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| Science & Theology since Copernicus: The Search for Understanding
Excerpts from Peter Barrett's Science & Theology since Copernicus: The Search for Understanding
from the Preface:
I write as a retired physicist and member of the Anglican church, with a long standing interest in theology and in the missiological and ecumenical aspects of Christianity. Of course, one's background and experience colour one's approach and choice of material, but I hope that there is at least a coherence and unity in this version of a story that needs to be told more widely and developed further. I hope, too, that other scientists will enjoy as much as I have an encounter with some of the historical and philosophical aspects of science that we so often ignore, and that fellow Christians will relax and realise how unthreatening, even enriching, are scientific ideas to the heart of the Christian faith!
(Finally) I have taken the liberty of bringing into the last part of the book some of my own thinking about a trinitarian cosmology - a world-view which is concerned with the search for the transcendental values of truth, goodness and beauty. The search for beauty (often neglected by theologians - forms a key part of the human quest for life in all its fullness and is therefore, perhaps, a place where people can affirm and make common cause with those of other cultures and beliefs.
from The Scientific Revolution and its Background:
It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century, towards the end of the Renaissance, introducing a new understanding of the natural world. 'Is it not evident in these last hundred years .... that almost a new Nature has been reveal'd to us?' wrote the poet John Dryden in 1668, even before the arrival of Newtonian cosmology. What was this revolutionary modern science and what were the underlying factors, both within and beyond Europe, that encouraged its emergence then and there? These are questions that have led to a large body of scholarship since the early years of the 20th century.
The central features of the new science have been listed as: the mechanistic model of nature; the emphasis on unprejudiced observation; and the deliberate setting up of experiments designed to focus on a limited aspect of nature and seek answers to precise questions, seeking where possible to formulate mathematical descriptions of nature's phenomena, without reference to notions of first causes or ultimate purposes. Science historian Alexandre Koyre regarded the birth of modern science as essentially the transition from the world of the 'more-or-less' to the universe of precision.
For Koyre the transition signalled too a change in world-view, of which modern physical science was at once the expression and the fruit. Fundamental propositions such as the principle of inertia and Newton's second law of motion took their place in the framework of a larger transition, a fundamentally new overall conception of motion. And this transition, in its turn, could only take place in the even wider framework of a new conception of the universe itself. He referred to this transition as an 'intellectual mutation', the change from movement as a goal-oriented process to movement as a value-neutral state of a body.
What then were the main causes and circumstances of this landmark in human history if it is to be regarded as not simply a spontaneous 'intellectual mutation'? Or, to put it in the negative form of the question pursued by the renowned sinologist Joseph Needham during the period 1954-1981: What, if anything, can we learn about the causes of the Scientific Revolution by considering the fact that modern science did not emerge in any of the other great civilizations of the past, especially those of China, India and the Islamic world? This is a complex and wide ranging question - one of the great questions facing historians, claimed Needham - and it begs answers in terms of attitudes towards the natural world on the one hand and socio-economic factors on the other. It has been stimulated by the multi-faceted comparative approach that Needham brought to it as he immersed himself sympathetically in a culture vastly different from his own, for which he became an ardent advocate.
from The Significance of the Scientific Revolution:
The Scientific Revolution was in some ways the final expression of the Renaissance - that rebirth of culture that has been described as the most amazing bursting forth of new life and vitality the West had seen for a thousand years. For example, it has been persuasively argued that there is a vital connection between the tradition of Hermetic magic in the Renaissance and the emergence of early modern science. Nevertheless, the latter ushered in an essentially new and very different way of thinking about the world, contributing to the overall sense of rapid change that was a central feature of the late 17th century.
For two thousand years the general appearance of the world and the activities of men had varied astonishingly little .... so much so that men were not conscious of either progress or process in history .... Now, however, change became so quick as to be perceptible with the naked eye, and the face of the earth and the activities of men were to alter more in a century than they had previously done in a thousand years.
Butterfield describes this period as one of the great episodes in human experience when new things are brought into the world and into history out of men's own creativity, and their own wrestlings with truth. Furthermore, it was part of a more general and complex process of rapid change, combining with other factors to create what we call the modern world. In the earlier decades of the twentieth century historians have often been tempted to think of the modern world as the product of the Renaissance as a whole, failing to realize the radical nature of the changes implicit in the new science itself. Indeed, there emerged from the 17th century
a kind of Western civilisation which when transmitted to Japan operates on tradition there as it operates on tradition here (in Europe) - dissolving it and having eyes for nothing save a future of brave new worlds. It was a civilization that could cut itself away from the Graeco-Roman heritage in general, away from Christianity itself - only too confident in its power to exist independent of anything of the kind. We know now that what was emerging towards the end of the 17th century was a civilization exhilaratingly new perhaps, but strange as Ninevah and Babylon. That is why, since the rise of Christianity, there is no landmark in history that is worthy to be compared with this.
What that landmark helped to launch was a colossal secularization of thought in every possible realm of ideas, following the extraordinarily strong religious character of much of 17th century thought.
from Early Controversies over Darwin's Theory:
The conflict was promoted by two books of the late 19th century, J W Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875) and A D White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). Since then the idea of direct contradiction between the two disciplines has often been fostered by the media in their predilection for combative debate. Recent scholarship, on the other hand, has revealed a far more complex and interesting interaction. There was no concerted organizing into separate science and religion camps. On the contrary, a large number of learned men - some scientists, some theologians, some who were both, all of whom were religious - experienced various differences among themselves. Altogether the debate was more subdued and unpolarized than generally supposed.
At the outset there was considerable questioning of the substance of Darwin's theory - a theory which assumed that evolutionary change occurred gradually, over vast stretches of time, with natural selection as the chief mechanism. Apart from the doubt raised by Lord Kelvin's estimate of the age of the earth - a mere 100 million years rather than the much longer period assumed by geologists - it was not clear that variations within a species could accumulate to the extent claimed by Darwin, for even within the highly selective process of artificial breeding the degree of change achieved was limited. Besides, the long established idea of the fixity of species died hard. Nor, was it entirely plausible that natural selection was the sole or chief mechanism responsible for evolutionary change. Thomas Huxley, for example, was passionate in his support for Darwin, especially for the latter's naturalism, but he also supported the claim of Darwin's step-cousin, Francis Galton, that evolution occurs not only by slow gradual change but also by 'a series of changes in jerks', in response to extremes of living conditions. As already mentioned, other critics pointed to the likelihood of the swamping of useful variations through interbreeding with members of the species which lacked them, and to the absence of supporting evidence in the fossil record.
But it was Darwin's way of constructing his theory that seemed to arouse the strongest criticism from scientists. The accepted way of doing science was that urged by Francis Bacon two centuries earlier, that is, to gather facts widely and then let them suggest a generalization - a law of nature inferred directly from the data. This inductive method was regarded in Darwin's time as the way to obtain certain knowledge of the material world. Fellow scientists felt that Darwin had ignored this path and turned to rather wild hypothesising. He was offering an ambitiously far-reaching model without producing any hard evidence of the transmutation of species. The critics wanted proof.
What then was Darwin's approach? He was certainly a patient observer of nature, but not simply a fact gatherer. His path toward natural selection consisted of a complex and highly creative process in which ideas were synthesized into a general hypothesis which was then tested in various ways against his array of observations and experimental data. Thus he followed to a large extent the so-called hypothetico-deductive method, which is used in much of modern science. This involves crucially the scientist's well-informed imagination to create the hypothesis and then deduce tests of its validity.
from Epistemic Aspects:
Generally speaking, scientist-theologians regard these disciplines as providing together the data and insights needed for a cogent unified account of the world - a world that is assumed to be real and the bearer of meaning. They tend to hold to a philosophical view of the nature of knowledge known as critical realism, one of the three epistemic approaches described below...
The philosophical movement of logical positivism (or logical empiricism) became fashionable in Western thought during the early part of the 20th century. Following Kant, logical positivists distinguished between analytic statements (those which are necessary and certain simply because they are tautologous, such as 'All bachelors are unmarried') and synthetic statements (those expressing something about the empirical world, such as 'The sun sets at ten past six'). The latter are statements capable of verification via some sense experience, at least in principle. All statements not falling within these two groups were regarded as meaningless, incapable of being either true or false - and this included much of metaphysics, ethics and theology.
AJ (Sir Alfred) Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (1936) was a classic statement of logical positivism in its most aggressive and iconoclastic phase. At that time Ayer was able to dispense with the existence of God in a few pages. He was not even an atheist, he said. How could one deny the existence of God if one did not even know what the word 'God' meant? Fifty years later, when asked what he regarded as the main defects of logical positivism he replied 'Well, I suppose the most important of the defects was that nearly all of it was false'. He still held to a weak form of the verification principle in which (rather vaguely) the appeal was made to some sort of ideal observer to do the verifying. He added that it is possible that the existence of God can be claimed as an explanatory hypothesis, but that in his own experience it explained nothing.
The assertions of logical positivism continue to ripple through popular consciousness and it is not unusual to hear of the existence of God discussed as a matter that needs firm scientific verification, sought as a prerequisite to religious belief. However, the analytic/synthetic distinction and the verification principle have been rigorously challenged and found wanting. Furthermore this once fashionable epistemic view sidelines much of the metaphysics, ethics and theology that constitute domains of human life and thought that seem central to our understanding of what it means to be human. Consequently it has very largely faded from the philosophical scene that it has enriched, having brought a fresh awareness of the need for clarity and precision in the use of language - an insistence on explaining exactly what one means and on analyzing the meanings of terms used, especially a profound term like 'God'.
from Toward a Trinitarian Cosmology:
It seems reasonable to suppose that if this magnificent creation has been designed to bring forth kenosis, that very quality must lie at the heart of the divine nature. Can we then begin to create a metaphysical scheme that will embrace the entire complexity hierarchy (including the level of the divine) in all its being and becoming?
In his superb exploration of the nature of creativity and its costliness - shown above all in the ongoing creation of the world - W H Vanstone devotes a chapter to the 'kenosis of God', a phrase that contains something of the limitlessness, the vulnerability and the precariousness of authentic love. The universe - the totality of being for which God gives himself in love - is costly to the creator. Taking the graciousness of God as axiomatic, he argues that such graciousness does not hold back any reserves of power or wisdom or love. All is poured out into the creating and sustaining of the world and the bearing of all consequences. This suggests, then, the axiom:
The Lord God creates with utmost love
which is consonant with Temple's notion of power in complete subordination to love and gives room to the traditional Christian doctrine of God as both source and sustainer of the created order.
But is such a single axiomatic statement sufficient? Is it too inclusive, covering all manner of cosmologies? Before attempting to answer this, we consider briefly the notion of restricting the range of applicability of a theory, a good example of which occurred in the development of particle physics in the early 1970s, based on principles of symmetry. Steven Weinberg explains it thus: In this kind of fundamental physics we do not want a theory that is as flexible as possible, capable of describing all imaginable kinds of force among the particles of nature. Rather, we hope for a theory that rigidly will allow us to describe only those forces that actually, as it happens, exist. Now, symmetry principles can give rise to a variety of theories, many of which are complicated. When, however, the very precise restriction is introduced that whatever infinities arise in the calculations must all cancel, this is found to impose a high degree of simplicity on the equations. Together with careful use of symmetry, this restriction went a long way to giving a unique shape to the 'standard model' of elementary particles. Physicists instinctively felt that thereby they had acquired a tighter grasp on that part of physical reality.
As in the case of particle physics, we do not want a highly flexible metaphysical 'theory of everything', capable, perhaps, of forming some sort of fit with most of the major religions of the world. Such a theory would be too general to have much meaning. Therefore we look for a restriction or modifying axiom that would make for a much closer fit with the insights of a particular religious tradition - Christianity in this case - a statement that follows on from the above axiom. For example, to allow for more than mere neural promptings towards kenotic behaviour,
The Lord God reveals (the divine nature and purpose) with utmost love
and, to include the idea of not only the being but also the becoming and ultimate fulfilment of the created order,
The Lord God perfects (the creation) with utmost love,
in line with the affirmation, 'Behold, I am making all things new'.
If we allow our three-fold axiomatic declaration to conjure up a vision of tender divine invitation and the awe and joy of creaturely response to a radiant beauty crowned with thorns and crucified, this would bring us toward the heart and meaning of Christianity's trinitarian doctrine of God. Such a vision can, reflexively, illuminate and add profound depth to the three statements.
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Table of Contents for Science & Theology since Copernicus: The Search for Understanding by Peter Barrett
Introduction
Historical Phases of Natural Science 4
Historical Phases of Natural Theology 5
Roles and Limits of Science and Theology 9
The Scientific Revolution
The Medieval World-View 12
The Scientific Revolution and its Background 14
Nicolaus Copernicus 24
Johannes Kepler 28
Galileo Galilei 31
Francis Bacon 37
Rene Descartes 40
Robert Boyle 44
Isaac Newton 49
The Significance of the Scientific Revolution 55
Natural History
Early Natural History and Deism 60
Carl Linnaeus 65
Comte de Buffon 66
Chevalier de Lamarck 70
Georges Cuvier 74
James Hutton 76
William Buckland 78
Adam Sedgwick 80
Charles Lyell 81
Charles Darwin 85
Darwin's Theory of Evolution 92
Controversies over Darwin's Theory 96
The Elaboration of Darwin's Theory 106
The Evolving Universe
Classical Physics 110
The New Physics 111
Particle Physics/Cosmology/Complexity Theory 112
A 'Theory of Everything' 123
Features of the Evolving Universe 124
Anthropic Principle 126
Chance and Necessity 127
Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics 128
Hierarchy of Levels of Complexity 129
The present Science-Theology discourse
The Challenge of New Knowledge 131
Epistemic Aspects 133
Divine Temporality/ Action/ Kenosis 140
A Theistic Cosmology 149
Toward a Trinitarian Cosmology 151
Beginning of Humanity; Fulfilment of Universe 154
Doctrine of Creation in the Light of Beauty 159
Beauty on Every Scale 163
Future agenda 166
Notes/Bibliography/Index 170-204
ISBN: 1 86888 148 2
Publisher: Unisa Press, PO Box 392, Unisa, Pretoria 0003, South Africa
Publication date: November 2000
Peter Barrett is Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa and Co-organizer of South African Science & Religion Forum.
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Published 2003.01.23
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