THE SHAPE OF THIS WONDER? CONSECRATED SCIENCE AND NEW COSMOLOGY AFFECTS

In response to Lisa Sideris's provocative new book Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge and the Natural World and in conversation with voices from feminist technoscience, this article challenges the deracinated wonder of new cosmology encounters in two senses. First, by tracing how it is uprooted from critical perspectives on scientific knowledge production. And second, by contending deracinated wonder is ripped from cultural and historical contexts thus erasing embodied inequalities. Deracinated wonder attached to uncritical forms of science, I argue, solidifies new cosmology as an investment in white environmentalism by directing religion and ecology away from pluralities of encounter and the affective weight of environmental degradation and environmental racism.     

JOURNEY OF THE UNIVERSE: WEAVING SCIENCE WITH THE HUMANITIES

This article discusses Journey of the Universe as a project that consists of a film, book, conversation series, online classes, and a website. It describes how the creators worked to integrate science and humanities, not privilege or elevate science. It refutes arguments made in Lisa Sideris's Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World that suggest that Journey overlooks religion and distorts wonder. The article observes that Journey does not dismiss religion but includes it in explicit ways. It does not dictate wonder; it evokes wonder. In short, Journey is a living or functional cosmology with implications for mutually enhancing human–Earth relations.     

MERE SCIENCE: MAPPING THE LAND BRIDGE BETWEEN EMOTION,POLITICS, AND ETHICS

Lisa Sideris's Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (2017) proposes that the call by some science advocates for a new moral framework based on scientific wonder is flawed. Sideris develops a typology of “wonder” with two separate affective axes: “true wonder” that is the prerogative of a sort of dwelling with the overwhelming mystery of life, and “curiosity” that presses to resolve puzzles and break through into a space of total clarity. The former, Sideris writes, is an ethical resource that, by placing the human self against the backdrop of the unknowable cosmic expanse, prompts humility and genuine admiration for nature. The latter is the theater of “mere science.” This essay follows suit with Sideris's line of questioning, but also pushes back on the correlation of wonder with ethical attentiveness and proposes ways that science in its puzzle‐solving mode can be brought back into the ethical conversation.     

Radical Orthodoxy on Catholicism,Protestantism and Liberalism/Liberality: On the Use of Historical Narratives and Quantitative Methods in Political Theology

Political theology assumes or depends, implicitly or explicitly, on historical narratives and empirical claims. For theologians making historical, socio‐cultural and economic claims an interdisciplinary use of several different methods is helpful, including a theologically and philosophically informed combination of historical narratives with social and economic quantitative methods. This argument is fleshed out by a critical analysis of historical and sociological claims about Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Protestantism in relation to liberalism and liberality, which are central to the argument of John Milbank’s and Adrian Pabst’s book The Politics of Virtue. They find the roots of an increasingly untenable abstract atomistic liberalism both in late medieval and Protestant (especially Calvinist) theology as well as in the dissenting nonconforming traditions that worked for the disestablishment of the Church. This very disestablishment is part of what creates modern liberalism. This article both sketches a partly alternative history to the one Milbank and Pabst provide, pointing to the role of creative minorities in certain dissenting Protestant churches and movements for the emergence of the type of liberality Milbank and Pabst defend, and tests these claims against quantitative social science studies on democracy, social trust, and corruption.     

REACTING TO CONSECRATING SCIENCE: WHAT MIGHT AMATEURS DO?

In Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World, Lisa H. Sideris makes a compelling case that a new cosmology movement advocates for a new, universal, creation story grounded in the sciences. She fears the new story reinforces elite power structures and anthropocentrism and thus environmental degradation. Alternatively, she promotes genuine wonder which occurs in experiences of the natural world. As Sideris focuses on the likely logical outcome of the assumptions and arguments of the new cosmologies, she does not investigate whether and how people react to these new myths. I suggest that methods of documentary studies, applied to popular book reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, shed light on the ramifications of the new cosmologies among the general public. While many reviewers exhibit attitudes and behaviors that would concern Sideris, responses are far from univocal. Using this case as a guide, I suggest that attention to the experience of laypeople could contribute productively to religion and science research in general.     

CHEMISTRY: WHAT DOES ONE NEED TO KNOW?

Abstract. The general knowledge and understanding that every teacher of religion and science should have relative to chemistry can be found in the answers to three major questions. In my own response to the first question, How did chemistry emerge as a discipline? I trace the origins, establishment, and subsequent historical significance of cosmology. I contend that chemistry is “the obvious, oldest science” and, as such, has played a key role among the sciences in agelong human efforts to understand reality. In my response to the second question, How do chemists currently view (cosmic) reality? I outline three prominent examples in support of my contention that chemistry, despite being “the obvious, oldest science,” is seen by some as playing only a tacit role in current efforts to (re)integrate religion and science. In my response to the third question, How do chemists currently view ultimate reality and meaning? I argue that “unifiers” in chemistry can also now play a key role in a reality revolution that is pointing humankind not only toward a possible historical (re) integration of religion and science but also toward a return to cosmology.     

LAME SCIENCE? BLIND RELIGION?

In Consecrating Science, Lisa Sideris argues that an anthropocentric and science‐based cosmology encourages human arrogance and diminishes a sense of wonder in human experience immersed in the natural world, as found in diverse cultural and religious traditions. I agree with her that science elevated to a commanding worldview, scientism, is a common and contemporary mistake, to be deplored, a lame science. But I further argue that science has introduced us to the marvels of deep nature and vastly increased our human appreciation of nature as a wonderland at levels great and small. Sideris is right to fear consecrating science. She—and the humanists, sages, and saviors—need also to fear blindness to what science has to teach us about cosmogenesis and wonderland Earth.     

The War Between Faith and Fact

Is there a war going on between science and religion or not? The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and many other bridge-building advocates deny that a war must be fought between genuine science and authentic faith. Yet, a new book, Faith vs. Fact, by Jerry Coyne, launches a new attack against those with faith in God. This essay asks whether such an attack comes from genuine science or from scientism—a materialist ideology that claims rational science as its ally.     

THE SCOPE AND IMPLICATIONS OF MORALS NOT KNOWLEDGE

I greatly appreciate the opportunity provided by the editor of Zygon to further develop the ideas in my book Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science in conversation with four critical commentaries. It is an honor to have one's work focused upon so intently, and I greatly appreciate the time and effort of the critics. The book was quite intentionally written as a provocation, an attempt at agenda setting, and as a call for changing the thinking of the entire religion and science academic community. In my previous writings I have kept close to the data, allowing myself at best mid‐level conclusions, but this book is a foray into the abstraction and inevitable lack of precision required for high‐level generalization. I hope that it continues to be generative of debate.     

DANCING WITH THE SACRED: EXCERPTS

Abstract. In excerpts from my Dancing with the Sacred (2002), I use ideas from modern science, our world's religions, and my own experience to highlight three themes of the book. First, working within the framework of a scientific worldview, I develop a concept of the sacred (or God) as the creative activity of nature, human history, and individual life. Second, I offer a relational understanding of human nature that I call our social‐ecological selves and suggest some general considerations about what it means to live meaningfully and morally in an evolutionary world. Third, I explore how we might be at home in a universe that is constantly changing and in which suffering and death are interwoven with life and new creation.     

“THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF EXPERTS”: IN DEFENSE OF THE “ELITES” OF THE SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION DEBATE

This article takes a critical stance on John H. Evans's 2018 book, Morals Not Knowledge: Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science. Highlighting the significance of the book for the science‐and‐religion debate, particularly the book's emphasis on moral questions over knowledge claims revealed in social‐scientific studies of the American public, I also suggest that the distinction between the “elites” of the academic science‐and‐religion field and the religious “public” is insufficiently drawn. I argue that various nuances should be taken into account concerning the portrayal of “elites,” nuances which potentially change the way that “conflict” between science and religion is envisaged, as well as the function of the field. Similarly, I examine the ways in which the book construes science and religion as distinct knowledge systems, and I suggest that, from a theological perspective—relevant for much academic activity in science and religion—there is value in seeing science and religion in terms of a single knowledge system. This perspective may not address the public's interest in moral questions directly—important as they are—but nevertheless it fulfils the academic function of advancing the frontiers of human knowledge and self‐understanding.     

The Undiscovered Mind: How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation

In The End of Science, I argued that particle physics, cosmology, evolutionary biology, and other fields of pure science have entered an era of diminishing returns (Horgan, 1997). Although scientists will continue refining and extending current theories and applying their knowledge in the realms of technology and medicine, they may never again achieve insights into nature as profound as quantum mechanics, relativity theory, the big bang theory, natural selection, and DNA-based genetics. One reasonable objection to the book was that mind-related research, of all current scientific enterprises, has the most revolutionary potential, and it deserves a more thorough treatment than it received in The End of Science. I responded to this objection by writing a book that focused on "mind-science"(Horgan, 1999). The Undiscovered Mind considered not only the debate over consciousness, which was the primary focus of The End of Science; it also reviewed the record of fields such as clinical psychology, psychiatry, behavioral genetics, evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, and neuroscience. I contended that there has been little progress in understanding the mind, replicating its properties, or treating its disorders—especially compared with the extravagant claims made by proponents of certain approaches. In this article, I summarize some of my book's main points.     

Replies to Deng,Lee, and Skow

This paper is a contribution to a book symposium on my book Experiencing Time. I reply to comments on the book by Natalja Deng, Geoffrey Lee and Bradford Skow. Although several chapters of the book are discussed, the main focus of my reply is on Chapters 2 and 6. In Chapter 2 I argue that the putative mind-independent passage of time could not be experienced, and from this I develop an argument against the A-theory of time. In Chapter 6 I offer one part of an explanation of why we are disposed to think that time passes, relating to the supposedly ‘dynamic’ quality of experienced change. Deng, Lee, and Skow’s comments help me to clarify several issues, add some new thoughts, and make a new distinction that was needed, and I acknowledge, as I did in the book, that certain arguments in Chapter 6 are not conclusive; but I otherwise concede very little regarding the main claims and arguments defended in the book.     

The rise of information in an evolutionary universe

This paper outlines the grand scenario of cosmic evolution by examining the ongoing changes among radiation, matter and life in standard, big‐bang cosmology. Using aspects of non‐equilibrium thermodynamics and information science, we argue that it is the contrasting temporal behavior of various energy densities that have given rise to the environments needed for the emergence of galaxies, stars, planets, and life forms. We furthermore argue that a necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) condition—a veritable prime mover—for the emergence of such ordered structures of growing complexity is the expansion of the Universe itself. Neither demon‐strably new science nor appeals to non‐science are needed to explain the impressive hierarchy of developmental change, from quark to quasar, from microbe to mind.     

A RELATIVISTIC ESCHATOLOGY: TIME,ETERNITY, AND ESCHATOLOGY IN LIGHT OF THE PHYSICS OF RELATIVITY

Unique epistemological challenges arise whenever one embarks on the critical and self‐critical reflection of the nature of time and the end of time. I attempt to construct my preference for an eschatological distinction between time and eternity from within a middle way, avoiding both the hubris that claims complete comprehension and the resignation that concedes readily to know nothing. Surveying the history of reflection on this multifaceted question of time, with its ephemeral and everlasting dimensions, I argue that the eschatological interplay between the “already” and the “not yet” has much to offer: promise for the religion‐science dialogue as well as hope for humanity, especially for those on society's bleakest edges. But understandings of time, to be authentically theological, must be also informed by cosmology and the physics of relativity. My proposal seeks to respect the theological and scientific interpretations of the nature of time, serving the ongoing, creative interaction of these disciplines. Between physics and theology I identify four formal differences in analyzing eschatology, all grounded in the one fundamental difference between extrapolation and promise. Discussion of what I term deficits in both the scientific and theological approaches leads to further examination of the complex relationship between time and eternity. I distinguish three models of such relationships, which I label the ontological, the quantitative, and the eschatological distinction between time and eternity. Because of the way it embraces a multiplicity of times, especially relating to the culmination and the consummation of creation, I opt for the eschatological model. The eschatological disruption of linear chronology relates well to relativ‐istic physics: This model is open, dynamic, and relational, and it may add a new aspect to the debate over the block universe.     

Heidegger on Assertion,Method and Metaphysics

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger makes several claims about the nature of ‘assertion’ [Aussage]. These claims are of particular philosophical interest: they illustrate, for example, important points of contact and divergence between Heidegger's work and philosophical movements including Kantianism, the early Analytic tradition and contemporary pragmatism. This article provides a new assessment of one of these claims: that assertion is connected to a ‘present‐at‐hand’ ontology. I also indicate how my analysis sets the stage for a new reading of Heidegger's further claim that assertion is an explanatorily derivative phenomenon. I begin with a loose overview of Heidegger's position and then develop a sharper formulation of the key premises. I go on to argue that existing treatments of the supposed link between assertion and the ‘present‐at‐hand’ are unsatisfactory, and advance a new, ‘methodological’, interpretation of that link. Finally, I sketch the implications of my interpretation for the further claim that assertion is explanatorily derivative.     

A SCIENTIFIC BUDDHISM?

This essay endorses the argument of Donald Lopez's Buddhism and Science and shows how the general thesis of the book is consonant with other historical work on the “discovery” of Buddhism and on the emergence of Western conceptions of religion. It asks whether one of the key claims of Buddhism and Science—that Buddhism pays a price for its flirtation with the modern sciences—might be applicable to science‐and‐religion discussions more generally.     

WONDER OPENS THE HEART: POPE FRANCIS AND LISA SIDERIS ON NATURE,ENCOUNTER, AND WONDER

This article argues that Pope Francis's invocations of wonder can speak to and at times challenge Lisa Sideris's recent contributions to the interdisciplinary discussion of wonder, science, and religion. Although the importance of wonder to Pope Francis's 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato si’ is acknowledged, it has not been widely recognized that wonder is implicated in and forms connections between multiple concepts and postures acknowledged as defining marks of Francis's papacy: coming out of oneself, encountering others, going to the margins; aversion to doctrinal rigidity; compassion, mercy, tenderness, and humility; to name a few. These defining concepts and stances resonate strongly with certain views on wonder, ethics, and ecology recently articulated by Lisa Sideris. In Francis, however, one finds a more affirming treatment of science‐based wonder and a response to Sideris's criticism of theistic wonder.     

COSMOLOGY FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA: RESPONSE TO REVIEWS

I gratefully acknowledge and respond here to four reviews of my recent book, Cosmology from Alpha to Omega. Nancey Murphy stresses the importance of showing consistency between Christian theology and natural science through a detailed examination of my recent model of their creative interaction. She suggests how this model can be enhanced by adopting Alasdair MacIntyre's understanding of tradition in order to adjudicate between competing ways of incorporating science into a wider worldview. She urges the inclusion of ethics in my model and predicts that this would successfully challenge the competing naturalist tradition in contemporary society. John F. Haught weighs the alternatives of viewing divine action as objective versus subjective and of divine action at one level in nature or at all levels. He asks whether physics is fundamental to nature, arguing instead that metaphysics should be considered as fundamental. Michael Ruse assesses occasional versus universal divine action, the problems raised to divine action when it is related to quantum mechanics, and the way these relations exacerbate the challenge of natural theodicy. As an alternative he suggests viewing God as outside time and acting through unbroken natural law. Willem B. Drees discusses my use of the bridge metaphor for the relation between theology and science, the implications when science is inspired by theology, the role of contingency and necessity in the anthropic principle/many-worlds debate, and the challenge of cosmology to eschatology with the ensuing problem of theodicy.     

It's a Wonderful Life: Reflections on Wittgenstein's Last Words

On his deathbed, Wittgenstein is reported to have said, upon hearing that his friends were coming for a visit, “Tell them I've had a wonderful life.” Malcolm found this puzzling, given that Wittgenstein seemed to be fiercely unhappy. I find my way into these words against the backdrop of the Hollywood film It's a Wonderful Life and Wittgenstein's famous remark, to wit, “Man has to awaken to wonder . . . Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.” Along the way I discuss Plato's praise of wonder, Nietzsche's attack on science, and Kierkegaard's remark about finding the sublime in the pedestrian. I conclude that Wittgenstein did have a wonderful life insofar as he was fully awake to wonder, what I call the wonder of our words.