StoryCorps Interview (Yeager) 2011

StoryCorps interview. Interview by Douglas Yeager, December 11, 2011. 41 mins. audio. Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/48079

Interview by Douglas Yeager, December 11, 2011. Rolston finding his way to a calling in life. Beginnings in Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, amidst people who loved gospel and landscape. Studies in physics and mathematics, in theology, in philosophy of science. A lifetime of crooked lines, yet a certain straight course. The father of environmental ethics exploring new directions interpreting values in nature. Life has a logic, a capacity for creative genesis, and that opens up possibilities for religious interpretation. Early publications, rejected, later reprinted many times. Personal agenda, loving nature, turns out to be a global environmental crisis. Recollections of being awarded the Templeton Prize. Invitation to give Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh, came by surprise. But it gives Rolston an opportunity to present his views on the importance of , beyond , in biology, coded in DNA, yet limits to genetic explanation, for example, in ethical and religious explanations. Darwinian explanations are correct but incomplete. Three big bangs: the explosion that produced the universe, the explosion of life on Earth, and the explosion of mental powers in humans.