Rational Consilience

This final chapter focusses on the question of how insights gained from multiple disciplines can be brought together or colligated into a deeper and more satisfying vision of the world. It specifically engages the question of whether it is irrational to hold beliefs which are developed through the use of different rational strategies and criteria—for example, the scientist who is also a socialist, or a theologian who is also a natural scientist. It is argued that any form of interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary engagement requires working with multiple rationalities and learning to live with the tensions this creates. In arguing for the need for integration and dialogue, the chapter criticizes the influential approach to consilience developed by E. O. Wilson on the grounds that it it is excessively dependent on the intellectual framework provided by the Enlightenment, and gives too prominent a place to the natural sciences. A more open approach is suggested in its place.

From Observation to Theory

How do we move from observing the world to developing more complex and sophisticated ways of representing and understanding it? This chapter examines the intellectual journey from observing our world to representing it in theory, focussing on three distinct processes that are widely believed to be important in this process—deduction, induction, and abduction. Each of these rational strategies is used in theological or philosophical arguments relating to the existence of God. In each case, careful consideration is given to its application both in the natural sciences and in Christian theology. Particular attention is given to the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce’s use of abduction, and its potential significance for Christian theology.

Social Aspects of Rationality

This chapter considers how social communities arise which are committed to a specific way of understanding or investigating our world, and how they transmit their ideas and values. Particular attention is paid to the notion of ‘epistemic communities’, and how they are able to communicate with each other, despite their different understandings of what it means to be ‘reasonable’. The concept of tradition—meaning a settled understanding of how the world is to be understood and explored—is considered, particularly in relation to the challenge this poses to the idea that reason is something that is historically and culturally invariant.

One Reason; Multiple Rationalities

This chapter examines the rise of ‘multiple situated rationalities’—the idea that different cultures and academic disciplines develop distinct understandings of what is ‘reasonable’, reflecting their specific contexts and tasks. Rationality is now seen as historically and culturally embedded, so that what thinkers in one context regard as ‘reasonable’ will not find agreement in other contexts. The emergence of this realization is documented carefully and critically, focussing on the collapse of the Enlightenment’s idea of a single universal reason, and the implications of this collapse for human thinking about rationality and reasonableness. Particular attention is paid to the criteria of rationality, and the use of exemplars of rationality—such as ‘the wise’.

Complexity and Mystery

This chapter examines the limited capacity of human reason to make sense of a complex world, and how this expresses itself in the notion of ‘mystery’. How does being receptive to mystery help us cope with our complex world? The concept of mystery is explored with particular reference to Gabriel Marcel and Austin Farrer, and as this is expressed in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The chapter considers whether a ‘mystery’ is simply a synonym for an ‘irrationality’, or whether it can be seen as a recognition of the limits placed upon the human mind to grasp a vast and complicated universe. What are the scientific and theological consequences of the limited capacity of the human mind? How can we expand our grasp of reality?

Rational Explanation in Science and Religion

This chapter considers what it means to ‘explain’ something in the natural sciences and Christian theology. A number of theories of explanation are considered, including ‘ontic’ and ‘epistemic’ approaches to explanation. Their respective merits and applications are examined. Particular attention is paid to ‘unitative explanation’, the idea that a good theory is able to enfold other theories, or enable things which were previously seen as unrelated to be considered as part of a greater coherent whole. The implications of these reflections for theological explanation are then considered, with the focus on one of Thomas Aquinas’s famous arguments for the existence of God—the ‘Second Way’.

Mapping Human Reason

This chapter looks at the ‘maps’ of human reason, focussing on how different academic disciplines work with different—and often divergent—notions of rationality. Particular attention is paid to ‘scientism’—the view that the natural sciences are the ultimate rational authority. Attention then turns to interdisciplinary issues, focussing on the relation of science and religion; and the notion and location of a boundary between science and religion are examined. The chapter explores the ideas that these two fields might represent different perspectives on reality, or that they can be seen as engaging different levels of reality. Noting how concepts of rationality and their associated practices vary according to their cultural and disciplinary context, various accounts of the relation between science and religion are considered as potential frameworks for understanding how they might engage in a meaningful dialogue.

Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice

This chapter examines the criteria which are used to decide which scientific or religious theory is to be preferred. After consideration of what is meant by a ‘theory’, particular attention is paid to the process of ‘inference to the best explanation’, in which a choice is made between several potential theories on the basis of certain criteria—such as their correspondence with reality, or their internal coherence. Is the best theory the most elegant? The simplest? Or the one most likely to predict outcomes? These points are considered in relation to both scientific and theological theories, with engagement with historical examples to illustrate the principles at issue.

Introduction

Philip Clayton opens his 1989 study of the concept of explanation in physics and theology with an arresting and engaging statement: ‘For believers, religious beliefs help to explain the world and their place within it.’1 For Clayton, this represents both a reliable summary of the consensus of religious believers, and a legitimate option within the changing intellectual landscape of that age. Clayton rightly emphasizes the radical changes in scholarly understanding of rationality which lay behind his book. The school of logical positivism, dominant in the early 1930s and still influential in the 1960s, left no conceptual space for ‘rational’ discussion of beliefs about God, generally taking the view that religious language could not be cognitively meaningful. Yet major transformation in the philosophy of science began to take place during the 1950s, as positivist accounts of reality were gradually displaced by contextualist or coherence-based theories of scientific rationality, opening up new possibilities of dialogue between theology and the philosophy of science....