Science & Religion: A Critical Survey - Softcover

Rolston, Holmes

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1599470993 ISBN 13: 9781599470993

Verlag: TEMPLETON FOUNDATION PR, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

This landmark book, first published in 1987, is now back in print, with a new introduction by its award-winning author. An interdisciplinary approach to the central themes of scientific and religious thought, this book was widely heralded upon its publication for the richness and depth of its contribution to the science and religion dialogue.

 

“notable for its breadth and depth . . . filled with admirably argued and powerfully presented treatments of critical issues.”—Joseph Pickle, Colorado College, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science

 

“a superb and subtle book.”—David Foxgrover, Christian Century

 

“a monumental work . . . [T]he book is truly outstanding.”—John H. Wright, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley, Theological Studies

 

“Rolston’s presentation of the methods of science, along with up-to-date summaries of the main achievements of the various sciences, is commendable for its clarity and critical acumen.”—Choice

 

According to Holmes Rolston III, there are fundamental questions that science alone cannot answer; these questions are the central religious questions. He uses the scientific method of inquiry to distill key issues from science, and then he integrates them in a study that begins with matter and moves through life, mind, culture, history, and spirit. Incorporating religious and scientific worldviews, he begins with an examination of two natural sciences: physics and biology. He then extrapolates examples from two human sciences: psychology and sociology. Next, he moves to the storied universe and world history, raising and addressing religious questions. “Never in the histories of science and religion have the

opportunities been greater for fertile interaction between these fields, with mutual benefits to both,” states Rolston. The re-publication of this book provides current researchers and students in the field an invaluable, timeless methodological resource.The new introduction offers updated insights based on new scientific research. 

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Holmes Rolston III is a world-renowned philosopher, widely recognized as the father of environmental ethics as a modern academic discipline. The winner of the Templeton Prize in 2003 and the Mendel Medal in 2005, he currently holds the position of University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Colorado State University. Rolston is associate editor of the journal Environmental Ethics and serves on the editorial boards of a number of other journals. He is the author of six books that have won acclaim in both academic journals and the mainstream press.

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SCIENCE & RELIGION

A Critical Survey

By HOLMES ROLSTON III

Templeton Foundation Press

Copyright © 1987 Holmes Rolston III
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59947-099-3

Contents

Preface....................................................................
vii
Introduction to the 2006 Edition. Human Uniqueness and Human 
Responsibility: Science and Religion in a New Millennium...................
xi
Chapter 1. Methods in Scientific and Religious Inquiry.....................
1
Chapter 2. Matter: Religion and the Physical Sciences......................
33
Chapter 3. Life: Religion and the Biological Sciences......................
81
Chapter 4. Mind: Religion and the Psychological Sciences...................
151
Chapter 5. Culture: Religion and the Social Sciences.......................
198
Chapter 6. Nature and History..............................................
238
Chapter 7. Nature, History, and God........................................
297
Index......................................................................
349

CHAPTER 1

Methods in Scientificand Religious Inquiry

To have a method is to have a disciplined mode of "following after" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII])truth, and in science and religion alike one intends an orderly approach to understanding,to be a methodise, but procedures in the two fields may seem very differentand even incompatible. In this overview we will broadly assess their operation so asto see whether and how far they are related or opposed. Lest the diversity in religionprove overwhelming, the plan here is to consult mainly Western theistic belief, itselfdiverse enough, as it has developed in interaction with the sciences, which have adiversity almost equal to that in theism. Despite the pluralism, these two greatepistemic lines in the West are cousins, at once kindred and independent. Whatfollows is partly a description characteristic of science and theology, but, so far asI choose good science and good religion for models, it is a prescription of how inquirythere ought to be done, perhaps not always, but at least in the present state of thesearts.

The thesis that will emerge is that in generic logical form science and religion,when done well, are more alike than is often supposed, especially at their cores. Animplication of this is that positivistic and scientistic views that exalt science anddowngrade religion involve serious misunderstanding of the nature of both scientificand religious methods. At the same time, in material content, science and religiontypically offer alternative interpretations of experience, the scientific interpretationbeing based on causality, the religious interpretation based on meaning. There arediffering emphases in specific logical form in the rational modes of each. But bothdisciplines are rational, and both are susceptible to improvement over the centuries;both use governing theoretical paradigms as they confront experience. The conflictsbetween scientific and religious interpretations arise because the boundary betweencausality and meaning is semipermeable.

1. THEORIES, CREEDS, AND EXPERIENCE

The Hypothetico-deductive Method and Theory-laden Facts

Whether there exists an overall scientific method is open to question, since theprocedures of electronics engineers, plant taxonomists, and social psychologists areso diverse. In a generalized way science mixes observation, theory, and inference,but these ingredients with their blending are more complex than at first appears,and not until something of this complexity is appreciated can one appreciate ascientific method and then profitably ask how far religious inquiry differs from it.Let us begin by saying that a scientist attempts to operate out of theory in an if-thenmode "over" the facts. A schematic of this would find a theory (the hypothesis)arising out of the facts, followed by deduction back down to further empirical-levelexpectations, those then being related back to observations to confirm or disconfirmthe theory, more or less, and to generate revised theory, from which new conclusionsare drawn, after which the facts are again consulted (Figure 1.1). This is sometimescalled the hypothetico-deductive model, but we are using a more expanded versionof it than that phrase usually implies, and also noticing already that a theory comesto have a developmental history.

Such facts quickly become theory-laden. When the engineer reports that thecurrent through the meter is ten amperes, or the zoologist discovers that thevertebrates are related to the tunicates, the larval notochord of the latter and thespinal chord of the former having evolved from a long-extinct hypothetical ancestor,their facts come within and are partially products of their theoretical frameworks.Fabricated concepts and laws are used to trace and to classify naturalevents, and the facts so obtained do not come nakedly but rather filtered throughthese constructs. In the more theoretical sciences, those likeliest to affect cosmicbelief, there is often a tenuous combination of speculative abstraction with senseobservation, linked by hundreds of intervening hypotheses, as in the experimentsthat verify the time dilation of relativity theory by measuring the supposed decayof muons at high velocity, all translated into streaks on photographic plates andmeter readings. The geneticist maps a gene by back inference from statisticalphenotypic expressions. The biochemist decodes the amino acid sequence in aprotein by observing certain colored stains or layers of material in an ultracentrifuge.Molecular biochemistry contains highly theoretical construction of modelsof unobservable entities and processes—for instance, the lac-operon geneticsequence—to account for observed gross phenomena at great distance from thepostulated microentities. Geology has become a unified science only in recentyears, with the appearance of plate tectonics, but that supertheory stands at agreat inferential distance from the immediate observation of fault lines, subsidencemeasurements, chart tracings that indicate oceanic ridges, and magnetometerreadings from which are inferred prehistoric reversals of Earth's magneticfield.

Even in the plainer bare world there are no centimeters, or calories, or lines oflatitude and longitude; nor can it be Tuesday, 1:30 p.m. (EST), for these are allconceptual overlays on nature. The center of gravity in a rock is as much assignedas discovered. Still, one may reply, at least there are some evident natural kinds; thereare tunicates and genes, there were trilobites in the Cambrian period, and Yosemite'sHalf Dome is made of quartz monzonite. But even these facts do not comeunalloyed with the theories by which they were obtained. There is always somedefinition or decision about theoretical kinds in what counts as a tunicate, a gene,quartz monzonite, or the Cambrian period, as these are fitted into explanatorytheories.

The whole numbers may seem natural enough until we add, divide, and multiplyby zero and infinity, and with some artificial innovation must define what theseoperations will mean. The point in science is to mix theory and fact appropriately,and not to pretend that they can be insulated from each other. The naked fact ismostly a mythical entity; facts are contextual truths. To believe in pure facts is tobelieve "the dogma of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TEMPLETON FOUNDATION PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1599470993
• ISBN 13: 9781599470993
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 357
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland