The WoKers

Piet and Steven first met in the mid-nineties to discuss Piet's ideas about a book Steven had worked on years earlier. Since then, they have collaborated frequently and actively on the "science/life/values/contemplation" issues WoK explores. Photos and further personal information about them and their joint projects will be posted soon. Meanwhile, here are their short bio-pieces, and a link to other materials:

Piet Hut is an astrophysicist and the director of the Program for Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ. His interests range from (astro)physics and other natural sciences to computer science, cognitive science, and philosophy. While most of his published work is in the field of his specialty, computational astrophysics, he has also made contributions to various interdisciplinary forums. In addition, Piet has helped start several initiatives, such as the B612 Foundation, which aims at significantly altering the orbit of an asteroid, in a controlled manner, by 2015; MODEST, short for MOdeling DEnse STellar systems; and the Art of Computational Science, which widens the notion of `open source' to `open knowledge' and `open lab.'

Steven Tainer is a logician, philosopher and teacher of Eastern contemplative traditions, which he has studied intensively since 1970 with many Tibetan, Chinese and Korean masters. After practicing for a number of years in both mountain retreats and in (non-?) ordinary circumstances such as Silicon Valley, he began offering a range of meditation and internal yogic teachings and retreats to public groups. He also serves on the faculty of the Institute for World Religions in Berkeley, CA. His specialties are Indian Buddhist philosophy, the "Unity of the Three Traditions" in Chinese thought, Taoist yogic practice, and Ch'an contemplation. Working on behalf of his teachers, Steven is the coauthor or editor of over eighteen books on Buddhism and Taoism (including Dragon's Play, and Time, Space, Knowledge).