Today’s Post
Last week we took a first look at how the seemingly opposing perspectives of science and religion, our two great modes of thinking on this planet, could be seen as simply two facets of a fundamentally integrated movement towards a more comprehensive understanding of ourselves and the universe of which we are a part. Teilhard likened them to two meridians on the surface of a globe which draw near as they approach the pole:
“Like the meridians as they approach the poles, science, philosophy and religion are bound to converge as they draw nearer to the whole. I say, “converge” advisedly, but without merging, and without ceasing, to the very end, to assail the real from different angles and on different planes”.
Given the traditional enmity between them, many would conclude that more of one inevitably results in less of the other. This conclusion certainly seems to be borne out by the many polls in western countries which show a decline in religious participation. ‘Accommodation’ has been automatically translated as ‘surrender’.
This week we will look at both Teilhard’s model of “assailing the real from different angles and on different planes” and how Paul Davies’ recognition of science’s need to ‘accommodate’ the human person offers a starting place for a true ‘accommodation’ in which one is enriched by the other.
Science and Religion: Drawing Nearer to the Poles
As a first step to rethink this classic duality, Paul Davies, a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, simply puts scientific understanding into an evolutionary perspective:
“No scientist would claim that the existing formulation of the laws of physics is complete and final. It is therefore legitimate to consider that extensions or modifications of these laws may be found, that embody at a fundamental level the capacity for matter and energy to organize themselves.”
One aspect of such ‘extension or modification’ lies in the Inclusion of the phenomenon of increasing complexity into the scope of science. He notes that not only is such inclusion necessary for a more complete understanding of the universe in which we live, but will open the door to a subject significant but so far poorly treated by science: the human person.
Teilhard de Chardin also understood that the recognition of increasing complexity was key to a comprehensive understanding of reality, and also recognized the missing piece:
“Up to the present, whether from prejudice or fear, science has been reluctant to look man in the face but has constantly circled round the human object without daring to tackle it. Materially our bodies seem insignificant, accidental, transitory and fragile; why bother about them? Psychologically, our souls are incredibly subtle and complex: how can one fit them into a world of laws and formulas?”
Thus, such inclusion as proposed by Davies, requires a new empirical perspective, an extension to traditional science. Such emphasis on emerging complexity, while perhaps new to science, echoes Teilhard’s insistence that this same emphasis brings more relevancy to religion itself. After all, he notes, religion has always assumed that there is a facet to the human person which is connected in some way to whatever universal agency by which the universe unfolds. Again, from Teilhard:
“To outward appearance, the modern world was born of an anti-religious movement: man becoming self-sufficient and reason supplanting belief. Our generation and the two that preceded it have heard little but talk of the conflict between science and faith; indeed it seemed at one moment a foregone conclusion that the former was destined to take the place of the latter.
But, as the tension is prolonged, the conflict visibly seems to be resolved in terms of an entirely different form of equilibrium- not in elimination, nor duality, but in synthesis. After close on to two centuries of passionate struggles, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary. On the contrary, it becomes obvious that neither can develop normally without the other. And the reason is simple: the same life animates both. Neither in its impetus nor its achievements can science go to its limits without becoming tinged with mysticism and charged with faith.”
The ‘mysticism’ to which Teilhard refers here is less the classical religious concept of ‘tuning into to the supernatural’ and more the recognizing of the presence of a heretofore unrecognized agency of universal evolution. ‘Faith’ in this insight refers less to ‘adherence to dogmatic statements so that we will be saved’ and more believing in both the inherent comprehensiveness of reality and our innate capability to understand it.
The Next Post
This week we took a deeper look at the skill of using the ‘whole brain’ to assess the ‘noosphere’, focusing on the different thinking modes of science and religion, as represented by Paul Davies and Teilhard, and how they illustrate the potential to envision them as Teilhard did, as global “meridians as they approach the poles…, bound to converge as they draw nearer to the pole”. While Davies and Teilhard offer two very clear examples of envisioning synergy between science and religion, the question can be asked, “what areas of focus could be common to science and religion?” Aren’t they, as claimed by Stephen Jay Gould (and echoed by Richard Dawkins), independent ‘non overlapping magisteria’
Next week we will take a look at some areas where it would be appropriate to explore the idea of synergy.