[asa] Cornell

This past weekend I had the privilege of visiting and speaking at Cornell University, cosponsored by the Chesterton House and the Cornell Christian Grad Fellowship. Some of you might be interested in the excellent contacts I made while there.

First, Kent Fuchs is the dean of the engineering college at Cornell. He is a plenary speaker at our annual meeting this year. He told me that students are particularly interested in practical ways of helping people. He said organizations like Engineers without Borders are thriving. ASA could have a good opportunity to highlight and encourage such ministries. We plan to talk about some possibility at our annual meeting.

Then I met Hugh Gauch who hosted me one of the days. He's a statistician in the agriculture school with a second research focus on philosophy and practice of science. He gave me a copy of his book "Scientific Method in Practice." I look forward to reading it. I liked his approach and the table of contents. He also gave me some preprints of his analysis of AAAS position papers on science and religion.

Gary Fick was another faculty member of the agronomy college that I met. He has just written "Food, Farming, and Faith" and he gave me a copy of that. It may not be of interest to many people on this list but for boys raised on the farm like me, it seems quite appropriate. The book has extensive biblical references and would be a great study book for an agricultural community.

Karl Johnson, head of the Chesterton House, had lots of good insight for me. In addition, he pointed me to a great article by former Cornell U president Frank Rhodes, a geologist and a Christian, dating back to the 60's that was published in "Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe", edited by Donald MacKay, 1965, IVPress. I have a pdf of it and will share with those of you who ask for it. I found the book at a used book dealer and got it for $3 plus $3 shipping so I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book.

By the way, the book dealer where I found it was a find in itself. Maybe some of you know about it. This dealer focuses on old books in church history, theology, and related fields. They are Windows Booksellers in Eugene, Oregon at www.windowsbooks.com.

Randy

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Received on Thu May 1 21:02:14 2008