Templeton Nomination

Letters Supporting Philip McShane’s Nomination for the Templeton Prize in 2010 and 2015.

Patrick Brown

I write to nominate Dr. Philip McShane, B.Sc. 1955 (First Hons); M.Sc., 1956 (First Hons); Lic. Phil. 1959, S.T.L, 1964; D.Phil Oxford, 1968, for the 2015 Templeon Prize.

Philip McShane is an ideal candidate for the Templeton Prize. He has spent He has spent decades wholly immersed in science and scholarship investigating mathematics, natural science, economics, methodology, philosophy, theology, and spirituality. A brilliant, innovative, and unusually polymathic thinker, his work ranges literally from Aquinas to Zoology, from technical works on the foundations of mathematics, probability theory, and evolutionary process to Music That Is Soundless: An Introduction to God for the Graduate (2nd edition, 2005).

James Duffy

It is with great pleasure that I recommend Prof. Philip McShane for the 2015 Templeton Prize.  We first met at Boston College in June of 1983 at the annual Lonergan conference there.  Later, in the early 1990s, he provided feedback on research and writing my doctoral thesis at Fordham University.  I began teaching both philosophy and interdisciplinary studies in 1996 at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, and McShane generously provided suggestions for teaching in these two areas.  In 2001, I took a sabbatical in Mexico and decided to stay to learn Spanish and teach both English (undergraduates) and philosophy (undergraduates and graduates).  I continue to collaborate with and learn from McShane to the present date.

Francisco Galán

It is my great honor and pleasure to provide a supporting reference for the nomination of Dr. Philip McShane, M.Sc., Lic. Phil., S.T.L., D.Phil. (Oxford) for the Templeton Prize for 2015. As yo may kinow from reading the nomination, and his extensive C.V., Profesor McShane has been both a scientist and a theologian for over 50 years. That is a rare achievement, and worthy of notice. I think it must be especially worth of notice to those who are assessing candidates for the Templeton Prize, because the prize is awarded to those “who have provided insights into scientific or philosophical problems relating to infinity, ultimate reality, and purpose in the cosmos,” as well as to those who “have used the analytical tools of the humanities to provide new perspective” on the spiritual dimensions of modern life.”

Cecilia Moloney

I am pleased to nominate Dr. Philip McShane as an eminently worthy candidate for the Templeton Prize. Philip McShane is truly “an entrepreneur of the spirit”: he has devoted the past 50 years and more to affirming the unrestricted human desire for understanding and the human orientation towards Being within an intelligible universe.
       McShane’s position is grounded in the critical realism of Bernard Lonergan (1904-1983) in which the real is what can be reached through correct understanding; his life’s work has been to clarify, extend, and implement Lonergan’s methodological philosophy based on human cognitional structure and, through functional specialization, structures of human collaboration.

Terrance Quinn

It is with great pleasure that I write this letter of support for Philip McShane’s candidacy for the 2015 Templeton Prize.
       My own background is in mathematics and foundations of science. My earlier career included strategic entries into various zones of research in pure and applied mathematics. So, in addition to more recent work in foundations, I also have earlier publications in C*-algebras (operator algebras, mathematics that emerged from quantum mechanics), Lie symmetries of systems of ordinary and partial differential equations, mathematical biology including stochastic methods for identifying active sites of proteins. My goal has been to obtain a representative range of experience and results in the contemporary sciences, in order to eventually ground contributions to philosophical and foundational issues at the level of our times. I have found unique help from the writings of Philip McShane, whose work I have been studying since the 1980’s.