THE RELATION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY: THE CASE FOR COMPLEMENTARITY REVISITED |
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| Authors: | K. Helmut Reich |
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| Affiliation: | After twenty-eight years of particle accelerator physics and engineering, chiefly at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Geneva, is Research Associate and Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Education at the University of Fribourg (Rte des Fougères, Ch-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland). |
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| Abstract: | Abstract. Donald MacKay has suggested that the logical concept of complementarity is needed to relate scientific and theological thinking. According to Ian Barbour, this concept should only be used within, not between, disciplines. This article therefore attempts to clarify that contrast from the standpoint of cognitive process. Thinking in terms of complementarity is explicated within a structuralist-genetic, interactive-constructivist, developmental theory of the neo- and post-Piagetian kind, and its role in religious development is indicated. Adolescents'complementary views on Creation and on the corresponding scientific accounts serve as an illustration. After further analysis of parallel and circular complementarity, it is shown under which conditions complementarity of science and theology can be better justified and may be potentially more fruitful than is apparent from Barbour's or even MacKay's considerations. |
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| Keywords: | Ian Barbour cognition complementarity epistemology intellectual development logic Donald MacKay science and religion worldviews |
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