Gifford Lectures

The Gifford Lectures are four prestigious lecture series, Saint of the Scottish universities Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh are held. They go back to the testament of the lawyer and judge Adam Gifford, Lord Gifford (1820-1887), of these universities bequeathed £ 80,000 in order to " promote the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the word and spread ." The natural theology should in this case be treated as a science, " without reference to or reliance upon any supposed special or so-called supernatural revelation."

Besides the scientific treatment of the topic Gifford laid emphasis on its understandable representation. The lectures should be published as inexpensive as possible.

The lectures were established in 1888 and has since conducted to an interruption during the Second World War 1942-1945 regular basis. The speakers were initially appointed for a term of two years and were in the same city two more times to be ordered. This should ensure that various possible approaches come to the topic discussed. Meanwhile, the appeal for an academic year is common.

Originally designed for teaching " the whole population of Scotland ", the lectures have, due to the rank of the ordered speakers and the range of approaches has long represented a large international reputation. Numerous researchers from the fields of theology, philosophy, history, but also from the natural sciences, along with politicians and writers contributed in its frame before considerations and assumptions, some of which were in the print edition classics in their field.

Eminent speakers

In Aberdeen

James Adam ( 1904-06: The Religious Teachers of Greece ), Karl Barth ( 1936-38: The Knowledge of God and the service of God accor ding to the Teaching of the Reformation ), Michael Polanyi ( 1951-52: Personal Knowledge ) Paul Tillich ( 1952-54: Systematic Theology ), Raymond Aron ( 1965-67: On Historical Consciousness in Thought and Action ), Hannah Arendt ( 1973: The Life of the Mind ), Richard Swinburne ( 1982-84 )

In Edinburgh

William James ( 1900-02: The Varieties of Religious Experience), Henri Bergson ( 1913-14 ), James George Frazer ( 1923-25 ​​), Arthur Eddington ( 1926-27 ), Alfred North Whitehead ( 1927-28: Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology ), John Dewey ( 1928-29 ), Albert Schweitzer ( 1934-35 ), Reinhold Niebuhr ( 1938-40 ), Niels Bohr ( 1949-50 ), Arnold J. Toynbee ( 1952-53 ), Rudolf Bultmann ( 1954-55 ), Sir John Eccles ( 1978-79 ), Iris Murdoch ( 1981-82 ), Jürgen Moltmann ( 1984-85 ), Paul Ricoeur ( 1985-86: On Selfhood, the Question of Personal Identity, first version Soi - même comme un autre, dt The Oneself as Another ), Alasdair MacIntyre ( 1987-88: Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry ), Martha Nussbaum ( 1992-93 ), John Polkinghorne ( 1993-94 ), Charles Taylor (1998-99: Living in a Secular Age, first version of A Secular Age? ), Michael Ignatieff ( 2002-03 ), Stephen Toulmin and Noam Chomsky (2004-05 and in a series of lectures in honor of Edward Said, who had intended died in 2003 )

In Glasgow

Friedrich Max Müller ( 1888-92 ), Arthur Balfour (1914, 1922), Samuel Alexander ( 1916-18 ), Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1959 ), Carl Sagan (1985 ), Richard Dawkins (1988 ), Lynne Rudder Baker (2001 )

In St. Andrews

Werner Heisenberg ( 1955-56 ), Walter Burkert ( 1988-89: .. Creation of the Sacred Tracks of Biology in Early Religions, dt cults of antiquity Biological Basis of Religion ), Hilary Putnam ( 1990-91 ), Arthur Peacocke ( 1992-93), Roger Penrose ( 1992-93)