Philip Clayton

Philip Clayton holds a PhD in both philosophy and religious studies from Yale University.  He has taught at Haverford College, Williams College, and the California State University, and has just been named to the Ingraham Chair at the Claremont School of Theology.  Clayton has been guest professor at the Divinity School, Harvard University, Humboldt Professor at the University of Munich, and Senior Fulbright Professor, 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 of The Problem of God in Modern Thought (Eerdmans, 2000), God and Contemporary Science (Edinburgh University Press, 1997); Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion (Yale University Press, 1989; German edition, Rationalität und Religion, 1992); and Das Gottesproblem, vol. 1: Gott und Unendlichkeit in der neuzeitlichen Philosophie (Schöningh Verlag, 1996).  He has edited and translated several other volumes and published some 40 articles in the philosophy of science, ethics, and the world’s religious traditions.  His current research interest lies in developing a theology of emergence, to be published next year as The Emergence of Spirit.

Clayton is currently Principal Investigator of the “Science and the Spiritual Quest” project (SSQ) at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California.  SSQ has brought together over 100 top scientists from around the world to explore the connections between science, ethics, religion and spirituality.  The SSQ Berkeley conference in 1998 received close to 100 million media impressions and was featured on the cover of Newsweek.  Other major public events (past or future) sponsored by SSQ include:  Silicon Valley, Harvard University, the UNESCO World Headquarters in Paris, Granada, Bangalore, and Tokyo.