DISCERNING THE VOICE OF ZYGON: IDENTITY AND ISSUES

The challenge to the journal Zygon as suggested here is to respond to three different reference groups: public intellectuals, academia, and religious communities. An extended discussion follows of what I term the situation of irony in which religion‐and‐science finds itself. I argue that this situation of irony actually constitutes the domain in which our greatest contributions can be offered.     

ON THE ROAD WITH RELIGION‐AND‐SCIENCE AND THE ROMANCE OF THE PAST

This essay responds to the question “Where Are We Going?Zygon and the Future of Religion‐and‐Science” and was first presented on 9 May 2009 at a symposium honoring Philip Hefner's editorship of Zygon. It offers four suggestions for the future of religion‐and‐science: Ask big questions; encourage cultural literacy in the public sphere; bring a critical voice to other academic disciplines; and include the history of philosophy.     

NEW DIRECTIONS,NEW COLLABORATIONS

In a world where all of life is on the edge of extinction and destruction by humankind, those who practice religion‐and‐science within a mutual dialogue bear the responsibility of doing so with this edge of life in mind. To speak of religion‐and‐science as a field of inquiry is to acknowledge the ethical responsibilities it entails. If one task of Zygon is to reformulate religion in light of the future dialogue of religion‐and‐science, we need to think about what kind of hope for the future is needed. Clearly, we are not simply called to repeat the past or comment on what has already been done by other academics. To help accomplish these goals and to reflect on the mission and future of Zygon, I appeal to the metaphor of improvisation, particularly as it is embodied in the visual and performing arts.     

ERNAN MCMULLIN ON CONTINGENCY,COSMIC PURPOSE,AND THE ATEMPORALITY OF THE CREATOR

This article reviews, and offers supportive reflections on, the main points of Ernan McMullin's provocative 1998 article, “Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution,’’ reprinted in this issue of Zygon. In it he addresses the important science‐theology issue of how the Creator's purpose and intention to assure the emergence of human beings is consonant with the radical contingency of the evolutionary process. After discussing cosmic and biological evolution and critically summarizing recent solutions to this question by Keith Ward, John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Alvin Plantinga, and others, who presuppose in different ways that God is subject to time, McMullin compellingly argues for the traditional position, that God is unconditioned by time, and this enables God to work purposefully through contingency, randomness, and chance just as easily as through law‐like regularity.     

The Multiple Source Effect and Synthesized Speech

Two experiments examine the effect of multiple synthetic voices in an e‐commerce context. In Study 1, participants (N= 40) heard five positive reviews about a book from five different synthetic voices or from a single synthetic voice. Consistent with the multiple source effect, results showed that participants hearing multiple synthetic voices evaluated the reviewed books more positively, predicted more favorable public reaction to the books, and felt greater social presence of virtual speakers. The effects were mediated by participants’ feelings of social presence. The second experiment (N= 40) showed that the observed effects persisted even when participants were shown the purely artificial nature of synthesized speech. These results support the idea that characteristics of synthetic voices in doubly disembodied language settings influence participants’ imagination of virtual speakers, and that technological literacy does not hinder social responses to anthropomorphic technologies such as text‐to‐speech (TTS).     

Fernando Pessoa’s Art of Living: Ironic Multiples,Multiple Ironies

In The Art of Living, Alexander Nehamas argues that Michel de Montaigne, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault undertook a particularist art of living—a unique project of self‐construction. In so doing, argues Nehamas, they based their lives on the life of Socrates, that quintessentially ironic character. To this list of self‐fashioning philosophers, I add Fernando Pessoa, the twentieth‐century Portuguese writer. I argue that Pessoa, via the writings of his heteronyms, also took Socrates as the model for constructing a self. Moreover, Pessoa employed all three kinds of irony that Nehamas argues is present in Plato’s writing, and did so not just to investigate the nature of the self, but to question its very existence. This is Pessoa’s formulation of the problem of the self. But Pessoa also borrowed from Nietzsche’s views on multiplicity, redeploying them in order to fabricate multiple selves. Pessoa’s solution to the problem of the self thus consists in the heteronymic device, which acts as a deus ex machina, unifying the disparate fictional voices and establishing Pessoa as a new, authentic self. Accordingly, Pessoa borrows from both Platonism and anti‐Platonism, distinguishing himself from both, so as to contrive—and simultaneously exemplify—an original art of living.     

ESSAYS IN HONOR OF CHRISTOPHER SOUTHGATE: INTRODUCTION

This article is an introduction to the special issue of Zygon in honor of Christopher Southgate. Over the years he has made many significant contributions to the field of science and religion, and contributors have gathered to celebrate him on his sixty‐fifth birthday. This introduction includes some biographical background and an outline of the issue's contents.     

On Irony Interpretation: Socratic Method in Plato's Euthyphro

Socratic Method in the Euthyphro can be fruitfully analysed as a method of irony interpretation. Socrates' method – the irony of irony interpretation – is to pretend that Euthyphro is an ironist in order to transform him into a self-ironist. To be a self-ironist is to ironize one's knowledge of virtue in order to bring an intuitive and unarticulated awareness of virtue to mind. The exercise of the capacity for self-irony is then a mode of striving for the good.     

Knowledge Justice: An Opportunity for Counter-expertise in Security vs. Science Debates

ABSTRACT

Knowledge justice provides a conceptual framework to apply principles of social justice in environments of competing interests regarding science. Both knowledge and its making can be seen as a good to be distributed, including all voices for whom the science will matter. In this framework, knowledge production is shared among a broader constituency of knowers representing both local and cosmopolitan voices. The problem of knowledge injustice can be seen in the U.S. government’s recent attempt to secure scientific knowledge about H5N1 or avian bird flu virus. The censorship produced a global debate between scientists and policy-makers over how to balance the nation-state’s desire for security with the life science’s tradition of open and shared research. This conundrum, known as the dual-use dilemma, obscures larger questions that lie outside of expert-centered domains—namely the concerns of many communities in the Global South struggling with the impact of the virus in their daily lives. An example of such counter-expertise is that of the backyard poultry farmer whose ways of knowing are foreign to science and policy experts who frame the ways in which knowledge about H5N1 should be developed, controlled, and used. While the H5N1 debate illuminated competing positions regarding knowledge production between powerful elites, it ignored the social justice inequities produced by the dual-use dilemma. The concept of knowledge justice provides a way of thinking about science that can include locally situated counter-expertise, disrupting the dual-use dilemma produced by competing dominant priorities of security and public health.     

RELIGION AND SCIENCE THROUGH THE AGES: RESPONSE TO MARANGUDAKIS

Abstract This paper is in response to an article by Professor Marangudakis in Zygon in which he presented a “grand narrative” that predicted the coming of a new “axial age” (Marangudakis, 2012). In his article, Marangudakis criticized parts of my article in Zygon, “Athens, Jerusalem and the Arrival of Techno‐Secularism” (Caiazza, 2005). Two issues separate us: first, whether the Athens/Jerusalem dilemma can or should be overcome in a new axial age, and second, how benign future technological developments will be. Marangudakis thinks that the Athens/Jerusalem dichotomy will be overcome, whereas I think that the dichotomy should and will persist in future ages. I am suspicious of the future effects of current technologies, since they give political elites increased control over the individual, while Marangudakis generally applauds the new technologies (especially biotechnology). The Athens/Jerusalem dichotomy arises as an inevitable part of monotheistic religious belief.     

ON SCIENCE AS A GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING THE ORDER AMIDST THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE

This paper is the reprinting under a new title of the “Foreword” of Paul A. Weiss's Life, Order, and Understanding: A Theme in Three Variations, published in 1970 as volume 8 supplement of The Graduate Journal of the University of Texas (Austin, Texas, #5.00 [hardcover], #2.50 [paperback], 157 pages). We reprint this paper here for two reasons. The first is that its beautiful, scientifically grounded imagery of living systems in relation to wave dynamics provides a significant supplement to this issue of Zygon on human values in the context of thermodynamics. The second is that it is hoped this foreword will serve better than would a book review to introduce Zygon readers to the philosophical and scientific wisdom contained in Life, Order, and Understanding.–Editor.     

Kierkegaard on the Problems of Pure Irony

Søren Kierkegaard's thesis, The Concept of Irony, contains an interesting critique of pure irony. Kierkegaard's critique turns on two main claims: (a) pure irony is an incoherent and thus, unrealizable stance; (b) the pursuit of pure irony is morally enervating, psychologically destructive, and culminates in bondage to moods. In this essay, first I attempt to clarify Kierkegaard's understanding of pure irony as “infinite absolute negativity.” Then I set forth his multilayered critique of pure irony. Finally, I consider briefly a distinctly theological component in Kierkegaard's critique. I argue that this feature of Kierkegaard's account can and should be distinguished from the broadly ethical critique of pure irony that I sketch in the second section, even if these components of Kierkegaard's position are found together as a unified whole in The Concept of Irony. My overall goal in this essay is to reveal the subtlety and plausibility of Kierkegaard's critique of pure irony. I also attempt to disclose the richness of the Hegelian account of ethical life to which Kierkegaard recurs in his thesis.     

Pragmatic Encroachment and Moral Encroachment

Subject‐sensitive invariantism posits surprising connections between a person's knowledge and features of her environment that are not paradigmatically epistemic features. But which features of a person's environment have this distinctive connection to knowledge? Traditional defenses of subject‐sensitive invariantism emphasize features that matter to the subject of the knowledge‐attribution. Call this pragmatic encroachment. A more radical thesis usually goes ignored: knowledge is sensitive to moral facts, whether or not those moral facts matter to the subject. Call this moral encroachment. This article argues that, insofar as there are good arguments for pragmatic encroachment, there are also good arguments for moral encroachment.     

ZYGON 'S DUAL MISSION

The first mission of Zygon has been the exploration of the relation between Religion and Science. The second, I suggest, has been consideration of the relation between Ethics and Technology. Some articles have given attention to the relation of Religion to Ethics, or that of Science to Technology. The interaction of Ethics and Science, and that of Religion and Technology, are also significant. I give examples of articles or symposia in each of these categories and close with great hope for Zygon's future.     

“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.     

BETWEEN KNOWING AND BEING: REFLECTIONS ON BEING TAUGHT SCIENCE AND RELIGION BY PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER SOUTHGATE

It is a joy to be asked to contribute to this commemorative edition of Zygon, in honor of my friend Christopher Southgate. But a narrowly academic article seems not to fit the brief of writing a reflection on Southgate's teaching of science and religion, as one who has witnessed it, gladly, as both student and colleague. What follows, then, is deliberately reflective in tone, with little in the way of academic references apart from occasional links to Southgate's own work—though, I hope, enough of a strand of argument to justify inclusion in these pages. My argument is simply put: Southgate teaches by not teaching, but by drawing out knowledge from students and thereby empowering their growth. He is an exemplar, a kind man committed to the unfolding of understanding, interested too in forming dispositions in his students that will lead to their flourishing as thinkers and as people.     

THE ATHENS/JERUSALEM TEMPLATE AND THE TECHNO‐SECULARISM THESIS—KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD

Abstract. The publication of my article “Athens, Jerusalem, and the Arrival of Techno‐secularism” (2005) in Zygon was followed by twenty‐one responses, most of them critical. In this essay I reply by clarifying the earlier one, separating out its two major theses: the Athens/Jerusalem template and the techno‐secularism thesis. The Athens/Jerusalem template is a typology that provides a historical basis for understanding why religion/science conflicts persist by showing that the contrasts between intellectual knowledge and revealed knowledge are permanent features of Western cultural history. Postmodern criticisms often have a negative edge, rejecting “canonical” accounts but not presenting alternative explanations. Historical context is helpful in understanding religion/science conflicts, which continue to exist. The present cultural situation is that technology is replacing religion—and science—as the dominant condition and theory of our culture. Evidence for the techno‐secularism thesis can be seen in the nature of electronic entertainment, which invades the silence required for religious contemplation and obscures the scientific laws that are the basis for the new technology.     

How Sports Fans Forge Intergroup Competition Through Language: The Case of Verbal Irony

In situations with rival groups, people strategically use language to strengthen group identity and foster intergroup competition. We distinguished 2 communication mechanisms to accomplish this: (a) linguistic aggression toward out‐group members, (b) communicating group expectancies. We contrasted these mechanisms across 2 experiments by studying verbal irony. Experiment 1 targeted speaker behavior and showed that Dutch soccer fans found irony more appropriate to comment on out‐group (vs. in‐group) members, regardless of behavioral valence. Experiment 2 demonstrated differential inferences from irony by neutral observers: Fans using ironic comments about competent (vs. incompetent) behavior were seen more as out‐group and less as in‐group members. Our experiments demonstrated a communication asymmetry between speaker behavior and addressee inferences.     

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.