ECOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY: SCIENCE AND THEOLOGICAL MODELING

Abstract. The possibility of in-breakings of God in science is discussed. A realist philosophy of science is used as a framework in which new paradigms are seen as providing ever better approximations to the true underlying structure of nature, which will be revealed in the eschaton. It is argued that ecology–the study of the earth as a whole–cannot be treated as a natural science because there can be no paradigms for understanding the earth as a whole. Instead technology is used as a means for interacting with God through nature.