Project
title:
Opening Up a Closed World.
Abstract:
It can be seen in the history of mathematics that creative thinking
has always laid the path from closed systems to open ones. In addition
to other personalities, famous mathematicians of my country, János
Bolyai and John von Neumann, are model figures in this respect. Mathematics
today is also characterized by attempts to achieve openness, therefore
it has become the most important formal language of scientific description.
In return, the openness of nature urges mathematicians to discover
newer and newer fields and find the adequate mathematical formulae
for natural phenomena. Since the axiomatic approach in mathematics
has had its impact on Christian thinking for almost two thousand years,
which resulted in a kind of closed approach in theology, it has become
necessary to open up this field, too. It was not in the interest of
mathematics in the first place, but it was due to the inherently open
Biblical approach. Therefore theology can learn a lot from mathematics
as far as the issue of spirituality is concerned, and it should also
represent this approach in university education.
Short
biography:
Dr.
Botond Gaal is Professor of Christian Dogmatics and Systematic Theology
at the University of Reformed Theology. He was formally President
of this university and the University of Debrecen. He holds a university
diploma in Mathematics and Physics and was invited to research the
significance of James Clerk Maxwell’s work – the relationship
between Science and Theology in the 19th century at the Center of
Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, in 1991-92 and
again in 1999. He is the founder and leader of the Steven Hatvani
Theological Research Centre for the study of science and theology
has organized six conferences on Science and Theology in Hungary that
have brought together many eminent scholars and members of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences.
