Gerard Verschuuren


Gerard M. Verschuuren is a scientist, writer, speaker, and consultant, working at the interface of science, philosophy, and religion. He is a human biologist, specialized in human genetics, who also earned a doctorate in the philosophy of science, and studied and worked at universities in Europe and the United States. In 1994, he moved permanently to the United States, and lives now in the southern part of New Hampshire.

Studies and research

He began studying biology at Leiden University and specialized in human genetics at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, with a thesis on the statistical analysis of epigenetic variation in the Tellem skulls of Mali in comparison with the Kurumba tribe of Burkina Faso. After that, he became a participant of the six-member Human Adaptability Project team of the former Institute of Human Biology at Utrecht University Medical School, as part of the International Biological Program, studying the population genetics and adaptation of savannah populations in sub-saharan Africa based on research among the Fali in Cameroun, among the Dogon in Mali, and among the Fulbe in Chad.
Verschuuren also studied philosophy at Leiden University and wrote, under supervision of professor Marius Jeuken, a thesis on the impact of the Harvard philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead on research in biology. He further specialized in philosophy of science, in particular in philosophy of biology, at VU University Amsterdam. Verschuuren concluded his post-graduate studies with a doctoral thesis on the use of models in the sciences. In this work, he analyzes how all sciences use models, which are simplified replicas of the dissected original, made for research purposes by reducing the complexity of the original to a manageable model related to a soluble problem.
Verschuuren taught biology, biological anthropology, genetics, human genetics, statistics, philosophy, philosophy of biology, logic, and programming at Leiden University, Utrecht University, the Dutch Open University, Merrimack College, and Boston College. Currently, he focuses almost exclusively on writing, consulting, and on speaking engagements.

Educational work

Verschuuren became the leader of a team of textbook writers that developed three consecutive series of biology textbooks for high-schools and colleges under the names , , and . He also became a member of the College Admission Test team for biology in the Netherlands.
For those specifically interested in the philosophy of biology, he wrote four textbooks: , , , and .
To reach fellow scientists as well, he started in cooperation with the professors Cornelis Van :nl:Cees van Peursen|Peursen and Cornelis :nl:Cees Schuyt|Schuyt, both of Leiden University, an overseeing editorial board for the development of 25 books on the philosophy of science for 25 specific fields, written by experts in those fields, Nijhoff, Leiden,
.
During the 1970s, Verschuuren wrote a weekly column on breaking biological topics in the Volkskrant daily. He was a member of the editorial board of the Dutch philosophical magazine Wijsgerig Perspectief, for which he wrote several of its articles, and a member of the editorial board of the Dutch-Flemish magazine Streven, for which he also wrote articles and book reviews . All in all, he wrote many books and articles in Dutch on biological and philosophical issues .
In the 1980s, Verschuuren was an advisor to the , which published a voluminous overview of research and technology in 20 European countries, entitled . From 1985 until 1994, he was the editor-in-chief of the Dutch magazine :nl:Natuurwetenschap en Techniek|Natuurwetenschap en Techniek and publisher of the Dutch version of the Scientific American Library.

At the interface of science and religion

A practicing Catholic, Verschuuren is interested in the relationship between science and religion. It is his conviction that religion and science cannot be in conflict with each other and cannot be seen as a threat to each other, as long as both stay in their own territory, which prevents us from turning science into a pseudo-religion, or religion into a semi-science. Put in the words of Augustine of Hippo or Galileo Galilei, science reads the "Book of Nature" and religion reads the "Book of Scripture," for they both have the same Author, GOD.
From this perspective, grounded in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas, he has written several books: