Dwight H. Terry Lectureship

The Dwight H. Terry Lectureship, also known as the Terry Lectures, was established at Yale University in 1905 by a gift from Dwight H. Terry of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Its purpose is to engage both scholars and the public in a consideration of religion from a humanitarian point of view, in the light of modern science and philosophy. The subject matter has historically been similar to that of the Gifford Lectures in Scotland, and several lecturers have participated in both series.

Establishment

The 1905 deed of gift establishing the lectureship states:

The object of this foundation is not the promotion of scientific investigation and discovery, but rather the assimilation and interpretation of that which has been or shall be hereafter discovered, and its application to human welfare, especially by the building of the truths of science and philosophy into the structure of a broadened and purified religion. The founder believes that such a religion will greatly stimulate intelligent effort for the improvement of human conditions and the advancement of the race in strength and excellence of character. To this end it is desired that a series of lectures be given by men eminent in their respective departments, on ethics, the history of civilization and religion, biblical research, all sciences and branches of knowledge which have an important bearing on the subject, all the great laws of nature, especially of evolution ... also such interpretations of literature and sociology as are in accord with the spirit of this foundation, to the end that the Christian spirit may be nurtured in the fullest light of the world’s knowledge and that mankind may be helped to attain its highest possible welfare and happiness upon this earth.

Although commitment to the gift was made in 1905 it did not mature until 1923, which is when the first Terry lectures were held.

Lecture format

The lectures are free and open to the public. A single installment generally consists of four lectures by the same visiting scholar, given over the course of a month or less. Many of the lectures have been edited into books published by the Yale University Press, and remain in print to this day (see below). From 1999 to 2009 the lectures were recorded and posted on the Terry Lectures website as audio and/or video streams. Starting in 2008, recordings of the lectures have been made available via Yale's YouTube channel.

Past lectureship holders

• 1923–1924: John Arthur Thomson Concerning Evolution:
• 1924–1925: Henry Norris Russell Fate and Freedom:
• 1925–1926: William Ernest Hocking The Self: Its Body and Freedom:
• 1926–1927: Robert Andrews Millikan Evolution in Science and Religion:
• 1927–1928: William Brown Science and Personality:
• 1928–1929: James Young Simpson Nature: Cosmic, Human, and Divine:
• 1929–1930: William Pepperell Montague Belief Unbound: A Promethean Religion for the Modern World:
• 1930–1931: Hermann Weyl The Open World:
• 1931–1932: Arthur Holly Compton The Freedom of Man:
• 1932–1933: Herbert Spencer Jennings The Universe and Life:
• 1933–1934: John Dewey A Common Faith:
• 1934–1935: Joseph Needham Order and Life:
• 1935–1936: John Macmurray The Structure of Religious Experience:
• 1936–1937: Joseph Barcroft The Brain and Its Environment
• 1937–1938: Carl Gustav Jung Psychology and Religion:
• 1938–1939: Te Rangi Hīroa Anthropology and Religion:
• 1939–1940: Henry Ernest Sigerist Medicine and Human Welfare:
• 1940–1941: Alan Gregg The Furtherance of Medical Research
• 1941–1942: Reinhold Niebuhr
• 1942–1943: Alexander Dunlop Lindsay Religion, Science, and Society in the Modern World:
• 1942–1943: Jacques Maritain Education at the Crossroads:
• 1943–1944: George Washington Corner Ourselves Unborn: An Embryologist's Essay on Man:
• 1944–1945: Julius Seelye Bixler Conversations with an Unrepentant Liberal:
• 1945–1946: James Bryant Conant On Understanding Science:
• 1946–1947: Henri Frankfort
• 1946–1947: Charles Hartshorne The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God:
• 1947–1948: Alexander Stewart Ferguson
• 1948–1949: George Gaylord Simpson The Meaning of Evolution:
• 1949–1950: Erich Fromm Psychoanalysis and Religion:
• 1950–1951: Paul Johannes Tillich The Courage to Be:
• 1951–1952: Jerome Clarke Hunsaker Aeronautics at the Mid-Century:
• 1953–1954: Gordon Willard Allport Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality:
• 1954–1955: Pieter Geyl Use and Abuse of History:
• 1955–1956: Rebecca West The Court and the Castle: Some Treatments of a Recurrent Theme
• 1956–1957: Errol Eustace Harris The Idea of God in Modern Thought / Revelation Through Reason: Religion in the Light of Science and Philosophy:
• 1957–1958: Margaret Mead Continuities in Cultural Evolution:
• 1958–1959: Hermann Dörries Constantine and Religious Liberty:
• 1961–1962: Paul Ricoeur The Philosopher Before Symbols (published as Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation: )
• 1961–1962: Norbert Wiener Prolegomena to Theology
• 1962–1963: Michael Polanyi Man and Thought: A Symbiosis / The Tacit Dimension:
• 1963–1964: Walter J. Ong The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History:
• 1964–1965: James Munro Cameron Images of Authority: A Consideration of the Concept of Regnum and Sacerdotium:
• 1966–1967: Loren Eiseley
• 1967–1968: Clifford Geertz In Search of Islam: Religious Change in Indonesia / Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia:
• 1968–1969: Albert J. Reiss Jr. Civility and the Moral Order: The Police and the Public:
• 1971–1972: James Hillman Re-Visioning Psychology:
• 1973–1974: Father Theodore M. Hesburgh The Humane Imperative: A Challenge for the Year 2000:
• 1975–1976: David Baken And They Took Themselves Wives: Male Female Relations in the Bible
• 1976–1977: Philip Rieff
• 1977–1978: Hans Küng Freud and the Problem of God:
• 1978–1979: Adin Steinsaltz
• 1979–1980: Hans Jonas Technology and Ethics: The Imperative of Responsibility:
• 1985–1986: Stephen Jay Gould Darwin and Dr. Doolittle: ‘Just History’ as the Wellspring of Nature’s Order
• 1986–1987: Eric R. Kandel Cell and Molecular Biological Explorations of Learning and Memory
• 1988–1989: Joshua Lederberg Science and Modern Life
• 1993–1994: Walter J. Gehring Genetic Control of Development:
• 1996–1997 Rev. John Polkinghorne Belief in God in an Age of Science:
• 1998: David Hartman Struggling for the Soul of Israel: A Jewish Response to History:
• 1999: Bas C. Van Fraassen The Empirical Stance:
• 2000: Peter Singer One World: The Ethics and Politics of Globalization:
• 2001: Francisco J. Ayala From Biology to Ethics: An Evolutionist's View of Human Nature
• 2003: H.C. Erik Midelfort Exorcism and Enlightenment: Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of 18th-Century Germany:
• 2003: Mary Douglas Writing in Circles: Ring Composition as a Creative Stimulus:
• 2004 David Sloan Wilson Evolution for Everyone
• 2006 (Centennial Conference): Ronald L. Numbers Aggressors, Victims, and Peacemakers: Historical Actors in the Drama of Science and Religion
• 2006 (Centennial Conference): Kenneth R. Miller Darwin, God, and Dover: What the Collapse of 'Intelligent Design' Means for Science and for Faith in America
• 2006 (Centennial Conference): Alvin Plantinga Science and Religion: Why Does the Debate Continue?
• 2006 (Centennial Conference): Lawrence M. Krauss Religion vs. Science? From the White House to Classroom
• 2006 (Centennial Conference): Robert Wuthnow No Contradictions Here: Science, Religion, and the Culture of All Reasonable Possibilities
• 2006: Barbara Herrnstein Smith Natural Reflections: Human Cognition at the Nexus of Science and Religion "
• 2007: Ahmad Dallal Islam, Science, and the Challenge of History :
• 2008: Terry Eagleton Faith and Fundamentalism: Is Belief in Richard Dawkins Necessary for Salvation? :
• 2008: Donald S. Lopez, Jr. The Scientific Buddha: Past, Present, Future :
• 2009: Marilynne Robinson Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self :
• 2010: Joel Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams Cosmic Society: The New Universe and the Human Future :
• 2012: Keith Stewart Thomson Jefferson and Darwin: Science and Religion in Troubled Times
• 2013: Philip Kitcher Secular Humanism
• 2014: Wendy Doniger The Manipulation of Religion by the Sciences of Politics and Pleasure in Ancient India
• 2015: Janet Browne Becoming Darwin: History, Memory, and Biography
• 2016-17: Kwame Anthony Appiah The Anatomy of Religion
• 2017: Judith Farquhar Reality, Reason, and Action In and Beyond Chinese Medicine
• 2018: Thomas E. Lovejoy The World of the Born and the World of the Made: A New Vision of Our Emerald Planet
• 2022: Karen Barad Energetics of the Otherwise and the Material Force of Justice:   Diffractive Readings of Walter Benjamin and Quantum Physics
• 2024: Lorraine Daston Natural Disasters and the Question of Blame

See also

• Silliman Memorial Lectures

External links

• Official website
• Terry Lectures playlist on YouTube