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Chapter 1 - Science and Religion as Historical Traditions

from Part I - Modern Historians on ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

Peter Harrison
Affiliation:
University of Queensland
John Milbank
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Summary

This chapter investigates the conditions for dialogue between science and religion, and asks what makes dialogue possible or desirable. Sometimes, dialogue has simply amounted to theology and religion accommodating themselves to the sciences, and this can serve to reinforce unhelpful ways of categorising science and religion. Different models for dialogue are suggested by past relations between natural philosophy and religion, understood as formative practices (rather than proposition-generating activities). An alternative approach is also suggested by the problem of incommensurability, initially applied in different ways by Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Alasdair MacIntyre to the relations between competing scientific frameworks, but which is also applicable also to science–religion relations. Thinking of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ in terms of historical traditions, to use MacIntyre’s expression, leads to a different understanding of their possible relationships. Historical and sociological descriptions of scientific and religious practices, in short, should play a more prominent role in our understandings of sciences, religions, and their relations.

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Chapter
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After Science and Religion
Fresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology
, pp. 15 - 34
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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