I found Michael’s paper stimulating and thought-provoking. I should add that I have very much enjoyed working together with Michael (and other like-minded individuals) over the past few years on new and largely untried approaches to the science-theology discussion.(1) In what follows I set out some areas of agreement before moving on to a series of more critical questions—some admittedly rather speculative—about the approach that he advocates.
I am in full agreement with Michael that modern science is at least partly grounded in a metaphysical and theological revolution that took place in the late medieval and early modern periods. Vestiges of these metaphysical foundations remain in the present sciences, although they are mostly implicit. What follows from this, according to the case that Michael outlines, is that theology-science discussions should ideally involve engagement with the largely unspoken metaphysics and theology of science rather than ‘surface’ concerns to do with specific doctrinal or theoretical claims. This would amount to moving the conversation to the home ground of theology, seeking to make the tacit metaphysical foundations of modern science explicit, and exposing them to the possibility of theological critique. Such an analysis would also bring to light the fact that modern science is no longer capable of providing an account of its own foundations in a way that would establish its rationality. (For a comprehensive argument to this effect, readers should consult Michael’s important book, No God, no Science.)
Further, as Michael also points out, modern science was accompanied by a particular version of natural theology that was problematic, not least because it was implicated in the rise of modern atheism. (Some evidence for this may be found in the observation of one early modern wit who declared that no-one thought to question the existence of God until the Boyle Lecturers sought to prove it. We get a magisterial treatment of this theme in Michael J. Buckley’s At the Origins of Modern Atheism.) Arguably, this distorted natural theology accompanied a utilitarian approach to nature and promoted a version of techno-utopianism (which received a further boost from those seeking to make Christian eschatology immanent in history). I take part of Michael’s point to be that a good number of well-meaning attempts to place theology and science into dialogue run the risk of endorsing this deficient natural theology and perpetuating its distorted instrumentalist view of reality.
All of this makes good sense, especially to those already convinced of the relevance of theology and committed to a particular version of metaphysics. So I understand and am sympathetic to the internal logic of Michael’s position. That said, I wonder about the audience for this kind of argument and who is likely to be persuaded by it. At one point Michael observes that ‘the fundamental question at issue between theology and science as forms of knowledge or historical practices, is not principally historical, methodological or sociological. None of these forms of knowledge can pass from the factual to the true without surreptitiously becoming a kind of total metaphysics, that is, without ceasing to be themselves and becoming philosophy.’
My own view, in response to this, would be to suggest that the historical and sociological are inseparable from the philosophical. They are vital for a comprehensive understanding of the status of scientific and theological/philosophical claims and indeed to the forging of arguments that will be persuasive to those not already persuaded. Very simply, it is the present epistemic prestige of scientific knowledge that makes science-theology questions relevant and urgent for those with religious convictions. How science came to occupy this position, and the ongoing basis of its epistemic privilege, are historical and sociological questions.
Moreover, the ‘passing from factual to true’ is a key premise of Michael’s position. But if we understand the modern sciences as operating at the level of conditional ‘facts’ that are always subject to future revision, we might argue that they are not in the ‘Truth’-with-a-capital-‘T’ game. This would imply that to some degree the sciences float free from deeper metaphysical commitments and hence do not impact theology as deeply as we might sometimes imagine. I will offer further suggestions along these lines below. Before that, however, let me make five related points about the connection between science and metaphysics, and the idea of the unity of the sciences that such a connection seems to imply. (The latter goes to Peter Leithart’s important point that Michael seems ‘willing to leave the territories of religion and science more or less intact’.)
First, while I’m in agreement that the modern sciences were grounded in major metaphysical shifts that took place between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, these were by no means the sole drivers of what we call ‘the scientific revolution’. Like most historical changes, the slow evolution of the modern natural sciences was overdetermined, which is to say that many different factors were involved. These would include, for example, the practical labours of artisans and instrument makers, the expertise of the ‘invisible technicians’ who mastered new techniques and conducted experiments, new scientific associations and forms of communication (facilitated by print media), and the growing body of new data about the natural world that followed the voyages of discovery and colonization. None of these was directly related to metaphysical concerns. Importantly for our purposes, there are aspects of present scientific practice, related to these earlier precedents, that remain largely indifferent to metaphysical considerations.
Second, it is undoubtedly true that key agents in ‘the scientific revolution’ were well attuned to theological and metaphysical issues. Kepler, Newton, Boyle, and even Descartes, can justifiably be regarded as ‘secular theologians’ to use Amos Funkenstein’s designation. However, as the sciences became more successful and established their social legitimacy, their original theological and metaphysical foundations were gradually forgotten. It was enough that the sciences ‘worked’—at least in their own terms. The eclipse of metaphysics is signalled in the nineteenth-century abandonment of the traditional label for the study of nature—‘natural philosophy’—and its replacement by the familiar ‘science’. It could be argued, then, that the sciences once rested upon metaphysical foundations, but no longer do so. This goes to the question of whether the basis of the legitimacy of science has shifted, and I would argue that it has.
Third, I have been using the plural ‘sciences’ advisedly, since a characteristic of twenty-first century scientific activity is its highly differentiated nature. The label ‘science’, as I have argued elsewhere, was introduced in the nineteenth century and not only signalled a purported abandonment of metaphysics, but was explicitly deployed to lend a semblance of unity to an increasingly disparate set of activities. The unitary label ‘science’ thus tends to disguise the fundamental differences among the sciences. To take just one example, the historical sciences of geology and evolutionary biology rely upon very different sets of presuppositions to the physical sciences. The proposal that ‘science’ can be aligned with a set of unitary metaphysical assumptions runs the risk of reinforcing an unhelpful reification and disguising the plurality of activities that fly under its banner. My question for Michael would be whether we can relate the full range of contemporary scientific practices to some unitary, underlying, metaphysics.
Fourth, and pragmatically, metaphysics is not where most people start when they have questions about science and theology. In science-religion discussions, issues typically arise out of apparent conflicts between specific scientific and religious doctrines. These might be traced ultimately to underlying metaphysical commitments—and I take this to be the thrust of Michael’s argument—but that is not where they begin. This gives us reasons for not dismissing out of hand some of the more conventional approaches to science-religion dialogue which tend to treat specific issues in the terms in which they initially arise. More importantly—and this is where sociology enters the picture—what makes these questions acute is the epistemic status of the sciences in a world in which, to quote Michael quoting Stephen Gaukroger, ‘all cognitive values have been assimilated to scientific ones’. As noted above, how science came to assume its present epistemic authority is a sociological and historical question, as too, on the other side, the declining public authority of theology. So the next step in treating specific doctrinal conflicts might be to enquire into the sociological question of the source of authority that lies behind the respective knowledge claims, rather than taking the high road to metaphysics.
Fifth, associating science with metaphysics can reinforce the impression that science is in the truth game, whereas most of the sciences seek explanations and, crucially, instrumental purchase on the natural world. Along these lines, Michael himself writes of ‘the obvious success of modern science in achieving its goals’, before going on to pose the question of whether ‘this success should simply be equated with truth’. That is the right question to ask, and I want to devote the rest of this piece to exploring how it might be answered.
I should say, for a start, that addressing whether success is to be equated with truth can again lead us in a different direction to seeking some metaphysical resolution to science-theology relations. As a matter of fact, the social legitimacy of the modern sciences, in my view, does not lie in their capacity to provide a coherent account of their own metaphysical underpinnings, but in their apparent explanatory successes and in the technological affordances that they make possible. If true, the strategy of exposing the inability of the sciences to offer an account of their own metaphysical foundation is likely to fail, because for the champions of the sciences the source of their legitimacy lies elsewhere. However, as Michael implies, it is highly dubious to slide from something like instrumental success to metaphysical truth. What needs to be exposed is the illicit nature of that move. This would require some recourse to philosophy of science (including figures referenced by Michael such as T. S. Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend) along with history and sociology.
We can ask, for example, just how successful science is in accomplishing even its explanatory goals. Consider just two areas: modern physics, often regarded as the epitome of all the sciences, and modern medicine, which has contributed so much to ‘the relief of the human estate’ to use Francis Bacon’s evocative phrase.
Modern physics, not to put too fine a point on it, seems unable to answer even the most basic questions about what most of the universe is made of. The standard model calls upon something like 20 parameters that have values that cannot be predicted by any theory. It also invokes any number of ‘constants’ that seem utterly contingent and are not derived from any other principles of physics. Even if we can get comfortable with this model, its ‘success’ extends to only a small fraction of the matter-energy content of the universe given the existence of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’.(2) Perhaps I am too cynical, but these latter expressions seem to be just euphemisms for ‘we have no idea’. This is not too far from the ad hoc ‘occult qualities’ that Leibniz accused Newton of having introduced into the sciences.
Moving to our second example, great strides have undoubtedly been made in the biomedical sciences, for which we are all grateful. But, exaggerating just a little for the sake of the argument, in the surgical sphere these are akin to improvement in mechanics, plumbing, and carpentry. Medical treatments, moreover, are often based upon trial and error, albeit in the form of ingenious and large-scale randomized, controlled trials, that yield probabilities about what is likely to work. Knowing that a treatment is 90% successful might be comforting, but it would surely be better to have a fully worked out theory that could explain why you might fall in the 90% rather than the 10%. However, the explanations offered in the practice of modern medicine are typically framed in terms of probability rather than causal mechanisms that can be predicted with 100% reliability.
My aim is not to denigrate the remarkable accomplishments of either physicists or medical researchers, but to identify precisely where the success of these endeavours lie. My suggestion would be that we not think of scientific successes in terms of ‘truth’ or even theoretical explanatory power, but rather the capacity to make predictions (especially under experimental conditions) and to produce impressive practical affordances. None of this amounts to truth, since every scientific theory ever articulated was at least partially successful in these senses. Yet successive scientific theories posit very different kinds of realities. Impressive technologies have also been launched on the basis of theories that subsequently turned out to be mistaken. (Take the case of the radio and the theory of aether, for example.) All of this goes to the issue of where it is that theology and the sciences come into contact, and on the above analysis it would not be in the realm of metaphysics.
Related to science’s success stories is also a tendency to conflate science with technology and engineering. When most people think of the boons of modern science, what they typically have in mind are biomedical and technological advances, rather than apparent improvement in theoretical understanding offered by, say, the modern evolutionary synthesis or quantum cosmology. This is not the occasion for a disquisition on the differences between science and technology. Suffice it to say for now that the common assumption of technological advances being underpinned by theoretical science in many cases has it round the wrong way, with explanation often lagging behind technological innovation.(3)
What all of this means is that if we conceptualise the modern sciences primarily in instrumentalist terms, we can cede the whole sphere of metaphysics to philosophy and theology. We would do so, of course, at the cost of severing any substantive metaphysical connection between theology and science. This would constitute a move in the direction of an ‘independence’ model of science-theology relations—but one in which, contrary to the common application of this model, does not simply mean ceding to science whatever territory it seeks to claim.
There are historical precedents for this kind of approach. The distinguished Catholic physicist, philosopher and historian of science, Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) espoused a version of instrumentalism and held that modern physics did not need any metaphysical foundation. He was likely inspired by the medieval thinkers whose work he did so much to place on the historical record. It was usual, in the Middle Ages, to observe a distinction between ‘natural philosophy’ which sought causal explanations, and astronomy which just ‘saved the appearances’ (which is to say, offered fictional models that enabled predictions to be made). This led to an enduring tension in modern science between conceptions of science as yielding access to truth on the one hand, or as simply offering various techniques for manipulating nature on the other.(4) My argument has been that if we emphasize the latter, we get a very different set of prescriptions for how to think about science and theology. Peter Leithart’s observations about the centrality of models and metaphors in the sciences is also pertinent here.
To put the matter provocatively, if we think of the sciences as more akin to engineering—or even carpentry, mechanics, and plumbing—a theology of science would not take us in the direction of metaphysics, but rather a theology of practical vocations—of understanding practical endeavours and how these might benefit the human race. This would still allow for the critiques of what Michael refers to as ‘biotechnocracy’ and the ‘biomedical security state’, but from a more straightforwardly ethical perspective than from the lofty heights of metaphysics.
To conclude, Michael’s piece stimulated a number of further questions—as all good conversation starters should. I have used this opportunity to float some arguments and ideas that are not fully worked through and must confess that to some extent the questions sketched out above are questions that I have about aspects of my own projects in the science-theology space. If Michael can offer some answers, I shall be doubly grateful.
Peter Harrison is a Professorial Research Fellow and the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland.
Footnotes:
(1) Peter Harrison and John Milbank (eds.), After Science and Religion: Fresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022); Peter Harrison and Paul Tyson (eds.), New Directions in Theology and Science: Beyond Dialogue (London: Routledge, 2022); Paul Tyson (ed.), Astonishment and Science: Engagements with William Desmond (Eugene: Cascade, 2023).
(2) For additional commentary, see Stephen Gaukroger, The Failures of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), p. 286.
(3) From an extensive literature, see, e.g. David F. Channell, A History of Technoscience: Erasing the Boundaries between Science and Technology (London, 2017), 10. Stephen Gaukroger, again, illuminating on this point. ‘Does Science get the Credit for too Much?’, in Journal of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 156 (2023), forthcoming.
(4) On this theme see Peter Dear, The Intelligibility of Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
I found Michael’s paper stimulating and thought-provoking. I should add that I have very much enjoyed working together with Michael (and other like-minded individuals) over the past few years on new and largely untried approaches to the science-theology discussion.(1) In what follows I set out some areas of agreement before moving on to a series of more critical questions—some admittedly rather speculative—about the approach that he advocates.
I am in full agreement with Michael that modern science is at least partly grounded in a metaphysical and theological revolution that took place in the late medieval and early modern periods. Vestiges of these metaphysical foundations remain in the present sciences, although they are mostly implicit. What follows from this, according to the case that Michael outlines, is that theology-science discussions should ideally involve engagement with the largely unspoken metaphysics and theology of science rather than ‘surface’ concerns to do with specific doctrinal or theoretical claims. This would amount to moving the conversation to the home ground of theology, seeking to make the tacit metaphysical foundations of modern science explicit, and exposing them to the possibility of theological critique. Such an analysis would also bring to light the fact that modern science is no longer capable of providing an account of its own foundations in a way that would establish its rationality. (For a comprehensive argument to this effect, readers should consult Michael’s important book, No God, no Science.)
Further, as Michael also points out, modern science was accompanied by a particular version of natural theology that was problematic, not least because it was implicated in the rise of modern atheism. (Some evidence for this may be found in the observation of one early modern wit who declared that no-one thought to question the existence of God until the Boyle Lecturers sought to prove it. We get a magisterial treatment of this theme in Michael J. Buckley’s At the Origins of Modern Atheism.) Arguably, this distorted natural theology accompanied a utilitarian approach to nature and promoted a version of techno-utopianism (which received a further boost from those seeking to make Christian eschatology immanent in history). I take part of Michael’s point to be that a good number of well-meaning attempts to place theology and science into dialogue run the risk of endorsing this deficient natural theology and perpetuating its distorted instrumentalist view of reality.
All of this makes good sense, especially to those already convinced of the relevance of theology and committed to a particular version of metaphysics. So I understand and am sympathetic to the internal logic of Michael’s position. That said, I wonder about the audience for this kind of argument and who is likely to be persuaded by it. At one point Michael observes that ‘the fundamental question at issue between theology and science as forms of knowledge or historical practices, is not principally historical, methodological or sociological. None of these forms of knowledge can pass from the factual to the true without surreptitiously becoming a kind of total metaphysics, that is, without ceasing to be themselves and becoming philosophy.’
My own view, in response to this, would be to suggest that the historical and sociological are inseparable from the philosophical. They are vital for a comprehensive understanding of the status of scientific and theological/philosophical claims and indeed to the forging of arguments that will be persuasive to those not already persuaded. Very simply, it is the present epistemic prestige of scientific knowledge that makes science-theology questions relevant and urgent for those with religious convictions. How science came to occupy this position, and the ongoing basis of its epistemic privilege, are historical and sociological questions.
Moreover, the ‘passing from factual to true’ is a key premise of Michael’s position. But if we understand the modern sciences as operating at the level of conditional ‘facts’ that are always subject to future revision, we might argue that they are not in the ‘Truth’-with-a-capital-‘T’ game. This would imply that to some degree the sciences float free from deeper metaphysical commitments and hence do not impact theology as deeply as we might sometimes imagine. I will offer further suggestions along these lines below. Before that, however, let me make five related points about the connection between science and metaphysics, and the idea of the unity of the sciences that such a connection seems to imply. (The latter goes to Peter Leithart’s important point that Michael seems ‘willing to leave the territories of religion and science more or less intact’.)
First, while I’m in agreement that the modern sciences were grounded in major metaphysical shifts that took place between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, these were by no means the sole drivers of what we call ‘the scientific revolution’. Like most historical changes, the slow evolution of the modern natural sciences was overdetermined, which is to say that many different factors were involved. These would include, for example, the practical labours of artisans and instrument makers, the expertise of the ‘invisible technicians’ who mastered new techniques and conducted experiments, new scientific associations and forms of communication (facilitated by print media), and the growing body of new data about the natural world that followed the voyages of discovery and colonization. None of these was directly related to metaphysical concerns. Importantly for our purposes, there are aspects of present scientific practice, related to these earlier precedents, that remain largely indifferent to metaphysical considerations.
Second, it is undoubtedly true that key agents in ‘the scientific revolution’ were well attuned to theological and metaphysical issues. Kepler, Newton, Boyle, and even Descartes, can justifiably be regarded as ‘secular theologians’ to use Amos Funkenstein’s designation. However, as the sciences became more successful and established their social legitimacy, their original theological and metaphysical foundations were gradually forgotten. It was enough that the sciences ‘worked’—at least in their own terms. The eclipse of metaphysics is signalled in the nineteenth-century abandonment of the traditional label for the study of nature—‘natural philosophy’—and its replacement by the familiar ‘science’. It could be argued, then, that the sciences once rested upon metaphysical foundations, but no longer do so. This goes to the question of whether the basis of the legitimacy of science has shifted, and I would argue that it has.
Third, I have been using the plural ‘sciences’ advisedly, since a characteristic of twenty-first century scientific activity is its highly differentiated nature. The label ‘science’, as I have argued elsewhere, was introduced in the nineteenth century and not only signalled a purported abandonment of metaphysics, but was explicitly deployed to lend a semblance of unity to an increasingly disparate set of activities. The unitary label ‘science’ thus tends to disguise the fundamental differences among the sciences. To take just one example, the historical sciences of geology and evolutionary biology rely upon very different sets of presuppositions to the physical sciences. The proposal that ‘science’ can be aligned with a set of unitary metaphysical assumptions runs the risk of reinforcing an unhelpful reification and disguising the plurality of activities that fly under its banner. My question for Michael would be whether we can relate the full range of contemporary scientific practices to some unitary, underlying, metaphysics.
Fourth, and pragmatically, metaphysics is not where most people start when they have questions about science and theology. In science-religion discussions, issues typically arise out of apparent conflicts between specific scientific and religious doctrines. These might be traced ultimately to underlying metaphysical commitments—and I take this to be the thrust of Michael’s argument—but that is not where they begin. This gives us reasons for not dismissing out of hand some of the more conventional approaches to science-religion dialogue which tend to treat specific issues in the terms in which they initially arise. More importantly—and this is where sociology enters the picture—what makes these questions acute is the epistemic status of the sciences in a world in which, to quote Michael quoting Stephen Gaukroger, ‘all cognitive values have been assimilated to scientific ones’. As noted above, how science came to assume its present epistemic authority is a sociological and historical question, as too, on the other side, the declining public authority of theology. So the next step in treating specific doctrinal conflicts might be to enquire into the sociological question of the source of authority that lies behind the respective knowledge claims, rather than taking the high road to metaphysics.
Fifth, associating science with metaphysics can reinforce the impression that science is in the truth game, whereas most of the sciences seek explanations and, crucially, instrumental purchase on the natural world. Along these lines, Michael himself writes of ‘the obvious success of modern science in achieving its goals’, before going on to pose the question of whether ‘this success should simply be equated with truth’. That is the right question to ask, and I want to devote the rest of this piece to exploring how it might be answered.
I should say, for a start, that addressing whether success is to be equated with truth can again lead us in a different direction to seeking some metaphysical resolution to science-theology relations. As a matter of fact, the social legitimacy of the modern sciences, in my view, does not lie in their capacity to provide a coherent account of their own metaphysical underpinnings, but in their apparent explanatory successes and in the technological affordances that they make possible. If true, the strategy of exposing the inability of the sciences to offer an account of their own metaphysical foundation is likely to fail, because for the champions of the sciences the source of their legitimacy lies elsewhere. However, as Michael implies, it is highly dubious to slide from something like instrumental success to metaphysical truth. What needs to be exposed is the illicit nature of that move. This would require some recourse to philosophy of science (including figures referenced by Michael such as T. S. Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend) along with history and sociology.
We can ask, for example, just how successful science is in accomplishing even its explanatory goals. Consider just two areas: modern physics, often regarded as the epitome of all the sciences, and modern medicine, which has contributed so much to ‘the relief of the human estate’ to use Francis Bacon’s evocative phrase.
Modern physics, not to put too fine a point on it, seems unable to answer even the most basic questions about what most of the universe is made of. The standard model calls upon something like 20 parameters that have values that cannot be predicted by any theory. It also invokes any number of ‘constants’ that seem utterly contingent and are not derived from any other principles of physics. Even if we can get comfortable with this model, its ‘success’ extends to only a small fraction of the matter-energy content of the universe given the existence of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’.(2) Perhaps I am too cynical, but these latter expressions seem to be just euphemisms for ‘we have no idea’. This is not too far from the ad hoc ‘occult qualities’ that Leibniz accused Newton of having introduced into the sciences.
Moving to our second example, great strides have undoubtedly been made in the biomedical sciences, for which we are all grateful. But, exaggerating just a little for the sake of the argument, in the surgical sphere these are akin to improvement in mechanics, plumbing, and carpentry. Medical treatments, moreover, are often based upon trial and error, albeit in the form of ingenious and large-scale randomized, controlled trials, that yield probabilities about what is likely to work. Knowing that a treatment is 90% successful might be comforting, but it would surely be better to have a fully worked out theory that could explain why you might fall in the 90% rather than the 10%. However, the explanations offered in the practice of modern medicine are typically framed in terms of probability rather than causal mechanisms that can be predicted with 100% reliability.
My aim is not to denigrate the remarkable accomplishments of either physicists or medical researchers, but to identify precisely where the success of these endeavours lie. My suggestion would be that we not think of scientific successes in terms of ‘truth’ or even theoretical explanatory power, but rather the capacity to make predictions (especially under experimental conditions) and to produce impressive practical affordances. None of this amounts to truth, since every scientific theory ever articulated was at least partially successful in these senses. Yet successive scientific theories posit very different kinds of realities. Impressive technologies have also been launched on the basis of theories that subsequently turned out to be mistaken. (Take the case of the radio and the theory of aether, for example.) All of this goes to the issue of where it is that theology and the sciences come into contact, and on the above analysis it would not be in the realm of metaphysics.
Related to science’s success stories is also a tendency to conflate science with technology and engineering. When most people think of the boons of modern science, what they typically have in mind are biomedical and technological advances, rather than apparent improvement in theoretical understanding offered by, say, the modern evolutionary synthesis or quantum cosmology. This is not the occasion for a disquisition on the differences between science and technology. Suffice it to say for now that the common assumption of technological advances being underpinned by theoretical science in many cases has it round the wrong way, with explanation often lagging behind technological innovation.(3)
What all of this means is that if we conceptualise the modern sciences primarily in instrumentalist terms, we can cede the whole sphere of metaphysics to philosophy and theology. We would do so, of course, at the cost of severing any substantive metaphysical connection between theology and science. This would constitute a move in the direction of an ‘independence’ model of science-theology relations—but one in which, contrary to the common application of this model, does not simply mean ceding to science whatever territory it seeks to claim.
There are historical precedents for this kind of approach. The distinguished Catholic physicist, philosopher and historian of science, Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) espoused a version of instrumentalism and held that modern physics did not need any metaphysical foundation. He was likely inspired by the medieval thinkers whose work he did so much to place on the historical record. It was usual, in the Middle Ages, to observe a distinction between ‘natural philosophy’ which sought causal explanations, and astronomy which just ‘saved the appearances’ (which is to say, offered fictional models that enabled predictions to be made). This led to an enduring tension in modern science between conceptions of science as yielding access to truth on the one hand, or as simply offering various techniques for manipulating nature on the other.(4) My argument has been that if we emphasize the latter, we get a very different set of prescriptions for how to think about science and theology. Peter Leithart’s observations about the centrality of models and metaphors in the sciences is also pertinent here.
To put the matter provocatively, if we think of the sciences as more akin to engineering—or even carpentry, mechanics, and plumbing—a theology of science would not take us in the direction of metaphysics, but rather a theology of practical vocations—of understanding practical endeavours and how these might benefit the human race. This would still allow for the critiques of what Michael refers to as ‘biotechnocracy’ and the ‘biomedical security state’, but from a more straightforwardly ethical perspective than from the lofty heights of metaphysics.
To conclude, Michael’s piece stimulated a number of further questions—as all good conversation starters should. I have used this opportunity to float some arguments and ideas that are not fully worked through and must confess that to some extent the questions sketched out above are questions that I have about aspects of my own projects in the science-theology space. If Michael can offer some answers, I shall be doubly grateful.
Peter Harrison is a Professorial Research Fellow and the Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland.
Footnotes:
(1) Peter Harrison and John Milbank (eds.), After Science and Religion: Fresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022); Peter Harrison and Paul Tyson (eds.), New Directions in Theology and Science: Beyond Dialogue (London: Routledge, 2022); Paul Tyson (ed.), Astonishment and Science: Engagements with William Desmond (Eugene: Cascade, 2023).
(2) For additional commentary, see Stephen Gaukroger, The Failures of Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), p. 286.
(3) From an extensive literature, see, e.g. David F. Channell, A History of Technoscience: Erasing the Boundaries between Science and Technology (London, 2017), 10. Stephen Gaukroger, again, illuminating on this point. ‘Does Science get the Credit for too Much?’, in Journal of the Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales 156 (2023), forthcoming.
(4) On this theme see Peter Dear, The Intelligibility of Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
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