Ian Barbour

Ian Barbour (born October 5, 1923, Beijing, China—died December 24, 2013, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.) was an American theologian and scientist who attempted to reconcile science and religion.

Barbour was born in Beijing, where his Scottish father and American mother both taught at Yanjing University. His family moved between the United States and England before settling permanently in the United States when he was 14 years old. Barbour’s father took temporary positions at universities in Pasadena, Calif.; Cincinnati, Ohio; and New York City before eventually obtaining a permanent position in Cincinnati. Barbour earned a bachelor’s degree (1943) in physics from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and a master’s degree (1946) from Duke University in Durham, N.C. After studying with Italian physicist Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, where he earned a doctorate in 1949, he began teaching at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, becoming chairman of the physics department in 1951.

Despite his success as a physics professor, Barbour chose to move in a new direction in 1953, enrolling at Yale Divinity School to study theology and ethics. Even before completing his divinity degree in 1956, he was appointed to teach in both the religion and physics departments of Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., in 1955. Committed to exploring the relationship between science and religion, Barbour initiated an interdisciplinary program at Carleton in 1972 that promoted study in both fields. He became Carleton’s first professor of science, technology, and society in 1981. He became emeritus in 1986.

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Barbour wrote numerous books and articles on the interaction between science and religion. His Issues in Science and Religion (1966) was one of the first books to treat the fields as two disciplines that shared a common ground rather than as two completely separate or conflicting spheres of study. The publication, which many credited with having created the interdisciplinary field of science and religion, was widely used as a college textbook. Barbour’s other notable works included Myths, Models, and Paradigms (1974), which compared concepts and methods of inquiry in science and religion and was nominated for a National Book Award.

Religion in an Age of Science (1990) and Ethics in an Age of Technology (1993), a two-volume set based on a series of lectures he presented in Scotland, received the 1993 book award from the American Academy of Religion. Among the topics Barbour examined were religion’s role in the treatment and development of the environment, the impact of the theory of evolution and the big-bang model of cosmology on religious thought, and the influence of religion on ethical issues raised by rapid advances in such fields as medicine, genetic engineering, agriculture, and computer technology. He later published an updated and revised version of Religion in an Age of Science as Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (1997). In When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (2000), Barbour reviewed possible responses to the conflict between science and religion, ultimately concluding that the two are not mutually exclusive.

In 1999 Barbour received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion for his contributions toward the integration of scientific and religious knowledge and values. Barbour pledged $1 million of the prize money to the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, an educational organization affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.