Ursula Goodenough
Encyclopedia
Ursula W. Goodenough is a Professor of Biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

 at Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...

 and author of the best selling book Sacred Depths of Nature. This highly regarded book has resulted in her teaching the paradigm of Religious Naturalism
Religious naturalism
Religious naturalism is an approach to spirituality that is devoid of supernaturalism. The focus is on the religious attributes of the universe/Nature, the understanding of it and our response to it . These provide for the development of an eco-morality...

 and the Epic of Evolution
Epic of Evolution
The phrase Epic of Evolution represents an attempt to create a mythic narrative aimed at reconciling religious and scientific views of cosmic evolution, biological evolution, and sociocultural evolution. According to Taylor's Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, it is…-History:The term "Epic of...

 around the world and also her participation in television productions on PBS and The History Channel
The History Channel
History, formerly known as The History Channel, is an American-based international satellite and cable TV channel that broadcasts a variety of reality shows and documentary programs including those of fictional and non-fictional historical content, together with speculation about the future.-...

, as well as NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

 radio broadcasting. In December 2009, Goodenough began participating in a National Public Radio blog Cosmos And Culture.

Background

Goodenough earned her M.A. in zoology
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...

 from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 and in 1969 she completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. Goodenough was an assistant and associate professor of biology at Harvard from 1971-1978 before moving to Washington University where she wrote three editions of a widely adopted textbook, Genetics. Goodenough joined the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science
Institute on Religion in an Age of Science
The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science is a non-denominational society that promotes and facilitates the ongoing dialectic between religion and science. Both members of IRAS and non-members congregate at the IRAS conference held annually at Star Island in New Hampshire.-History:IRAS...

 (IRAS) in 1989 and served continuously on its council and as its president for four years. She also served as president and is a member of The American Society for Cell Biology
The American Society for Cell Biology
American Society for Cell Biology is a learned society that was founded in 1960.Its mission statement states:- History :On 6 April 1959 the United States National Academy of Sciences passed a resolution for the establishment of a "national society of cell biology to act as a national...

. She has presented papers and seminars on science and religion to numerous audiences, co-chaired three IRAS conferences on Star Island, and serves on the editorial board of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.

Family

Goodenough believes that the critical success factor for women balancing the demands of raising children and developing a career is knowing that you can do both. She says that realizing that a child's development are influenced by many people in their lives other than their mother has helped her achieve both her personal and professional goals. She is the mother of five children: Jason, Mathea, Jessica, Thomas, and James.

Science & Spirit describes her as a warm, brilliant and embracing woman, [whose] contradictions make up a harmonious whole – sort of like nature itself, and describes her book as a poetic and accessible bestseller.

The Epic of Evolution

Goodenough taught a junior/senior level cell biology
Cell biology
Cell biology is a scientific discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level...

 course at Washington University for many years. Recently she has helped to begin a new 200-level course that is cross-listed under biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...

, physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 and earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 and planetary sciences—The Epic of Evolution. The course is team-taught by Goodenough and fellow Washington University professors Clifford Will, Ph.D., professor of physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

 and Michael E. Wysession
Michael E. Wysession
Michael E. Wysession is currently an Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and author of numerous science textbooks with Pearson Education and Prentice Hall. He earned his Sc.B. from Brown University in 1980 and his Ph.D...

, Ph.D., associate professor of earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

 and planetary sciences. Bernard brings his expertise in physics, Goodenough her insight into cell
Cell (biology)
The cell is the basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. It is the smallest unit of life that is classified as a living thing, and is often called the building block of life. The Alberts text discusses how the "cellular building blocks" move to shape developing embryos....

 and molecular biology
Molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...

 and Wysession his knowledge of geophysics to the course. The idea is for students to contemplate the wide arch of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

 from The Big Bang and the subsequent expansion of the universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...

 to the origins and progression of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...

 on Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

. The course is predicated upon presenting the science of evolution along with challenging students to interpret the ways evolution has impacted other parts of life. Much of the inspiration of the course is drawn from Goodenough's work linking science with religion and philosophy through numerous publications and organizations of national symposia.

Use of the term ‘religious naturalism’ was initiated after Edward O. Wilson used it in his 1978 book On Human Nature. Loyal Rue, who was also familiar with the term from Brightman's book begin using it the 1990s. Subsequent conversations between Rue and Goodenough [both of whom were active in IRAS (The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science)] led to Goodenough's use of it in her book The Sacred Depths of Nature and by Rue in Religion is not about God and other writings. Since 1994 numerous authors have used the phrase or expressed similar thinking. Examples are: Chet Raymo, Stuart Kauffman and Karl Peters.

An Epic of Evolution Journal was published from 1998 till 2000 with articles by noted authors — Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Jennifer Morgan, Connie Barlow, and Goodenough. She makes frequent use of the term and uses it to extrapolate from the concept of evolution to a guiding belief for mankind. She writes in Sacred Depths – "Emerging Religious Beliefs: When the responses elicited by the Epic of Evolution are gathered together several religious principles emerge that I can believe, serve as a framework for a global Ethos
Ethos
Ethos is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Early Greek stories of...

". She continues – "Theologian Philip Hefner offers us a weaving metaphor. The tapestry maker first strings the warp, long strong fibers anchoring firmly to the loom, and then interweaves the welt, the pattern, the color, the art. The epic of evolution is our warp, destined to endure, commanding our universal gratitude, and reverence and commitment."

Concerning the Epic of Evolution, she writes “the epic is a fantastic myth that happens to be true of the material Universe”.”We do have something of a story here, a true story, that we can work with religiously should we elect to do so." “The Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context. Moreover, responses to this story — what we are calling religious naturalism — can yield deep and abiding spiritual experiences. And then, after that, we need other stories as well, human-centered stories, a mythos that embodies our ideals and our passions.”

Religious naturalism

The paradigm of religious naturalism
Religious naturalism
Religious naturalism is an approach to spirituality that is devoid of supernaturalism. The focus is on the religious attributes of the universe/Nature, the understanding of it and our response to it . These provide for the development of an eco-morality...

 began evolving in the late 1940s but did not attract attention until the 1990s when Goodenough and others such as Loyal Rue
Loyal Rue
Dr. Loyal D. Rue is professor of religion and philosophy at Luther College of Decorah, Iowa , and focuses on naturalistic theories of religion.He has been awarded two John Templeton Foundation fellowships....

  and Jerome A. Stone
Jerome A. Stone
Jerome Stone—author, philosopher, and theologian—is best known for helping to develop the religious movement of Religious Naturalism. Dr. Stone is on the Adjunct Faculty of Meadville Lombard Theological School; is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at William Rainey Harper College; is in Preliminary...

  began writing about it. Goodenough has supplied major postulates to this evolving concept, such as – Nature is Sacred; Credo of Continuation: Covenant with Mystery; Global Ethos; and Shared Worldview. She has also contributed to the development of The Epic of Evolution and Emergence that are part of the basic doctrine.

Goodenough on religious naturalism - “I profess my Faith. For me, the existence of all this complexity and awareness and intent and beauty, and my ability to apprehend it, serves as the ultimate meaning and the ultimate value. The continuation of life reaches around, grabs its own tail, and forms a sacred circle that requires no further justification, no Creator, no super-ordinate meaning of meaning, no purpose other than that the continuation continue until the sun collapses or the final meteor collides. I confess a credo of continuation. And in so doing, I confess as well a credo of human continuation”.,

Goodenough is probably the best known influential thinker on Religious Naturalism. She lays out some of her own concepts on it in her NPR blog . Phil Mullin in an essay summarizes major themes in Goodenough's book and
several of her shorter publications. He describes her religious naturalism and her effort to forge a global ethos grounded in her penetrating account of nature. He suggests parallels between her deep accounts of nature and Michael Polanyi's ideas
Michael Polanyi
Michael Polanyi, FRS was a Hungarian–British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and the theory of knowledge...

. Michael Lotti also points out her desire for a global ethos and to develop Religious Naturalism from the sacredness in nature. He adds that although Goodenough does not believe in a personal god, she never criticizes those who do. Goodenough in Naturalizing Morality defines her concept of mindfulness and morality for Religious Naturalism. The individual perspectives on religious naturalism of Loyal Rue
Loyal Rue
Dr. Loyal D. Rue is professor of religion and philosophy at Luther College of Decorah, Iowa , and focuses on naturalistic theories of religion.He has been awarded two John Templeton Foundation fellowships....

, Donald A. Crosby
Donald A. Crosby
Donald Allen Crosby is currently Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Colorado State University and Adjunct Instructor in the philosophy department at Florida State University. Crosby's interests focus on metaphysics, American pragmatism, philosophy of nature, existentialism, and philosophy of...

, Jerome A. Stone
Jerome A. Stone
Jerome Stone—author, philosopher, and theologian—is best known for helping to develop the religious movement of Religious Naturalism. Dr. Stone is on the Adjunct Faculty of Meadville Lombard Theological School; is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at William Rainey Harper College; is in Preliminary...

, and Goodenough are discussed by Michael Hogue in his 2010 book The Promise of Religious Naturalism.

Dalai Lama

In 2002, Ursula Goodenough was a member of a five-scientist panel invited by the Mind and Life Institute
Mind and Life Institute
The Mind and Life Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the relationship of science and Buddhism as methodologies in understanding the nature of reality...

 as part of an ongoing series of seminars on Western science for His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama and his inner circle of monk-scholars. Previous seminars explored particle physics and neuroscience. This was the Dalai Lama’s first foray into cellular biology. Goodenough found him a quick study:"He’s very interested in science and really wants to understand this stuff. We’d been told that he knew about DNA and proteins, but when I started it became clear that he had very little background. Of course, one is left to wonder how many of the world’s leaders understand DNA protein.” Goodenough was joined by scientists Stuart Kauffman
Stuart Kauffman
Stuart Alan Kauffman is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth...

, Per Luigi Luisi, Steven Chu
Steven Chu
Steven Chu is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and...

 and Eric Lander
Eric Lander
Eric Steven Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career toward realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. He is co-chair of U.S...

 on her next trip to India. Goodenough was invited back to Dharamsala, India to lecture again in 2005.

Current research

Goodenough and colleagues are studying the molecular basis and evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

 of life-cycle transitions in the flagellated green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is a single celled green alga about 10 micrometres in diameter that swims with two flagella. They have a cell wall made of hydroxyproline-rich glycoproteins, a large cup-shaped chloroplast, a large pyrenoid, and an "eyespot" that senses light.Although widely distributed...

. They have cloned genes
Gênes
Gênes is the name of a département of the First French Empire in present Italy, named after the city of Genoa. It was formed in 1805, when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied the Republic of Genoa. Its capital was Genoa, and it was divided in the arrondissements of Genoa, Bobbio, Novi Ligure, Tortona and...

 in the mating-type (mt) locus and genes regulated by mt that control the transition between vegetative growth and gametic differentiation and zygote
Zygote
A zygote , or zygocyte, is the initial cell formed when two gamete cells are joined by means of sexual reproduction. In multicellular organisms, it is the earliest developmental stage of the embryo...

 development. These include genes responsible for mate recognition, uniparental inheritance of chloroplast
Chloroplast
Chloroplasts are organelles found in plant cells and other eukaryotic organisms that conduct photosynthesis. Chloroplasts capture light energy to conserve free energy in the form of ATP and reduce NADP to NADPH through a complex set of processes called photosynthesis.Chloroplasts are green...

 DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...

, and gametic differentiation, allowing them to study their function and their evolution during speciation
Speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. The biologist Orator F. Cook seems to have been the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or 'cladogenesis,' as opposed to 'anagenesis' or 'phyletic evolution' occurring within lineages...

.This work has led to looking at Chlamydomonas as a potential for producing algal biodiesel as a transportation fuel. Her lab will attempt to enhance triacylglycerol biosynthesis production via genetic manipulation.

Fellowship of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Dr. Ursula Goodenough was elected a Fellow in 2009 in to Section 2 – Cellular and Development Biology, Microbiology and Immunology (including Genetics)

Founded in 1780, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has elected as members the finest minds and most influential leaders from each generation, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the eighteenth century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. Members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs. Current membership is about 4,000 American Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members which includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Works

Books:
Publications:
  • Lee, J-H., S. Waffenschmidt, L. Small, and U.W. Goodenough. 2007. Between-species analysis of short-repeat modules in cell wall and sex-related hydroxyproline-righ glycoproteins of Chlamydomonas. Plant Physiol. 144: 1813-1826.
  • Lin, H., and U.W. Goodenough. 2007. Gametogenesis in the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii minus mating type is controlled by two genes, MID and MTD1. Genetics 176: 913-925.
  • Ferris, P.J., S. Waffenschmidt, J.G. Umen, H. Lin, J-H Lee, K. Ishida, T. Kubo, J. Lau, and U.W. Goodenough. 2005. Plus and minus sexual agglutinins from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Plant Cell 17: 597-615.
  • Umen, J.G., and U. W. Goodenough. 2001. Chloroplast DNA methylation and inheritance in Chlamydomonas. Genes & Development 15: 2585-2597.
  • Umen, J.G., and U.W. Goodenough. 2001. Control of cell division by a retinoblastoma protein homolog in Chlamydomonas. Genes & Development 15: 1652-1661.
  • Ferris, P.J., and U.W. Goodenough. 1994. The mating-type locus of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii contains highly rearranged DNA sequences. Cell 76, 1135-1145.
  • Ambrust, E.V., P.J. Ferris, and U.W. Goodenough. 1993. A mating type-linked gene cluster expressed in Chlamydomonas participates in the uniparental inheritance of the chloroplast genome. Cell 74:801-811.

Further reading

  • 2010 – Michael Hogue – The Promise of Religious Naturalism, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Sept.16, 2010, ISBN 0742562611
  • 2009 – Willem B. Drees
    Willem B. Drees
    In 2009 Willem B. Drees assumed the editorship of Zygon, Journal of Religion & Science the leading journal of religion and science in the world . It is available in 3,000 academic libraries all over the world and publishes 1000 pages of peer reviewed articles annually...

     - Religion and Science in Context: A Guide to the Debates Routledge; 1 edition, October 16, 2009, ISBN 9780415556170
  • 2008 – Michael Dowd
    Michael Dowd
    Michael Dowd is an American evolutionary theologian, bestselling author, and evangelist for Big History and Religious Naturalism....

     – Thank God for Evolution:, Viking (June 2008), ISBN 0670020451
  • 2008 – Jerome A. Stone
    Jerome A. Stone
    Jerome Stone—author, philosopher, and theologian—is best known for helping to develop the religious movement of Religious Naturalism. Dr. Stone is on the Adjunct Faculty of Meadville Lombard Theological School; is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at William Rainey Harper College; is in Preliminary...

     - Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative, State University of New York Press
    State University of New York Press
    The State University of New York Press , is a university press and a Center for Scholarly Communication. The Press is part of the State University of New York system and is located in Albany, New York.- History :...

    , December 2008, ISBN 0791475387
  • 2006 – John Haught
    John Haught
    John F. Haught is a Roman Catholic theologian and Senior Research Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University. His area of expertise is systematic theology, with a special interest in issues of science, cosmology, ecology, and reconciling evolution and religion...

     – Is Nature Enough?, Cambridge University Press (May 31, 2006), ISBN 0521609933
  • 2006 – Loyal Rue
    Loyal Rue
    Dr. Loyal D. Rue is professor of religion and philosophy at Luther College of Decorah, Iowa , and focuses on naturalistic theories of religion.He has been awarded two John Templeton Foundation fellowships....

     – Religion Is Not About God, Rutgers University Press, July 24, 2006, ISBN 0813539552

External links

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