Book published by SCIO staff member, Dr Michael Burdett

Dr Michael Burdett emmaus.org

Dr Michael Burdett. Image source emmaus.org

SCIO is delighted to announce the publication of Dr Michael Burdett’s book, Eschatology and the Technological Future (Routledge, 2015). Michael has been involved with the work of SCIO since 2008. He was a Junior Dean for the SSO programme 2008–2010 and Lecturer in Philosophy and Theology 2011–2013. He has played a significant role in the development of SCIO’s research in science and religion in recent years. From 2011–2013 he was the Junior Research Fellow for the Balancing Perspectives project funded by the John Templeton Foundation and is now Postdoctoral Fellow and Project Coordinator for the Bridging Two Cultures Project’ funded by the Templeton Religion Trust.

Michael’s book is based on his doctoral research on religion and technology. Michael comments:

‘The work originally arosCover imagee out of a personal desire to bring together my two vocations as an engineer and theologian. As I surveyed the literature, I found very little that explicitly brought into conversation Christian eschatology and our contemporary preoccupation with the apparent technological future. This book seeks to contextualize the growing literature on the cultural, philosophical, and religious implications of technological growth by considering technological futurisms such as transhumanism in the context of the long historical tradition of technological dreaming. I trace the latent religious sources of our contemporary technological imagination by looking at visionary approaches to technology and the future in seminal technological utopias and science fiction. I then draw on past theological responses to the technological future to arrive at a contemporary Christian response based around the themes of possibility and promise.’

Further information on Michael’s research can be found at  academia.edu.

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