"Scientists of the Bhaktivedanta Institute examine key underlying concepts of the modern life sciences in light of India's age-old Vedic knowledge. With an introductory survey of the issues by the Institue's founder, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada."

Originally published in 1980 by the Los Angeles division of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. For more information on the first edition, and the most recent 2016 BBT edition, please click here.

Notes:
Chapter 1 "The Goal of Knowledge," features a lengthy conversation between Bhaktivedanta Swami and the University of California physicist Gregory Benford, originally published in "Perspectives on Bhaktivedanta Institute" (1979). Please click the UCI Faculty Profile button for more information on Benford's scientific background. 

A short biographical essay offering an overview of Benford's award winning carear as a science fiction writer can be found on his personal website:  www.gregorybenford.com/biography/

Benford would also present at the Bhaktivedanta Institute Second World Congress for the Synthesis of Science and Religion held January 1997 in Calcutta. Benford's two papers were subsequently published in the conference proceedings, Thoughts on the Synthesis of Science and Religion: Srila Prabhupada Birth Centenary Volume, edited by T. D. Signh and S. Bandyopadhyay (Calcutta: The Bhaktivedanta Institute, 2001).

In the chapter written by Benford with the title, "Srila Prabhupada As I Saw Him" (pp. 34–37), Benford notes that he creatively "mined the experience of meeting" Srila Prabhupada in Los Angeles during the 1970s, and he drew upon that for a section of his novel, In the Ocean of the Night (1977).

Benford's second presentation at the January 1997 conference was titled, "The Coming Biological Century" (pp. 497-516).