body of work. As he notes, taking on the role of executive editor was “an act of extreme hubris.”
“It turns out that interdisciplinary study of this sort requires incredibly broad knowledge,” Das says. “What we found is that you need to know something about psychology and economics and environmental ethics … and you need to know about Christianity and Buddhism and Daoism … and physics and biology and chemistry. I am suitably chastened now, after having worked on it for a year.”
During his work on the science and spirituality projects, Das has continued teaching at Elon, where he is chair of the physics department, and coordinated administrative staffs at partner research institutions based in Paris (the UIP) and at St. Edmunds College of the University of Cambridge (the ISSR).