The Copernicus Center

I first met Michael Heller at Balice airport, Krakow, in 2006, where he was holding up a sign to greet me with the Hartle-Hawking creation ex nihilo wave-function of the universe:

Ψ₀(Σ_f,γ_f,φ_f) = K(∅ ; Σ_f,γ_f,φ_f)

This May he was awarded the Templeton Prize at Buckingham Palace, and pledged to invest the $1.6 million in establishing the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Study in Krakow. The Center opened last week, and its mandate is absolutely salivating:

Research at the Copernicus Center will focus on mutual relations among theology, science, and philosophy, including astronomy and cosmology, biology, mathematics, physics, and the history of science. The Center will organize course lectures, public lectures, and seminars, and publish two monograph series and a yearbook, For Philosophy and Science, in English and Polish.

To date, research teams established within the Center include:

• Copernican Group;
• Science and Religion;
• Philosophy of Cosmology;
• Mathematical Foundations of Cosmology;
• Generalized Geometries and their Applications in Physics;
• Philosophy and History of Physics;
• History of Mathematics: People, Ideas, Philosophical Aspects;
• Neurobiology;
• Methodology and Philosophy of Science;
• Analytical Metaphysics;
• Polish Philosophy of Nature in the First Half of the 20th Century; and
• Naturalized Normative Sciences.