The Templeton Foundation has awarded a grant of $967,000 for a 3 year interdisciplinary project in the Philosophy of Cosmology to Rutgers University. The project will be housed in the Rutgers Philosophy Department (and the Center for Philosophy and the Sciences) and led by co-PIs David Albert (Columbia) and Barry Loewer (Rutgers). Other members of the team are Shelly Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka, and Dean Zimmerman (all Rutgers), Brian Greene (Columbia), Tim Maudlin (NYU), Priya Natarajan (Yale) and Joel Primack (UC Santa Cruz). Among the philosophical problems investigated by the group are multiverse hypotheses, the grounds of "time's arrows", the idea of creation, the nature of fundamental laws, philosophical issues about string theory, and finally "Why is there is anything at all?" The project will involve a number of workshops, conferences, public lectures, a summer institute, support for graduate students, and an initiative in high schools.
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