Iris Book Award & Discussion w/ Mary-Jane Rubenstein - 2023 ISSRNC Conference
Channel: ISSRNC Religion, Nature, and Culture
Date: 2023-02-25

Plenary Session: 2:45-4:00 pm
Saturday, February 4, 2023

The Iris Book Award is an annual prize honoring outstanding work that offers new insights into the meaning and status of the human in relation to science, technology, nature, and religion. The award is an initiative of the Center for Religion & the Human at Indiana University and overseen by former IU faculty member Lisa Sideris (now at UC Santa Barbara).

Recipient:
-Mary-Jane Rubenstein–Wesleyan University
 Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (2014)

Discussants:
- Catherine Newell–University of Miami
- Alexus McLeod–Indiana University

Presiding:
-Lisa Sideris–University of California, Santa Barbara

“Multiverse” cosmologies imagine our universe as just one of a vast number of others. While this
idea has captivated philosophy, religion, and literature for millennia, it is now being considered as
a scientific hypothesis--with different models emerging from cosmology, quantum mechanics, and
string theory. In their very efforts to sidestep metaphysics, theoretical physicists propose
multiverse scenarios that collide with it and even produce counter-theological narratives. Far from
invalidating multiverse hypotheses, Rubenstein argues, this interdisciplinary collision actually
secures their scientific viability. We may therefore be witnessing a radical reconfiguration of
physics, philosophy, and religion in the modern turn to the multiverse. Rubenstein is Professor of
Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan University, and is affiliated with the Philosophy Department and the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

Books considered for the award are nominated by scholars working in interdisciplinary areas of
science, nature, religion, and technology, and by academic and popular presses. A rotating jury of
scholars selects the prize. More information about th

After Earth? Religion and Technology on a Changing Planet
International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture Conference
February 2-5, 2023 @ Arizona State University

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