Michael Polanyi Center
The Michael Polanyi Center (MPC) at Baylor University, Texas, was the first intelligent design think-tank at a major research university[1], primarily to host William Dembski, its director, and Bruce L. Gordon, its assistant director. It was founded in 1999 by Baylor president Robert B. Sloan "with the primary aim of advancing the understanding of the sciences" and was named for Michael Polanyi. It hosted a conference in April 2000 that brought the center to the attention of the broader Baylor community as well as the rest of the scholarly world.
Controversy
In April 2000, a controversy arose at Baylor University in Texas over the right of academics to dissent from Darwinian orthodoxy. The Michael Polanyi Center had been established six months earlier by the university administration to promote research on the conceptual foundations of science. However, when the Center sponsored a major international conference that included two Nobel Prize winners, a controversy erupted when faculty learned that the Center's director, William Dembski, was an outspoken critic of Darwinian evolution.[2]
Baylor's Faculty Senate immediately voted to close the Michael Polanyi Center, claiming that university president Robert Sloan had failed to obtain its approval before opening it. However, this had not been the practice up until then, and several other centers had been established without such approval in the past.[2]
References
- ↑ Marks Ii,Robert J; Dembski, William; Ewert, Winston (2017). Introduction To Evolutionary Informatics. World Scientific. ISBN 978-9813142138.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wells, Jonathan. Icons of evolution. Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing. ISBN 0-89526-200-2.
External links
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