Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments
This book is an expanded version of my opening keynote lecture at the 2015 conference of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at Oxford University. The conference brought together experts from the fields of anthropology, biology, philosophy, psychology, and theology to present and debate the implications of recent research on the “human difference”—the question of what distinguishes human beings from other living species, and what conceptual frameworks might be helpful in clarifying the nature of this difference. The rich discussion that followed my lecture stimulated me to write it up as a book. In expanding this lecture, I was able to engage some of the probing questions that arose during that extended discussion at the Ian Ramsey Centre. I owe much to those who have helped me develop these ideas in the last few years. While I can never hope to acknowledge my full debt to others, I can at least thank those who have proved to be such a stimulus to my own thinking in this area, especially Joanna Collicutt, Mary Midgley, Andrew Pinsent, Donovan Schaefer, Raymond Tallis, Graham Ward, and Johannes Zachhuber.