Theology and the Scientific Imagination

"This book came out in the 1980s, even before John Brooke’s complexity thesis. It’s a powerful statement of continuities in medieval thinking about divine omnipotence—the all-powerfulness of God—and how this idea played out in very interesting ways in the formation of modern science. At a time when no one was really talking much about how specific theological ideas may have had an impact on the emergence of modern science, Funkenstein’s book is a milestone. We can go back to Merton for the sociological stuff, but in terms of the specific theological ideas, we can go to Funkenstein. It is a real masterpiece. His knowledge of the sources is really impressive, in showing how these ideas and debates of the operations of God’s power in the world had a direct impact on scientific thinking. Let me start with omnipotence, because that’s a slightly simpler case. The concept of laws of nature is a modern concept that we see most explicitly articulated first by Descartes. Descartes talks about laws of nature as God directly impinging on natural order, immediately moving objects around in lawful fashion according to his choice of a particular set of laws. So, the idea of a law of nature is that God chooses to instantiate regularities in the world and we need to go out and discover what they are. This is very different from Aristotle’s idea that the order of the world is a function of the inherent properties that things have. To overgeneralise somewhat, with the new views of Descartes and Newton, the powers of things are stripped away—they become inert—and God has to do the work of moving things around. He does according to his own laws. The notion of divine omnipotence—that God can make any kind of world he wants and is not constrained by any other considerations—then leads to the necessity of empirically investigating the world. That’s one example: the idea of laws of nature and mathematical laws of nature which are foundational to modern science come out of the idea of divine omnipotence. Descartes is explicit about this, and so too are English thinkers like Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton , and Samuel Clark. They are very explicit that laws of nature are divine edicts. “The idea of laws of nature and mathematical laws of nature, which are foundational to modern science, come out of the idea of divine omnipotence” The omnipresence link is really quite complicated. It’s interesting because the debates that we see between Leibniz and Newton about whether space is absolute or relative actually hinge on theological questions to do with divine omnipresence. The Newtonian position is that if God is omnipotent, he must be present where he is active. His omnipresence, then, is what makes possible his acting everywhere. For Leibniz, this looks suspiciously like a form of pantheism—God has a body and that body is space. Newton comes very close to this in one edition of the Optiks where he talks about space as God’s ‘divine sensorium’ or sense organ. I think I would. I’d be inclined to say that the medieval theological background is necessary but not sufficient. That would be my view, which is a bit stronger than Funkenstein’s claim. I think the timing of the separation between the two is often got completely wrong, and Funkenstein is a good example of why that’s the case. It’s often thought that the scientific revolution takes place when science and religion are separated out. But what Funkenstein shows—and I think he’s exactly right—is that they actually come closer together in the 17th century. He talks in this context about “secular theologians”, meaning that for the first time, natural philosophers start to make theological claims and that would have been very unusual in the Middle Ages. The whole structure of the medieval university was set up so that the faculty of arts where natural philosophy was taught was separate from the theological faculties. That was done quite deliberately. Natural philosophers (scientists, we would call them) typically did not make theological claims. But in the 17th century, we find that people like Descartes, Kepler, and Newton are all making theological statements. Part of the reason for this is that theological considerations are central to the way they’re thinking about the world. So, what actually happens is that science and religion come together in the 17th century in a way that would have been very unusual in the Middle Ages. “Science and religion come together in the 17th century in a way that would have been very unusual in the Middle Ages” The question is: when do they come apart? That happens definitively in the 19th century. Why they came apart is another complicated story, but in England one of the reasons was because scientists wanted to assert their independence from ecclesiastical strictures. There was a professional component. People like Thomas Henry Huxley had an explicit mission to use science, e.g. evolutionary thinking, to liberate science and scientific institutions from theological constraint. For Huxley and his fellow travellers, the union of theology and science was a problem. And at some level I think it was. Your second question—whether it’s a good thing that they’re separate—is a hard one to answer. If those like Merton, Funkenstein and me are correct in thinking that theology was really crucial to the efflorescence of science in the 17th century, counterfactually we might ask if there is something lacking in science today that might limit its prospects. The question for me is: what makes science fruitful? Clearly, the advocacy of something like intelligent design or scientific creationism in present circumstances is absolute heresy. And I want to be clear that I am not advocating that. But I do think it’s very interesting to consider whether religious conceptions might lead to unconceived possibilities in terms of contexts of discovery. This is precisely Funkenstein’s point—that thinking about divine omnipotence and what God could possibly instantiate led to new ways of thinking about the world. This was also argued even more strongly by the French historian and philosopher of science Pierre Duhem. But we can also look at that the other way around. I wonder whether the very strong naturalism which either explicitly or implicitly shapes virtually all modern thought is in some way restrictive. Your point is that specific religious dogmas are potentially restrictive, and I think that’s absolutely right. But there’s a difference between specific religious dogmas and thinking in more elaborate theological terms about something like divine omnipotence (which is the historical case I’m thinking of). To put it this way, I don’t buy the idea that scientific naturalism is some neutral position and that the religious position is the one invested in a set of restrictive assumptions. I think naturalism is potentially just as dogmatic and restrictive."