Ernan McMullin and Critical Realism in the Science-Theology Dialogue

Paul L. Allen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317141754
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión

Scientists, philosophers and theologians have wrestled repeatedly with the question of whether knowledge is similar or different in their various understandings of the world and God. Although agreement is still elusive, the epistemology of critical realism, associated with Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke, remains widely credible. Relying on the lifetime work of philosopher Ernan McMullin, this book expands our understanding of critical realism beyond a permanent stand-off between the subjective and objective, whether in science or theology. Critical realism illuminates the subject and the objectively known simultaneously. Responding to criticisms made against it, this book defends critical realism in science and theology with a specific role to play in our understanding of God.

Chapter 1

Contemporary Natural Theology and Critical Realism in Science and Theology

One approach in which the issue of critical realism has been framed is natural theology. Natural theology is a form of reflection that takes its structure of questioning from the discipline of philosophy and its point of departure from the world as given, to speak about God as creator. So it is logical that an analysis of select lectures by scientists in this field would yield a set of fruitful reflections on the relationship between scientific and theological knowledge. Moreover, it follows that the three scientist-theologians selected for analysis in this chapter would discuss the God–World relationship in their Gifford Lectures. The experience of God as creator is pivotal for the entire Christian theological tradition. It is the chief locus of concern in both natural theology and the science–theology dialogue.¹

Scientist-theologians and the Gifford Lectures

Natural theology has been the focus of the Gifford Lectures, a prominent series of lectures that have become a culturally privileged forum for addressing the topic. The three thinkers I named in the introduction, Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne, have been prominent recent Gifford Lecturers. They delivered Gifford Lectures in 1989–90, 1993 and 1993–94 respectively, each of which has been published in book form. As such, they have committed themselves to reflections in the science–theology dialogue from within the general parameters of the natural theology tradition.²

Their common objective is to describe a cognitive and epistemological basis to theological claims regarding the natural universe. There are, none the less, distinct and important differences among these thinkers. It is worth noting in particular the contribution of John Polkinghorne. His examination of credal theology with an eye on science in The Faith of a Physicist addresses the estrangement of redemptive and revelational theology from the science–theology discourse. Polkinghorne’s choice marks a significant though not utterly unique break from the natural theology of previous Gifford Lectures. Simultaneously, it marks a break from the philosophical approach to God that characterizes the bulk of reflections in the science–theology dialogue.³

Since the Creed is a form of theological language that arose in the context of a specifically Christian tradition centred on the redemptive experience of Christ’s disciples and the Christian church, Polkinghorne’s point of departure requires that we pay attention. His focus on the Creed may hold a clue to a problem in the science–theology dialogue. Perhaps the notion of critical realism, in defining what is acceptable as knowledge, has left out too much of what is theologically distinctive. Polkinghorne argues convincingly in his work that faith, redemptive categories, human historicity or revelation theology should not be avoided. In speaking explicitly of faith, Polkinghorne indicates that theology needs to claim more than its recovery of cognitive and epistemological dimensions.

In suggesting that the God–World question in theology implies taking up the issue of knowledge, it is equally implied that the critical realist theory of knowledge is involved. Since the worldviews of thinkers like Barbour, Peacocke and Polkinghorne address the God–World question, they each require appraising in terms of how their views on knowledge and worldview cohere. They hold a common position on the nature of knowledge. But do they successfully account for God as a distinct object of theological knowledge? If so, how? Are they explicit in what makes up a claim to knowledge in regards to both the world and the world vis-à-vis God? Through a better understanding of the meaning of critical realism on the part of each thinker, I argue here that their theological positions can be freshly clarified and open to constructive expansion.

Until recently, critical realism was virtually unchallenged in the science–theology dialogue. Now, with a wave of critiques concerning critical realism’s alleged oversights in the science–theology dialogue, this position requires a thorough re-examination.⁴ The selection of the three Gifford Lectures is thus a natural point of departure for such a re-examination. Barbour, Peacocke and Polkinghorne already provide key elements for adopting a wider philosophical framework.⁵

My aim is to reinforce what the three Gifford Lecturers emphasize as the cognitive locus of theological knowledge, given the correlations that exist outside theology. A focus on critical realism alerts theologians to how to deal with the complexities of appropriating subject matter that is steeped in conflicting philosophical allegiances.⁶ However, I shall argue that, although each Gifford Lecturer defends critical realism with common terms and references, each of them develops the term with respect to different discourses. This is especially apparent in the case of Polkinghorne. In spite of a shared descriptive phrase designating how theology and the sciences understand the reality that they investigate, there exist important differences in their understanding of what critical realism means for theology. This divergence is why the issue of critical realism, their common methodological position, deserves a systematic analysis. If the methodological question cannot be settled with some assurance, then it is unlikely that agreement on specific theological interpretations of nature or science can ever be resolved.

Each lecturer advances the belief that theology contains cognitive content. Theology does not refer to arbitrary sets of religious language expressed differently according to the religious outlook of a particular tradition or culture. Each lecturer’s contribution as it pertains to critical realism will be analysed. As it stands, Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne have set out to identify and describe the implications of historical conflicts, contemporary scientific findings and certain philosophical areas of discussion for Christian theology.

Two concerns emerge in reading these lectures and their other published work on this question. The first deals with the depth of philosophical acumen that each lecturer brings to his theological inquiry. There is an aporia over the degree and range within which human rationality has been utilized to support the position of critical realism in science and theology. A risk emerges when theology attaches itself to an idealist interpretation of science for fear of being unable to relate to empirical inquiries. Systematic theology becomes idealist when it attaches itself to the most speculative aspects of science. This is a risk for a theology of divine action that wants to utilize the indeterministic aspects of quantum mechanics to leverage a dimension of reality in which God’s action in the world can be identified. Those who investigate such proposals are dedicated to seeing how quantum mechanics can be interpreted in a less speculative light, but nevertheless the concern remains, at least for the present.

The second concern raised by a reading of these lectures is whether these theologians select too liberally from the scientific data to suit their theological purposes. The problem is the degree to which scientific sources have been understood and represented well. To the degree that science and scientific rationality are philosophically skewed, there are indirect consequences for theology. To the degree that theological knowledge is skewed, there are also consequences for whether a dialogue with science will be authentic. Bearing in mind Polkinghorne’s stance on faith, for instance, how does his departure from natural theology disclose a problem in the way that theological knowledge claims are treated in the science–theology dialogue? Do the differences among Polkinghorne, Peacocke and Barbour on this subject undermine the apparent agreement over critical realism?

In response, this study will explore a theological reflection that aims to provide an explanatory account of a critical realist view of knowledge. This question is crucial in view of the entire neo-Kantian move to conceptually construct objects as the precondition for knowing these objects by subjects. The quote from Wright describes this situation well. We know from within certain human contexts. For this reason, Nancey Murphy calls critical realism a truism.⁷ The three Gifford Lecturers being examined here develop the term in connection with specific problems that render the term a problem rather than a description or a truism. Barbour develops the term critical realism in relation to religion and religious claims from its usual locus in science. Peacocke develops critical realism in relation to a theological systematics that depends, for its part, on a biologically oriented theological anthropology. Polkinghorne develops critical realism in relation to the basic claim that faith is reasonable.

In short, this study argues that in these thinkers, there is an incomplete critical realist philosophical framework, because on the religious side of the dialogue at least, the term is developed with three different purposes in mind. As this chapter will show, for Barbour, critical realism is developed with attention to dialectical oppositions and their foundational resolution, inspired by contemporary debates in the philosophy of science. For Peacocke, critical realism is developed as a tool for understanding how to systematically integrate theological notions in an interdisciplinary context. Polkinghorne, finally, is concerned to show the reasonable status of doctrines in theological discourse. Critical realism offers the epistemological basis for doing this. These three purposes appear to be similar, but in fact are quite different. While these three different aims are related and not necessarily contradictory, there is insufficient evidence to suggest that each thinker refers to a common or identical position of critical realism.

On the scientific side, I want to make the case that these diverse theological interpretations of critical realism draw on a similar descriptive approach to science and scientific rationality. While this is correct so far as it goes, they ignore the cognitively rich elements of human rationality. While this common employment of the term ‘critical realist’ from philosophy of science helps identify their advocacy of a general critical realist epistemology, their lack of reference to an explanatory perspective limits the extent to which critical realism is exploited as a legitimately profound philosophical discovery. On the contrary, this study seeks to show that critical realism is genuinely a philosophical discovery, yet one whose meaning has been taken for granted.

In the following analysis of Barbour’s Religion in an Age of Science, Peacocke’s Theology for a Scientific Age and Polkinghorne’s The Faith of a Physicist, the focus will remain on the specific contents of each thinker’s proposed critical realism. This analysis will outline the resources marshalled in defence of critical realism, the main insights each thinker makes into it, the implications arising from these insights, and a summary theological evaluation of these three critical realisms.

Ian Barbour

I will begin with Barbour. His interpretation of critical realism is directly inspired by Thomas Kuhn, especially his agreement with Kuhn’s notion of paradigms that mark off different periods of normal scientific investigation from one another. As is well known, Kuhn’s notion of paradigm was introduced spectacularly through his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.⁸ In the wake of the critical turn in philosophy, Barbour identifies models and theories which attempt to correspond with an aspect of the reality of the world. Models and theories are inherently limited, however. They comprise internal or epistemological limits to knowledge. A model exemplifies this understanding of knowledge as being ‘an imaginative tool for ordering experience, rather than a description of the world’.⁹ For Barbour, the correspondence between scientific data with theories on the one hand and religious experience with belief on the other hand is ample justification for a Whiteheadian metaphysic that stresses the interconnected web of reality, understood in complementary ways, according to one’s particular approach. Barbour’s critical realism is nothing less than a renewal of a theology of nature, something Barbour has stressed as his own particular goal.

Among our three thinkers, Barbour was the first to deliver the Gifford Lectures. He delivered them at the University of Aberdeen in 1989. The title of these lectures was first published as Religion in an Age of Science. It has since been re-published as Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, and remains perhaps the most well-known religious engagement with the natural sciences in the history of the Gifford Lectures.¹⁰ Barbour’s work has since been lauded as the standard text by which other science–religion discourse is evaluated.¹¹ This is especially true with respect to Barbour’s famous fourfold typology for science–religion interaction: conflict, independence, dialogue and integration.¹²

For Barbour, critical realism is an epistemological breakthrough that occurred during the mid-twentieth century. It opened up a new view on the achievement of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries, especially in the sciences. The reason for this shift was the demise of scientific positivism beginning with the modest critiques of Karl Popper and later with the rise of the historical school, beginning in the early 1960s. Barbour’s use of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is matched only by an appreciation of Michael Polanyi’s book Personal Knowledge.¹³ Barbour also mentions a similar theory of scientific research programmes by philosopher of science Imre Lakatos.¹⁴ But it is really Kuhn and the historicist movement to whom Barbour gives credit for advancing critical realism in the philosophy of science. According to Kuhn and others, science advances as a community of knowledge in different stages. It does not advance, as popular optimistic portraits previously a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Contemporary Natural Theology and Critical Realism in Science and Theology
• 2 McMullin’s Scientific Realism and the Theory of Retroduction
• 3 Cosmology and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge
• 4 McMullin, Faith and Rationality
• 5 Extending McMullin’s Theology of Self-transcendence
• Conclusion
• Chronological Bibliography of Ernan McMullin’s Works
• Index