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I A N R A M S E Y CE N T R E S T U D I E S I N
SCIENCE AND RELIGION

General Editor: ALISTER E . M C GRATH

Managing Editor: ANDREW PINSENT

The Ian Ramsey Centre Studies in Science and Religion series brings readers
innovative books showcasing cutting-edge research in the field of science and
religion. The series will consider key questions in the field, including the
interaction of the natural sciences and the philosophy of religion; the impact
of evolutionary theory on our understanding of human morality, religiosity,
and rationality; the exploration of a scientifically-engaged theology; and
the psychological examination of the importance of religion for human
flourishing and well-being. The series will also encourage the development
of new and more nuanced readings of the interaction of science and religion.
This ground-breaking series aims to represent the best new scholarship in
this ever-expanding field of study.
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The Territories
of Human Reason
Science and Theology in an Age
of Multiple Rationalities

A L I S T E R E . M C G RA TH

1
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3
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In memory of
Ian T. Ramsey (1915–72)
Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian
Religion, Oxford University
Bishop of Durham
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Contents

Introduction: Science and Theology in an Age of ‘Multiple

Situated Rationalities’ 1
Mapping the Territories of Human Reason 3
Mapping the Territories of Science and Religion 6
The Aim of this Book 13

I . E X P L OR I N G TH E NO T I O N O F R A T IO N A L I T Y
1. One Reason; Multiple Rationalities: The New Context
of Discussion 19
Shifting Notions of Rationality 21
Rationality, Embodiment, and Embeddedness 22
Reflections on the Cultural and Social Embeddedness of Rationality 27
The Embodiment of Right Reason: The ‘Wise’ 32
Concerns about Human Rationality 35
One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 39
Rationality, Ideology, and Power 46
2. Mapping Human Reason: Rationalities across
Disciplinary Boundaries 50
On the Correlation of Rationalities 53
Scientism: The Natural Sciences as the Ultimate Rational Authority 56
Multiple Perspectives on a Complex Reality 59
Science and Theology: Distinct Perspectives on Reality 63
Science and Theology: Distinct Levels of Reality 65
3. Social Aspects of Rationality: Tradition and Epistemic
Communities 75
Communities and their Epistemic Systems 76
Rationality, Community, and Tradition 80
Rationality and Dominant Cultural Metanarratives 84
Science and Religion: Reflections on the Communal
Aspects of Knowledge 89
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viii Contents

I I . R A T IO N A L I T Y I N S C I E N C E AN D T H E O L O G Y:
A CRITIC A L ENG AG EMENT
4. Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 95
What is a Theory? 97
Inference to the Best Explanation 101
Correspondence and Coherence as Theoretical
Virtues 106
Objectivity 110
Simplicity 113
Elegance and Beauty 117
A Capacity to Predict 119
5. Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 124
What does it Mean to ‘Explain’? 125
Causality as Explanation 129
Unification as Explanation 132
Two Approaches to Explanation: Ontic and Epistemic 135
Religious Explanation: Some General Reflections 137
Religious Explanation: Ontic and Epistemic 140
Theology, Ontology, and Explanation 143
A Case Study: Aquinas’s ‘Second Way’ 145
The Image of God and Religious Explanation 148
Understanding and Explaining: A Religious
Perspective 150
6. From Observation to Theory: Deduction, Induction,
and Abduction 154
The Entanglement of Theory and Observation 157
Logics of Discovery and Justification 159
Deduction in the Natural Sciences 164
Deduction in Christian Theology 167
Induction in the Natural Sciences 170
Induction in Christian Theology 172
Abduction in the Natural Sciences 175
Abduction in Christian Theology 178
7. Complexity and Mystery: The Limits of Rationality
in Science and Religion 182
Mystery and Irrationality 182
Mystery in Science 187
Mystery in Christian Theology 190
The Trinity as Mystery 195
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Contents ix
On Being Receptive to Mystery 199
Mystery: An Invitation to Deeper Reflection 201
8. Rational Consilience: Some Closing Reflections on
Science and Christian Theology 203
Towards a ‘Big Picture’: A Metaphysical Turn 204
The Colligation of Insights 210
A Case Study in Colligation: Science and Socialism 212
A Case Study in Colligation: Science and Theology 218
Rationality: A Cohesive Approach 221

Bibliography 227
Index 283
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Introduction
Science and Theology in an Age of ‘Multiple
Situated Rationalities’

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 empha-
sizes 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.²
This book seeks to extend this discussion in the light of still further
changes in the wider debate about human rationality, including but
extending beyond the philosophy of science, since the publication of

¹ Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology, 1. While Clayton notes additional

functions of religious belief, he rightly insists that a capacity to explain remains an
integral aspect of faith. Cf. van Huyssteen, Essays in Postfoundationalist Theology, 231.
² For some important episodes in the history of exploration of this theme, see
Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany.
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2 The Territories of Human Reason

Clayton’s landmark book—above all, the seemingly inexorable move
away from the notion of a single universal rationality towards a
plurality of cultural and domain-specific methodologies and ration-
alities. In particular, it seeks to affirm and explore the intellectual
legitimacy of both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialogue³ in
this age of multiple situated rationalities, focussing on the interaction
of the natural sciences and Christian theology as a single case study
with the potential to illuminate other such discussions.
The suggestion that the natural sciences themselves adopt a plur-
ality of methods and criteria of rationality finds ample support in
scientific practice. The biologist Steven Rose, reflecting on the com-
plexity of the scientific task of engaging and explaining the world,
drew a conclusion he believed to be widely shared among reflective
scientists. ‘As a materialist, as all biologists must be, I am committed
to the view that we live in a world that is an ontological unity, but
I must also accept an epistemological pluralism.’⁴ We cannot reduce
all cognitive activity to ‘a single fundamental method’, as some scien-
tists suggest,⁵ but must rather make use of a range of conceptual
tool-boxes, adapted to specific tasks and situations, to give as com-
plete an account as possible of our world.⁶ Different explanatory types
or ‘stances’ are evident across disciplines—an observation which has
led to a sea change within the philosophy of science, which has moved
away from older reductionist or eliminativist views of explanation in

³ The distinction between ‘interdisciplinary’ and ‘transdisciplinary’ is contested.

A common way of understanding the relation between multidisciplinary, interdiscip-
linary, and transdisciplinary approaches is to see them respectively as additive,
interactive, and holistic. On this way of thinking, interdisciplinarity aims to create
interactive links among disciplines which allows them to be seen as a coordinated and
coherent whole. Transdisciplinarity aims to integrate disciplinary insights and tran-
scend their traditional boundaries, thus adding a new element to the discussion that
cannot be sustained by any single discipline. For a discussion, see Leavy, Essentials of
Transdisciplinary Research; Osborne, ‘Problematizing Disciplinarity, Transdisciplinary
Problematics’.
⁴ Rose, ‘The Biology of the Future and the Future of Biology’, 128–9 (my
emphasis).
⁵ See, for example, Ladyman and Ross, Every Thing Must Go; Rosenberg, The
Atheist’s Guide to Reality. For a critique of such a scientific exclusivism, see Kidd,
‘Reawakening to Wonder’.
⁶ Gigerenzer, ‘The Adaptive Toolbox’, 38–43. For a more philosophical approach,
see Midgley, The Myths We Live By, 76–7.
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Introduction 3
favour of pluralistic approaches.⁷ For many, this line of thought leads
ultimately to the conclusion that the ‘only route to a deeper under-
standing of ourselves is through radical epistemological pluralism’.⁸
Yet while the pluralistic nature of scientific enquiry seems clear to
anyone acquainted with its history or practice, the implications of this
pluralism require further exploration.

MAPPING THE TERRITORIES OF HUMAN REASON

This book offers a tentative and provisional mapping of human

rationality, surveying the forms of reasoning and criteria of rational-
ity that have characterized the production of knowledge across
culture and history, and within specific disciplines. The failings of
certain approaches which emerged during the Enlightenment—
specifically, a family of phenomenological views that saw human
reason as historically and culturally invariant, or ideological views
that took the approaches to reason developed by Western European
illuminati of the eighteenth century as normative—are now seen to
depend on unreliable mappings of the multiple territories of human
reason. There is no universal ‘republic of reason’—rather, we have to
contend with an array of distinct, yet occasionally overlapping and
competing, epistemic territories and communities. This has led to
growing interest in transdisciplinarity—the quest for ‘articulated
conceptual frameworks’ that transcend the narrow scope of discip-
linary worldviews, and thus offer an enriched and deepened under-
standing of our world.⁹

⁷ Keil, ‘Explanation and Understanding’, 231–3.

⁸ Dupré, ‘The Lure of the Simplistic’, 293. There is no need to follow Paul
Feyerabend and move from the recognition of a plurality of methods in science to a
form of relativism that would be seen by many, if not most, scientists as ultimately
compromising the integrity of science: Pigliucci, ‘Feyerabend and the Cranks’; Kidd,
‘Why Did Feyerabend Defend Astrology?’
⁹ Klein, ‘Discourses of Transdisciplinarity’. The emergence of transdisciplinarity is
usually dated to a conference held in 1970 at the University of Nice by the Organiza-
tion of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which recognized the
need for ‘a common system of axioms for a set of disciplines’ that transcends the
narrow scope of disciplinary worldviews through an overarching synthesis. The term
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4 The Territories of Human Reason

In exploring the multiple territories of human reason, this work
aims to contribute to discussions about the possibilities of inter-
disciplinary and transdisciplinary discourse and reflection, with the
object of enriching knowledge and understanding by avoiding dis-
ciplinary compartmentalization and encouraging a transdisciplinary
inquiry characterized by a common orientation to transcend discip-
linary boundaries and an attempt to bring continuity to enquiry and
knowledge through attention to comprehensiveness and creating por-
ous boundaries between concepts and disciplines. While this question
is of general interest, it is of especial interest to the rapidly growing
field of ‘science and religion’, which has established itself since its
emergence in the 1960s as one of the most interesting, challenging,
and contested areas of academic investigation and reflection.
The philosopher John Dewey famously argued that the ‘deepest
problem of modern life’ was our collective and individual failure to
integrate our ‘thoughts about the world’ with our thoughts about
‘value and purpose’.¹⁰ Dewey’s distinct proposal for the redirection
of philosophy, bringing it back into contact with the deep human
concerns from which he believed it had originally sprung, may have
been relegated to the domain of intellectual history; the issue he
raised, however, has never gone away. Others have echoed his con-
cern about divorcing philosophy from life’s deepest questions and
concerns, suggesting that a purely ‘objective’ account of the world
disregards most of what makes life interesting.¹¹ Science ‘may provide
the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data’, but its
power to do so is ‘predicated on its inability to grasp the most central
aspects of human life’—such as love, beauty, honour, and virtue.¹²
Yet how can we follow Dewey in aiming to integrate such thoughts
about the world, value, and practice, while acting rationally through-
out this process? The empirical investigation of our world is the
domain of the natural sciences, which some hold to be characterized

‘transdisciplinary’ is widely attributed to Jean Piaget: see, for example, López-Huertas,

‘Reflections on Multidimensional Knowledge’.
¹⁰ Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, 255. On Dewey, see Kitcher, ‘The Importance of
Dewey for Philosophy (and for Much Else Besides)’.
¹¹ Davies, Why Beliefs Matter, v.
¹² Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air, 151.
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Introduction 5
by a rational precision which is quite absent from any exploration of
non-empirical notions, such as value, meaning, or purpose—notions
that are traditionally seen as falling within the domain of religion,
which provides a way of helping individuals to transcend their own
concerns or experience and connect up with something greater.¹³
Mary Midgley, for example, suggests that science ‘only begins to
have a value’ when it is ‘brought into contact with some existing
system of aims and purposes’.¹⁴ To give a full account of our complex
world, enabling us to live meaningfully within it, requires that
we develop a correspondingly complex array of research methods,
disciplines, and traditions for making sense of it. It also requires a
discourse of transgression—a principled belief that disciplinary
boundaries can be a barrier to a deeper form of knowledge, and the
development of transdisciplinary strategies to allow discourse across
and within those boundaries.¹⁵
In famously declaring that ‘a picture held us captive’,¹⁶ making it
difficult for us to liberate ourselves from its imaginative thrall, Ludwig
Wittgenstein was basically pointing out how easily our understanding
of our world can be controlled by an ‘organizing myth’¹⁷—a world-
view or metanarrative that has, whether we realize it or not, come to
dominate our perception of our world, in effect predisposing us to
interpret experience in certain manners as natural or self-evidentially
correct, while blinding us to alternative ways of understanding it. We
are easily seduced by simplistic, captivating narratives about our
world, coming to believe we are seeing things ‘the way they really
are’, when we are in fact seeing them in a specific way, which is often

¹³ Park, ‘Religion as a Meaning-Making Framework in Coping with Life Stress’;

Emmons, The Psychology of Ultimate Concerns; Wong, The Human Quest for Mean-
ing. There is, of course, continuing interest in such concepts within philosophy: see,
for example, Wolf, Meaning in Life; Seachris, ‘The Meaning of Life as Narrative’.
¹⁴ Midgley, The Myths We Live By, 21. A similar theme is found throughout
Wilson, Consilience.
¹⁵ See especially Biagioli, ‘Postdisciplinary Liaisons’; Osborne, ‘Problematizing
Disciplinarity, Transdisciplinary Problematics’. For a classic account of the deliberate
attempt to justify and enforce disciplinary boundaries, see Gieryn, ‘Boundary-Work
and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science’.
¹⁶ Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §115.
¹⁷ For this interpretation of Wittgenstein’s use of Bild, see Egan, ‘Pictures in
Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy’.
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6 The Territories of Human Reason

socially constructed rather than ‘natural’, and are thus failing to
appreciate both the specificity and limits of this perspective, or the
plausibility of alternative ways of framing our world. Wittgenstein’s
use of the analogy of a picture (Bild) aims to free us from the grip
which certain pictures have on us,¹⁸ especially by inviting us to view
alternative paradigms or framings, which might offer a better render-
ing of our world.
Wittgenstein’s point has particular force in the field of science and
religion, in that the culturally regnant ‘picture’ of their relationship
holds that they are in perennial and essential conflict.¹⁹ Historical
research has exposed the flaws of idealized, synthetic accounts of
‘the relationship between science and theology’, making it clear that
a multiplicity of such accounts may be given, and that the task of
judging which is ‘right’ lies beyond normative definitive judgement
on the basis of the resources available to us. Religion and science are
both theoretical constructs, rather than natural types; both are shaped
by cultural perceptions and agendas, which severely impede any
attempt to offer essentialist accounts of their nature, or their possible
interactions.²⁰ Yet the ‘conflict myth’ retains its appeal. Before pro-
ceeding further, we need to reflect on this point.

MAPPING THE TERRITORIES OF SCIENCE

AND RELIGION

In a series of important and influential historical studies of science

and religion in the 1990s and beyond, focussing especially on the
nineteenth century, the Oxford scholar John Hedley Brooke has

¹⁸ See the important essay in Baker, Wittgenstein’s Method, 260–78.

¹⁹ For the origins of the ‘conflict’ myth which underlies this influential yet
unreliable mapping, see Russell, ‘The Conflict Metaphor and Its Social Origins’;
Turner, ‘The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion’; Watts, ‘Are Science
and Religion in Conflict?’; and especially Harrison, The Territories of Science and
Religion, 172–6, 191–8.
²⁰ Hence the widespread scholarly demands to acknowledge that ‘religion’ (and
‘non-religion’) are categories of social designation which lack empirical or scientific
warrant: see especially Jong, ‘On (Not) Defining (Non)Religion’.
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Introduction 7
argued that serious scholarship in the history of science has revealed
‘so extraordinarily rich and complex a relationship between science
and religion in the past that general theses are difficult to sustain. The
real lesson turns out to be the complexity’.²¹ Brooke’s analysis has
found widespread support within the scholarly community. Peter
Harrison has pointed out that ‘study of the historical relations between
science and religion does not reveal any simple pattern at all’,²² such
as the monomyth of the ‘conflict’ narrative. It does, however, disclose
a ‘general trend’—that for most of the time, religion has facilitated
scientific enquiry.
This scholarly complexification of the relation of science and
religion has left many feeling ‘emotionally and intellectually unsatis-
fied’, in that it ‘seems to have little to recommend it besides its
truth’.²³ For some, any suggestion that science and religion might
exist, even to a limited extent, in a non-confrontational relationship
seems to cause cultural anxiety and unease in some,²⁴ perhaps reflect-
ing a fear of intellectual contamination or category violation. Yet
while this account may lack popular appeal or a simple rhetorical
flourish, it has the enormous advantage of corresponding more
closely to the historical evidence, and thus offers a more reliable
basis for informed discussion of the issues.
Picking up on Wittgenstein’s image of a limiting and imprisoning
Bild, Peter Harrison has argued that the ‘picture’ of science and
religion that has held Western culture captive for the last century is
a flawed conceptual map that forces the disciplines of science and
religion to be seen as existing in an agonistic relationship.²⁵ The
perception thus becomes a reality. Yet whether science and religion
are seen to be at war with each other depends on how their relationship
is framed—on what map is used to identify their respective territories.

²¹ Brooke, Science and Religion, 6. For Brooke’s personal reflections on his histor-
ical research, see Brooke, ‘Living with Theology and Science’.
²² Harrison, ‘Introduction’, 4.
²³ Numbers, ‘Simplifying Complexity’, 263.
²⁴ For reflections on the grounds of such anxiety, see Russell, Inventing the Flat
Earth, 35–49. There are interesting parallels here with the vigorous attempts in
classical Greek culture to disentangle and disconnect science, mythology, magic,
and philosophy: see Lloyd, Magic, Reason and Experience, 2–58.
²⁵ Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion, 145–82.
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8 The Territories of Human Reason

A map represents a visual matrix developed to construct knowledge
and meaning, combining various empirical perceptions and theoret-
ical interpretations in ‘mapping’ a geographical, political, or intellectual
territory²⁶—and thus framing our perceptions of where something
(such as ‘science’ or ‘religion’) properly belongs, and shaping our
expectations of its relationships with other mapped objects. Whether
science and religion are to be seen as in conflict depends on the
categories and boundaries of their territories, which are social construc-
tions, not empirical observations.²⁷
Harrison’s ‘historical cartography of the categories of “religion”
and “science”’ both challenges the outdated ‘warfare’ map, and offers
an alternative mapping of their respective territories which opens the
way to a more reliable reading of intellectual history on the one hand,
and present-day possibilities of interaction between science and reli-
gion on the other. Harrison’s revisionist intellectual cartography
helps to liberate us from becoming locked into an outdated narrative
of conflict, by observing that what some deem to be intellectually
necessary is culturally contingent—and that other more reliable cul-
tural contingencies can be re-appropriated and renovated. Harrison’s
considerable intellectual achievement is to allow us to reorganize our
conceptual domains to allow a fuller and more reliable appreciation
of the situation.²⁸
So given the ideological freighting of the ‘conflict myth’ and its
highly unreliable historical foundations, why do this myth and
its derived map persist in contemporary discussion? Harrison points
out that this, like any other myth, serves an important function for
certain communities of discourse—‘validating a particular view of
reality and a set of social practices’.²⁹ Given that the validity of certain
particular views of reality—such as the specific forms of atheism
associated with Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens—has
now become dependent upon this foundational narrative, there is
no realistic possibility that it will be abandoned by such communities

²⁶ See Lévy, ed., A Cartographic Turn.

²⁷ See especially Harrison, ‘ “Science” and “Religion”: Constructing the Boundaries’.
²⁸ For the importance of such intellectual or imaginative reconfiguration, see Elgin,
‘Creation as Reconfiguration’.
²⁹ Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion, 173.
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Introduction 9
of discourse, whose existence depends upon its continuing plausibility.
Paradoxically, this has become a sacred narrative for certain kinds
of atheism, being treated as if it was immune to historical criticism
and revision. My own experience of (non)-dialogue with such move-
ments suggests that a compliant acquiescence in this manifestly flawed
and discredited myth has become a boundary marker for inclusion
within such communities.
Yet it is important to think, not merely in terms of the remapping
of the domain of ‘science and religion’, but also of reconsidering the
cultural mapping of the individual domains of both science and
religion in their own right. In both cases, there are questions that
need to be asked about popular perceptions and academic habits
that clearly need careful and informed reconsideration. Some, for
example, speak of the natural sciences’ unique and characteristic use
of the ‘Scientific Method’. The fiction of a unique, singular, formalized
set of methodological rules that constitutes ‘the Scientific Method’
(note the singular) lies behind much popular literature advocating
a scientistic outlook, such as the writings of the Oxford physical
chemist and popularizer Peter Atkins, who argues that the distinctive
‘Scientific Method’ is capable of illuminating ‘every and any concept’ in
a uniquely reliable manner.³⁰ Yet this entertaining and simplistic
account fails to take account of the distinct characteristics and object-
ives of individual sciences,³¹ in effect reducing them all to a single
‘mono-science’ which overlooks their distinct identities, histories, and
objects of enquiry.
This view of a unique ‘Scientific Method’ has long been under-
mined by scholarly studies of the history and practice of science,
which point to a wide range of methods being deployed within the
natural sciences, incapable of being reduced to a single ‘method’.
Perhaps the philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend overstated his
case in Against Method (1975);³² yet his critique of what we might
style ‘methodological monism’ within the natural sciences remains
on the table, along with its correlate—that there exists a plurality of

³⁰ Atkins, On Being, vii–ix.

³¹ Clarke and Walsh, ‘Scientific Imperialism and the Proper Relations between the
Sciences’.
³² For some important criticisms, see Preston, Feyerabend, 136–9; 174–7.
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10 The Territories of Human Reason

scientific methods, each adapted and developed in the light of a specific
scientific discipline’s investigative aims and objects of enquiry. Werner
Heisenberg, in reflecting on the Copenhagen approach to quantum
theory, highlighted the importance of one of its implications—that
‘what we observe is not nature itself, but nature as it is disclosed by
our methods of investigation’.³³ Even if we conceive nature as a unitary
entity, Heisenberg’s line of thought leads us to the conclusion that a
multiplicity of research methods leads to a corresponding plurality
of perspectives or insights, which thus require to be integrated,
coordinated, or colligated in order to allow the best possible overall
representation of nature.
The ontological unity of nature thus does not entail a single
research method; rather, its depth and complexity demand an epis-
temological pluralism if it is to be fully and reliably characterized.
No reliable map of intellectual territories can therefore be drawn on
the basis of such a methodologically monistic notion of the natural or
human sciences. This insight is fundamental to the approach adopted
in this work, and will be developed further throughout its course.
But what of the domain of religion? It may be natural for us to
think of religion in essentialist terms, seeing it as a universal category,
embracing individual examples of this universal—such as Buddhism,
Christianity, and Hinduism—so that summative generalizations can
be made about the ‘essence of religion’. Yet views about the nature,
function, and identity of religion have varied from one historical
location to another, as they do today. The category of ‘religion’ is
best seen as a social construction that has little, if any, scientific
legitimacy.³⁴ The term is socially important—for example, in relation
to ensuring the basic right of ‘religious freedom’ (which requires some
agreement on what counts as a religion.)³⁵ Yet such generally useful
cultural conventions do not amount to a scientific understanding of
religion, and must not be treated as such.

³³ Heisenberg, ‘Die Kopenhagener Deutung der Quantentheorie’, 85: ‘Und wir

müssen uns daran erinnern, daß das, was wir beobachten, nicht die Natur selbst ist,
sondern Natur, die unserer Art der Fragestellung ausgesetzt ist.’
³⁴ See especially Jong, ‘On (Not) Defining (Non)Religion’, 16: ‘our efforts to figure
out how the term “religion” ought to be used have been—rightly or wrongly—
motivated at least in part by a latent essentialism’.
³⁵ Zucca, ‘A New Legal Definition of Religion?’
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Introduction 11
As Jong points out, from an empirical standpoint, scholarly efforts
to define ‘religion’ are confronted by two core difficulties—the
‘Buddhism Problem’ and the ‘Football Problem’—which he declares
to represent ‘the Scylla and Charybdis of the problems of stingy
exclusivity on one hand, and promiscuous inclusivity on the other’.³⁶
Crude definitions of religion in terms of belief in gods or spiritual
beings—underlying Daniel Dennett’s bold yet seriously inaccurate
declaration that ‘a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate
without a backbone’³⁷—are rendered problematic by Buddhism, which
obstinately refuses to conform to such definitions.³⁸ Cultural def-
initions of religion which focus on its outcomes—such as Clifford
Geertz’s view that religion is a system of symbols which evokes or
establishes ‘powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motiv-
ations’³⁹—are rendered problematic by fanatical football followers and
online gamers, who often display those same outcomes yet without
conforming to conventional definitions of religiosity.⁴⁰
These problems can, of course, be circumvented by suggesting that
Buddhism is not really a religion, or that fanatical football fans are
actually religious (without knowing it). Yet such evasions are ultim-
ately seen as implausible, suggesting that the issue is not primarily
about finding an improved definition of religion, but in fact that
religion is not something that can be meaningfully defined scientific-
ally in the first place, despite the perceived utility of arriving at some
shared social understanding of what roughly we mean by the word.⁴¹

³⁶ Jong, ‘On (Not) Defining (Non)Religion’, 18.

³⁷ Dennett, Breaking the Spell, 9. Dennett’s view of religion is clearly an uncritical
reflection of his American cultural context: see Schaefer, ‘Blessed, Precious Mistakes’,
78 n. 6: ‘Dennett’s failure to pursue even a single secondary source on the “authorities”
[for the definitions of religion] he cites suggests a problematic lapse of academic due
diligence, one that is made possible by trafficking in a set of common-sense assump-
tions about religion that circulate in the American context.’
³⁸ Southwold, ‘Buddhism and the Definition of Religion’. Southwold suggests that
scholars tend to treat ‘religion’ as ‘the polythetic class of all cultural systems that it
seems reasonable to call religions’.
³⁹ Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 90.
⁴⁰ The difference on this point is a matter of degree and not of kind: cf. Geraci,
Virtually Sacred, 63–169, who emphasizes the role of mythology in many such games.
⁴¹ See the points made by Harrison, ‘The Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a
Multi-Cultural World’; Schaffalitzky de Muckadell, ‘On Essentialism and Real Defin-
itions of Religion’.
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12 The Territories of Human Reason

Religion too easily becomes a definitional victim in a culture war—
usually with the natural sciences.
As Peter Harrison’s revisionist account of the complex historical
relationship of science and religion makes clear, this can be (and has
been) mapped in multiple manners, with significantly different out-
comes. For example, consider the influential map developed by the
social anthropologist J. G. Frazer in his The Golden Bough (1890),
which depicts religion as a primitive form of science, offering explan-
ations of the world which are refuted by modern science.⁴² As
Marilynne Robinson points out, this map of the territory of religion
conceives it as ‘a crude explanatory system, an attempt to do what
science actually could do, that is, account for the origins and the
workings of things’.⁴³ On the basis of this deficient understanding,
science and religion must compete for the same logical space, and
are to be judged by the same empirical criteria. Yet this negative
evaluation of religion is dependent upon the reliability of Frazer’s
widely ridiculed conceptual map,⁴⁴ which maps religion in a
specific—and ultimately indefensible—way.
Now compare this with a Wittgensteinian map of the territories of
science and religion, which does not frame religion as a flawed
version of science which is deficient in evidential foundations, sophis-
tication, or predictive power, but rather as constituting certain shared
practices, observances, and rituals that have a special significance to
its practitioners. Such a map suggests that there is, and can be, no
meaningful opposition between science and religion, in that they do
not occupy the same logical space.⁴⁵
Such a remapping of intellectual and imaginative possibilities—to
which others might easily be added—creates ample conceptual space
for exploring alternative readings of the relationship of science and

⁴² Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment, 125–52.

⁴³ Robinson, What Are We Doing Here?, 257.
⁴⁴ The work is now seen by anthropologists as ‘a cautionary tale of a grand project
blighted by its poor anthropological theory and methodology’: see Kumar, ‘To Walk
Alongside’. Curiously, Richard Dawkins makes Frazer’s discredited ‘general prin-
ciples’ of religion central to his evolutionary debunking arguments: Dawkins, The
God Delusion, 188.
⁴⁵ For a popular presentation of this kind of map, see Labron, Science and Religion
in Wittgenstein’s Fly-Bottle.
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Introduction 13
religion. Many now argue that the outdated traditional Western
‘narrative of conflict’ between science and religion needs to be
replaced with a ‘narrative of enrichment’, which allows for the pos-
sible integration of scientific functionality with existential concerns,
such as meaning and value.⁴⁶
Yet in suggesting that the richness and complexity of the world
should be reflected in the diversity and sophistication of our intellec-
tual and imaginative reflections, the question of the rationality of such
multiple approaches cannot be evaded. Does the study of the func-
tioning of our universe entail standards of rationality which are
divergent from—or are even in conflict with—those that we might
use to explore questions of ‘value and purpose’? Can what Dewey
believed to be the ‘deepest problem of modern life’ be resolved
without a lapse in or compromise of rationality? Is transdisciplinarity
itself an incoherent enterprise, in that it lacks a single operational
rationality? Or might we think in terms of distinct ‘rationalities’, each
appropriate to its own domain of investigation, which have to be held
together in a creative tension within individual minds? Or can we
develop a richer or deeper concept of rationality, capable of extending
across disciplines, finding a distinct implementation within each such
discipline?⁴⁷ Or perhaps retrieving the notion of wisdom as the
integration of disciplinary insights, and their incorporation into the
world of life?⁴⁸ The exploration of such questions is an integral aspect
of the agenda of this book.

THE AIM OF THIS BOOK

Building on some existing studies in this field,⁴⁹ this book aims to

establish the understandings of rationality as both theory and practice

⁴⁶ e.g. McGrath, Enriching our Vision of Reality.

⁴⁷ For example, see Guattari, ‘La transversalité’; Ryan, ‘Wisdom, Knowledge and
Rationality’.
⁴⁸ This is often seen as a correction of modernity’s tendency towards disciplinary
fragmentation: see, for example, Kaufman, ‘Knowledge, Wisdom, and the Philosopher’.
⁴⁹ Major contributions to this field in the last few decades include Clayton,
Explanation from Physics to Theology; Banner, The Justification of Science and the
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14 The Territories of Human Reason

encountered within professional communities in both the natural
sciences and Christian theology, and to avoid simplistic reductions
to allegedly ‘essential’ or ‘universal’ characterizations of either ‘sci-
ence’ or ‘religion’, or the rational practices or criteria which emerge
within them. The approach adopted in this work is fundamentally
(though not exclusively) empirical, in that it sets out to consider how
rationality is understood and enacted, rather than to offer predeter-
mined accounts of what forms rationality ought to take. The patterns
of rationality that such an undertaking discloses are complex, and
resist easy reduction to categories and taxonomies. The present study
thus stands at some distance from those more abstractly philosoph-
ical approaches to rationality which are disinclined to consider how
rationality is actually understood within specific epistemic commu-
nities, and implemented in their virtues and practices.
This book thus sets out to map the concepts of rationality and their
attendant practices across disciplinary fields, with a particular focus
on the fields of science and religion. To make this project manageable,
it has proved necessary to restrict its focus to the relation of the
natural sciences and Christian theology. Although this work engages
extensively with the philosophy of science—for example, when con-
sidering the nature of explanation, or criteria of theory choice—its
approach sometimes leads it to focus on specifically Christian themes,
perhaps most notably an explicitly Trinitarian view of God (as opposed
to generalized forms of theism).
The exploration of the relation of science and theology offers a case
study in both interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, which many
now regard as a necessary response to the growing fragmentation of
knowledge, the increasing disconnection between the academy and
wider culture, and a wider concern to grasp a bigger picture of reality
than one intellectual standpoint or academic discipline can offer. Such
concerns lie behind recent integrative projects, such as Roy Bhaskar’s
critical realism, Ken Wilber’s integral theory, Edgar Morin’s pensée
complexe, and E. O. Wilson’s concept of consilience.⁵⁰ Yet any such

Rationality of Religious Belief; Stenmark, Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday

Life; van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality.
⁵⁰ For a summary and critical assessment of such approaches, see Marshall, ‘Towards
a Complex Critical Realism’; Segerstrale, ‘Wilson and the Unification of Science’.
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Introduction 15
undertaking has to come to terms with the notion of ‘multiple situated
rationalities’, and its implications for any form of dialogue or synthesis.
In my view, this has not yet taken place; this book aims to establish a
framework which is dependent neither on an outdated foundational-
ism nor on its antithetically conceived alternatives.
A hankering after simplification can easily distort our understanding
of complex phenomena⁵¹—such as any informed attempt to under-
stand human rationality which takes the complexity of its cultural and
disciplinary manifestations seriously. Although the social-scientific
stereotyping of religious thought as ‘primitive’ is now falling out of
fashion as the ideological freighting of such approaches becomes
increasingly obvious,⁵² there still remains a reluctance in some circles
to take the rationality of religious systems seriously. Yet it is clear that
most religious people act according to what they regard as rational
principles, which they consider to be justified and reasonable.⁵³ It is
therefore important to attempt to explore how these map on to broader
concepts of rationality, not least given the recognition of the multiple
forms that human rationality takes.
It remains for me to thank colleagues who have stimulated my
own thinking in this field, and above all in relation to the complex
relationship between scientific and theological rationality. This book
has been in preparation for many years, and I owe especial thanks
to Charles A. Coulson (1910–74), Jeremy R. Knowles (1935–2008),
Thomas F. Torrance (1913–2007), and R. J. P. Williams (1926–2015),
whose influence can be discerned at many points within these
pages, even if it is not always explicitly referenced. I also wish to
acknowledge helpful conversations with many others, especially John
Hedley Brooke, Joanna Collicutt, Peter Harrison, David Livingstone,
Andrew Pinsent, Donovan Schaefer, Graham Ward, and Johannes
Zachhuber. They cannot be blamed for the imperfections of this
work, for which I take full responsibility.
Alister McGrath
Oxford University
May 2018

⁵¹ Dupré, ‘The Lure of the Simplistic’.

⁵² See especially Iannaccone, Stark, and Finke, ‘Rationality and the “Religious Mind” ’.
⁵³ Witham, Marketplace of the Gods, 17–32.
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I
Exploring the Notion of Rationality
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1
One Reason; Multiple Rationalities
The New Context of Discussion

Je pense, donc je suis.¹ Descartes’s maxim of 1637—usually cited in its

later Latin form, cogito ergo sum—was as much an affirmation of the
characteristic human capacity to think as it was a proposal for finding
a secure foundation for knowledge in the face of the radical scep-
ticism of his age.² The human propensity to think is often framed in
terms of ‘reason’, which John Locke defined as ‘a faculty in man, that
faculty whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from beasts’.³
Locke’s caution about human uniqueness here is to be welcomed,
given our growing interest in the phenomenon of animal reasoning.⁴
Yet this does not in any way negate or subvert the decisive role of
reasoning in human life and culture.
The unassailable empirical observation that human beings think
cannot, however, be detached from more troubling normative ques-
tions about how they should think.⁵ If we conceive rationality as
‘a state or quality of being in accord with reason,’ we need to be able
to offer criteria by which we can judge the extent to which a specific

¹ Descartes, Discours de la méthode, 36–7. For Sartre’s quite distinct reflections

on the role of reason in relation to individual human identity, see Immel, ‘Vom
vernünftigen Ich’.
² Rott and Wagner, ‘Das Ende vom Problem des methodischen Anfangs’.
³ Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 667.
⁴ For David Hume’s reflections on this theme, see Boyle, ‘Hume on Animal
Reason’.
⁵ Broome, ‘Does Rationality Give Us Reasons?’; Kolodny, ‘Why Be Rational?’;
Reisner, ‘Is there Reason to Be Theoretically Rational?’
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20 The Territories of Human Reason

belief, or process of argumentation, can be demonstrated to be ‘in
accord with reason’. Aristotle’s categorial notion of reason is unhelpful
here, in that its alternative is not so much irrationality as arationality—
that is to say, acting in a manner that is not the outcome of reasoning.⁶
Normative models of optimal judgement and decision-making—such
as those developed by the empirical sciences—tend to understand
rationality in terms of its proximity to the optimum defined by nor-
mative models of human cognition.⁷ ‘If human beings can indeed be
described as rational animals, it is precisely in virtue of the fact that
humans, of all the animals, are the only ones capable of irrational
thoughts and actions.’⁸ If a behaviour or belief is to be described as
irrational, it must be capable of being shown that it departs from the
optimum prescribed by a particular normative model.
So are there norms to which reasoning ought to conform? And
if so, how might such norms be justified without the implicit presup-
position of their validity?⁹ As Wittgenstein pointed out, the complex-
ities of human reasoning processes are such that one and the same
proposition or idea may at one point be treated as something that is to
be tested, and at another as a rule of testing.¹⁰ The discussion of
human rationality, particularly since the eighteenth century, has strug-
gled with the tension between the descriptive and normative on the
one hand, and the apparently irresolvable circularity of discussions of
rationality on the other. These tensions are exposed, rather than res-
olved, by attempts to distinguish the ‘reasonable’ from the ‘rational,’¹¹
and are often exacerbated by the rhetorical tendency to elevate

⁶ De Sousa. Why Think?, 6–7.

⁷ Chater and Oaksford, ‘Normative Systems’.
⁸ De Sousa. Why Think?, 7.
⁹ The problem of rational ‘bootstrapping’, a circular form of argument in which
reason itself is used to ground or evaluate reason, should be noted here. Bootstrapping
is often defined using the statement ‘a belief that an epistemic rule R is reliable can be
justified by the application of R’. See Cheng-Guajardo, ‘The Normative Requirement
of Means-End Rationality and Modest Bootstrapping’. There is widespread hostility to
any form of bootstrapping in the philosophy of science, even if this is not always
accompanied by a precise account of how it is to be understood, and thus averted: see
Vogel, ‘Epistemic Bootstrapping’.
¹⁰ Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 98. For further discussion, see Ariso, ‘Unbegründ-
eter Glaube bei Wittgenstein und Ortega y Gasset’.
¹¹ For significant contributions to this discussion, see Sibley, ‘The Rational Versus
the Reasonable’; Rawls, Political Liberalism, 48–53.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 21

the status of the problematic notion of ‘rationality’ to that of a cultural
virtue. Broad statements such as ‘it is not rational to believe in God’ or
‘it is rational to believe in the goodness of human nature’ often rest on
unacknowledged normative cultural judgements, which clearly need to
be identified and interrogated.
In this opening chapter, I shall offer some introductory reflections
(perhaps best seen as ‘orientating generalizations’¹²) which need to be
considered before engaging in a more detailed assessment of the
theme of rationality in science and religion.

SHIFTING NOTIONS OF RATIONALITY

Rationality is regularly affirmed as a cultural virtue,¹³ a core element

of the self-image of the human species.¹⁴ Yet this admirable virtue
proves remarkably resistant to clarification, often serving as a cultural
aspiration which seems to lie beyond both a meaningful consensual
definition on the one hand, and empirical verification on the other.¹⁵
Wittgenstein’s assertion that rationality has a history, and takes
different forms in different social locations, resonates with a growing
empirical and historical awareness of the diversity of human concepts
of rationality. ‘What men consider reasonable or unreasonable alters.
At certain periods, men find reasonable what at other periods they
found unreasonable. And vice versa.’¹⁶
Human cultures possess and exhibit multiple notions of rationality,
concepts of sense-making, and criteria for adjudication of the truth-
fulness of beliefs.¹⁷ A survey of the manner in which human rationality

¹² I borrow this phrase from Ken Wilber, and use it in his sense: Wilber, Sex,
Ecology, Spirituality, 5.
¹³ For Plato’s political application of reason, see Miller, ‘The Rule of Reason in
Plato’s Laws’.
¹⁴ Nozick, The Nature of Rationality, xii.
¹⁵ Nickerson, Aspects of Rationality, 1–70; Lenk, ‘Typen und Systematik der
Rationalität’.
¹⁶ Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 336.
¹⁷ Moore, ‘Varieties of Sense-Making’. More generally, see the important collection
of essays in Apel and Kettner, eds, Die eine Vernunft und die vielen Rationalitäten. For
a similar approach, critiquing normative western assumptions about rationality,
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22 The Territories of Human Reason

has been understood and represented from the seventeenth to the late
twentieth centuries discloses radical shifts in patterns of thinking,¹⁸
suggesting that rationality is not a given universal norm, but is embed-
ded within its own Lebensform and Lebenswelt.¹⁹ The idealization of
human rationality by some Enlightenment thinkers led to its being
seen as culturally and historically invariant, capable as serving as both
the foundation and the criterion of reliable knowledge.²⁰ Antoine
Destutt de Tracy thus introduced the notion of ‘ideology’ in post-
revolutionary France to refer to the domain of ideas which he believed
arose unproblematically from the exercise of human rationality.²¹ Yet
this assumption, while once seen as culturally plausible and intellec-
tually generative, is now generally seen as a period piece, reflecting
assumptions which it is now difficult to endorse.
There has been a growing realization that both the beliefs that we
hold and the rationality through which we develop and assess these
beliefs are embedded in cultural contexts. Rationality is thus increas-
ingly coming to be seen as being dependent (though questions remain
about the extent and nature of that dependency) upon its historical and
cultural context, and best assessed in terms of the practices it generates.

RATIONALITY, EMBODIMENT,
AND EMBEDDEDNESS

Over the past twenty-five years, several claims about human cogni-
tion and its underpinnings have gained traction within the academic

see the collection of essays reflecting an African perspective in Hountondji, ed., La

rationalité, une ou plurielle?
¹⁸ See the comprehensive study of Wollgart, ‘Zum Wandel von Rationalitätsvor-
stellungen vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert’.
¹⁹ Abel, ‘Der interne Zusammenhang von Sprache, Kommunication, Lebenswelt
und Wissenschaft’. There are some important parallels here with the approach of the
Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, especially his essay ‘Ideas y creencias’, with
its landmark statement ‘Las ideas se tienen; en las creencias se está’. See further Defez,
‘Ortega y Wittgenstein’.
²⁰ Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power, 1–8.
²¹ These ideas were consolidated and systematized in his Eléments d’idéologie
(1801–15).
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 23

research community. It is now clear that human beings regularly and
characteristically reach decisions on the basis of what can be shown
to be flawed reasoning processes. Recent discussions in the philoso-
phy of knowledge have highlighted our epistemic fallibility, in that
our psychological commitment to our views often turn out to sig-
nificantly exceed the actual epistemic justification for those views.²²
It is now also clear that cognition is affective—that is, that it is
intimately connected with the perceived value of the object of cog-
nition to the observer.²³ This recognition of the role of emotions
helps us understand the deeper rationality of seemingly irrational
decisions or ‘akratic’ actions.²⁴ Yet particular attention has focussed
on the recognition that human cognition is both embodied and
embedded. Our cognitive properties and performances are often
significantly dependent on our embodiment, and our relationship
to our physical and cultural environment.²⁵
The starting point for any twenty-first-century discussion of
rationality—whether as a general human phenomenon or as a specific
factor in understanding how specialist communities develop and
validate their ideas—is thus a recognition that human beings are
both physically embodied and culturally embedded.²⁶ This recognition
of the historicity of rationality avoids the forms of ahistorical thinking
characteristic of so many forms of rationalism, and insists that history
should be allowed to disclose norms of rational choice. The justifica-
tion of such choices does not result from human reason as such, but is
rather grounded in the particular communities in which we find
ourselves located.²⁷ Whereas older writers regarded a culturally and

²² Fumerton, ‘Why You Can’t Trust a Philosopher’; Leite, ‘Believing One’s Reasons
Are Good’; Hammond, Beyond Rationality, 145–90.
²³ Columbetti, ‘Enaction, Sense-Making and Emotion’. For the importance of this
point to theology, see Zahl, ‘On the Affective Salience of Doctrines’.
²⁴ Akratic actions can be defined as free and intentional actions performed despite
the judgement that another course of action is better. For discussion of this point, see
Tappolet, ‘Emotions and the Intelligibility of Akratic Action’.
²⁵ Clark, Being There; Haugeland, Having Thought; Gallagher, How the Body
Shapes the Mind.
²⁶ For the importance of this point from anthropological and psychological per-
spectives, see Marchand, ed., Making Knowledge; Shapiro, Embodied Cognition.
²⁷ Note especially John Stuart Mill’s notion of socially embedded rationality:
Zouboulakis, The Varieties of Economic Rationality, 14–24.
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24 The Territories of Human Reason

historically invariant reason as the prime source of authority for their
social and political views,²⁸ this view came to be seen as philosoph-
ically misguided and politically dangerous by many liberal writers, in
that it assumed an ahistorical definition or criterion of ‘reasonable-
ness’ which led to the marginalization or social devaluation of
allegedly ‘unreasonable’ views.²⁹
The way in which human beings sense, perceive, and interpret
information about the world around them is now agreed to be
partly determined by both psychological and social factors.³⁰ Natural
human cognitive processes are contextualized within, and modulated
by, a sociocultural environment. The insight that human beings are
culturally embodied means that the manner in which we sense,
perceive, and interpret the world around us is determined by both
psychological and social influences. This point is integral to the
present study, which distances itself from more abstractly philosoph-
ical approaches to rationality, characteristic of some earlier discus-
sions of rationality in science and religion, which fail to ascertain
how rationality is actually understood in practice, and how this can
be explored and interpreted empirically. It is therefore important
to identify the embedded cultural assumptions which shape a
culture’s understandings of rationality or interpretations of the nat-
ural world,³¹ partly to subvert any claims of ultimacy for any given
way of understanding such notions, but more fundamentally to
understand the critical role of a specific cultural context in interpret-
ing human experience.³² A belief might seem to be rational in terms

²⁸ Galston, ‘Two Concepts of Liberalism’, 525.

²⁹ Mouffe, The Return of the Political, 141–4. For Mouffe, this recognition of a
historicized rationality inevitably leads to an ‘agonistic pluralism’: Mouffe, The Return
of the Political, 1–8.
³⁰ See Frank, ‘Sociocultural Situatedness’; Kimmel, ‘Properties of Cultural Embodi-
ment’, especially 91–5.
³¹ For a detailed analysis, see Avrahami, The Senses of Scripture, 4–64.
³² The term sensorium is now sometimes used to designate the distinct and shifting
sensory environments within which individuals are located, determined by both
natural capacities and cultural influences, which shape how we understand ourselves
and our world. See Ong, ‘The Shifting Sensorium’. For its theological application, see
McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 41–61. This modern use of the term differs from that
of Isaac Newton, who conceived it primarily as the human sensory apparatus: Kassler,
Newton’s Sensorium, 3–27.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 25

of the criteria embedded in one sociocultural situation, but not in
another.
Three elements can be identified in shaping the perceptions of
what beliefs are rational, although the manner of their interaction is
the subject of continuing research and reflection:
1. Natural human cognitive processes, which are generally thought to
be independent of a given individual’s cultural location;
2. The prevailing cultural metanarrative, which influences our judge-
ments about what is to be deemed ‘reasonable’ or corresponding to
‘common sense’;
3. The evidence that is available to individuals in that specific cultural
location.
Each of these three elements clearly requires further discussion.
1. Natural human cognitive processes. The way in which human
beings assess situations and arrive at ‘rational’ conclusions has
been the topic of intense empirical study since the early 1970s.
The heuristics and biases research programme inaugurated by
Kahneman and Tversky clearly demonstrated that descriptive
accounts of human behaviour diverged from normative models.³³
Since then, it has become increasingly clear that supposedly
rational individuals are prone to assess probabilities incorrectly,
test hypotheses inefficiently, fail to calibrate degrees of belief
properly, ignore alternative hypotheses when evaluating data, as
well as displaying other significant information-processing biases.³⁴
These defects can, at least to some extent, be corrected, once the
nature of the problem is grasped.
2. The prevailing cultural metanarrative. Social theorists such as Cor-
nelius Castoriadis and Charles Taylor have explored how the ‘social
imaginaries’ of any specific cultural location play a significant role
in what is deemed to be ‘rational’ or to constitute ‘common sense’.

³³ For example, Kahneman and Tversky, ‘Subjective Probability’. The key point is
that humans find it difficult to make probability judgements. Kahneman won the
Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001.
³⁴ For a review of the literature, see Samuels and Stich, ‘Rationality and Psych-
ology’; Stanovitch, ‘On the Distinction between Rationality and Intelligence’.
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26 The Territories of Human Reason

Taylor suggests that our cultural imagination has now been captured
by a ‘picture’ that leads us to deem certain ideas, which might once
have seemed to be eminently ‘reasonable’, irrational. As we have
already noted, a belief that was thought to be rational in one context
is thus considered irrational in another. The belief itself may not
have changed; the context within which it is evaluated, however, has
altered, with significant implications for the cultural plausibility of
that belief. Given its importance for understanding the cultural
enactment of human rationality, we shall consider this point in
more detail later in this work (84–6).
3. The available evidence. Humans reflect on the evidence that is
available to them. Yet such evidence is often determined by the
contingencies of history and culture. For example, the observation
of galactic spectral red shifts, which pointed to an expanding
universe and hence to a moment of cosmic origination, was simply
not possible before the First World War. Or, to give another
example, the relatively late development of the notion of biological
evolution is not an indication of flawed human reasoning in earlier
periods, but of the absence of evidence which made such ideas
initially plausible, and subsequently compelling.³⁵ Reasoning about
our world is inevitably limited by what we can see of that world.
These three broad categories of factors help us to organize the
various contributories to the flux of human rationality, offering an
interpretative framework that goes some way towards accounting for
variations in patterns of human thinking across history and culture.
It avoids reducing questions of rationality to the proper functioning
of human cognitive processes, while nevertheless recognizing that
such processes are of critical importance. It recognizes the cultural
embeddedness of individual thinkers and interactive groups of think-
ers, while making allowance for the influence of their specific histor-
ical location on the intellectual resources at their disposal—such as
observational evidence. Human thinkers are embodied, existing in a
complex relationship with their physical and social environment,
involving both top-down and bottom-up interactions which make it
impossible to treat cognitive functioning in a culturally or socially

³⁵ Corsi, Evolution before Darwin.

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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 27

detached manner.³⁶ The human mind creates culture, which in turn
interacts with the manner in which that mind functions, thus creating
a complex layered framework of interaction and feedback.
A failure—however understandable—to appreciate that criteria of
what is ‘reasonable’ are culturally situated helps us to make sense
of the otherwise puzzling failure of the English Enlightenment to
recognize that the notion of a ‘universal human rationality’ was
called into question by the ‘voyager’ literature of the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries, which reported on cultures whose
notions of morality and rationality diverged significantly from those
of England.³⁷ Instead of allowing such observations to challenge
the emerging myth of a universal rationality, leading to a remapping
of the territories of human reason, the English Enlightenment generally
tended to prefer creating social binaries, such as ‘civilization—savagery’
and ‘rational—irrational’, to accommodate (and thus to neutralize)
these anomalies within the framework of this totalizing and universal
notion of reason.³⁸ These observations raise concerns about the ethno-
centric approaches to discussions of rationality often regarded as
characteristic of the European Enlightenment, which suggest to more
critical observers that thinkers embedded within this Western philo-
sophical tradition had made themselves ‘prisoners of their own
sensorium’.³⁹

REFLECTIONS ON THE CULTURAL AND SOCIAL

EMBEDDEDNESS OF RATIONALITY

The cultural specificity of notions of rationality is reflected in the shifting

cultural assessment of the rationality of certain religious notions—such
as belief in God, or in special divine action—in western Europe and
North America. The notion of divine action was predominantly seen as

³⁶ Shea, ‘Distinguishing Top-Down from Bottom-Up Effects’. See further Ellis,

How Can Physics Underlie the Mind?, especially 372–6.
³⁷ Carey, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson, 14–97.
³⁸ Gozdecka, Rights, Religious Pluralism and the Recognition of Difference, 139–44.
³⁹ Avrahami, The Senses of Scripture, 10.
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28 The Territories of Human Reason

entirely reasonable in the sixteenth century, yet is generally viewed as
requiring extended justification in the twenty-first.⁴⁰ Charles Taylor
highlights this shifting cultural perception of rationality by focussing
on the perceived reasonableness of belief in God. ‘Why was it virtually
impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society,
while in 2000 many of us find this not only easy, but even inescapable?’⁴¹
Taylor’s answer to this shifting perception of what counts as
‘rational’ highlights the importance of culturally regnant metanarra-
tives in shaping a society’s understanding of what is ‘reasonable’.⁴²
The wisdom of Taylor’s approach can be appreciated by considering
scholarly reconstructions of the worldviews of educated Europeans
around 1600—with such features as seeing comets as signs of evil,
believing in the possibility of changing base metals into gold, and
acknowledging an influence of the planets on human destiny.⁴³ Per-
ceptions of what is ‘rational’ are, at least in part, socially constructed,
in that these are influenced, if not determined, by a set of historical
contingencies, such as the character of the dominant cultural meta-
narrative. For Taylor, to hold patterns of thought that run counter to
a deeply embedded cultural mindset or groupthink is potentially to be
seen and judged as irrational. This judgement arises through the
exercise, not of pure reason, but of culturally shaped notions of what
counts as ‘rational’ within a culture or community of discourse, high-
lighting the need to recognize the social dimensions of rationality.
A similar point needs to be made in relation to the notion of
‘common sense’, which is often presented, especially in popular
discussions of issues of rationality, as a straightforward and universal
account of the way things are—or ought to be. Nicholas Rescher, for
example, speaks of common sense as ‘the commonplaces of everyday-
life experiences of ordinary people in the ordinary course of things’.⁴⁴
Yet just who are these ‘people’? Who decides what is ‘ordinary’?

⁴⁰ For the issues, see McGrath, ‘Hesitations about Special Divine Action’.
⁴¹ Taylor, A Secular Age, 25.
⁴² Taylor highlights the importance of the emergence of what he terms an ‘imma-
nent frame’ and ‘closed world structures’ within this process: Taylor, ‘Geschlossene
Weltstrukture in der Moderne’.
⁴³ Wootton, The Invention of Science, 6–7.
⁴⁴ Rescher, Common Sense, 11.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 29

And who interprets these ‘experiences’? For Heidegger, common
sense is part of the public interpretation of the world, an aggregate
of ‘self-evident’ truisms that characterizes a group’s normative self-
conception.⁴⁵ As Clifford Geertz observed, the ‘unspoken premise
from which common sense draws its authority’ is that it ‘presents
reality neat’.⁴⁶ Yet closer examination indicates a need for the reloca-
tion of this authority within a broader cultural context. ‘If common
sense is as much an interpretation of the immediacies of experience,
a gloss on them, as are myth, painting, epistemology, or whatever,
then it is, like them, historically constructed and, like them, subjected
to historically defined standards of judgement.’⁴⁷
Geertz is particularly critical of anthropologists who bring ‘common-
sense’ reasoning to bear on the social habits and worlds of thought
of those whom they find culturally alien—such as Evans-Pritchard’s
famous discussion of Azande witchcraft in his influential Oracles,
Witchcraft, and Magic Among the Azande (1937). Evans-Pritchard
may have thought he was a neutral objective observer; in fact, he was
a culturally embedded observer, who judged another cultural system on
the basis of his own beliefs, which were assumed to be correct. Geertz
argued that what Evans-Pritchard regarded as a crude and primitive
metaphysical system simply represented Azande commonsense assum-
ptions.⁴⁸ Indeed, recent research has suggested that many cultures
merge a range of causal explanations of events, and do not see this as
entailing contradiction or tension.⁴⁹
This general question of the cultural embeddedness of a rational
observer was explored earlier in the great ‘rationality debate’ within
the philosophy of social sciences, which focussed particularly on the
difficulties faced by Western observers in interpreting and assessing
the rationality of an alien culture from the rational perspectives
of their own.⁵⁰ Peter Winch suggested that Evans-Pritchard was

⁴⁵ Absher, ‘Speaking of Being’, 210–12.

⁴⁶ Geertz, ‘Common Sense as a Cultural System’, 8.
⁴⁷ Geertz, ‘Common Sense as a Cultural System’, 8.
⁴⁸ Geertz, ‘Common Sense as a Cultural System’, 10–12.
⁴⁹ See Legare, Evans, Rosengren, and Harris, ‘The Coexistence of Natural and
Supernatural Explanations across Cultures and Development’.
⁵⁰ Davies, ‘Living in the “Space of Reasons’’’.
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30 The Territories of Human Reason

judging the beliefs of a primitive society on the basis of his own
(unacknowledged) beliefs. Winch’s essay explored the difficulty in
attempting ‘to make intelligible in our terms institutions belonging to
a primitive culture, whose standards of rationality and intelligibility
are apparently quite at odds with our own.’⁵¹
Winch’s questions may not have been answered to everyone’s
satisfaction; the issues he raises, however, remain significant. One
obvious point concerns the failure of secular writers to appreciate
how theological ideas can inform and stimulate the intellectual and
moral vision of individuals and communities; since they do not share
these views, they cannot grasp the explanatory power of theology
as an intellectual system of epistemic weight.⁵² The historian Brad
Gregory has drawn attention to the ‘uncritically accepted presuppos-
itions’ that prevent secular historians from appreciating the descrip-
tive and illuminating function that theological frameworks had
in shaping the mentality of early modern religious individuals.⁵³ In
effect, such writers are privileging their own perspectives, and in
doing so lack the intellectual empathy necessary for the social scien-
tific virtue of Verstehen. It is becoming clear that much of the received
modernization model is not so much a scientific description of actual
processes of social change, but rather a structure resting on a specific
normative antireligious ideology of ‘progress’ and a secular conception
of a ‘good society’, presented as if they were objective social science.
There is another point that needs to be made here. Nineteenth-
century writers tended to assume that culture was an invariant,
something absolute that did not vary from one location to another,
save in the extent to which a given society was ‘cultured’. After the
First World War, perceptions changed. No longer was it realistic to
speak of ‘culture’ in the singular; it was finally recognized that there
existed (and presumably always have existed) a range of cultures,
each of which was bounded, coherent, cohesive, and self-standing.⁵⁴
Perhaps most importantly for our purposes, each culture came to

⁵¹ Winch, ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’. For comment, see Schilbrack,

‘Rationality, Relativism, and Religion’.
⁵² See the rich collection of material in Chapman, Coffey, and Gregory, Seeing
Things Their Way.
⁵³ See the analysis in Gregory, ‘No Room for God?’
⁵⁴ Galison, ‘Scientific Cultures’, 121–2.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 31

be seen as having developed its own understanding of what was
‘reasonable’. This has raised important questions for normative
judgements about the rationality of certain beliefs and practices—
such as those traditionally described as ‘magic’.⁵⁵
If Thomas Nagel is correct in suggesting that we cannot escape the
condition of seeing the world from our particular spatial and cultural
insertion within it, our concepts of rationality will be shaped to some
extent and in some manner by the traditions of discourse and
research within which we find ourselves located.⁵⁶ Academics are
not exempt from the contingencies of cultural and historical location.
Most academic disciples experience significant shifts in their self-
understandings and underlying values over time, leading to changes
in dominant paradigms and the scholarly consensus. Such concepts
as ‘objectivity’ and ‘impartiality’ attained the status of epistemological
virtues in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, largely
because they bolstered the plausibility of a ‘view from nowhere’,
untainted by partisan concerns or cultural precommitments.⁵⁷ Yet
the fact that these two notions have a history—that is to say, that they
emerged as significant at a particular moment in history—points to
the historical particularity of the concepts of rationality associated
with the ‘Age of Reason’.
Similar trends can be seen emerging within recent empirical stud-
ies of human logic. Whereas ‘logic’ was once thought to imply what
we might now prudently designate as ‘classical logic’, it is now
becoming clear that multiple ‘logics’ develop to meet specific tasks
in knowledge production. This trend has spread from within the
somewhat restricted mathematical study of logic to the use of logic
in normative theories of everyday human activities, so that a plurality
of logics emerges in which the context of the agent’s goals determines
the relevant logical norms.⁵⁸

⁵⁵ For a careful exploration of this concern from an anthropological and socio-

logical perspective, see Sanchez, La rationalité des croyances magiques.
⁵⁶ Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 67–89.
⁵⁷ As argued by Daston, ‘Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective’; Murphy
and Traninger, eds, The Emergence of Impartiality.
⁵⁸ Achourioti, Fugard, and Stenning, ‘The Empirical Study of Norms Is Just What
We Are Missing’. See further Beall and Restall, Logical Pluralism.
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32 The Territories of Human Reason

THE EMBODIMENT OF RIGHT REASON: THE ‘WISE’

Reason is an embodied activity. For this reason, Aristotle’s dialectical

method often involves an appeal to ta endoxa—‘those things which
are accepted by everyone, or by most people, or by the wise
(sophoi)’.⁵⁹ Aristotle’s category of ta endoxa remains somewhat
opaque, but clearly designates those beliefs which are accepted by
sociologically determinative or privileged groups—above all, the
‘wise’.⁶⁰ Although Aristotle’s main concern in developing his endoxic
method is to develop a perspective which can both explain and
support these ‘common beliefs’ or bring them into harmony with
one another, it is impossible to overlook his assumption that the
views of certain social groups are deemed to be privileged.
Similar difficulties in defining ‘reason’ as an operational concept
became evident in the early modern period. In a world that increas-
ingly considered individual reason and private judgement to be the
primary arbiters of truth, there was clearly a need to be able to
navigate the stormy sea of conflicting reality claims. For its critics,
the grand narrative of Enlightenment could not be disentangled from
Eurocentric biases and power dynamics, and was stubbornly resistant
to any form of epistemic reflexivity.⁶¹
One way of dealing with this problem emerged in the middle of the
seventeenth century—to create a social hierarchy where some voices
are valued more than others because they are held to personify ‘sound
reason’ or embody ‘right thinking’. Thomas Hobbes, finding himself
forced to the conclusion that there was no self-evidently correct mode
of reasoning embedded within the natural order, suggested that this
‘want of a right Reason constituted by Nature’ required the reinter-
pretation of ‘right Reason’ in terms of ‘the Reason of some Arbitrator,

⁵⁹ Aristotle, Topics I.1; 100a18-2; Nicomachean Ethics, VII.1; 1145b4.

⁶⁰ For a detailed assessment, see Bolton, ‘The Epistemological Basis of Aristotle’s
Dialectic’. Cf. Smith, ‘Logic’, 60–1.
⁶¹ These same criticisms can be made against more recent attempts to develop
metatheories, such as Integral Theory: see Rutzou, who argues in ‘Integral Theory
and the Search for the Holy Grail’ that it is ‘quintessentially western and illicitly
universalizing’.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 33

or Judge’, to be agreed by those wishing to resolve their debates.⁶²
Since there is no such thing as ‘right reason’, the reason of some
individual or group of individuals must serve as a proxy. For Hobbes,
those who appealed to ‘right reason’ thus generally had their own
ideas in mind. ‘This common measure, some say, is right reason: with
whom I should consent, if there were any such thing to be found or
known in rerum naturâ. But commonly they that call for right reason
to decide any controversy, do mean their own.’⁶³
This tendency to see ‘right reason’ or ‘right thinking’ embodied or
exemplified in luminous exemplars is, as Hobbes rightly discerned,
ultimately a matter of social judgement or convention. The emer-
gence of a notional ‘reasonable person’ who served both as an instan-
tiation and criterion of ‘right thinking’ during the eighteenth century
reflects this difficulty in defining normative modes of operative
reasoning, and reveals how covert sociological norms or influences
often intruded into debates which were notionally about a disembod-
ied universal rationality. ‘Right-thinking people’ came to designate
the cultural icons of social in-groups in England, France, and Germany,
so that debates about rationality all too easily became transposed into
issues of social alignment rather than of epistemic virtue.⁶⁴
In the last twenty years, there has been intense scholarly scrutiny of
the defining characteristics of the Enlightenment. Many have framed
this movement using Kant’s famous essay ‘Was ist Aufklärung?’
(1784), which has become for many a ‘one-stop shop for defining
the Enlightenment’.⁶⁵ For Kant, ‘Enlightenment (Aufklärung) is the
emergence of humans from their minority (Unmündigkeit), for which
they themselves are to blame. Minority is the inability to use one’s
reason without the guidance of another.’⁶⁶ This is probably best seen
as a retrospective attempt to impose coherence on a complex cultural
movement, with significant regional variations and agendas, through
the articulation of a distinctive narrative or conceptual framework

⁶² Hobbes, Leviathan; English Works, vol. 3, 31.

⁶³ Hobbes, De Corpore; English Works, vol. 4, 225.
⁶⁴ Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory, 31–2.
⁶⁵ Edelstein, The Enlightenment, 117.
⁶⁶ Kant, Was ist Aufklärung?, 5. For the modification of Kant’s definition in the later
German Enlightenment, see Gödel, ‘Eine unendliche Menge dunkeler Vorstellungen’.
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34 The Territories of Human Reason

that was flexible enough to allow the diverse elements of contemporary
intellectual culture to have at least some sense of shared purpose
and identity.
Yet we must note that there are multiple narratives of identity of
this kind, originating from different quarters of the Enlightenment,
and it is difficult to see who has the authority to determine which is
the defining narrative.⁶⁷ Kant’s definition of the Enlightenment may
be the most-cited today; it is, however, a summative statement framed
with a definite agenda in mind.
There is no doubt of the significance of the Enlightenment appeal
to human reason, partly as a means of avoiding religious debates
about the interpretation of sacred texts. Yet some suggest that
the Enlightenment is best understood not as ‘an aggregate of ideas,
actions, and events’, but rather as a narrative which ‘provided a
matrix in which ideas, actions, and events acquired new meaning’.⁶⁸
On this reading, the human use of reason was thus located within a
new narrative framework. Yet debates about the limits and proper use
of reason highlighted the need to calibrate this new confidence in
human rationality.
A good example of this kind of discussion is found in Jean-Baptiste
le Rond d’Alembert’s ‘Discours préliminaire’ (1751) in the celebrated
Encyclopédie, which declared that ‘the art of reasoning is a gift which
Nature bestows of her own accord upon people of discernment (bons
esprits)’.⁶⁹ The category of ‘reason’, which earlier generations had
grounded in theological principles, was now seen as embodied
in cultural exemplars, who played a critical role in the establishment
of a ‘rational’ authority. As Hobbes had foreseen, the virtue of
being ‘rational’ thus became a matter of intellectual and cultural

⁶⁷ See, for example, Schmidt, ‘Inventing the Enlightenment’; Hunt and Jacob,
‘Enlightenment Studies’.
⁶⁸ Edelstein, Enlightenment, 13.
⁶⁹ D’Alembert, ‘Discours préliminaire’; Oeuvres, vol. 1, 33. ‘L’art de raisonner est
un présent que la Nature fait d’elle-même aux bons esprits’. D’Alembert regularly uses
the term ‘bons esprits’ to refer to right-thinking individuals, seeing such an intellectual
oligarchy as culturally determinative: see Hayes, Reading the French Enlightenment,
45. Historically, D’Alembert’s Discours and Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau histo-
rique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1795) were especially influential in shaping the
self-understanding of the Enlightenment.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 35

alignment with approved exemplars, so subtly transposing questions
of rationality into those of conformity with the views of privileged
authorities. A generation later, Nicolas de Condorcet sought to
avoid the problem of such cultural oligarchies by a rationalization
of processes of judgement that in effect amounted to a mechaniza-
tion or mathematization of decision-making,⁷⁰ which made the
social location of those who made those decisions theoretically
irrelevant, yet—as events demonstrated—practically decisive.
Nietzsche is one of many critics of the Enlightenment vision of
rationality, arguing that human reason does not simply and neutrally
render the way things are, but schematizes them, and reshapes them
in the form of falsehoods and distortions, trying to force a complex
reality into a simple intellectual framework. Nietzsche thus highlights
the way in which we do violence to the singularity and variability of
phenomena by means of generalizations and universalizations.⁷¹

CONCERNS ABOUT HUMAN RATI ONALITY

The optimism of the Enlightenment partly reflected what now seems

to be an unrealistic estimate of the capacity of human reason on the
one hand, and the benign nature of humanity on the other. The
experience of destructive global wars in the twentieth century seemed
to call both into question. As R. G. Collingwood gloomily remarked
on the eve of the Second World War, some ‘the chief business of
twentieth-century philosophy is to reckon with twentieth-century
history’.⁷² Echoing such concerns, Bertrand Russell argued that
human rationality was a noble aspiration that unfortunately lagged
far behind the reality disclosed by the harsh realities of observation.
Writing in the midst of the Second World War, Russell found
himself overwhelmed with what seemed to be incorrigible evidence

⁷⁰ Bates, Enlightenment Aberrations, 78–85; Kavanagh, ‘Chance and Probability in

the Enlightenment’.
⁷¹ Welsch, ‘Nietzsche über Vernunft’.
⁷² Collingwood, An Autobiography, 79. For the wider context of such concerns, see
Glover, Humanity.
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36 The Territories of Human Reason

of human irrationality, which made him despair about the human
future. ‘Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. Through-
out a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this
statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come
across it.’⁷³ The subsequent emergence of ‘Cold War rationality’ in
the late 1950s, based on algorithms of ‘mutually assured destruction’,
only seemed to confirm Russell’s dark anxieties.⁷⁴ Many would now
argue that such seemingly irrational outcomes reflect the ‘collectivizing
of human reason’, in which a group collectively endorses a conclusion
that most of the group would individually reject.⁷⁵ This, however,
merely complexifies the problem of human rationality, without resolv-
ing the representative concerns raised by Russell.
For Russell, human aspirations to rationality were compromised by
the destructive ‘intellectual vice’⁷⁶ of a natural human craving for
certainty, which could not be reconciled with the capacities of human
reason on the one hand, and the complexity of the world on the other.
Philosophy, Russell suggested, was a discipline deeply attuned to this
dilemma, enabling reflective human beings to cope with their situ-
ation. ‘To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being
paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in
our age, can still do for those who study it.’⁷⁷
Many, of course, would disagree with Russell, whose own epistemo-
logical agnosticism is often overlooked by those who simplistically
classify him as an atheist.⁷⁸ The resurgence of religious fundamental-
ism on the one hand, and popular forms of scientific positivism on the

⁷³ Russell, Unpopular Essays, 82.

⁷⁴ Russell, Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare, 30. Cf. Erickson et al., How
Reason Almost Lost Its Mind, especially 85–7. Russell’s concern was that essentially
irrational choices would be made under pressure, leading to nuclear devastation: cf.
Quackenbush, International Conflict, 179–86.
⁷⁵ Pettit, ‘Groups with Minds of Their Own’, especially 175–8. More generally, see
Rupert, ‘Minding One’s Cognitive Systems’. The concept of akratic action should also
be noted here: Tappolet, ‘Emotions and the Intelligibility of Akratic Action’.
⁷⁶ Russell, Unpopular Essays, 32.
⁷⁷ Russell, History of Western Philosophy, xiv.
⁷⁸ Russell explicitly identifies himself as an agnostic, in that he regarded the
question of God to lie beyond proof: see especially Russell, Essays in Skepticism,
83–4; idem, Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind, 20. However, Russell was prepared
to allow that he was an atheist in the popular sense of that term, thus distinguishing
his epistemological agnosticism from his pragmatic atheism.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 37

other, are worrying signs of what is at best a disinclination, and at worst
an unprincipled refusal, to take seriously the deeply troubling human
predicament, so sensitively explored in Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man
(1732–4). For Pope, human beings are ‘born but to die, and reas’ning
but to err’, inhabiting a middle realm between scepticism and cer-
tainty.⁷⁹ While the rationalities of religious fundamentalisms are some-
what more complex than their critics generally concede,⁸⁰ there is
ample evidence of their quest for certainty in their convictions,⁸¹ and
their tendency to demonize those who do not share them.
These disturbing tendencies of religious fundamentalism are sur-
prisingly mirrored, rather that countered, by some of their secularist
counterparts. The populist ‘New Atheism’, which achieved media
attention in 2006–7, secured its cultural traction largely by avoiding
any serious engagement with the question of human rational capaci-
ties, preferring to offer grand unevidenced assertions of the essential
rationality of scientific atheism and the fundamental irrationality of
religious belief.⁸² While it was unclear quite how the ‘god’ rejected by
the New Atheism related to those of religious communities,⁸³ its
arguments against religious belief often focussed on its perceived
irrationality. For Christopher Hitchens, perhaps the most eloquent
representative of this movement, the remedy for this resurgence of
irrationality lay in rediscovering and returning to the elegant intel-
lectual simplicities of the Golden ‘Age of Reason’, which he believed
had been neglected, if not suppressed, in contemporary debates.⁸⁴
The growing influence and aggressiveness of both religious fun-
damentalisms and their secular counterparts—such as the ‘New
Atheism’—might seem to confirm at least Russell’s observation of

⁷⁹ Pope, Essay on Man, 38. For the intellectual context of Pope’s ideas, see Cope,
Criteria of Certainty, especially 140–67.
⁸⁰ For example, see the perceptive analysis in Euben, Fundamentalism and the
Limits of Modern Rationalism, 20–48.
⁸¹ For a critical assessment, see Vorster, ‘Perspectives on the Core Characteristics
of Religious Fundamentalism Today’; Hood, Hill, and Williamson, The Psychology of
Religious Fundamentalism.
⁸² Pigliucci, ‘New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement’. For
the link between science and secularism, see Coleman, Hood, and Shook, ‘An Intro-
duction to Atheism, Secularity, and Science’.
⁸³ Bradley, Exline, and Uzdavines, ‘The God of Nonbelievers’.
⁸⁴ Hitchens, God Is Not Great, 277–83.
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38 The Territories of Human Reason

the natural human longing for certainty, if not his judgement that it
represents an intellectual vice. Yet it is clear that this potentially
sterile debate might serve to open up more intellectually productive
possibilities, in which the central and controlling notion of ‘ration-
ality’ is subjected to critical analysis. It is clear that there is a need,
catalyzed but not created by the debate over the ‘New Atheism’, to
provide a scholarly exploration of how the concept of ‘rationality’ is
understood and enacted in both science and religion, and how this
might impact on their relationship as two of the most significant
forces in contemporary culture. Might there be ‘common resources
of rationality’⁸⁵ which could serve as the basis for a dialogue, or even
for mutual refinement of methods and enrichment of outcomes?
Might there be some multi-perspectival approach to interdisciplin-
ary dialogue, in which rationality is to be situated within the
‘intersecting connections and transitions between disciplines’?⁸⁶
Such discussions need to be located within the ‘turn to practice’ in
contemporary cultural theory, which recognizes a reciprocal and
socially constructed relationship between belief and practice.⁸⁷ This
approach, which has secured significant traction within many discip-
lines, involves moving beyond the traditional conception of reason
as an innate mental faculty and reconceptualizing it in terms of
practice—for example, by exploring how different epistemic commu-
nities develop their own distinct rational procedures and forms of
argumentation.⁸⁸ The influence of this development is now evident
across disciplines—for example, in the attentiveness of recent writers
in the philosophy of technology towards the actual practices of
engineering, or contemporary approaches to the philosophy of reli-
gion which emphasize that religious practices are irreducibly cogni-
tive, and hence merit philosophical attention.⁸⁹

⁸⁵ I borrow this helpful phrase from van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality,
111–77.
⁸⁶ Van Huyssteen, Alone in the World?, 20.
⁸⁷ See especially Schatzki, Knorr-Cetina, and von Savigny, eds, The Practice Turn
in Contemporary Theory.
⁸⁸ This trend is often traced back to Toulmin, Human Understanding.
⁸⁹ See Franssen, Vermaas, Kroes, and Meijers, eds, Philosophy of Technology after
the Empirical Turn; Schilbrack, Philosophy and the Study of Religions, 31–49.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 39

This growing interest in practice is of particular importance in the
natural sciences. Since the 1980s, there has been growing anxiety within
the philosophy of science concerning the then-dominant narratives of
scientific progress, which assumed that the fundamental methodological
norms for the sciences—such as explanation and justification—were
in all important respects constant and invariant across scientific discip-
lines in the present, and in their historical development.⁹⁰ In distancing
themselves from such overstatements, philosophers of science have
instead proposed domain-specific approaches to scientific rationality,
in which scientific methods are not predetermined, fixed, or universal,
but rather emerge through scientific practice in forms adapted to their
specific domains or objects of investigation.
This approach to scientific rationalities has not yet filtered through
into the self-understanding of many scientific popularizers, who tend
to prefer the older ‘central narrative’. However, this approach fits well
with (although is not dependent upon) the growing tendency within
the philosophy of science to see the diverse natural sciences in terms
of practice—as the collective activity of scientists working in socially
coordinated communities, thus functioning as active participants in a
social enterprise.⁹¹ A recognition of the interconnectedness of the
cognitive, epistemic, and social dimensions of science does not, how-
ever, render the notion of ‘science’ incoherent; it is perfectly possible
to develop models—such as that of ‘family resemblances’—which
allow individual scientific traditions to be located within a broader
coherent framework of understanding.⁹²

ONE REASON; MULTIPLE RATIONALITIES

We may indeed speak generically of human reason in the singular; it

has, however, become clear that we must now also speak of multiple

⁹⁰ Examples of such works from the 1980s include Galison, ‘History, Philosophy,
and the Central Metaphor’; Miller, Fact and Method; Laudan, Science and Values;
Shapere, Reason and the Search for Knowledge.
⁹¹ For an important early intervention of importance to this development, see
Skinner, ‘A Case History in the Scientific Method’.
⁹² Rocha and Gurgel, ‘Descriptive Understandings of the Nature of Science’.
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40 The Territories of Human Reason

rationalities.⁹³ Empirical research projects, such as the ‘Beyond
Rationality’ programme established by the Centre for the Philosophy
of Natural and Social Science at the London School of Economics,
have attempted to map domain-relative practices and discourses
relating to rationality, highlighting the diversity of the notion.⁹⁴
This mapping of the territories of reason expresses an increased
awareness of the existence of ‘multiple situated rationalities’,⁹⁵ rather
than the older belief in a context-free concept of rationality (or of its
presumed antithesis, irrationality).
Each academic discipline develops its own specific implementation
of rationality, adapted to the objects of its enquiry, and often demand-
ing the application of wisdom, craft, and judgement rather than the
mechanical application of procedural formulae.⁹⁶ This can be framed
in terms of disciplinary ‘fields’, which are distinguished by a distinct
focal problem, a domain of facts related to the problem, explanatory
goals, methods, and an associated vocabulary.⁹⁷
Pierre Duhem’s notion of le bon sens articulates these intellectual
intuitions, which arise from accumulated experience within a given
epistemic community.⁹⁸ Even within a single discipline, the norms of
rational discourse and practice have varied across history and culture,
and continue to diverge across disciplines—including the natural
sciences. Historical scholarship indicates that the boundary between
reliable and established knowledge on the one hand, and the realm of
conjecture and speculation on the other, is constantly shifting, in line
with the changing dynamic of research and interpretation.⁹⁹ The
‘received wisdom’ of a research tradition is subject to constant review
and reassessment, with the result that ‘the price of scientific progress
is the obsolescence of scientific knowledge’.¹⁰⁰

⁹³ See especially Apel and Kettner, eds, Die eine Vernunft und die vielen
Rationalitäten.
⁹⁴ Harré and Jensen, eds, Beyond Rationality: Contemporary Issues.
⁹⁵ Avgerou, Information Systems and Global Diversity, 72–97.
⁹⁶ For a detailed study of this point in relation to particle physics, see Franklin,
Shifting Standards.
⁹⁷ Darden and Maull, ‘Interfield Theories’.
⁹⁸ Stump, ‘Pierre Duhem’s Virtue Epistemology’.
⁹⁹ Daston, ‘Scientific Error and the Ethos of Belief ’. For an earlier and influential
statement of this point, see Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 315–42.
¹⁰⁰ Daston, ‘Scientific Error and the Ethos of Belief ’, 1.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 41

By the middle of the 1980s, there was a growing appreciation of the
resistance of the notion of rationality to conformity with precise
standards or procedures of reasoning, partly because of the sheer
variety of modes of reasoning observed within human history and
culture, and partly because of the growing appreciation of the signifi-
cance of the social construction of rationality, which called into
question the notion of some ‘natural’ human rationality which was
invariant across culture and history.¹⁰¹ The concept of rationality
was increasingly realized to be so ‘vague’ and ‘disparately employed’
across intellectual disciplines—such as philosophy or the social
sciences—that it had limited utility.¹⁰² It is necessary to speak at
least of a ‘Discours préliminaire’, which is embodied in different
forms in various intellectual disciplines and historical contexts, leav-
ing open at this stage the question of whether and how these various
rationalities are related to one another.
The psychologist Jerome Kagan notes that there are multiple issues
involved in any attempt to clarify notions of rationality across the
‘Three Cultures’—by which he means the natural sciences, the social
sciences, and the humanities—including:¹⁰³
1. The primary questions asked, including the degree to which pre-
diction, explanation, or description of a phenomenon is the major
product of enquiry;
2. The sources of evidence on which inferences are based and the degree
of control over the conditions in which the evidence is gathered;
3. The vocabulary used to present observations, concepts, and con-
clusions, including the balance between continuous properties and
categories and the degree to which a functional relation was
presumed to generalize across settings or was restricted to the
context of observation;
4. The degree to which social conditions, produced by historical
events, influence the questions asked.

¹⁰¹ Scholte, ‘On the Ethnocentricity of Scientistic Logic’; Bouwmeester, The Social
Construction of Rationality.
¹⁰² Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition, 27. Cf. Code, ‘On the Poverty of Scient-
ism, or: The Ineluctible Roughness of Rationality’.
¹⁰³ Kagan, The Three Cultures, 1–50.
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42 The Territories of Human Reason

For Jerome, these three different cultures share a fundamental
characteristic: their claims are considered to be valid and coherent
only within their own scientific community, and are not seen as
compelling or binding from the standpoint of the other epistemic
communities. This, Jerome rightly notes, constitutes a formidable
barrier to meaningful dialogue. Perhaps, it might be added, it makes
it all the more difficult for a member of any one of these communities
to expect to learn something useful from the other two.¹⁰⁴
Cognitive scientists distinguish between rationality and intelli-
gence, noting that the developmental trajectories of the cognitive
skills that underlie intelligence and those that underlie rational think-
ing are conceptually and empirically separable, and must thus be
studied in their own right.¹⁰⁵ Two distinct kinds of rationality are
distinguished within cognitive science: epistemic and instrumental.
Epistemic rationality is about forming true beliefs, about ensuring
that human mental maps accurately and adequately reflect the terri-
tory of the world. Instrumental rationality is the optimization of the
individual’s goal fulfilment, and concerns making decisions that are
adapted to bring about intended or desired outcomes.¹⁰⁶
One model of rational judgement assumes that a person chooses
options with the greatest expected utility. Such rational choice
models, which are particularly influential in economic theory, are
difficult to apply in other contexts, and tend to be dependent on
certain ad hoc auxiliary assumptions about how this approach is to be
applied to these different situations.¹⁰⁷
In practice, however, human beings seem to violate their own
criteria of rationality on a regular basis. A rich range of research
in the heuristics and biases tradition has shown that people violate
many of the proposed norms of rationality—for example, in display-
ing confirmation bias, in testing hypotheses inefficiently, in dis-
playing preference inconsistencies, in failing to properly calibrate

¹⁰⁴ Kagan, The Three Cultures, 245–75.

¹⁰⁵ Stanovich, ‘On the Distinction between Rationality and Intelligence’.
¹⁰⁶ Toplak, West, and Stanovich, ‘Assessing the Development of Rationality’;
Stanovich, Rationality and the Reflective Mind, 95–174.
¹⁰⁷ The uncritical use of ‘Game Theory’ in this respect is an excellent example of
this problem: see Gueth and Kliemt, ‘Perfect or Bounded Rationality?’; Zouboulakis,
The Varieties of Economic Rationality.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 43

degrees of belief, in over-projecting their own opinions on to others,
and in allowing prior knowledge to become entangled with deductive
reasoning.¹⁰⁸ The significance of emotional influences on supposedly
rational decisions has been the subject of many recent empirical
studies,¹⁰⁹ which call into question less reflective accounts of human
rationality, such as those which achieved cultural dominance during
the ‘Age of Reason’. ‘The rule that human beings seem to follow is to
engage [rational thought] only when all else fails—and usually not
even then.’¹¹⁰ Nevertheless, this still leaves the door open for
improvement of our rational judgements by identifying the biases
and constraints that may lead us to make bad decisions, and amend
our styles of reasoning accordingly, thus hence increasing our cap-
acity to reach ‘rational’ conclusions.
One of the most influential accounts of the emergence of a dis-
tinctive western rationality is due to the sociologist Max Weber, who
argued that this has involved the depersonalization or commodifica-
tion of social relationships, the refinement of techniques of calcula-
tion, the extension of technically rational control over both natural
and social processes, and the enhancement of the social importance of
specialized knowledge. Others, however, have argued that a number
of different approaches to rationality can be discerned within the ‘Age
of Reason’. Although some writers consider modernity to have been
displaced by a more pluralist postmodernity, with a wide range of
rationalities, many scholars now recognize the multiple variations of
modernity, its ongoing and innovative pluralization, and its lack of a
normative notion of rationality.¹¹¹ A seemingly simple ‘modernity’
gave way to a multiplicity of ‘modernities’ through a process of
appropriation and re-embedding of the ideas and practices of mod-
ernity in local situations, generating a multiplicity of local modern
rationalities.¹¹² Despite some difficulties and divisions, the ‘multiple

¹⁰⁸ Stanovich and West, ‘On the Relative Independence of Thinking Biases and
Cognitive Ability’.
¹⁰⁹ See Haidt, ‘The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail’; Pham, ‘Emotion and
Rationality: A Critical Review and Interpretation of Empirical Evidence’.
¹¹⁰ Hull, Science and Selection, 37.
¹¹¹ See especially Arnason, ‘The Multiplication of Modernity’; Eisenstadt, ‘Multiple
Modernities’; Browne, ‘Postmodernism, Ideology and Rationality’.
¹¹² Arce and Long, eds, Anthropology, Development and Modernities, 1, 160.
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44 The Territories of Human Reason

modernities’ thesis provides a promising and potentially productive
theoretical approach to frame and interpretively explain the vast body
of empirical knowledge that has accumulated in recent decades
pointing to the inadequacy of the ‘inevitable and homogenizing’
version of modernization theory, not least in relation to the future
of religion in a diverse ‘modern’ world.¹¹³
Such a recognition of ‘multiple modernities’ permits an appreci-
ation of the creative role of cultural contingency, resulting in different
cultural inflections and embodiments of rationality, thus complex-
ifying the older notion of a single Enlightenment rationality shaped
by the notion of the rational mastery of the natural world—a theme
of critical importance to both the natural sciences and Christian
theology, and to those who define ‘postmodernity’ in terms of the
perceived deficiencies of their understanding of ‘modernity’. The
notion of multiple rationalities can be mapped on to the rather differ-
ent territories of both multiple modernities and postmodernity, and
should not be interpreted simply in terms of the latter.
This point should be borne in mind when evaluating the ‘post-
foundationalist’ proposal for theological rationality developed by
Wentzel van Huyssteen, who locates his approach between modernity
and postmodernity, aiming to avoid the difficulties arising from
both.¹¹⁴ Not only does such an approach overlook the importance
of distinct disciplinary rationalities, which are not easily mapped on
to the proposed territories of modernity and postmodernity; it does
not give due weight to the complexity of modernity, and its capacity to
develop in divergent (though arguably correlated) manners, adapted
to local cultural norms and situations.¹¹⁵ We need to speak of mod-
ernities, rather than a single modernity. As the very different imple-
mentations of modernity in Japan, China, and the Arab world
indicate, ‘transitions to what we might recognize as modernity, taking
place in different civilizations, will produce different results, reflecting

¹¹³ Smith and Vaidyanathan, ‘Multiple Modernities and Religion’.

¹¹⁴ van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality. For comment, see LeRon Shults, ed.,
The Evolution of Rationality; Reeves, ‘Problems for Postfoundationalists’.
¹¹⁵ See the discussion in Fourie, ‘A Future for the Theory of Multiple Modernities’;
Schmidt, ‘Multiple Modernities or Varieties of Modernity?’; Lee, ‘In Search of Second
Modernity’.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 45

the civilizations’ divergent starting points’.¹¹⁶ The complex territory
of human rationality cannot be accommodated in terms of a simple
dichotomy between modernism and postmodernism—or any other
binary axis, such as foundationalism and postfoundationalism—
leading to the construction of some third category which retains the
strengths of each component while minimizing their weaknesses.
The German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch has argued that, given
the specificity of rationalities to each domain of enquiry, there is a
need to reassert the category of ‘transversal reason’ as a means of
transcending and mediating between these various construals and
implementations of rationality.¹¹⁷ However, even allowing for the
merits of Welsch’s approach, we are still left with the problem of ‘local’
accounts of rationality, in which it proves problematic to determine
who (and what) is rational in the absence of an informing context.¹¹⁸
As many have noted, for example, the laws of nature may seem universal
and univocal, but often have different meanings for different practi-
tioners or local situations.¹¹⁹ Even the natural sciences—widely regarded
as the most universal of disciplines—developed, and continue to
develop, what might be called local ‘styles’, reflecting how nations or
communities believed the sciences ought to be implemented.¹²⁰
Yet a pluralism of rationalities arises for reasons other than the
specificity of academic disciplines. Perhaps the most important of
these is the historic or cultural location of individuals or communi-
ties, which plays a major role in determining what they accept as
reasonable, and in judging those which they find to be irrational. The
reception of ideas—a process which involves both the interpretation
of their meaning and an assessment of their local utility—is signifi-
cantly shaped by the cultural context of those who receive them.¹²¹

¹¹⁶ Taylor, ‘Modernity and Difference’, 367.

¹¹⁷ Welsch, Vernunft, 366–7. Welsch here draws on the pioneering 1964 article of
Guattari, ‘La transversalité’. The idea of transversal rationality is also found in the
writings of Wentzel van Huyssteen, who draws on the somewhat less rigorous account
of the idea found in the writings of Calvin Schrag.
¹¹⁸ Huggett, ‘Local Philosophies of Science’.
¹¹⁹ Galison, ‘Material Culture, Theoretical Culture, and Delocalization’, 677–81.
¹²⁰ See Henry, ‘National Styles in Science’.
¹²¹ See Livingstone, ‘Science, Text, and Space’; Withers, Placing the Enlightenment,
136–48.
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46 The Territories of Human Reason

Recognizing the ‘constitutive significance of place’ in the production
of meaning does not entail a descent into irrationalism or radical
scepticism, but rather calls for a warranted attentiveness to the complex
historical and cultural geography of human reason.¹²² Human ration-
ality is rooted in, and hence shaped by, the realities of human biological
and social existence. These themes were anticipated by early pragma-
tists, particularly Charles Peirce and John Dewey, who explored how
personal convictions and local contexts interacted with more universal
features of human experience. This conversation clearly needs to be
continued and extended, particularly in the light of a new interest
in ‘post-foundationalism’ in the fields of science and religion, which
often seems to be inattentive to earlier discussions which retain a
potential for further development.

RATIONALITY, IDEOLOGY, AND POWER

To its critics, one of the most significant achievements of the Enlight-

enment has been to create a social imaginary of rationality which
makes what is actually culturally contingent appear to be intellectually
necessary. This naturally leads into a discussion of one of the most
important and difficult aspects of the concept of rationality—the
manner in which human perceptions of what is ‘reasonable’ can be
manipulated by power groups.
The term ‘ideology’—minted in conscious opposition to ‘theology’—
was developed at the time of the French Revolution, which articulated
its Revolutionary rationalism in terms of a science of ideas, founded
on an objective system of classification which permitted clear and
distinct lines to be drawn between truth and falsehood. For Antoine
Destutt de Tracy, who is widely regarded as crystallizing the notion of
ideology in the immediate post-Revolutionary period, there was an
essential coincidence of ideology and rationality,¹²³ with the former

¹²² Rupke, ‘A Geography of Enlightenment’, 336.

¹²³ Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary, 19–43; Freeden, Ideology, 4. Cf.
Gusdorf, La conscience révolutionnaire. For de Tracy, ideology was a science that
served as the basis for the critique of false or irrational ideas, and was not itself
understood in terms of false ideas.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 47

being understood as a systematic attempt to establish an empirically
based science of ideas, capable of sustaining the cultural hegemony
and intellectual coherence of the Revolutionary government.¹²⁴ Ideol-
ogy was, in effect, a science of ideas which was created and sustained
by those in political power, a historical contingency of this Revolu-
tionary age.
The collapse of Revolutionary rationalism following Napoleon
Bonaparte’s accession to power ended the social privilege of this
allegedly universal science of ideas, and led to ideology’s being
seen as a remnant of a discredited political past.¹²⁵ Yet its intel-
lectual credibility was under threat for other reasons by the 1830s,
in that there was a growing realization that there were a series of
possible ideologies, rather than one natural and hence authorita-
tive ideology.¹²⁶ There is no doubt that Karl Marx’s Ideologiekritik
was of fundamental importance in highlighting the social condi-
tioning of ideologies and their cognate concepts of rationality. For
Marx, an ideology was fundamentally a deliberate intellectual
falsification or distortion of material reality which allowed the
ruling classes to exploit workers economically, and oppress them
politically. An ideology was a socially constructed set of ideas,
a social imaginary designed to conceal class oppression and
exploitation by demanding that the world be seen through what
was seemingly a rational and self-evident interpretative frame-
work, yet was in reality a constructed social imaginary designed
to reinforce the hegemony of a specific social class.¹²⁷ In effect, an
ideology represented an ‘attempt to represent the universal from
the particular point of view of the dominant class’ in such a way
that this artificial social construction seemed eminently reasonable

¹²⁴ For the role of lawmakers in embedding ideology in social structures, see
especially Bauman, Legislators and Interpreters, 96–109.
¹²⁵ Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary, 1–2.
¹²⁶ For the issues, see Millon-Delsol, ‘La dénaturation de la vérité ou le fondement
des idéologies’.
¹²⁷ Márkus, ‘Concepts of Ideology in Marx’. This is a leading concern in Castor-
iadis, L’institution imaginaire de la société. Cf. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries,
23–30. The theme is also important in Gramsci’s account of the relation of ideology
and culture: see especially Filippini, Using Gramsci, 4–23.
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48 The Territories of Human Reason

and natural.¹²⁸ There are obvious parallels between ideologies and
religion, in that both offer ‘big pictures’ of reality which deal with
core human concerns such as meaning, values, and purpose.¹²⁹ In
the case of Christianity, a way of seeing the world is developed
which is rooted in historical particularities—such as the history
of Jesus of Nazareth—yet is interpreted as possessing universal
significance.
The category of ideology thus allows us to explore the complex
relationship between rationality and power—or, more accurately, the
relationship between societies and the forms of rationality which they
develop as a means of expressing and defending their core assump-
tions and social structures. They are culturally contingent interpret-
ative frameworks which present a view from somewhere as if it were a
view from nowhere (and hence disinterested and objective) or a view
from everywhere (and hence universal). In one sense, an ideology is
essential if a movement or society is to have some degree of intellec-
tual or cultural coherence; in this somewhat neutral sense, ideology is
inevitable and relatively unproblematic. The main concern of critics
of ideology is not the phenomenon as such, which is arguably
inescapable, given the human need to develop means of understand-
ing and structuring the social and political worlds they inhabit.¹³⁰
Rather, the concern is with those ideologies which are deliberately
constructed—one might say fabricated—to advance the agendas and
influence of sectarian interests or specific social groupings. It is not so
much that reason is abused in the service of vested interests; Marx’s
point is rather that such notions of rationality are often shaped by
these vested interests in the first place.
These cautionary observations are not intended in any way to
detract from the importance of the theme of rationality in human
life in general, or in the fields of the natural sciences or Christ-
ian theology in particular. They are rather intended to frame an

¹²⁸ Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society, 200. For Lefort, an ideology
controls the way we see the world, in that it ‘establishes the origins of facts, encloses
them in a representation and governs the structure of the argument’ (205).
¹²⁹ Note the emphasis on the ‘meaning dimension’ in Clayton, Explanation from
Physics to Theology, 113–45.
¹³⁰ See the important essay of Jos, Kay, and Thorisdottir, ‘On the Social and
Psychological Bases of Ideology’.
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One Reason; Multiple Rationalities 49

informed discussion which avoids abstract intellectual idealizations
of rationality by exploring the forms which it actually has taken
across cultures and disciplines in an empirical and non-judgemental
way. This procedure establishes a context within which a more detailed
comparison can subsequently be made between the enactments of
rationality encountered within the natural sciences and Christian the-
ology, which might offer possibilities of interdisciplinary enrichment.
This book aims to explore the notions of rationality encountered in
the natural sciences and Christian theology, and reflect on how these
might help us frame the intellectual enterprise of interdisciplinary
dialogue, particularly the broader and more diffuse field usually
referred to as ‘science and religion’. Yet it is impossible to consider
the relationship between the natural sciences and Christian theology
without acknowledging that, like conceptions of rationality themselves,
understandings of what the terms ‘science’ and ‘religion’ denote are
embedded in cultural contexts, and inevitably reflect the agendas of
those sociological addresses. Since religion is not an empirical notion,
definitions of ‘religion’ inevitably reflect covert assumptions about
what religion ought to be, and often unacknowledged judgements
as to whether it is to be seen as benign or pathological.¹³¹ This work
cannot avoid such entanglements; it is, however, hoped that the
approach it adopts will both acknowledge their significance, and min-
imize their intrusiveness.

¹³¹ Harrison, ‘The Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a Multi-Cultural World’;

D’Costa, ‘Whose Objectivity? Which Neutrality?’
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2
Mapping Human Reason
Rationalities across Disciplinary Boundaries

The present study is conceived as an exploration of concepts of

rationality across disciplinary boundaries,¹ focussing particularly on
the porous intellectual borders between the natural sciences and
Christian theology. Three main considerations lie behind the choosing
of this boundary for particular consideration:

1. In the last forty years, the field of science and religion has emerged
as a significant area of academic research and teaching, with
leading universities establishing research centres in the field—
such as the Ian Ramsey Centre at Oxford University, founded in
1986. Intensive research in the field has indicated the need for
significant revision of scholarly understandings of the relationship
of science and religion,² at the levels of both historical research and
contemporary engagement and dialogue.
2. Science and religion remain highly significant elements of global
culture, although with significant variations in how their mutual

¹ See, for example, the general discussions in Stenmark, Rationality in Science,

Religion, and Everyday Life; Elio, ed., Common Sense, Reasoning, and Rationality;
Bertolotti, Patterns of Rationality. On the specific case of science and religion, see
Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology; Banner, The Justification of Science
and the Rationality of Religious Belief; van Huyssteen, The Shaping of Rationality.
² Two works of fundamental importance in catalysing this revision of existing
understandings are Brooke, Science and Religion; Harrison, The Territories of Science
and Religion.
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Mapping Human Reason 51

relationship is understood in local contexts,³ reflecting differing
degrees of religiosity, varying levels of scientific infrastructure, and
unique relationships between religious and state institutions.
3. Christian theology has long recognized the importance of dialogue
and debate with other systems of thought as a means of self-
correction and self-improvement on the one hand, and as afford-
ing an enhanced capacity to communicate its ideas beyond its own
boundaries.⁴ The academic discussion of the nature and norms of
rationality is clearly of theological significance, not least because
certain schools of theology seemed to be wedded to outdated
notions of the concept, and their implementation in practice.
Serious discussion of the place of rationality in science and religion
has been impaired by the perpetuation of outdated stereotypes based on
spurious binaries on the one hand, and oversimplifications and distor-
tions on the other—as evidenced in the following bizarre assertion.⁵
Being scientifically rational requires seeking evidence, especially evidence
refuting a specific belief. It requires taking this evidence seriously and
changing our beliefs if the evidence demands it. Being religious requires us
to ignore evidence, especially refuting evidence.
Such unevidenced overstatements may have a place in popular
debates, in which complexification and engagement with alternative
perspectives are seen as needless impairments obscuring a self-
evident truth, whose luminosity obviates any need for assessment or
critical reflection. Yet even a superficial familiarity with religious
works on the rationality of belief is sufficient to discredit such super-
ficial oracular pronouncements,⁶ which ought to have no place in
serious discussion of such issues.
It would be impossible for a single monograph to engage the topic
of rationality across the vast territories of science and religion in a

³ See the recent detailed analysis covering eight geographical regions in Ecklund
et al., ‘Religion among Scientists in International Context’.
⁴ For reflections on this notion, see Detjen, Geltungsbegründung traditionsabhängiger
Weltdeutungen, 201–7.
⁵ Dietrich, Excellent Beauty, 106.
⁶ For example, see Davies, Thinking about God, 235–305; McGrath, ‘The Ration-
ality of Faith’.
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52 The Territories of Human Reason

manageable and meaningful manner; the present study therefore
focusses on the more limited question of rationality as understood
and practised within Christian theology and a representative sample
of the natural sciences, especially the physical and biological sciences.
It is a field in which there is already considerable interest—evident,
for example, in the growing scholarly focus on the theological foun-
dations of medieval and early modern science and mathematics on
the one hand,⁷ and on the potential value of the natural sciences in
discussions about theological method.⁸
As we noted earlier (10–11), difficulties encountered in defining
‘religion’ cannot be entirely overcome,⁹ not least because religion is a
socially constructed, not an empirical, category. The problematic
distinction between ‘magic’ and ‘religion’,¹⁰ which is particularly
significant in assessing the rationality of religion and cognate phe-
nomena in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,¹¹ should also be noted.
The lingering cultural stereotype of the essential ‘irrationality’ of
religion also casts a lengthening, if ultimately unscholarly, shadow
over the proposed topic of this work. Individual theologians who have
criticized the ultimate authority of reason—such as Martin Luther—
are sometimes misrepresented, especially in popular polemical litera-
ture, as abandoning any attempt to engage in rational discourse.¹²

⁷ There is a large literature. Representative studies include Lawrence and McCartney,

eds. Mathematicians and Their Gods; Gaukroger, ‘The Early Modern Idea of Scientific
Doctrine and Its Early Christian Origins’; Hon, ‘Kepler’s Revolutionary Astronomy’.
⁸ There is a large literature. Representative studies include Torrance, Theological
Science; Polkinghorne, Scientists as Theologians; McGrath, Enriching our Vision of
Reality.
⁹ Fitzgerald, ‘A Critique of Religion as a Cross-Cultural Category’. See also the
more general analysis of the changing cultural understanding of religion set out in
Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion, 21–54.
¹⁰ Keith Thomas, for example, suggested that religion primarily offered an explan-
ation of human existence while magic was more concerned with specific temporary
problems: Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. See further the important
discussions in Sanchez, La rationalité des croyances magiques, and more generally
Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment, 4–16.
¹¹ Kieckhefer, ‘The Specific Rationality of Medieval Magic’; Coudert, Religion,
Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America, 25–44.
¹² See, for example, Dawkins, The God Delusion, 190, based on some unreliable
web sources. For a good account of Luther’s somewhat more complex views on this
matter, see Kern, Dialektik der Vernunft bei Martin Luther, 335–403.
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Mapping Human Reason 53

Tertullian is often ridiculed for his aphorism credo quia absurdum—
despite the obvious difficulty that this represents a reductive paraphrase
of his rather more complex and nuanced argument.¹³ Kierkegaard’s
selective appropriation of Tertullian in developing his own views on the
irrationality of faith, though not without interest,¹⁴ fails to do justice
to the latter’s emphasis on the rationality of faith, carefully framed to
avoid cultural accomodationism.¹⁵
The present work cannot entirely avoid entanglements with the
historical past, nor with continuing debates about the distinctive
characteristics of both science and religion. The approach adopted,
however, is intended to minimize these difficulties, by focussing
primarily on the question of how the biological and physical sciences
on the one hand, and Christian theology on the other, have construed
and implemented the notion of rationality since the middle of the
nineteenth century. The approach adopted is to offer a comparative
account of how these two traditions of enquiry deal with a number
of specific issues, traditionally seen as reflective of their commitment
to the rationality of their undertakings—such as the role of evidence-
based reasoning, the criteria of theory choice, and the manner in
which anomalies are accommodated within theoretical structures.

ON THE CORRELATION OF RATIONALITIES

We have already noted the growing realization that rationality is

domain-specific, in that each academic discipline develops a set of
intellectual virtues, procedures, and criteria which are deemed to be
appropriate to its distinct tasks and procedures. While human
rational investigation of our world may be ‘universal in intent’, the
rationality of particular beliefs and actions is generally ‘person- and

¹³ Sider, ‘Credo Quia Absurdum?’

¹⁴ Bühler, ‘Tertullian: The Teacher of the Credo Quia Absurdum’.
¹⁵ See, for example, Tertullian, de poenitentia I, 2. ‘Quippe res dei ratio quia deus
omnium conditor nihil non ratione providit disposuit ordinavit, nihil enim non
ratione tractari intellegique voluit’. Tertullian tries to avoid equating ratio with
culturally dominant notions of ‘common sense’.
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54 The Territories of Human Reason

situation-relative’.¹⁶ This is not a new development. For example, the
Spanish philosopher Vicente Fernández Valcárcel (1723–98) criti-
cized the universalizing tendencies of some Enlightenment writers,
holding that ‘each subject has its method (cada materia tiene
su método)’, enfolding its own distinct epistemological ‘jurisdiction
(jurisdicción)’.¹⁷
So how do these multiple rationalities relate to one another? Is
there some ‘meta-rationality’ which they instantiate, each in its own
distinct manner? Or are they to be seen as essentially independent,
perhaps bearing some family resemblance allowing the door to be
kept open for at least the possibility of shared norms or methods
across disciplines? And what form might such a meta-rationality
take? Are we speaking of a standpoint of logical necessity, based,
like Euclid’s geometry, on axiomatic deduction? Or of a plausible
cohesiveness, holding together a domain of particulars after the
manner of James Joyce’s Ulysses?
The case of Isaac Newton—a leading figure in the Scientific Revo-
lution of the late seventeenth century—is illuminating. Newton
actively engaged the fields of natural philosophy and Christian the-
ology, regarding both as constitutive elements of his intellectual
and spiritual identity.¹⁸ Yet there is no evidence of a single rational
methodology underlying both these enterprises, which appear to have
been conducted on the basis of quite different working assumptions.
Where some older studies of Newton ambitiously proclaimed that
both were the outcome of a ‘single mind’, the most recent study of
Newton’s religious thought has indicated that the documentary evi-
dence provides ‘no support for the notion that there is some simple
conceptual or methodological coherence to his work’.¹⁹ Newton
clearly worked with distinct, even divergent rationalities, holding
them together (for we cannot speak meaningfully of ‘integration’
here) in a manner that was peculiar to him as an individual, allowing

¹⁶ van Huyssteen, Shaping of Rationality, 155.

¹⁷ Valcárcel, Desengaños filosóficos, vol. 1, 408.
¹⁸ Snobelen, ‘To Discourse of God’; Illiffe, ‘Newton, God, and the Mathematics of
the Two Books’.
¹⁹ Illiffe, Priest of Nature, 14.
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Mapping Human Reason 55

the reconciliation of such approaches in an idiosyncratic manner that
is probably inaccessible to us.
A further issue that might be raised here is the willingness of an
epistemic community to justify itself to a wider public. Advocates of a
public Christian theology, for example, argue that the theologian must
always critically reflect on Christian practice in dialogue with those
inside and outside the community. ‘Any appeal to hidden or private
sources of authority or justification is inappropriate for a genuinely
public theology. The structure and logic of theological argument must
be available for examination by any reasonable inquirer.’²⁰ This con-
cern for rational and evidential accountability across traditions may be
complexified by the recognition of multiple operating rationalities; it
is not, however, invalidated by it.
Discussion of this already difficult interdisciplinary question of the
correlation of rationalities is made more intractable by the principled
refusal of some in both the scientific and the theological camps to
sanction any meaningful conversations or discussions between their
respective communities.²¹ Some draw on the deeply flawed—but still
widely cited—taxonomy of possibilities advocated by Ian Barbour,²²
two elements of which advocate either a perennial ‘warfare’ between
the natural sciences and Christian theology or their total intellectual
independence, to suggest that interdisciplinary conversations will
necessarily be sterile and unproductive. Both sides are prone to use
the toxic language of contamination, concerned that their own dis-
tinct insights, methods, and values might be tainted by intellectual
contact with alternative ways of thinking. There is a reluctance,
perhaps even a failure, to acknowledge the possibility of intellectual
enrichment within both intellectual communities, probably because
this entails an implicit recognition of incompleteness and penulti-
macy of both the natural sciences and theology.²³
Although such attempts to avoid engaging with the natural sci-
ences are widely encountered within Christian theology—especially

²⁰ Thiemann, Constructing a Public Theology, 20. See further Chung, Postcolonial

Public Theology, 21–125.
²¹ O’Brien and Noy, ‘Traditional, Modern, and Post-Secular Perspectives on Science
and Religion in the United States’.
²² Cantor and Kenny, ‘Barbour’s Fourfold Way’.
²³ For an example of this approach, see McGrath, Enriching our Vision of Reality.
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56 The Territories of Human Reason

in relation to psychology²⁴—some sections of the scientific community
are also resistant to serious engagement with other disciplines, or to
engaging their own limitations. Many would now argue that the prac-
tices of the natural sciences are too easily reified into something that
gives the impression of being inevitable and perennial, and in doing so
becomes inattentive to its own history and contingency, in effect having
become ‘a sealed microworld marked by fixity, holism and cohesiveness,
and isolated from everything and everyone else by a mathematically thin
but poreless boundary’.²⁵ The pressure for a clear demarcation between
‘science’ and ‘non-science’ is often presented as arising from the need to
demarcate a zone of credibility within which reliable knowledge is
created; the social scientist, however, is more likely to see this as the
creation, defence, and policing of culturally contingent and shifting
boundaries, which ultimately reflect changing scientific practice.²⁶
Any suggestion that both the natural sciences and Christian the-
ology might enrich their grasp of our immense and complex universe,
including ultimate questions of meaning, value, and purpose, through
interaction and dialogue thus falls on many deaf ears within both the
scientific and religious communities. Any suggestion of incomplete-
ness on the part of science or religion is seen as entailing their inad-
equacy. This is, it need hardly be said, a misreading of the situation. The
distinct approaches of both the natural sciences and Christian theology
are such that they are necessarily incomplete; they can only be made to
be complete by some form of metaphysical inflation which comprom-
ises each of their distinct identities and research methods.

SCIENTISM: THE NATURAL SCIENCES AS

THE ULTIMATE RATIONAL AUTHORITY

This resistance to dialogue, ultimately grounded in a misplaced fear of

intellectual contamination, is heightened by what some have called

²⁴ See the detailed analysis in Collicutt, ‘Bringing the Academic Discipline of

Psychology to Bear on the Study of the Bible’.
²⁵ Galison, ‘Scientific Cultures’, 128.
²⁶ Gieryn, Cultural Boundaries of Science, x–xii.
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Mapping Human Reason 57

‘scientism’—an inelegant contraction of ‘scientific imperialism’—
which privileges the natural sciences, holding that scientific enquiry
enables the resolution of conflicts and dilemmas in contexts where
traditional sources of wisdom and practical knowledge are seen to
have failed.²⁷ The philosopher Ian Kidd has argued that three basic
‘impulses’ can be discerned as lying behind the rise of scientism:²⁸
1. An imperialist urge—a compulsion to extend the concepts,
methods, and practices of scientific enquiry into areas in which
their competency is at best uncalibrated, and almost certainly
problematic.
2. A salvific urge—an insistence that science, or what some people
take to be science, can satisfy our ethical, spiritual, and existential
concerns and needs.
3. An absolutist urge—a compulsion to assign to science the exclusive
task of providing complete, absolute, and ‘totalizing’ accounts of
life, the universe, and everything.
Scientism has thus gradually come to be understood as ‘a totalizing
attitude that regards science as the ultimate standard and arbiter of all
interesting questions; or alternatively that seeks to expand the very
definition and scope of science to encompass all aspects of human
knowledge and understanding’.²⁹ These ideas are echoed in popularist
defences of scientism, such as the somewhat brash statements of Peter
Atkins: ‘Reductionist science is omnicompetent. Science has never
encountered a barrier that it has not surmounted.’³⁰
Such forms of scientism are however, vulnerable to penetrating
criticisms. It fails to account for the astonishing success of mathem-
atics, which does not derive its ideas through scientific means, even
if those ideas may ultimately prove to have scientific utility. More
importantly, scientism finds itself trapped in a viciously circular
argument from which no experiment can extricate it, in that it has

²⁷ Dupré, Human Nature and the Limits of Science, 74. See further Robinson and
Williams, eds, Scientism: The New Orthodoxy; Stenmark, Scientism; McGrath,
‘Gli ateismi di successo’.
²⁸ Kidd, ‘Doing Science an Injustice’.
²⁹ Pigliucci, ‘New Atheism and the Scientistic Turn in the Atheism Movement’, 144.
³⁰ Atkins, ‘The Limitless Power of Science’, 129.
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58 The Territories of Human Reason

to assume its own authority in order to confirm it. Inflated forms of
scientism, which treat science as the ‘ultimate standard and arbiter of
all interesting questions’ are actually making second-order philo-
sophical claims about science, which cannot be verified empirically;
a refutation of this point must therefore rest on philosophical, not
scientific, arguments. The price of getting out of this vicious circle is
forfeiting such spurious claims to intellectual privilege.³¹
To break out of this circle requires ‘getting outside’ of science altogether
and—discovering from that extra-scientific vantage point that science con-
veys an accurate picture of reality—and, if scientism is to be justified, that
only science does so. But then the very existence of that extra-scientific
vantage point would falsify the claim that science alone gives us a rational
means of investigating objective reality.
Scientism is perceived to be arrogant by non-scientists. For the
philosopher Mary Midgley, ‘scientism’s mistake does not lie in
over-praising one form of [knowledge], but in cutting that form off
from the rest of thought, in treating it as a victor who has put all the
rest out of business’.³² Yet the real problem is that the rich variety of
human discourses and experience prove resistant to even the most
persistent demands that they should be reduced to any single vocabu-
lary,³³ whether this be scientific or something else. Midgley insists
that most of the important questions in human life demand a number
of different conceptual tool-boxes that need to be used together.³⁴ If a
single perspective on reality is allowed to become normative, the
outcome is inevitably a ‘bizarrely restrictive view of meaning’.³⁵
Midgley’s approach recognizes the need for ‘multiple maps’ of a
complex reality. No single approach is adequate; different angles of
approach and research methodologies are required in order for the
human mind to secure a maximal grasp of the universe.

³¹ Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics, 10–11.

³² Midgley, Are You an Illusion?, 5. Susan Haack frames scientism in terms of
attitudes of ‘exaggerated deference’ to, or an ‘excessive readiness’ to revere, science:
Haack, Defending Science, 17–18.
³³ Putnam, Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity, 42–7. Cf. his critique of ‘pan-
scientism’: Naturalism, Realism, and Normativity, 214.
³⁴ Rivera, The Earth is Our Home, 179.
³⁵ Midgley, Wisdom, Information, and Wonder, 199.
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Mapping Human Reason 59

In this chapter, I propose to map two approaches to conceptualizing
the rational relationship between science and religion in general (and
science and Christian theology in particular). Both are essentially
heuristic, offering an imaginative framework which helps us to see
how their intellectual territories might overlap and interact, without
providing a rigorous means of adjudicating territorial boundary dis-
putes or determining levels of porosity. These can easily be used to
facilitate a wider transdisciplinary dialogue.

MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
ON A COMPLEX REALITY

Earlier, I cited the biologist Steven Rose, who holds that we live in a
world that is an ‘ontological unity’, while recognizing that we must
adopt ‘an epistemological pluralism’ in investigating it.³⁶ In defending
and unfolding this view, Rose offers us a ‘fable’ of five biologists,
representing different subdivisions of that discipline, who observe a
frog jump into a pond. What explanations might be offered of this
observation?
The physiologist explains that the frog’s leg muscles were stimu-
lated by impulses from its brain. The biochemist supplements this by
pointing out that the frog jumps because of the properties of fibrous
proteins, which enabled them to slide past each other, once stimu-
lated by ATP. The developmental biologist locates the frog’s capacity
to jump in the first place in the ontogenetic process which gave rise to
its nervous system and muscles. The animal behaviourist locates the
explanation for the frog’s jumping in its attempt to escape from a
lurking predatory snake. The evolutionary biologist adds that the
process of natural selection ensures that only those ancestors of
frogs which could detect and evade snakes would be able to survive
and breed. Rose’s point is simple: all five explanations are part of a
bigger picture. All of them are right; they are, however, different. ‘The

³⁶ Rose, ‘The Biology of the Future and the Future of Biology’, 128–9.
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60 The Territories of Human Reason

most that we can insist is that explanations in the different discourses
should not contradict each other.’³⁷
Rose’s fable illustrates the issues that need to be considered in
moving from the recognition of multiple perspectives to the devel-
opment of a unified theoretical account. Each of the five approaches
can be treated as offering a specific a perspective on the frog’s jump.
The spatial metaphor does not require that these be treated as
‘fictions’, or even as instrumentalist accounts of the phenomenon.
They are perspectives, reflecting their own distinct disciplinary methods
and emphases.
The idea that there are multiple ways of viewing or approaching a
complex reality can be traced back to Plato. Reality is too vast to be
fully apprehended by any single individual; we can at best hope to
grasp part of that greater whole, and allow others to supplement our
limited apprehension. Knowledge is thus a communitarian or cor-
porate undertaking, involving the aggregation and assimilation of
multiple perceptions. C. S. Lewis is perhaps one of the best-known
representatives of this view, arguing that literature represents an
accumulation of insights, open to personal appropriation and syn-
thesis. ‘My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of
others . . . In reading great literature, I become a thousand men and
yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a
myriad eyes, but it is still I who see.’³⁸ Literature, for Lewis, enables us
‘to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel
with other hearts, as well as our own’.³⁹ The weaving together of such
multiple perspectives and partial insights is left to the creative imagin-
ation of the individual knower.⁴⁰
Nietzsche developed a related approach in his Will to Power,
arguing that the human eye cannot take in the rich landscape with
which it is confronted, and tends to focus on features in the imme-
diate foreground of the field of vision. This complexity of the visual
field is such that we are unable to accommodate it in terms of a single
meaning (Sinn) lying behind the world; rather, there are countless

³⁷ Rose, ‘The Biology of the Future and the Future of Biology’, 128.
³⁸ Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, 140–1.
³⁹ Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, 137.
⁴⁰ See further McGrath, ‘An Enhanced Vision of Rationality’.
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Mapping Human Reason 61

meanings.⁴¹ Although the basis and implications of Nietzsche’s
perspectivism are the subject of considerable debate, it seems that
the decision to accept one such meaning as normative is thus best
seen as an act of intellectual self-determination rather than of dis-
cernment.⁴² Truth is not something that is ‘there’, waiting to be
‘found or discovered’, but is rather ‘something that must be created’,
and that thus refers to a process, or a ‘will to overcome that has in
itself no end’. Nietzsche himself does not develop an intellectual
project designed to integrate multiple perspectives, being more con-
cerned with exploring the implications of the human tendency to
identify what is seen to be relevant for pragmatic reasons. Yet the
depth of Nietzsche’s analysis seems to require him to work with—or
at least presuppose—some form of ontological perspectivalism.⁴³
The philosopher of science Ronald J. Giere argues that some form
of ‘perspectival realism’ is now essential in order to construct a
middle way between two flawed conceptions of the natural sciences:⁴⁴
classical science, framed by the assumptions of the Enlightenment,
which sees the natural sciences as an objective and rational pursuit of
the laws of nature; and social constructivism, which holds that science
is a social process, and as such, cannot be separated from human
values and beliefs. Giere offers a more nuanced and behaviourally
sophisticated approach that finds a middle ground between classical
and social constructivist views of science, both acknowledging that
science is indeed a social process, and insisting that scientific models
nevertheless bear an objective relation to the world.
In his account of how perspectival models can lead to theory
unification,⁴⁵ Alexander Rueger adopts an approach similar to Giere’s
‘perspectival realism’,⁴⁶ noting that perspectival models ‘[are] not
restricted to models incorporating a spatial perspective (which pro-
vides for the analogy with visual perspectives)’, but can be extended

⁴¹ Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, vol. 9, 337: ‘[Die Welt] hat keinen Sinn hinter sich,
sondern unzählige Sinne’.
⁴² Cf. Tanesini, ‘Nietzsche’s Theory of Truth’; Heelan, ‘Nietzsche’s Perspectivalism’.
⁴³ As argued by Welshon, ‘Perspectivist Ontology and De Re Knowledge’.
⁴⁴ Giere, Science without Laws; idem, Scientific Perspectivism. For criticism of this
general approach, see Votsis, ‘Putting Realism in Perspective’.
⁴⁵ Rueger, ‘Perspectival Models and Theory Unification’.
⁴⁶ Giere, Scientific Perspectivism.
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62 The Territories of Human Reason

to include the recognition of multiple levels of a system. In many
cases, these different perspectives yield a complementarity which
allows for the development of a coherent treatment of the phenom-
ena; in some others—such as attempts to model atomic nuclei—the
models appear inconsistent, and the development of a unified theory
proves difficult, if not impossible.⁴⁷ Yet it is clear that this analogy has
potential to illuminate one of the most important aspects of any form
of transdisciplinary research—the capacity to bring together ‘infor-
mation, data, theories, and methodologies from multiple disciplinary
viewpoints’ in order to ‘create something new that is irreducible to
the disciplinary components that were initially brought to bear’.⁴⁸
Defenders of certain forms of scientific perspectivalism can thus
argue that the approach is able to describe not merely different
regions of the same complex system but the same system at different
levels.⁴⁹ Perspectives are to be seen as a visual metaphor, an imagina-
tively rich yet cognitively inexact manner of describing the many
features of a complex system, without necessarily resolving the com-
plexities of their relationships. The appeal to multiple perspectives is a
strategy for saving the phenomena, providing a conceptual net that
captures complexity and detail, yet without resolving the relationship
of the various elements of the picture. No perspective offers a ‘perfect
model’ of reality; rather, each perspective offers an account of reality
which is not that of exact isomorphism, but rather that of similarity,
and then always in limited respects and degrees.⁵⁰ The challenge is
that of the colligation—perhaps even unification—of such perspec-
tives without loss of their local explanatory power.⁵¹
The visual metaphor of ‘perspective’ thus offers more than the
recognition of multiple ways of viewing and representing a complex
reality; it also catalyses discussion about different levels of reality, by
offering a means of visualizing the depth of a complex entity. The
origins of linear perspective at the time of the Renaissance arose from
an artistic desire to be able to convey depth in drawings, thus enabling

⁴⁷ See the detailed discussion in Morrison, ‘One Phenomenon, Many Models’.

⁴⁸ Leavy, Essentials of Transdisciplinary Research, 31.
⁴⁹ See the important analysis in Rueger, ‘Perspectival Models and Theory Unifica-
tion’, especially 590–2.
⁵⁰ For this point, see Teller, ‘Twilight of the Perfect Model Model’, 395–402.
⁵¹ Rueger, ‘Perspectival Models and Theory Unification’.
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Mapping Human Reason 63

two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional reality.⁵² Yet
there are concerns that need to be raised about such an approach,
including the anxiety that the use of perspective introduces a homo-
geneity or orderedness which is alien to the direct experience of
reality itself, thus imposing a predetermined structure on what is
being observed.⁵³

SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY: DISTINCT

PERSPECTIVES ON REALITY

The notion that science and religion offer different, yet potentially
complementary, perspectives on reality has been widely explored.⁵⁴
The Oxford theoretical chemist Charles A. Coulson used this image
in a number of his writings, seeing it as a heuristic device which
allowed the fundamental coherence of science and faith to be
affirmed.⁵⁵ Coulson’s personal interest in relating science and faith,
which emerged during his time as an undergraduate at Cambridge
University, led him to refuse to think in terms of a ‘dichotomy of
existence’ between science and faith, as if our experience of the world
could be pre-assigned to self-contained and mutually agonistic ‘reli-
gious’ or ‘scientific’ categories. He was not prepared to countenance
the notion of ‘some sort of hedge in the country of the mind’ that
separated these two domains.⁵⁶ Coulson was highly critical of any
view that held that it was possible to allocate different intellectual
locations for science and religion, or to regard these as domains which
were under separate authority.

⁵² For the suggestion that there are theological roots to this approach, see Edgerton,
The Mirror, the Window and the Telescope, 36.
⁵³ See especially Panofsky, ‘Die Perspektive als “Symbolische Form” ’. Various
recent artistic movements have arisen as protests against such a rigid representation
of a complex and changing reality: see Hendrix, Platonic Architectonics, 175–202.
⁵⁴ See especially Watts, ‘Science and Theology as Complementary Perspectives’.
For related approaches, see Wolterstorff, ‘Theology and Science’; Rueger, ‘Perspectival
Models and Theory Unification’.
⁵⁵ Coulson, Christianity in an Age of Science; idem, Science and Christian Belief;
idem, Science and the Idea of God.
⁵⁶ Coulson, Science and Christian Belief, 19.
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64 The Territories of Human Reason

As an enthusiastic mountaineer, Coulson illustrated his own
approach by inviting his readers to imagine Ben Nevis, Scotland’s
highest mountain. Seen from the south, the mountain presents itself
as a ‘huge grassy slope’; from the north, as ‘rugged rock buttresses’.
Those who know the mountain are familiar with these different per-
spectives. ‘Different viewpoints yield different descriptions.’ A full
description of the same mountain requires these different perspec-
tives to be brought together, and integrated into a single coherent
picture.⁵⁷ The scientist might thus stand at the north side of the
mountain, the poet at the south, and so on. Each reports on what
they find using their own distinct language and imagery, adapted to
what they see. Where one observer might see grassy slopes, another
might see a rocky mountain. Yet both are representative and legitim-
ate viewpoints of the same greater reality. For Coulson, this makes the
need for an overall, cumulative, and integrated picture of reality
essential. ‘Different views of the same reality will appear different,
yet both be valid.’⁵⁸
Coulson refuses to allow that there are demarcated ‘scientific’ and
‘religious’ worlds, which are each experienced in different manners. It
is one and the same world that is experienced—and that experience is
complex, requiring and mandating both scientific and religious
approaches. ‘The two worlds are one, though seen and described in
appropriate terms; and it is only the man who cannot, or will not,
look at it from more than one viewpoint who claims an exclusive
authority for his own description.’
There are clearly weaknesses with this general approach, most
notably the need to negotiate intellectual boundaries and methodo-
logical privileges. Are all standpoints or angles of approach to be
regarded as being of equal value and utility? Or might one serve in
effect as a privileged or normative standpoint, offering a conceptual
framework on the basis of which others might be evaluated, posi-
tioned, and coordinated?
A second concern relates to the inability of such an approach to do
justice to the complex texturing of reality. How can such perspectives
account for the granularity of reality? Much attention has been paid

⁵⁷ Coulson, Christianity in an Age of Science, 20.

⁵⁸ Coulson, Christianity in an Age of Science, 21.
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Mapping Human Reason 65

to this problem in recent years, especially the notion of ‘granular
perspectives’, and the related question of the processes of cognitive
partitioning of the world which underlies the quest for multiple
veridical perspectives.⁵⁹
As it stands, then, Coulson’s perspectival approach reflects a very
‘flat’ view of the world, which seems inattentive and insensitive to the
possibility of multiple levels or ‘strata’ of reality. For example, religion
is a complex social phenomenon, which possesses and is character-
ized by multiple dimensions or levels.⁶⁰ So how can we do justice to
the multiple layers of religion—such as its symbols, narratives, prac-
tices, and virtues?
We have already seen how the notion of linear perspective
opens up one possibility of representing depth while working with
two-dimensional representative forms. Galileo’s knowledge of this
approach allowed him to correctly interpret his telescopic observa-
tions of the moon as disclosing the presence of such features as
mountains—despite the fact that his observations were limited to
two dimensions.⁶¹ Strictly speaking, Galileo thus did not observe the
mountains or valleys of the moon, but observed an interplay of light
and shadow which he interpreted, by analogy with terrestrial per-
spectives, as indicating the presence of lunar mountains and valleys.

SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY: DISTINCT

LEVELS OF REALITY

So what other way of conceiving our world might allow us to affirm,

preserve, and engage its spatial depths? The natural sciences make
extensive use of the notion of ‘levels of explanation’, an approach
which counters inappropriate reductionist tendencies by emphasizing

⁵⁹ Such as Bittner and Smith, ‘A Theory of Granular Partitions’.

⁶⁰ For Ninian Smart’s influential characterization of these dimensions, see Rennie,
‘The View of the Invisible World’. For a more empirical view, see Visala, ‘Explaining
Religion at Different Levels’.
⁶¹ Hamou, La mutation du visible, 63–6; Shea, ‘Looking at the Moon as Another
Earth’; Spranzi, ‘Galileo and the Mountains of the Moon’.
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66 The Territories of Human Reason

that some explanations might be offered of certain aspects of systems
which could not be applied to every aspect of a system, or the system
as a whole.⁶² The interaction of such levels is complex, and it is
becoming increasingly clear that causation exists and operates at
multiple levels and in multiple directions within complex biological
systems.⁶³ Whereas those espousing reductionist approaches prema-
turely argue that the more fundamental levels—such as physical
reality—determine the properties and behaviours of higher levels, it
is becoming increasingly clear that such ‘bottom-up’ approaches need
to be supplemented by ‘top-down’ mechanisms.⁶⁴ For example, while
physical laws underlie all material entities, there nevertheless exist
higher-level causal relations that allow the brain to act as a means of
creating theories or searching for meaning, without contradicting or
overwriting those lower-level physical laws. Consequently, physics
does not control the mind, it enables the mind. Such ‘top-down’
mechanisms cause difficulties for some natural scientists and philo-
sophers in that they are not material causes. However, such difficul-
ties can be mitigated by reconceptualizing the issue in terms of the
‘coarse-graining’ of nature, or operational networks within nature.⁶⁵
Reality is stratified, and each scientific discipline develops research
methods adapted to its specific objects of study. The complexity of the
world requires the use of multiple levels of explanation, both within
the natural sciences and beyond. As we noted earlier (59–60), the
biologist Steven Rose has noted how multiple explanations might
be offered as to why a frog jumped into a pond, from the pers-
pectives of physiology, biochemistry, developmental biology, animal
behaviour, and evolutionary theory.⁶⁶ All these explanations, Rose
suggests, are right; they are also different, and combine to offer
explanatory depth. Phenomena in the world can be explained at

⁶² Potochnik, ‘Levels of Explanation Reconceived’; Bechtel, ‘Levels of Description

and Explanation in Cognitive Science’. For a different way of framing such levels, see
Rueger, ‘Perspectival Models and Theory Unification’, 590–2.
⁶³ Fazekas and Kertész, ‘Causation at Different Levels’.
⁶⁴ See the evidence assembled in Ellis, How Can Physics Underlie the Mind?, 1–28,
133–209.
⁶⁵ Bechtel, ‘Explicating Top-Down Causation Using Networks and Dynamics’;
Flack, ‘Coarse-graining as a Downward Causation Mechanism’.
⁶⁶ Rose, ‘The Biology of the Future and the Future of Biology’, 128–9.
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Mapping Human Reason 67

several levels, and—despite the protests of those who wish to assert
the intellectual hegemony of their own research fields—none can be
regarded as definitive, comprehensive, or normative.
The form of ‘critical realism’ developed by the philosopher and
social scientist Roy Bhaskar provides a conceptual framework that
affirms the ontological unity of reality, while recognizing that this
unity expresses itself at different levels, each demanding a form of
engagement which is determined by the distinctive identity of the
area of reality under investigation.⁶⁷ Bhaskar’s account of critical
realism—which he earlier described as ‘Transcendental Realism’ or
‘Critical Naturalism’—allowed the active exploration of social real-
ities, thus opening up a rich conceptual toolbox for engaging the
multiple levels of religious belief, practice, and communities.
This form of critical realism insists that the world must be regarded
as differentiated and stratified. Each individual science deals with a
different stratum of this reality, which in turn obliges it to develop
and use methods of investigation adapted and appropriate to this
stratum. Stratum B might be grounded in, and emerge from, Stratum
A. Yet despite this relation of origin, the same methods of investiga-
tion cannot be used in dealing with these two different strata. These
methods must be established a posteriori, through an engagement
with each of these strata of reality. For the purposes of our discussion,
we can leave open the question of whether this is simply a heuristic
device for conceiving the relation of the sciences in a visual form, or
whether we can actually speak of such layers within the overall struc-
ture of reality.
On this approach, the three representative sciences of physics,
chemistry, and biology can be seen to exist as layers: physics is
fundamental; chemistry builds upon physics, while extending it in
ways which could not necessarily be predicted on the basis of physics
alone; while biology builds further on chemistry, while extending
both physics and chemistry in ways that could not have been pre-
dicted from a knowledge of those lower levels. Each level is to be
regarded as distinct, thus demanding its own method of investigation
and representation which is adapted to its structures and forms,

⁶⁷ For an overview, see Collier, Critical Realism.

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68 The Territories of Human Reason

rather than having some methodology developed for another purpose
and application be imposed upon it.
There is an obvious theological counterpart here. Thomas F.
Torrance argued that all intellectual disciplines or sciences are
under an intrinsic obligation to give an account of reality ‘according
to its distinct nature’.⁶⁸ For Torrance, this means that both scientists
and theologians are under an obligation to ‘think only in accordance
with the nature of the given’.⁶⁹ The object which is to be investigated
must be allowed a voice in this process of enquiry. The distinc-
tive characteristic of a ‘science’ is to give an accurate and objective
account of things in a manner that is appropriate to the reality being
investigated. Both theology and the natural sciences are thus to be
seen as a posteriori activities which respond to ‘the given’ rather than
as a priori speculation based on philosophical first principles. In the
case of the natural sciences, this ‘given’ is the world of nature; in the
case of theological science, it is God’s self-revelation in Christ.
Bhaskar also offers a critical realist account of the relation of the
natural and social sciences which affirms their methodological com-
monalities, while respecting their distinctions, particularly when
these arise on account of their objects of investigation.⁷⁰
Naturalism holds that it is possible to give an account of science under which
the proper and more or less specific methods of both the natural and social
sciences can fall. But it does not deny that there are significant differences in
these methods, grounded in real differences in their subject-matters and in
the relationships in which these sciences stand to them . . . It is the nature
of the object that determines the form of its possible science.
We see here a clear recognition of each science being characterized by
the nature of its object, and being obligated to respond to that object
in a manner which is appropriate to its distinctive nature: ontology
determines epistemology. If we have ‘a conception of the world as
stratified and differentiated’, the nature of any specific object deter-
mines both the manner in which it is to be known, and the extent to

⁶⁸ Torrance, Theological Science, 10. See further Myers, ‘The Stratification of

Knowledge in the Thought of T. F. Torrance’.
⁶⁹ Torrance, Theology in Reconstruction, 9.
⁷⁰ Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, 3.
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Mapping Human Reason 69

which it can be known. There is thus no mathesis universalis, no
universal methodology for investigating everything, such as that
proposed during the Enlightenment, and echoed by later writers
such as Heinrich Scholz.⁷¹
Bhaskar insists that each stratum of reality—whether physical,
biological, or social—is to be seen as ‘real’, and capable of investiga-
tion using means appropriate to its distinctive identity. An example—
not used by Bhaskar himself—will help make this point clearer.
Consider the concept of ‘disability’. It is obvious that it is a complex
notion, with multiple levels. Recognizing this complexity, the World
Health Organization developed the ‘International Classification of
Functioning, Disability and Health’ (ICF), which recognizes four
constitutive levels or strata of ‘disability’:⁷²
1. Pathology, in which abnormalities arise in the structure of function
of a human organ or organ system.
2. Impairment, in which abnormalities or changes arise in the struc-
ture or function of the whole human body.
3. Activity, in which abnormalities, changes, or restrictions arise in
the interaction between a person and their environment or phys-
ical context.
4. Participation, in which changes, limitations, or abnormalities arise
in the position of the person in their social context or environment.
The model is important in creating a framework of understanding
which identifies and remedies the inadequacies of reductionist
accounts of biosocial phenomena such as disability,⁷³ or illnesses with
social consequences, such as rheumatoid arthritis.⁷⁴ A medical model
views disability exclusively as a problem of the individual person,
caused directly by disease, trauma, or some other health condition,
which calls for medical treatment or intervention to correct the
problem in the individual. By contrast, a social model of disability

⁷¹ McGrath, ‘Theologie als Mathesis Universalis?’.

⁷² World Health Organization, International Classification of Functioning, Disability
and Health.
⁷³ Üstün et al., ‘The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health’.
⁷⁴ Fransen et al., ‘The ICIDH-2 as a Framework for the Assessment of Functioning
and Disability in Rheumatoid Arthritis’. (ICIDH-2 was a predecessor of ICF.)
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70 The Territories of Human Reason

conceptualizes disability exclusively as a socially created problem and
not an attribute of an individual. On the social model, disability
requires social action, since it arises from a dysfunctional social envir-
onment. The ICF model synthesizes what is true and useful in both
medical and social models, without improperly reducing the whole
complex notion of disability to one of its aspects. This stratified account
of disability allows a better understanding of both the problem and its
potential solutions.
This leads into the critically important question: what research
methods might be used to investigate disability? For Bhaskar, ‘the
nature of objects’ determines ‘their cognitive possibilities for us’.⁷⁵
This means that we cannot use the same research methods to inves-
tigate each of these four levels of the complex phenomenon we call
‘disability’. We must use methods that are adapted and appropriate
to each stratum of reality. A brain tumour is a good example of a
pathology with important consequences for human functionality and
well-being. Positron emission tomography (PET) is highly effective at
detecting and locating brain tumours.⁷⁶ Yet this research method has
no utility whatsoever in the empirical investigation of changes in an
individual’s cognitive functionality resulting from the growth of a
brain tumour, which is better studied using standard tests such as the
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS).
It is important to appreciate that the recognition of stratification
does not imply, still less entail, that the properties of higher strata are
determined by, or can be predicted on the basis of, the lower strata.
It is a commonplace in popular scientific writings to offer arbitrary
reductionist accounts of complex phenomena, such as Francis Crick’s
simplistic overstatement:⁷⁷
You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your
sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior
of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.
This represents a reductive explanation of human behaviour which
arbitrarily terminates at the molecular level, apparently on the basis of

⁷⁵ Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, 3.

⁷⁶ Chen, ‘Clinical Applications of PET in Brain Tumors’.
⁷⁷ Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, 3.
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Mapping Human Reason 71

the unstated assumption that the properties and status of lower
(though in this case not the lowest) levels determine those of the
higher. Biological processes are assumed to always be derivable from
lower-level data and mechanisms. Yet this fails to take account of top-
down causative processes, and the more general point that there now
appears to be no ‘privileged’ level of causation in the first place.⁷⁸
Bhaskar’s critical realism allows scientism to be seen as an unjus-
tified imposition of a single research method appropriate for, and
developed in relation to, one specific level of reality on to every aspect
of the natural and social world.⁷⁹ For Bhaskar, the nature of the object
determines the form of its possible science; scientism, however, insists
that everything must be investigated using the methods of the natural
sciences—even when these are not adapted or appropriate for the
investigation of certain critical questions, such as issues of meaning or
purpose. Scientism denies that there are ‘any significant differences
in the methods appropriate to studying social and natural objects’.⁸⁰
Scientism thus reduces reality to what can be known through the
application of one specific research method—often on the basis of the
questionable assumption that there is a single ‘scientific method’.
Epistemology is allowed to determine ontology, in that the use of
one specific research method determines what is ‘seen’—and hence
judged to be real.
Scientism is, on this approach, blind to the existence of levels of
reality that cannot be engaged by the methods of the natural
sciences—methods, it must be added, which were developed for
other purposes. The observation that a specific research method
does not disclose any given level is misinterpreted as implying that
this level does not exist.
And what of religion? Religion is a complex reality, with multiple
levels or strata. One stratum of religion consists of beliefs about God,
salvation, and human identity. This stratum would seem to include
the process of intellectual reflection on the foundations and interrela-
tions of such beliefs which is usually understood as theology. Another

⁷⁸ Noble, ‘A Theory of Biological Relativity’; Ellis, How Can Physics Underlie the
Mind?
⁷⁹ Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, 2–3.
⁸⁰ Bhaskar, The Possibility of Naturalism, 2.
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72 The Territories of Human Reason

stratum relates to certain kinds of behaviour, such as prayer or
participation in worship. A third involves certain kinds of emotion
or phenomenological experiences that are usually described or cat-
egorized (although not necessarily helpfully) as ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’.
Finally, many religions have specific social structures and institutional
forms. Each of these strata can be explored using research methods
adapted to its specific nature. The disciplines of sociology of religion
and the psychology of religion thus focus on two such strata. Yet none
of these strata, alone, is enough to define or characterize a ‘religion’, as
this term is generally used.
This has important implications for many aspects of the study of
religion, not least attempts to explain the origins and characteristics
of religion on evolutionary grounds. Given the complexity and strati-
fied nature of religion, it proves resistant to explanation on evolu-
tionary grounds in its totality. As a result, most evolutionary accounts
of the origins of religion have focussed on a single specific aspect of
religion amenable to such explanation, and ignored others. This ‘frac-
tionation’ of religion is problematic, not least because it fails to take
account of the interaction of such components within a wider system.
Mounting criticisms of cognitive-evolutionary theories of religion
reflect a concern that these generally fail to recognize the complexity
of what is conventionally understood by the term ‘religion’, and the
inadequacy of the use of monochromatic theorizing in explaining the
existence of polychromatic phenomena.⁸¹ For example, some theories
focus on group behaviour such as ritual, arguing for an adaptive
function related to the benefits to the group arising from increased
cohesion or solidarity. An adaptationist explanation of, for example,
belief in God does not plausibly correlate with specific rituals or
ethical norms.⁸² A strong evolutionary account of the origins of
religion would have to account, not merely for its individual aspects,
but the manner of their correlation in cultural practice.
This stratified approach to science and religion is capable of pre-
serving and accommodating their complexity and stratification. It
recognizes that the natural sciences exist in relationships of interaction
and dependency, and that religion is a multi-layered phenomenon

⁸¹ For example, see Saler, Conceptualizing Religion; idem, ‘Theory and Criticism’.
⁸² See the analysis in Kirkpatrick, ‘Religion Is Not an Adaptation’.
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Mapping Human Reason 73

which cannot be reduced to any of its communal, symbolic, narrative,
or ideational elements. It is also capable of accommodating the shifting
historical and cultural understandings of what each of the terms
‘science’ and ‘religion’ designates.⁸³ One of the more fundamental
concerns about Ian Barbour’s fourfold taxonomy of relationships
between science and religion—conflict, dialogue, independence, and
integration—is that it is of severely limited utility in allowing engage-
ment with historical debates, in that these are socially and culturally
embedded, often involving the dynamics of institutions (such as the
church), cultural associations, and historical memories, rather than
the mere relation of ideas.⁸⁴ A stratified approach to both science
and religion does not displace, but rather complements, perspectival
approaches.
Yet in the end, it is not entirely clear how such multiple perspectives
and levels are to be woven together, in that such a process involves
judgement about what weight is to be attached to each voice, and how
seeming inconsistencies are to be addressed. Any ‘transversal’
approach to rationality,⁸⁵ which, recognizing the Enlightenment’s fail-
ure to provide an adequate defence of its own Letztebegründung,⁸⁶
seeks to be attentive to many voices and social practices, must make
transparent and warranted decisions about how these voices and
practices are to be assessed and integrated. In the end, the notion of
transversality is fundamentally a heuristic device that creates imagina-
tive space for affirming such multiple approaches, rather than a con-
ceptual algorithm for calibrating their competing claims to authority,
or the outcomes of their application.
Yet however imprecise we might find the notions of multiple
perspectives and levels, both these approaches nevertheless offer
an imaginative framework which allows us to see how multiple

⁸³ Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion.

⁸⁴ Cantor and Kenny, ‘Barbour’s Fourfold Way’.
⁸⁵ The best account is Welsch’s sprawling treatise Vernunft, which merits close
study despite its dense style. For two more accessible North American explorations of
this theme, see Schrag, The Resources of Rationality, 148–79; van Huyssteen, Alone in
the World?, 20–3. Recent discussion of ‘transdisciplinarity’ has not drawn on Welsch’s
analysis, although there are illuminating parallels between them.
⁸⁶ See, for example, d’Alembert’s appeal to metaphysics as such an ultimate ground
of knowledge: Neuser, Natur und Begriff, 99–123.
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74 The Territories of Human Reason

approaches might be held together and correlated, and seen as part of
a greater enterprise of securing traction on a complex reality. Human
rationality takes the form of a spectrum of practices, developed and
adapted to a variety of situations and tasks encountered in the process
of production of knowledge. Any attempt to achieve a broader vision
of reality than that offered by a single discipline must, however, find
some way of holding such insights together in the first place, if a
grander vision of reality is to emerge.
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3
Social Aspects of Rationality
Tradition and Epistemic Communities

Human beings are not solitary creatures. As Aristotle pointed out, we

are communal animals—politikoi in the sense that we inhabit a polis,
a community.¹ An individual’s social location is one of a number of
factors which help shape perceptions of what beliefs or criteria of
judgement might be deemed to be ‘reasonable’, and thus influence the
outcomes of the process of reflection.² The manner in which a group
of individuals arrives at a collective decision is not the same as that
in which an individual develops such a judgement. Groups—whether
juries or societies—arrive at their aggregated beliefs in ways that
are shaped by social considerations, often involving the collectivizing
of reason, which can paradoxically lead to the group’s collectively
endorsing a conclusion that a majority of the group members indi-
vidually reject.³
The standard textbook presentations of the development of scientific
thought or religious ideas typically present individuals as detached
geniuses, individuals who single-mindedly brought about a revolution
in the way in which we think about ourselves and our universe. To
suggest that the situation is rather more complex than this is not in
any way to detract from the achievements of Copernicus or Darwin,

¹ Kullmann, Aristoteles und die moderne Wissenschaft, 334–63.

² For the implications of this observation for reflecting on rationality, see Tuomela,
The Philosophy of Sociality.
³ Pettit, ‘Groups with Minds of Their Own’, especially 175–8. More generally, see
Rupert, ‘Minding One’s Cognitive Systems’.
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76 The Territories of Human Reason

Aquinas or Luther—to name just a few of these individuals. Both the
natural sciences and Christian theology are to be seen as communal
activities, in which ideas are generated, evaluated, and received accord-
ing to procedures and norms which emerge within those communities,
and are believed to be appropriate for their distinct resources and tasks.
In this chapter, we shall consider the implications of critical historical
analysis and social epistemology for an understanding of communal
rationalities, and how these might illuminate discussions about ration-
ality within both religious and scientific epistemic communities.⁴

COMMUNITI ES AND THEIR EPISTEMIC SYSTEMS

It is a matter of empirical observation that communities develop their

own distinct ‘epistemic systems’—that is, characteristic systems of
rules or principles about the conditions under which a given belief
may be said to be justified.⁵ Close studies of authors of the early
modern period have made it clear that they did not subscribe to a
single valid mechanism of knowledge-production, in that their epis-
temological views were motivated by multiple sources based on their
differing ideological backgrounds.⁶ Yet this observation also applies
to the communities within which they were embedded, which both
informed and sustained the ‘plausibility structures’ of such epistemo-
logical views. As Peter Berger has argued, belief systems—whether
religious or secular—are socially constructed and thus require social
confirmation and validation through participation in networks of
individuals who share these beliefs.⁷ A failure to participate in such
networks makes the beliefs easier to doubt, especially in a society
characterized by pluralistic beliefs, many of which may contradict
or compete with those of the individual. Epistemic communities
offer plausibility structures which thus reinforce and affirm those
beliefs. Cognitive science may help explain why certain religious

⁴ Zollman, ‘The Communication Structure of Epistemic Communities’.

⁵ Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge, 58–80.
⁶ Dear, ‘Reason and Common Culture in Early Modern Natural Philosophy’.
⁷ Berger, A Far Glory, 127–8.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 77

beliefs seem natural to individuals; the communal context nevertheless
remains important in consolidating these beliefs and giving them
specific form.⁸
Recent revisionist accounts of the points of divergence between the
English philosophers John Locke and John Sergeant during the 1690s
have highlighted the importance of social factors in the production
of knowledge.⁹ According to Sergeant, an epistemology that attempts
to explore the world based only on the knowing subject (and some
specific capacities of the mind) is unacceptably individualistic, in that
it neglects the community within which the thinking subject was
embedded, and whose traditions and accumulated judgements shaped
such a thinker’s view. A thinker’s communitarian context was to be
seen as a potential source of knowledge-acquisition, whether this was
to be seen as a positive or negative influence. A similar concern was
expressed a century later by Johann Georg Hamman, who questioned
whether Kant’s understanding of human reasoning was sufficiently
attentive to the consequences of the thinking subject being embed-
ded within a specific cultural context.¹⁰ Both Sergeant and Hamman,
though in different ways, expressed a fundamental concern that the
dominant approach to questions of knowledge and justified belief was
heavily individualistic in focus, and thus offered a distorted picture of
the human epistemic situation.
This does not require us to conclude that the variety of observed
rationalities entails some form of relativism; it does, however, alert us
to the importance of social factors in shaping human judgements, and
the difficulties that can arise from this. It also illuminates the obser-
vation that a single body of evidence can be interpreted in multiple
ways, without implying that only one such interpretation is ‘rational’.
Although this issue is familiar from the natural sciences—consider,
for example, the debate about whether there is a single universe or
a vast ensemble of universes, in which the same observations are

⁸ Gervais, Willard, Norenzayan, and Henrich, ‘The Cultural Transmission of

Faith’; Luhrmann, Nusbaum, and Thisted, ‘The Absorption Hypothesis’.
⁹ Levitin, ‘Reconsidering John Sergeant’s Attacks on Locke’s Essay’; Henry, ‘Tes-
timony and Empiricism’.
¹⁰ Bayer, Vernunft ist Sprache, 252–4; Hempelmann, ‘Keine ewigen Wahrheiten als
unaufhörliche zeitliche’. For the general issue, see Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of
Justice.
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78 The Territories of Human Reason

interpreted in quite different manners¹¹—it is also a commonplace in
any collective interpretation of evidence. When faced with an identi-
cal body of evidence, individual members of a group—such as a
jury—may assess the evidence in different manners, without being
irrational in doing so.¹² The collective decision reached by such a
group often masks the diversity of doxastic attitudes within it, and the
processes of negotiation by which these are resolved.¹³
It is also important to note that ‘rationality’ is often rhetorically
equated with the groupthink of the cultural establishment, or of
groups with a sense of cultural entitlement. It can be suggested that
societal norms of rationality both perpetrate and perpetuate forms of
epistemic injustice, in that these often distribute such rational cred-
ibility unjustly, assigning it to preferred social groups, such as the
privileged or powerful.¹⁴ When a group takes on or is given an
epistemic task, its performance is partly determined by ‘aggregation
procedures’—that is, its mechanisms for consolidating the group
members’ individual beliefs or judgements into corresponding col-
lective beliefs or judgements endorsed by the group as a whole.¹⁵
A modern Western nation state consists of a variety of epistemic
communities jostling for social, political, and intellectual acceptance,
and occasionally hegemony. In the case of the United States of
America, this has led to a fractured society of ‘beliefs and intuitions
resting on tradition-dependent values that cannot be empirically
proven or fully justified by forms of rationality external to those
traditions.’¹⁶ Some, disturbed by such observations, respond by reas-
serting the hegemony of one specific conception of rationality—such
as that of the European ‘Age of Reason’, or those associated with the
‘hard sciences’, such as physics—while ridiculing those who suggest
that there is no independent vantage point, no privileged seat of
judgement, by which rival traditions of enquiry and adjudication
can be assessed.

¹¹ See Carr, ed., Universe or Multiverse?

¹² Rosen, ‘Nominalism, Naturalism, Philosophical Relativism’, 71.
¹³ Pettit, ‘When to Defer to Majority Testimony—and When Not’.
¹⁴ See the careful analysis in Fricker, ‘Rational Authority and Social Power’.
¹⁵ List, ‘Group Knowledge and Group Rationality’; List and Pettit, ‘Aggregating
Sets of Judgments’. See also Goldman, ‘Group Knowledge versus Group Rationality’.
¹⁶ Inazu, Confident Pluralism, 88.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 79

Such epistemic anxiety lay behind the convening of the World
Congress of the International Academy of Humanism (2005) by the
leading secular humanist Paul Kurtz, who declared that there was
an urgent and pressing need for a ‘New Enlightenment’.¹⁷ After
listing the Enlightenment’s achievements with an enthusiasm that
was untroubled by the inconveniences of historical accuracy, Kurtz
warned that there had been ‘a massive retreat from Enlightenment
ideals in recent years, a return to pre-modern mythologies’, includ-
ing a receptivity towards a ‘vulgar post-modernist cacophony of
Heideggerian-Derridian mush’. The promised ‘New Enlightenment’
would be based on ‘scientific inquiry and philosophical rationality’,
offering what its critics could only see as a fundamentally rever-
sionary hermeneutic tendency in cultural development, based on
nostalgia for a highly idealized and sanitized ‘Enlightenment’.¹⁸
Yet Kurtz’s enthusiastic promissory note was not succeeded by
its intended payload, largely because of an ideologically motivated
disinclination to engage either the critical historical scholarship of
the origins and development of the Enlightenment, or the intellectual
objections raised to what might loosely be described as the ‘Enlight-
enment Project’ by Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, or Gadamer.¹⁹
Human reasoning operates within an already given network of
assumptions and motives, so that any given conception of rationality
will always be relative to some informing context. The rational
justification of our most fundamental values is potentially a circular
process, in that those values and beliefs constitute the context within
which our understanding of rationality functions.²⁰

¹⁷ Kurtz, ‘Re-enchantment: A New Enlightenment’.

¹⁸ See also Hitchen’s similar plea for a ‘New Enlightenment’: Hitchens, God Is Not
Great, 277–83.
¹⁹ It is instructive to read Kurtz’s comments in the light of the proceedings of the
23rd International Wittgenstein-Symposium (2000), collected in Brogaard and Smith,
eds, Rationalität und Irrationalität.
²⁰ Cf. Strawson, Skepticism and Naturalism, 39: ‘We have an original non-rational
commitment which sets the bounds within which, or the stage upon which, reason
can effectively operate, and within which the question of the rationality or irration-
ality, justification or lack of justification, of this or that particular judgment or belief
can come up.’
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80 The Territories of Human Reason

RATIONALITY, COMMUNITY, AND TRADITION

In his Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche argued that our vision of the

world is embedded, local, and perspectival. We are socially embedded
creatures, and cannot escape the particularities of our social and
cultural contexts, which shape our assumptions and outlooks.²¹
Thomas Nagel thus argues that we cannot escape the condition of
seeing the world from the particular point at which we have been
inserted within it.²² No matter how much we may aspire to conditions
of absolute cultural detachment and objectivity, we are forced to settle
for a view that is ‘incurably open to bias and limitation’.²³
Many would resist such a conclusion, hoping to find some vantage
point which is exempt from the contingencies of the rational
thinker’s location within the historical process. The core rational
virtues of objectivity and neutrality seem to require a capacity to
stand outside history. Yet the quest for culturally invariant norms
of human reasoning, such as those aspired to within sections of the
Enlightenment, has encountered fundamental difficulties, both dia-
chronically and synchronically. Both Baruch Spinoza and Moses
Mendelssohn—two leading figures of the Enlightenment—found
themselves negotiating a delicate boundary between the universality
of their vision of human reasoning and the specificity of their Jewish
identities.²⁴ They were, so to speak, citizens of two intellectual terri-
tories, members of two social communities with potentially different
and divergent epistemic norms.
The issue here is partly that of the cultural embeddedness of
human thought, and the desire to escape from the limits imposed
by our historicity. Some have turned to logic and mathematics as
intellectual paradigms for modes of reasoning which appear to be
culturally invariant. As Stephen Toulmin pointed out, the attraction
of pure mathematics to the ‘Age of Reason’ lay partly in the fact that it

²¹ Heelan, ‘Nietzsche’s Perspectivalism’; Emden, Nietzsche’s Naturalism, 184–203.

²² Nagel, The View from Nowhere, 67–89.
²³ Weinstein, ‘The View from Somewhere’, 85.
²⁴ A point brought out particularly clearly by Goetschel, Spinoza’s Modernity,
3–20, 91–2.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 81

was seen to be the only intellectual activity whose problems and
solutions were ‘above time’,²⁵ perhaps offering hope that philosophy
and ethics might achieve a similar status. Yet other intellectual
disciplines—including both the natural sciences and religion—are
embedded within their historical and cultural contexts, with poten-
tially indeterminate yet significant implications for their patterns
of reasoning.
These concerns have led some to conclude that we must speak of
the ‘rationality of traditions’, recognizing that communities develop,
propagate, and sustain specific implementations of rationality. On
this approach, a rationality is embedded within the values and prac-
tices of a community. One of the most important of these exploratory
projects is due to Alasdair MacIntyre,²⁶ who argued that a study of the
history of ethical thought demonstrated empirically that a neutral
tradition-independent ground from which a verdict may be passed
upon the rival claims of conflicting traditions in respect of practical
rationality and of justice had yet to be discovered, and suggested
theoretically that rationality was itself constituted and mediated
through traditions.²⁷ The history of ideas simply did not lend sup-
port to the notional of culturally invariant moralities or rationalities;
the question of how this observation is to be interpreted remains
open, although MacIntyre’s approach to the question has gained
considerable traction, not least because it is able to accommodate
the observation that distinct rationalities arise within individual
epistemic communities.
The concept of an ‘epistemic community’ was developed to help
make sense of the complex interaction between professional commu-
nities, their values, their rationalities, and their formulation of pol-
icies. Such communities hold a shared set of normative and
principled beliefs, which provide a value-based rationale for the social
action of community members, which are derived and justified on the
basis of shared notions of validity—that is, ‘intersubjective, internally

²⁵ Toulmin, The Uses of Argument, 118.

²⁶ For recent accounts and critiques, see Herdt, ‘Alasdair Macintyre’s “Rationality
of Traditions” and Tradition-Transcendental Standards of Justification’; Nicholas,
Reason, Tradition, and the Good; Seipel, ‘Tradition-Constituted Inquiry and the
Problem of Tradition-Inherence’.
²⁷ MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 9.
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82 The Territories of Human Reason

defined criteria for weighing and validating knowledge in the domain
of their expertise’.²⁸ Although there are clear parallels with MacIntyre’s
approach, the concept of an ‘epistemic community’ tends to emphasize
procedural rationalities, taking cues from the work of Herbert A.
Simon, who received the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for
his pioneering work on decision-making processes in economic organ-
izations, rather than that of MacIntyre.²⁹
MacIntyre himself was clear that there was no a priori reason to
suppose that a ‘neutral tradition-independent ground’ of judgement
did not exist;³⁰ his point was rather that the historical and present
failure to achieve fundamental agreement on such a ground was
an a posteriori reason for supposing that it did not exist. Although
MacIntyre is perhaps less clear on how we are to define the critically
important concept of ‘tradition’ than many would like,³¹ he in effect
adopts an instrumentalist reading of the notion that he appears to
consider adequate for his purposes. MacIntyre does not understand
tradition in a conservative sense, as of a fixed body of teachings
or beliefs which are mechanically transmitted over time, but as a
community of discourse within which disagreement elicits intellec-
tual advance.³²
There is no other way to engage in the formulation, elaboration, rational
justification,and criticism of accounts of practical rationality and justice
except from within some one particular tradition in conversation, cooper-
ation, and conflict with those who inhabit the same tradition. There is no
standing ground, no place for enquiry, no way to engage in the practices of
advancing, evaluating, accepting, and rejecting reasoned argument apart
from that which is provided by some particular tradition or other.
This line of analysis leads MacIntyre to draw three main conclusions:³³

²⁸ Haas, Epistemic Communities, Constructivism, and International Environmental

Politics, 5. The term ‘epistemic community’ is now generally used in a more general
sense to designate any group of experts giving policy advice.
²⁹ See especially Simon, ‘Rationality as a Process and as a Product of Thought’;
idem, Reason in Human Affairs.
³⁰ MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 346.
³¹ A concern expressed in Allen, ‘Macintyre’s Traditionalism’. For a fuller discus-
sion, see Trenery, Alasdair Macintyre, George Lindbeck, and the Nature of Tradition.
³² MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 350.
³³ Seipel, ‘In Defense of the Rationality of Traditions’, 258.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 83

1. Rationality is dependent on the resources of traditions;
2. There is no neutral, tradition-independent way in which to assess
the epistemic status of a theory or belief; and
3. One tradition can rationally defeat another by argument.
Many have expressed concern about the consequences of this
approach, which are taken to be indicative of a more fundamental
flaw in its foundations. MacIntyre, it is argued, makes claims about
the possibility of rational evaluation across traditions which are
irreconcilable with his conception of the tradition-dependent nature
of rationality. This suggests either that his theory of the rationality of
traditions has a tradition-independent basis (in which case his con-
ception of rationality is false), or that the theory is merely to be
regarded as justified within and for a particular tradition (and there-
fore fails to refute relativism).³⁴ On this reading of MacIntyre, his
theory of the rationality of traditions must be universally valid if he is
to be able to refute relativism; yet any suggestion of its universal
validity is inconsistent with his emphasis on the dependence of
rationality on specific traditions. Such a theory of rationality would
fall into the category of ‘tradition-transcendental’, in that it would be
neither limited to a specific tradition nor justified in a tradition-
independent sense, providing a rational standard that is ‘not limited
to a particular tradition, even if only at a general, procedural level’.³⁵
Yet our concern here is not with defending the positive notion
of ‘tradition-dependent rationality’ which MacIntyre affirms, but
with noting his empirical argument that understandings of what is
‘rational’ are to be located within some particular, historical, and
contingent tradition of theoretical enquiry that is socially embodied.
If this is so, we are obliged to speak and think in terms of the actual
use of and appeal to multiple rationalities. This leaves open the
question of the relationship of these rationalities, and whether they
might be seen as specific yet partial historical or cultural implemen-
tations of some grander meta-tradition.³⁶ Yet it suggests that the idea

³⁴ Seipel, ‘In Defense of the Rationality of Traditions’, especially 257–8.

³⁵ Herdt, ‘Alasdair Macintyre’s “Rationality of Traditions” and Tradition-Transcendental
Standards of Justification’, 535.
³⁶ I explore this idea in McGrath, ‘The Rationality of Faith’.
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84 The Territories of Human Reason

that there is some overarching concept of rationality, appropriate to
all traditions and communities of enquiry, is not justified in the light
of the evidence about how such communities and traditions actually
practise their intellectual and reflective tasks.

RATIONALITY AND DOMINANT CULTURAL

METANARRATIVES

The origin of MacIntyre’s notion of the ‘rationality of traditions’ lay in

his historical analysis of understandings of ethical and rational norms
of the Enlightenment project, which convinced him that its legacy was
an ideal of rational justification which proved impossible to attain in
practice.³⁷ McIntyre’s approach could be seen in terms of the histori-
cization of rationality—the recognition that a good theory of ration-
ality should somehow fit the history of human rational enterprises,
such as the natural sciences. Critical historical investigation raises
questions about any assumption that thinkers of the past shared
assumptions about the definition or implementation of rationality.³⁸
Core assumptions of the past, such as that females were less rational
than males, have been left behind us;³⁹ yet the fact that these assump-
tions were made, accepted, and regarded as rational must heighten our
sensitivity towards the social location of discussion of human ration-
ality. A belief that one culture saw as eminently rational might be seen
by another as irrational, even as a sign of mental illness.⁴⁰
In his Secular Age, Charles Taylor considers the question of why a
belief that was regarded as eminently reasonable in 1500 might be
seen as unreasonable or problematic in 2000. After all, if rationality is
a cultural constant, it might be anticipated that a belief could be

³⁷ MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, 6.

³⁸ A good example is Thomas Kuhn’s challenge to older assumptions about
scientific rationality: see Friedman, ‘Kuhn, and the Rationality of Science’. Cf.
Webel, The Politics of Rationality, passim.
³⁹ For the wider issues, see Jones, ‘Rationality and Gender’; Heikes, Rationality and
Feminist Philosophy.
⁴⁰ On the social construction of ‘madness’, see Walker, ‘The Social Construction of
Mental Illness’. The classic study of social irrationality remains Foucault, Folie et
déraison.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 85

deemed rational once and for all. Yet it is clear that some notions once
regarded as entirely reasonable—such as the idea that God acts in the
world—are now seen as problematic.⁴¹ Of course, examples also
abound of ideas that were once seen as problematic which are now
seen as entirely reasonable. Newton and his late seventeenth-century
contemporaries found the notion of gravity deeply counterintuitive,
in that it involved the apparently inexplicable notion of ‘action at a
distance’. There was simply no conceptual space for actio in distans
within the corpuscularist worldview of Newton’s age.⁴² Today, how-
ever, this notion is seen as quite unproblematic.⁴³ Perhaps the tipping
point was Helmholtz’s 1847 declaration that any attempt to render
the universe intelligible depended on forces of attraction or repulsion,
the intensity of which depended upon distance.⁴⁴ What was once seen
as a potential irrationality thus came to be recognized as a funda-
mental principle of cosmic intelligibility.
As we noted earlier (25), however, three elements can be discerned
within any analysis of what a culture deems to be reasonable: human
cognitive processes; the dominant presuppositions of the culture
within which a thinker is located; and the evidence available to that
culture. Taylor’s rich analysis of cultural change in the West high-
lights the importance of cultural metanarratives in determining what
are considered to be reasonable beliefs and values. It illuminates some
of the apparent contradictions and paradoxes of the Enlightenment,
such as the white racial framing mechanisms of the intellectual elite of
Enlightenment France,⁴⁵ and the curious decision of the founders of
the United States of America to preserve slavery and social inequality
after winning their political freedom from Britain. Even David Hume,
whose opposition to slavery during the 1770s put him ahead of his age,
held views that would now be seen as racist, evident in his remark that
he was ‘apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites’.⁴⁶

⁴¹ See the analysis in McGrath, ‘Hesitations About Special Divine Action’.

⁴² Ducheyne, ‘Newton on Action at a Distance’.
⁴³ Dijksterhuis, De Mechanisering van het Wereldbeeld, 512–13.
⁴⁴ von Helmholtz, Über die Erhaltung der Kraft, 17.
⁴⁵ On which see Curran, The Anatomy of Blackness, 117–66, 216–24.
⁴⁶ Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, 208. This 1777 statement is much
less offensive than an earlier version of 1753, which was widely cited in racist
literature. For comment and analysis, see Immerwahr, ‘Hume’s Revised Racism’.
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86 The Territories of Human Reason

Taylor’s Secular Age charts the rise to social dominance of a cluster
of modern attitudes which he designates ‘The Immanent Frame’.
This cultural metanarrative weaves together a number of themes,
including the disenchantment of the world,⁴⁷ an understanding of
nature as an impersonal order, the rise of an ‘exclusive humanism’,
and an ethic which is framed primarily in terms of discipline, rules,
and norms. This ‘exclusive humanism’ advocates a view of human
flourishing which denies or suppresses any notion of a transcendent
source of morality, such as God or the Tao, and which refuses to
recognize any good beyond this life and world. For Taylor, contem-
porary understandings of human flourishing, the natural order, the
moral life, and nature are thus framed in a self-sufficient, naturalistic,
and immanent manner.
The culture of our ‘secular age’ now makes a sharp distinction
between the natural and the supernatural, the human and the divine,
so that making sense of the world around us now seems to be possible
in terms of this world alone. Nature became emptied of the spirits,
signs, and cosmic purposes that once seemed a fact of everyday
experience. It came to be conceived fundamentally as an impersonal
order of matter and force, governed by causal laws. There has thus
been a marked shift to ‘Closed World Structures’ that implicitly
accept the ‘immanent frame’ as normative, evident in the fact that
most people no longer see natural events as acts of God.⁴⁸ Nature has
become reduced to the predictable and quantifiable. For Taylor, this
means that the dominant cultural narrative leaves no place for the
‘vertical’ or ‘transcendent’, but in one way or another closes these off,
renders them inaccessible, or even unthinkable. ‘Closed World Struc-
tures’ now function as unchallenged axioms in Western culture.
Taylor’s analysis, though not without its difficulties, offers some
illuminating insights into how Western culture became secular, and
what this implies. Yet the importance of his discussion for our
purposes lies in his identification of the importance of the grand
narratives or conceptual frameworks which capture the imagination

⁴⁷ For an alternative reading of this cultural trend, see Josephson-Storm, The Myth
of Disenchantment, 269–300.
⁴⁸ Taylor, ‘Geschlossene Weltstrukture in der Moderne’.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 87

of a culture, and thus shape its notions of rationality.⁴⁹ These ‘social
imaginaries’ are, however, cultural artefacts, not empirical realities;
social constructions, not observational givens; historical contingen-
cies, not rational necessities. They are not predictable; they arose in
certain historical contexts, and will change over time—as will any
notions of rationality that are shaped by them.
This analysis reinforces the growing consensus that the notion of
a ‘universal rationality’ is a historical fiction, in that it is clear that
different cultures in the past developed and maintained quite distinct
understandings of rational processes and criteria of judgement,
located within their own ‘social imaginaries’. But what of the future?
Will the process of globalization lead to cultural homogenization, so
that one single cultural metanarrative (or family of related metanar-
ratives) might achieve dominance?
Some would argue that the Enlightenment’s ‘cosmopolitan, uni-
versalizing vision of the human world’⁵⁰ ultimately leads to a vision of
civilization in which questions of justice can be applied and upheld
at a global level by a shared conception of rationality. Some such
vision certainly lay behind the colonial programmes of education
developed by European powers during the nineteenth century,
which often sought to impose their own intellectual and cultural
values on what they generally regarded as ‘primitive’ nations, not
necessarily because of a desire to control minds, but often on the
basis of the assumption that such ways of thinking were self-
evidently right, and would thus serve as the basis of a cosmopolitan
culture.⁵¹ Yet why should such a cosmopolitanism be allowed to be
grounded on ideals that were developed centuries ago in a specific
historical and cultural location—namely, eighteenth-century Western
Europe?⁵² This vision of a global ‘civilizing process’ exudes the con-
descending cultural values of a colonial age, making it vulnerable
to those who demand intellectual and cultural autonomy, rather

⁴⁹ McKenzie, Interpreting Charles Taylor’s Social Theory on Religion and Secular-

ization, 90–3.
⁵⁰ Pagden, The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters, 323.
⁵¹ Ghosh, ‘English in Taste, in Opinions, in Words and Intellect’; Hall, ‘Making
Colonial Subjects’.
⁵² A point raised at multiple points by African scholars in Hountondji, ed., La
rationalité, une ou plurielle?
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88 The Territories of Human Reason

than to have someone else’s rational and cultural norms imposed
upon them.
It can argued that the concepts of rationality associated with the
European Enlightenment gained global traction for a number of
reasons, one of which is the colonial enterprise itself, in which
European cultural and rational norms were imposed upon, or privil-
eged within, indigenous cultures.⁵³ Intellectual colonization was an
integral aspect of a wider cultural project, in which Western nations
sought to acquire territory, resources, and influence;⁵⁴ yet although it
may not have been a primary objective, it nevertheless often led to the
suppression or marginalization of native rationalities.
Yet there are now questions about whether globalization has fal-
tered, or fundamentally changed its character. Calls for ‘epistemo-
logical decolonization’ reflect both an awareness of the multiplicity of
potential modes of reasoning, and a reaction against the imposition
of Western understandings of rationality.⁵⁵ The notion of a ‘local
rationality’—which has clear affinities with MacIntyre’s ‘rationality of
traditions’—has acquired political traction within the narrative of
decolonization, and raised questions about the future shape and
prospects of a ‘universal rationality’, seen by some as integral to the
globalization project.⁵⁶ It is, for example, perfectly clear that there are
multiple visions of globalization,⁵⁷ and this fact raises questions about
how these might be resolved and implemented.
So what are the implications of these broad considerations for an
understanding of rationality in the natural sciences or religion? The
point here is that the social organization of both the scientific and the
religious communities has an impact on the knowledge produced
by each community, even though there are divergences within the
literature concerning which features of that social organization are

⁵³ See, for example, Beck, Bonss, and Lau, ‘The Theory of Reflexive Moderniza-
tion’; Lee, ‘In Search of Second Modernity’. For a wider survey of the colonial
enterprise and its motivations, see Abernathy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance.
⁵⁴ For some ideologies of colonialism, see Pyenson, Empire of Reason, 1–17;
MacMillan, ‘Benign and Benevolent Conquest?’
⁵⁵ See, for example, Mignolo, Desobediencia epistémica, 9–17.
⁵⁶ For the notion of a ‘local rationality’, see Townley, Reason’s Neglect, 133–45; Cox
and Nilsen, ‘What Would a Marxist Theory of Local Movements Look Like?’, 74–7.
⁵⁷ See the contributions to Rupert, ed., Ideologies of Globalization.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 89

of particular importance, and the manner in which they are reflected
in the theories and models accepted by a given community. Two
studies are of particular relevance here: Karin Knorr-Cetina’s study
of a plant science laboratory at Berkeley, and Bruno Latour and
Steven Woolgar’s study of the neuroendocrinology laboratory at the
Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego.⁵⁸ These works
suggested that purely philosophical analyses of core concepts such
as rationality, evidence, and knowledge were generally of little rele-
vance to understanding how scientific knowledge was actually
acquired and tested.⁵⁹ Scientific rationality was to be investigated
through scientific practice, and relates primarily to a research com-
munity, rather than the individuals which constitute this community.
And, like any epistemic community, scientific research groups experi-
ence tensions over the resolution of differences, in which social status
or reputational standing within the group often proves important in
the decision-making process.⁶⁰

SCIENCE AND RELIGION: REFLECTIONS ON

THE COMMUNAL ASPECTS OF KNOWLEDGE

In this chapter, we have focussed on knowledge production within

communities, and reflected on some of the factors that have shaped
this knowledge. While popular accounts of scientific discovery tend to
portray scientists as solitary geniuses solving significant problems in
splendid isolation, the social development of science has increasingly
moved away from individuals towards large groups. The rise of large
research groups bringing together individuals with different bodies of
expertise to a common research project—now widely known as ‘Big

⁵⁸ Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge; Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory

Life. See further Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures; Solomon, Social Empiricism,
117–35.
⁵⁹ For reflections on such approaches, see Gooday, ‘Placing or Replacing the
Laboratory in the History of Science?’
⁶⁰ For this point in relation to legal epistemic communities, see van Waarden and
Drahos, ‘Courts and (Epistemic) Communities in the Convergence of Competition
Policies’.
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90 The Territories of Human Reason

Science’—has introduced significant new dynamics into the production
of scientific knowledge. The research group increasingly functions as
an interdisciplinary community, bringing an array of skills together for
the purpose of investigating a specific topic, or solving a particular
problem. Before the First World War, most research took place in
small laboratories and often involved small groups of researchers
with specialist knowledge in the same discipline.⁶¹
The Second World War marked a significant change. The
‘Manhattan Project’ (1942–7) set up to produce the first atomic
bomb brought together a large team of scientists with multiple skills
and expertise, working in subgroups to deal with specific aspects of
the design and production of such a weapon. No one individual had
the necessary knowledge to deal with the theoretical questions attend-
ing the process of nuclear fission, or the technical experience to
develop this into a serviceable weapon. As a result, individuals came
to depend on each other for knowledge, in a process which might be
described as ‘epistemic dependence’ or ‘social epistemic interdepend-
ence’.⁶² In effect, it is the research group as a whole which is the
‘knower’, rather than its individual members. The group makes up for
the inadequacies of individuals, bringing together a shared knowledge
that was not accessible to any one individual.
As research tasks become increasingly complex, such research
groups become correspondingly significant. If I might be allowed a
personal reflection, I was a member from 1974 to 1977 of the Oxford
Enzyme Group,⁶³ a research group that was formed at Oxford Uni-
versity in 1969 specifically to create a co-located multidisciplinary
team with skills in physical science, biology, and biochemistry to
investigate aspects of enzyme structure and function. The research
culture that emerged possessed a corporate knowledge of such tech-
niques as nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), the pro-
duction of certain enzymes such as lysozyme, and the mathematical
modelling of protein structures.

⁶¹ Nye, Before Big Science.

⁶² Hardwig, ‘Epistemic Dependence’; Schmitt, ‘On the Road to Social Epistemic
Interdependence’. Note also the three approaches to epistemic dependence set out in
McMyler, Testimony, Trust, and Authority, 77–94.
⁶³ On this group, see Williams, Chapman, and Rowlinson, Chemistry at Oxford,
259–61.
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Social Aspects of Rationality 91

Yet such decentralized ‘radically collaborative research’ involving
investigators with different forms of expertise and knowledge raises
important questions about the methodological norms of such research,
in that researchers from different disciplines bring their own under-
standings of methods and rationalities to the group as a whole.⁶⁴ ‘Mass-
ively epistemically distributed’ scientific collaborations of this kind raise
important questions about which methodological practices and rational
norms are to be respected, when the individual collaborators come from
different epistemic communities with potentially conflicting norms.
These divergences often make it ‘impossible to assume a coherent,
unified set of methods and standards governing the study’. In practice,
however, local differences in epistemic standards appear to cancel one
another out to yield generally reliable results.
The situation in theology is somewhat different. Like the natural
scientist, the theologian increasingly is not an isolated thinker, but
someone embedded within epistemic communities—such as an aca-
demic faculty, and a community of worship. The theologian thus has
the possibility of interacting with, for example, historians of Christian
thought and New Testament scholars, thus creating a culture of epi-
stemic dependency on the one hand, while at the same time making
possible a broader intellectual engagement than is possible for a single
scholar. Yet the theologian is also aware of standing in continuity with
(if not in the presence of) earlier generations of theologians who have
wrestled with the same questions, and whose works serve as resources
for reflection on those themes.
Yet perhaps the more important is a community of worship, which
is primarily about the instantiation of the practice of theology, and
thus shapes theological reflection and articulation.⁶⁵ Prosper of Aqui-
taine’s remark that legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi is open to
multiple interpretations;⁶⁶ it nevertheless affirms the inseparability—
but not the identity—of the communal practices of prayer and worship
and the domain of theological interpretation. The Christian epistemic

⁶⁴ Winsberg, Huebner, and Kukla, ‘Accountability and Values in Radically Col-

laborative Research’.
⁶⁵ For a range of interpretations of this point, see Johnson, Praying and Believing in
Early Christianity; Knop, Ecclesia Orans; Pickstock, After Writing.
⁶⁶ De Clerck, ‘Lex Orandi—Lex Credendi’.
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92 The Territories of Human Reason

community is one that is grounded and shaped by the narrative of
Jesus Christ, and thus expresses itself both in worship and reflec-
tion, as two natural and interconnected outcomes of an encounter
with the mystery of faith.
But what of science and religion? Does this term designate a
coherent and distinct field of study and research? Or is it merely an
interface between two well-established and mature fields, marked by
the potential vulnerability of all interdisciplinary undertakings,
namely a propensity to attract those with little knowledge of either
discipline, while at the same time possessing the capacity to enrich
both through the forging of new connections? At present, the indi-
cations are that this is best seen as an interdisciplinary enterprise with
aspirations to become a field in its own right. Yet the potential for
development is clearly present, with journals, academic chairs, schol-
arly societies, and regular conferences dedicated to this broad area.
Yet if the field of science and religion is to develop in this way, the
epistemological and methodological issues raised by ‘radically collab-
orative research’ can hardly be avoided. As has been argued through-
out this work, disciplines operate with distinct and sometimes
divergent understandings of rationality, raising the question of how
these can be correlated, if they cannot be conflated. We shall return to
this question in the concluding chapter of this work.
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II
Rationality in Science and Theology:
A Critical Engagement
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4
Rational Virtues and the Problem
of Theory Choice

C. S. Lewis is one of many to argue that the capacity to dissociate the

process of reflection from vested interests and personal bias is an
integral aspect of good scholarship and intellectual enquiry. ‘In the
moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves
in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competi-
tive particularity. In coming to understand anything we are rejecting
the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.’¹ So what
rational virtues need to be cultivated and applied in order to tran-
scend our own limitations and prejudices?
One important answer, which was considered in the previous
chapter, is to affirm the importance of communal, rather than indi-
vidual, assessments of both the available evidence and the best inter-
pretation of this evidence. It might be hoped that these communal
insights, whether synchronic or diachronic, help filter out both in-
dividual bias and intellectual vested interests. Our concern in this
chapter, however, is with identifying the epistemic virtues that might
help ascertain the best interpretation of our observations and experi-
ence. Yet before turning to consider the problem of theory choice in
science and theology, we must give consideration to what is meant by
‘theory’, and how this impacts on the rational virtues to be valued and
deployed in its pursuit.
Perhaps it is understandable that many consider that the pro-
cess by which a theory is confirmed takes place by evaluation of

¹ Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, 138.

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96 The Territories of Human Reason

its epistemic virtues, determined against a grid of independently
established objective criteria. Yet a more critical reading of the history
of science suggests that theories which are regarded as successful tend
to act as validators for the criteria that were used in validating them
in the first place. The effectiveness of a criterion of theoretical success
is not determined on a priori epistemological grounds, but on its a
posteriori success in validating a theory that is now believed to
be successful.
There are, of course, difficulties with this approach. Hilary Kornblith
is one of many philosophers of science to argue that there are no
‘a priori standards’ of relevance to proper epistemic practice in
the natural sciences.² The identification of ‘appropriate inferential
patterns’ is an ‘empirical affair’; the legitimacy of any scientific infer-
ence is dependent upon its reliability. Kornblith’s cogent analysis
helps us understand why so many philosophical considerations of
the criteria of theory choice tend to focus on identifying ‘reliable
theories’, and the criteria that were used to justify them.³ The
difficulty is, of course, that a theory that is judged reliable today
may be discarded in the future, thus rendering this criterion histor-
ically contingent.
The study of scientific practice indicates that such archetypal
‘rational’ practices as scientific research and theorizing change over
time, and that—despite popularizing assertions to the contrary—
there are no ‘generally applicable standards of rational acceptability
in science’.⁴ Instead, we find a ‘roughly shared understanding of what
can be assumed’, reflecting the judgements of an epistemic commu-
nity (or set of communities) concerning what is credible and reliable
in the context of their ongoing work, in the light of the tasks to be
undertaken and the resources at their disposal.

² Kornblith, Knowledge and Its Place in Nature, 21–3.

³ For example, Plutynski, ‘Parsimony and the Fisher-Wright Debate’; Baker,
‘Occam’s Razor in Science’.
⁴ Rouse, Knowledge and Power, 124. For Rouse’s rigorous defence of the centrality
of scientific practice in shaping what is scientifically ‘rational’, see Rouse, Engaging
Science, 125–57; idem, How Scientific Practices Matter, 263–58; idem, Articulating the
World, 201–47. For criticism of Rouse’s earlier work, see van Huyssteen, The Shaping
of Rationality, 43–58.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 97

WHAT IS A THEORY?

A theory is fundamentally ‘a coherent description, explanation and

representation of observed or experienced phenomena’.⁵ The term is
widely used in philosophy (e.g. ‘theories of perception’) and the
humanities in general (e.g. ‘Renaissance theories of translation’). In
the natural sciences, the word is often used to designate such a way of
understanding the world that has secured traction within the scien-
tific community, although it is also used to refer to the views
of individual scientists (‘Newton’s theory of planetary motion’ or
‘Dalton’s atomic theory’), or to views that were once regarded as
plausible within that community, but have since been discarded as a
result of theoretical advance or the discovery of new evidence (such as
‘phlogiston theory’).⁶
Jurisprudence uses the terms ‘legal doctrine’ and ‘legal theory’,
tending to see the former as the outcome of the application of the
latter.⁷ This usage is also often found in Christian theology, which
tends to use the term doctrina to designate such a way of seeing
the world as has found acceptance within a Christian community,
while using ‘theory’ to designate a particular way of interpreting or
applying this doctrine, alone or in combination with others, to gain a
deeper understanding of the Christian vision of God.⁸ Interestingly,
nineteenth-century scientific works tend to use the word ‘doctrine’ as
interchangeable with ‘theory’—for example, referring to ‘Dalton’s
atomic doctrine’. Charles Darwin thus often used the term ‘doctrine’
rather than ‘theory’, sometimes speaking of his ‘doctrine of natural
selection’, where his modern interpreters would more naturally speak
of a ‘theory of natural selection’.⁹ In part, this shift away from doctrine
to theory represents a significant refocussing on how scientific ideas

⁵ Lynham, ‘Theory Building in the Human Resource Development Profession’,

162.
⁶ Woodcock, ‘Phlogiston Theory and Chemical Revolutions’.
⁷ Peczenik, ‘A Theory of Legal Doctrine’.
⁸ On which see van den Torren, ‘Distinguishing Doctrine and Theological Theory’.
⁹ See, for example, Darwin, Life and Letters, vol. 2, 155. Darwin rarely used the
word ‘evolution’, preferring instead to speak of ‘descent with modification’.
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98 The Territories of Human Reason

are conceived, in that the emphasis shifts from understanding to
perception. A theory is about intellectual visualization of the world.¹⁰
A theory is a cognitive or imaginative framework or template,
weaving together a series of known truths or proposed ideas into a
coherent way of viewing the world, which is subsequently to be tested
in terms of its ability to accommodate known and predict unknown
observations. In some scientific situations, prediction is impossible—
as, for example, in the case of Darwin’s theory of natural selection,
which is best seen as an explanation of past historical contingencies.¹¹
The capacity of a theory to predict novel observations is widely seen
as indicative of its truth within the scientific community. Einstein’s
general theory of relativity, for example, posited a ‘gravitational
lens’ created by the bending of light through warped space-time,
which was observed during the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919. Other
theories—such as string theory—have secured considerable traction
within the scientific community on account of their mathematical
elegance, yet in the conspicuous absence of experimental support.¹²
Theories arise through reflection on observations. This raises the
question of the observations on which theology is grounded. One of
the reasons for focussing the present discussion of rationality on
Christian theology, rather than ‘religion’ in general, relates to the
radically divergent understandings of the sources and norms of
reasoning characteristic of individual religious traditions, and further
internal divergence on these matters within each tradition. There are,
for example, problems in correlating a philosophical monotheism
(which argues for the existence of one single necessary being) and
‘ancient Jewish monotheism’, understood as the affirmation that
there is only one deity who is properly to be worshipped.¹³ The
existence of other deities may be conceded, but the propriety of giving
them worship is denied.

¹⁰ For the background to this idea, see the perceptive study of MacKisack et al., ‘On
Picturing a Candle’.
¹¹ Hitchcock and Sober, ‘Prediction vs. Accommodation and the Risk of Over-
fitting’. For the general issue, see Maher, ‘Prediction, Accommodation, and the Logic
of Discovery’.
¹² Penrose, Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe, 1–10.
¹³ Hurtado, One God, One Lord, 17–40; Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel,
107–25.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 99

While Christianity can be correlated with classic and contemporary
generic philosophical discussions about God—such as those associ-
ated with Plato and Aristotle—it nevertheless considers itself to be
grounded in the religion of Israel, refocussed around the figure of
Jesus of Nazareth.¹⁴ Christianity is thus an interpretation of the
identity and significance of Jesus of Nazareth, set out in the New
Testament, and embodied, enacted, and transmitted through the
community of faith, and expressed at different levels in its Creeds
and public worship. There is a sense, therefore, in which theology
can be seen as both the attempt to achieve the best intellectual
articulation of the Christian faith, and the exploration of how such
a Christian conceptual framework might enable both the meaningful
inhabitation of our world, and the interpretation of our observations
and experience. ‘Christian doctrines arise out of attempts to under-
stand and to do justice to our experience of Christ and of the Church,
and not as airy items of unconstrained or ungrounded speculation.’¹⁵
The Greek term theoria affirms the importance of the manner in
which we behold the world. We do not simply see the world, in whole
or part; we see it in a certain manner, which is open to redirection and
recalibration by a process of training and education.¹⁶ A new theory
thus allows us to see things in a new way. Thomas Kuhn makes this
point in discussing the transition from Ptolemaic to Copernican
theories of the solar system: ‘Before it occurred, the sun and moon
were planets, the earth was not. After it, the earth was a planet, like
Mars and Jupiter; the sun was a star; and the moon was a new sort of
body, a satellite.’¹⁷ The phenomena were unchanged; they were,
however, seen in a new light. Observation is thus not a neutral
process, but is shaped by assumptions, explicit or implicit, about

¹⁴ For an assessment of this process, see Hurtado, Ancient Jewish Monotheism and
Early Christian Jesus-Devotion; Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 2,
619–1042.
¹⁵ Polkinghorne, ‘Physics and Metaphysics in a Trinitarian Perspective’, 37. For
Polkinghorne’s account of how Christianity is grounded in observation, see Polking-
horne, Science and Christian Belief.
¹⁶ Adam, Theoriebeladenheit und Objektivität, 51–97.
¹⁷ Kuhn, The Road since Structure, 15. For the impact of theory on categorization,
see Gattei, Thomas Kuhn’s ‘Linguistic Turn’ and the Legacy of Logical Empiricism,
144–6.
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100 The Territories of Human Reason

what is being observed.¹⁸ One observer might see the sun rise and set;
another might see the earth turning on its axis, leading to the appar-
ent motion of the sun across the heavens.¹⁹
So how does one decide which is the best theory? Is there a ‘theory
of theory choice’, so to speak, which helps us understand how indi-
viduals or communities gravitate towards a particular theory, or
which articulates normative judgements about what criteria ought
to be used in making and justifying such choices?²⁰ Are there verifi-
able criteria, based on empirical research, that should be deployed in
this manner?²¹ Or are these norms essentially pragmatic matters of
judgement, determined by the values and working assumptions of a
community of practitioners? In practice, it seems clear that there is no
predetermined template of criteria; these rather emerge in the course
of practice, and are judged largely in terms of how well they retro-
spectively evaluate theories that are known or believed to be success-
ful, and might hence lead to the prediction of future successful
theories. The history of science thus helps identify criteria that were
used in the past by scientists to make theory choices which are now
judged to have been correct, so that there are inductive grounds for
operating within the constraints of these particular inductive cri-
teria.²² Thus the well-known philosophical difficulties with the
inductive method are countered by the observation that, despite
these problems, this method seems capable of leading to successful
theoretical outcomes.
The recognition of the importance of epistemic values in theory
selection dates from the late 1950s, as it became increasingly clear that
scientists needed additional guidance for theory choice beyond sim-
ple criteria based on logic and evidence.²³ A careful reassessment of

¹⁸ Adam, Theoriebeladenheit und Objektivität, 51–97.

¹⁹ Radder, The World Observed, the World Conceived, 19–32.
²⁰ Thagard, ‘The Best Explanation’. For the importance of this question to Thomas
Kuhn’s historicization of scientific rationality, see Kuhn, ‘Objectivity, Value Judg-
ment, and Theory Choice’; idem, ‘Rationality and Theory Choice’.
²¹ Achourioti, Fugard, and Stenning, ‘The Empirical Study of Norms Is Just What
We Are Missing’.
²² This point is emphasized by Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science, 224–5.
²³ See, for example, the influential studies of Churchman and Levi: Churchman,
‘Science and Decision-Making’; Levi, ‘On the Seriousness of Mistakes’. See also Kuhn,
‘Objectivity, Value, and Theory Choice’.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 101

earlier episodes in scientific history—such as Darwin’s discovery of
the principle of natural selection—which were often interpreted at the
time in terms of logic and evidence has shown how they often
anticipate later reflections on the role and reliability of certain
rational virtues.
By the early 1980s, the phrase ‘epistemic values’ was beginning to
gain acceptance as a means of designating the values that were
regarded as acceptable in science as criteria for theory choice.²⁴ So
what virtues might be seen as normative, or at least desirable, in
guiding researchers to the most reliable interpretations of our
world? Many such virtues have been proposed, in effect leading
some to speak of the emergence of a repository of multiple epistemic
virtues, with unresolved questions remaining concerning the manner
and priority of their mutual relationships. The question of what
might be judged to be the ‘best’ explanation of a set of observations
will clearly depend on the nature of these criteria, and the manner in
which they are applied.
We shall therefore turn to consider the general question of theory
choice, focussing on the approach that has come to be known as
Inference to the Best Explanation.

INFERENCE TO THE BEST EXPLANATION

The approach now generally known as ‘Inference to the Best Explan-

ation’²⁵ recognizes that multiple explanations might be offered for a
set of observations, and sets out to identify criteria by which the best
such explanation might be identified and justified.²⁶ It is inevitable
that there will be multiple explanatory possibilities for any series of

²⁴ McMullin, ‘Values in Science’.

²⁵ For an early statement of this approach, see Harman, ‘The Inference to the Best
Explanation’. The best study at present remains Lipton, Inference to the Best
Explanation.
²⁶ Although ‘inference to the best explanation’ is sometimes confused with Peirce’s
concept of abduction, they should be seen as conceptually divergent: Minnameier,
‘Peirce-Suit of Truth’; Campos, ‘On the Distinction Between Peirce’s Abduction and
Lipton’s Inference to the Best Explanation’.
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102 The Territories of Human Reason

observations, given the radical under-determination of theory by
evidence.²⁷ It is possible to interpret ‘Inference to the Best Explan-
ation’ as an extension of the notion of ‘self-evidencing’ explanations,
in which the phenomenon that is to be explained itself provides
reason for believing the explanation is correct. This situation fre-
quently arises in the natural sciences, in that hypotheses are often
supported by the observations that they are supposed to explain.
An example of this apparent circularity can be seen in a star’s
speed of recession explaining why its characteristic spectrum is red-
shifted by a specified amount, despite the fact that this observed
red-shift may actually be an essential element of the grounds which
the astronomer has for believing that the star is receding at that
speed.²⁸ Self-evidencing explanations exhibit a curious circularity,
but this circularity is regarded as being benign—virtuous rather
than vicious. The recession is used to explain the red-shift and the
red-shift is used to confirm the recession, yet the recession hypothesis
may be both explanatory and well supported. Inference to the Best
Explanation thus partially inverts what might be considered as a
natural or ‘common-sense’ view of the relationship between inference
and explanation. According to this natural view, inference is prior to
explanation. A scientist must first decide which hypotheses to accept,
and will then draw from this group of accepted hypotheses to explain
a given observation. Inference to the Best Explanation, however,
holds that it is by only by asking how well various hypotheses
would explain the available observational evidence that a scientist
can determine which of those hypotheses merit acceptance. In this
limited sense, Inference to the Best Explanation thus holds that
explanation is prior to inference. This approach is, in a sense, about
reasoning backwards.
Inference to the Best Explanation is thus really inference to the
‘best’ of the known and available competing possible explanatory
hypotheses. It will thus be clear that the procedure of Inference to
the Best Explanation is not about determining which of a given series
of hypotheses is true; the objective is rather to determine which of

²⁷ Bonk, Underdetermination, 141–75; Laudan and Leplin, ‘Empirical Equivalence

and Underdetermination’.
²⁸ Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, 24–7.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 103

these hypotheses functions as the ‘best’ explanation of what is
observed, when assessed against a set of criteria—such as simplicity,
elegance, and predictability. Harman, however, considered that there
were good reasons for believing that the best explanation was likely to
be true:²⁹
In making this inference, one infers from the fact that a certain hypothesis
would explain the evidence, to the truth of that hypothesis. In general, there
will be several hypotheses which might explain the evidence, so one must be
able to reject all such alternative hypotheses before one is warranted in
making the inference. Thus one infers, from the premise that a given
hypothesis would provide a better explanation for the evidence than would
any other hypothesis, to the conclusion that the given hypothesis is true.
Yet there is no agreed ranking of these criteria, and no agreement
concerning how they might be generally applied (although there is
much scholarly interest in how they were applied in the past to
develop ‘successful’ theories). Paul Thagard, for example, engages in
some detail with some important case studies, such as Darwin’s
argument in his Origin of Species; the wave theory of light, as devel-
oped by Huygens in the seventeenth century, and subsequently by
Young and Fresnel in the nineteenth century; Newton’s explanation
of the motion of planets and satellites; and Halley’s Newtonian
prediction of the return of a comet.³⁰ Yet these illustrate the utility
of these criteria, without illuminating the manner of their interaction,
including their taxonomic ranking. Harman himself noted this prob-
lem, although he had little to say about how it might be addressed or
resolved.³¹
There is, of course, a problem about how one is to judge that one hypothesis
is sufficiently better than another hypothesis. Presumably such a judgment
will be based on considerations such as which hypothesis is simpler, which is
more plausible, which explains more, which is less ad hoc, and so forth. I do
not wish to deny that there is a problem about explaining the exact nature of
these considerations; I will not, however, say anything more about this
problem.

²⁹ Harman, ‘The Inference to the Best Explanation’, 89.

³⁰ Thagard, ‘The Best Explanation’.
³¹ Harman, ‘The Inference to the Best Explanation’, 89.
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104 The Territories of Human Reason

The scientific utility of this method of reasoning is well established; but
what of its theological counterparts?³² C. S. Lewis may have described
himself as an ‘empirical theist’ who came to faith through ‘induction’.
Yet he is not typical. Relatively few religious believers come to faith
through inductive or abductive processes of reasoning; most tend to
speak of the motivation for their belief in terms of a response to, or
encounter with, a personal, transcendent reality resulting in a com-
mitment to a life of prayer, worship, and self-transformation. And
having arrived at faith, many believers then turn to consider how their
faith makes sense of what they observe and experience—not because it
will lead them to faith, but because they wish to confirm or explore the
sense-making capacity of their existing faith. This leads them to assess
how a Christian theoria is able to accommodate their observations and
experience—for example, the success of the natural sciences—and
compare this with a rival way of seeing things, such as naturalism.³³
In developing this account of Christian rationality, Philip Clayton and
Steven Knapp make two important points.³⁴
1. The Christian breaks no epistemic obligations by believing some
things that have not been confirmed through intersubjective
testing—such as a source accessible only to the Christian commu-
nity, including the Bible or the Christian tradition;
2. The epistemic criterion for rationality is that all beliefs should be
open to criticism in principle, and that those which are judged to
be inadequate should be rejected. It is a theme, it may be added,
which is familiar to any reader of the New Testament: ‘test every-
thing; hold fast to what is good’ (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
There is little doubt that this mode of reasoning has considerable
theological potential.³⁵ We have already mentioned C. S. Lewis’s

³² For excellent discussions, see Clayton, ‘Inference to the Best Explanation’;

Reichenbach, ‘Explanation and the Cosmological Argument’; van Holten, ‘Theism
and Inference to the Best Explanation’.
³³ Clayton and Knapp, ‘Rationality and Christian Self-Conception’, 133–4. For an
excellent account of belief as a ‘disposition towards judgement’, see Ward,
Unbelievable.
³⁴ Clayton and Knapp, ‘Rationality and Christian Self-Conception’, 135.
³⁵ For an early indication of its potential, see Prevost, Probability and Theistic
Explanation. A more explicitly theological approach is found in Clayton, ‘Inference to
the Best Explanation’.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 105

appreciation of the accommodative capacities of the Christian
theoria, which allows it to ‘fit in’ art, the natural sciences, morality,
and other religions.³⁶ At a more explicitly philosophical level, William
J. Wainwright follows Basil Mitchell in arguing that Christianity may
be seen as a worldview or metaphysical system which attempts to
make sense of human experience as a whole, and uses criteria similar
to those used to judge other forms of explanation. For Wainwright,
good metaphysical theories of this kind should meet three formal
criteria. They must be logically consistent; they should be coherent,
displaying a certain amount of internal interconnectedness and sys-
tematic articulation; and they should be simple, rather than complex.³⁷
Other criteria might be adduced for the adequacy of a theological
system which do not relate to its explanatory functions—such as
its faithfulness to authoritative texts such as the Christian Bible, its
acceptance by the consensus fidelium, or its perceived existential
adequacy.
There is a clear resonance with this approach in C. S. Lewis’s
formulation of an ‘argument from desire’. What, he asks, is ‘the
most probable explanation’ of ‘a desire which no experience in this
world can satisfy’?³⁸ Lewis sets out three possible explanations of our
experience of desire, especially of our sense of emptiness and lack of
fulfilment, and indicates which he considers to be the best. The first
such explanation is that this frustration arises from looking for its
true object in the wrong place; the second is that there is no true
object of desire to be found. If this second explanation is true, then
further searching will result only in repeated disappointment, sug-
gesting that there is no point in trying to find anything better than or
beyond the present world.
Lewis then suggests that there is a third approach, which recog-
nizes that these earthly longings are ‘only a kind of copy, or echo, or
mirage’ of our true homeland. Since this overwhelming desire cannot
be fulfilled through anything in the present world, this suggests that

³⁶ Lewis, Essay Collection, 21. For Lewis, the ‘scientific point of view cannot fit in
any of these things’—including the success of science itself.
³⁷ Wainwright, ‘Worldviews, Criteria and Epistemic Circularity’. For similar stipu-
lations, see Brümmer, ‘The Intersubjectivity of Criteria in Theology’.
³⁸ Lewis, Mere Christianity, 136–7.
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106 The Territories of Human Reason

its ultimate object lies beyond the present world. ‘The most probable
explanation is that I was made for another world.’³⁹
Lewis makes it clear that this is not about ‘proving’ anything; it is
about trying to identify which, of several possible explanations, is the
best, or the ‘most probable’. For Lewis, this third is the ‘most prob-
able’ explanation (although he does not clarify the criteria by which
this probabilistic judgement might be made). Lewis clearly sees his
analysis of the human experience of desire as an expression of the
rationality of faith. Conceding that other explanations of this experi-
ence are indeed possible, he argues that the Christian explanation is
the best.
This approach can be extended to engage other observations.
Consider, for example, the increasingly widespread recognition that
it is natural to believe in God.⁴⁰ It remains unclear whether this
constitutes evidence for or against religion, and it certainly does not
constitute a proof of theism.⁴¹ Yet Lewis’s approach suggests that
such a natural inclination can be accommodated convincingly within
a theistic perspective—for example, though conceiving the ‘image of
God’ in terms of a relational homing instinct for the transcendent and
meaning,⁴² captured in the descriptor homo religiosus.

CORRESPONDENCE AND COHERENCE AS

THEORETICAL VIRTUES

Theories, whether scientific or theological, aspire to possess and

exhibit both an extra-systemic and an intra-systemic rationality.⁴³
Scientific theories must be grounded in the real world, and aim at

³⁹ Lewis, Mere Christianity, 136–7.

⁴⁰ See, for example, Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God?; idem, Born
Believers.
⁴¹ As noted in Jong, Kavanagh, and Visala, ‘Born Idolaters’.
⁴² Shults, Reforming Theological Anthropology, 117–39.
⁴³ For the general issue, see Hornbostel, Wissenschaftsindikatoren, 21–76. On some
theological aspects of this question, see Trenery, Alasdair Macintyre, George Lindbeck,
and the Nature of Tradition, 201–7.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 107

maximal internal coherence.⁴⁴ They are accountable to the reality they
purport to represent. ‘Science cannot dispense with extra-systematic
concepts: if there were no links between systematic and extra-
systematic concepts, scientific theories would be untestable and un-
intelligible.’⁴⁵ Ontological finality is thus understood to rest with nature
itself. This viewpoint is widespread within the natural sciences, which
have generally disregarded anti-realist arguments on account of their
failure to account adequately for the success of scientific theorization
and explanation. Following the lines of the approach of Hilary Putnam,
most scientists argue that the success of science would be a miracle if
our theories were not at least (approximately) true.⁴⁶
Yet scientific theories are not merely understood to be grounded
in an external reality; the ideas which arise from an engagement
with reality should ultimately be consistent with each other. A good
theory is understood to ‘correspond coherently to reality’, in that it is
grounded in an engagement with the real world, and is internally
coherent.⁴⁷ Neither internal coherence nor some form of correspond-
ence with reality is adequate in itself.
While this kind of approach finds widespread acceptance within
the natural sciences, it also has significant theological traction.
Wolfhart Pannenberg’s early theological project took the form of
demonstrating the internal coherence of Christian doctrines on the
one hand, and the external coherence or consistency of those doc-
trines with the world of reality and other intellectual disciplines on
the other.⁴⁸ Similarly, the Anglican theologian Charles Gore, while
affirming the importance of the ‘coherence of Christian doctrine’, did
not hold that the plausibility of Christian doctrine rested upon that
coherence alone; it was to be judged in terms of its reliability in
conveying the Christian understanding of the significance of Jesus

⁴⁴ Dawson and Gregory, ‘Correspondence and Coherence in Science’.

⁴⁵ Bunge, Philosophy of Science, 100.
⁴⁶ For discussion, see Agazzi, Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts, 243–312;
Psillos, Scientific Realism, 72–93.
⁴⁷ Thagard, ‘Coherence, Truth, and the Development of Scientific Knowledge’;
Kitcher, ‘On the Explanatory Role of Correspondence Truth’.
⁴⁸ Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, 21–2.
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108 The Territories of Human Reason

Christ, as presented in Scripture and the Christian experience.⁴⁹ Some
theologians have attempted to disentangle extra-systemic corres-
pondence and intra-systemic coherence, seeing doctrine primarily
in terms of the internal regulation of Christian language.⁵⁰ Yet clas-
sical Christian theology has affirmed that doctrine is more than the
internal regulation of a community’s language of faith; it is about
offering a theory—a way of seeing things—which represents both an
internally coherent theoretical representation and a corresponding
external reality.
It is possible to argue that, seen in terms of the historical process of
its development, Christian doctrine was primarily concerned with
articulating and safeguarding intra-systemic consistency. Athanasius
of Alexandria, for example, argued that the internal intellectual
coherence of Christianity was compromised by Arius’s Christology,
which was clearly inconsistent with a core element of Christian
practice in the fourth century—the worship of Christ.⁵¹ Yet while
an outsider might see Christianity as grounded upon and character-
ized by its own controlling narrative, capable of generating a set of
distinctive ideas, Christianity has seen this as, not simply a narrative,
but a metanarrative.⁵² Both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis regarded
Christianity as a ‘true myth’, telling a story that places and accounts
for other stories, and subsequently generating a set of ideas derived
from this story.⁵³ There is no inconsistency here; any tradition-
mediated rationality or metanarrative is called upon to account for
the existence of rival accounts of rationality and alternative narrations

⁴⁹ Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God, 21–6, 96–106.

⁵⁰ This criticism is often directed against George Lindbeck’s intra-systemic
approach to doctrine: see O’Neill, ‘The Rule Theory of Doctrine and Propositional
Truth’. Lindbeck, however, is not entirely consistent here, and suggests that his
cultural-linguistic model of doctrine does not entail the rejection of either an epis-
temological realism or a correspondence theory of truth: Lindbeck, The Nature of
Doctrine, 68–9.
⁵¹ Williams, Arius, 95–115, especially 110. For the general issue, see Lehmkühler,
Kultus und Theologie, 208–32.
⁵² Watson, Text, Church and World, 82–4.
⁵³ McGrath, ‘A Gleam of Divine Truth’. The ideas of the German philosopher Kurt
Hübner are of interest here, not least in correlating the categories of ‘myth’ and
‘rationality’: see Rieger, ‘Grenzen wissenschaftlicher Rationalität, Relativismus und
Gottesglaube’.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 109

of identity and meaning—in other words, to account for something
that exists outside that community, in terms of that community’s own
framework of meaning.⁵⁴
The roots of this approach are complex, and lie partly in the
expansion of Christianity during the period of the early church.
Much theological discussion initially focussed on the relation of
Christianity to Judaism, attempting to identify the nature of the
continuity and discontinuity between the two movements.⁵⁵ Yet as
Christians became familiar with both Hellenized versions of Judaism
(such as the writings of Philo) and Hellenistic philosophy, a growing
interest developed in Plato’s notion of logos, and the way in which this
could be correlated with the Christian notion of Jesus Christ as the
incarnate logos.⁵⁶ The notion of God creating a ‘rational (logikos)’
world created a growing interest in showing how Christianity could
engage and even surpass existing philosophical discussions about the
nature of the world and the divine. Without losing its intra-systemic
focus, Christian theology developed an extra-systemic role, as the
apologetic potential of the explanatory capacity of faith began to be
appreciated.
This development was consolidated in the Latin-speaking West, in
Augustine of Hippo’s emphasis upon the human intellect’s intrinsic
ability to cognize in a unifying manner. For Augustine, faith opens,
heals, or cleanses the eyes of the mind, allowing the believer to see
things as they really are, and finally to behold God.⁵⁷ Augustine uses
the model of illumination, not entirely consistently, to indicate the
ways in which God makes it possible for human beings to see
themselves and the world as God sees them. These ideas were devel-
oped further in the Western theological tradition, and helped shape
its understandings of rationality.
This development had some important implications. In the first
place, Christianity understands its ‘big picture’ as capable of engaging
and making sense of the wider world, so that the Christian community

⁵⁴ For a detailed reflection on this general issue, see Detjen, Geltungsbegründung

traditionsabhängiger Weltdeutungen im Dilemma, Theologie, Philosophie, Wis-
senschaftstheorie und Konstruktivismus.
⁵⁵ Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World, 98–146.
⁵⁶ Edwards, Image, Word and God in the Early Christian Centuries.
⁵⁷ For an excellent analysis, see Schumacher, Divine Illumination, 25–65.
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110 The Territories of Human Reason

is able to offer its own distinct account of reality. Christian theology is
thus not a purely self-referential system; it has, in principle, a capacity
to explain and account for what lies outside its own domain. It is
therefore theologically legitimate and productive to explore how Chris-
tianity generates new ways of seeing our world and ourselves, and
consider how this is reflected in the values Christians attach to them.
It suggests that, as we shall discuss in more detail later (140–3), an
epistemic mode of explanation is particularly adapted to Christian
theology, in that this generates a map of meaning within which events
or entities may be located.
Yet in the second place, this suggests that Christianity is under an
intellectual obligation to defend its own distinct rationality, in terms
of demonstrating that it can offer either the ‘best’ explanation of the
world, or at least an adequate account. While Christian apologetics
takes many forms,⁵⁸ one of its most characteristic approaches consists
of the affirmation of its own distinct rationality, and showing how
this allows both observation and experience to be interpreted in a
meaningful and at least plausible manner. The granularity of a tradi-
tion’s interpretation of the world is thus seen as an indicator of its
reliability, as well as of its appeal beyond the boundaries of its own
community.

OBJ ECTIVITY

In his magisterial project Science and the Shaping of Modernity,

Stephen Gaukroger offers an account of the ‘fundamental transform-
ation of intellectual values’ that are held to be constitutive of the
modern era. One of the most important elements of this transform-
ation of intellectual culture, especially in the natural sciences, is the
emergence of the virtue of objectivity, which aims for an impartial
and detached account of reality which could be accepted by any
individual, in that it does not draw on any assumptions, prejudices,

⁵⁸ For a good account of the origins and form of this development in the early
church, see Dulles, A History of Apologetics, 27–90; Pelikan, Christianity and Classical
Culture, 3–151.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 111

or values.⁵⁹ This virtue—evident in Francis Bacon’s notion of scientific
self-distancing,⁶⁰ but seemingly contradicted by Bacon’s personal
inclinations to adapt his views for financial considerations⁶¹—has a
history, in that it does not possess the status of a ‘universal given’,
but has rather been constructed and altered over the centuries, espe-
cially during the transition to modernity.⁶² Recognition of this has
increasingly led intellectual historians to treat ‘objectivity’ and cognate
notions as ‘historical products’ or ‘actors’ judgments’, rather than self-
evidently appropriate values for, or definitional prerequisites of, the
scientific enterprise.⁶³
Yet these observations on the historical emergence of the epistemic
virtue of objectivity do not negate its utility. It is not difficult to
understand the appeal of disinterested and impartial observers of
our world,⁶⁴ who are able to don a ‘veil of ignorance’ that prevents
them from knowing their race, social status, gender, religion, talents,
and other defining characteristics or vested interests that might skew
their judgements about the morality or wider implications of any
decision. Such an aperspectival objectivity clearly has its virtues; never-
theless, it runs the risk of being a ‘view from nowhere’. in effect being
an idealistic construction rather than a practical reality. Perhaps for this
reason, many have argued that objectivity is best achieved communally,
rather than individually. Communal approaches to truth, it could be
argued, proceed by a cancellation of individual biases or an elimination
of idiosyncrasies and the distorting influences of personal histories.
Yet speaking of ‘objectivity’ might suggest that observation is
invariably or necessarily a cool and detached process, in which the
observer is disengaged from what is being observed. The beholding of
certain objects can arouse, excite, disturb, and inspire the observer. In
his Modern Painters, John Ruskin famously contrasted what he
termed aesthesis with the more committed and informed activity of

⁵⁹ Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, passim.

⁶⁰ Zagorin, ‘Francis Bacon’s Objectivity and the Idols of the Mind’.
⁶¹ Stewart, ‘Bribery, Buggery, and the Fall of Lord Chancellor Bacon’.
⁶² Daston and Galison, Objectivity, 27–35.
⁶³ Solomon, Objectivity in the Making, 1–8. An early example of this approach is
Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 13–14.
⁶⁴ Adam, Theoriebeladenheit und Objektivität, 179–244.
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112 The Territories of Human Reason

theoria. For Ruskin, aesthesis was the ‘mere animal consciousness’ of
beauty, whereas theoria was the ‘exulting, reverent and grateful per-
ception’ of that same beauty.⁶⁵ At times, Ruskin conceived theoria in
almost religious terms, as a sacred beholding of the transcendent,
perhaps hinting at the theological associations of the term in ancient
Greece.⁶⁶ Ruskin offers an important corrective to Martin Heidegger’s
suggestion that theoria entails the notion of ‘spectatorial vision’ which
leads to the distancing of the knowing subject from the known object,
thus leading to their mutual estrangement.⁶⁷ Although Ruskin had
yet to clarify his understanding of the relation of the knowing subject
and the known object, especially between the externally given and the
internally modified imaginative representation, he saw no reason to
divorce them.
This leads into a potentially significant divergence between sci-
entific and religious reflections on theory. While there is some
danger in this generalization, scientific theorizing is primarily con-
cerned with achieving an enhanced understanding of the natural
world; theological theorizing, while also aiming for a deeper under-
standing of God and the world, is seen to lead seamlessly into the
praxis of adoration and prayer. There is an intimate connection
between theology and worship (91–2), involving the coordination
of objective and subjective elements, going beyond the traditional
acknowledgement that the practice of worship informs the content
of theology (lex orandi, lex credendi).⁶⁸ Theology articulates a vision
of God which cannot be adequately accommodated by the human
intellect, and thus generates a sense of intellectual wonder most
appropriately expressed in worship. We shall return to this point
in a later chapter, when we consider the concept of mystery in
science and theology.
Yet many scientists, whether religious or not, would suggest that
the conventional account of science as an attempt to understand or

⁶⁵ Ruskin, Works, vol. 4, 42. Ruskin was not entirely consistent in his exposition of
this notion of theoria. For a more recent exposition and application of this idea, see
Fuller, Theoria: Art and the Absence of Grace.
⁶⁶ Rausch, Theoria: Von ihrer sakralen zur philosophischen Bedeutung, 148–52.
⁶⁷ McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 58–9.
⁶⁸ Clerck, ‘Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi’; Schneider, Zur theologischen Grundlegung
des christlichen Gottesdienstes nach Joseph Ratzinger.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 113

explain our world is deficient, not simply in terms of its resulting
attitude to that world, but because it fails to do justice to the actual
attitudes of scientists themselves. An experience of a sense of awe in
the presence of nature transcends any attempt to reduce it to verbal or
conceptual formulae. Such an experience of awe, although ‘often
fleeting and hard to describe’, diminishes the emphasis on the indi-
vidual self and enables a more expansive vision of our world, which
cannot be reduced to words or formulae, and which opens individuals
to new modes of thought and action.⁶⁹
In affirming, although critically, the importance of objectivity as a
virtue in the scientific method, it is important to note the challenge it
poses to what might be termed a ‘feels-right’ diagnostic standard for
the acceptance of an explanation.⁷⁰ Yet there is a subjective element in
scientific judgement, as the widespread appeal to beauty or elegance
in theory choice indicates. We shall consider this virtue later in our
discussion (117–19).

SIMPLICITY

The human cognitive system is required to cope with a world that is at

one and the same time immensely complex yet highly patterned. In a
completely random world, there would be no patterns to be observed,
so that making the scientific processes of prediction, explanation, and
understanding would be impossible. Human cognition thus involves
the discernment of patterns of association or behaviour which can
serve in explanatory or predictive manners. Some psychologists have
argued that the human cognitive system imposes patterns on the
world according to a ‘simplicity principle’, in which the chosen
pattern provides the most compact representation of the available
information.⁷¹ In practice, the application of this ‘simplicity prin-
ciple’ is normatively justified in that it generally leads to simple

⁶⁹ Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman, ‘The Nature of Awe’; Piff et al., ‘Awe, the Small
Self, and Prosocial Behavior’.
⁷⁰ Trout, ‘Scientific Explanation and the Sense of Understanding’, 214.
⁷¹ See especially Chater, ‘The Search for Simplicity’.
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114 The Territories of Human Reason

representations that provide good explanations and predictions on
the basis of which the agent can make decisions and actions. Willard
van Quine seems to have anticipated such considerations when he
suggests that our perceptions of what is ‘simple’ may in fact arise from
contingent features of our perceptual mechanisms.⁷²
The assertion that simplicity is a sign—but most emphatically not a
guarantor—of truth has a long history of use in the natural sciences.
In inscribing the Latin motto simplex est sigillum veritatis on the
flyleaf of his Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere (1828), the pioneer
embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer was perhaps doing more than
echoing the widespread intuition of a direct correlation between
simplicity and truth; he was also criticizing the biogenetic doctrine
of recapitulation, which held that the development of the embryo of a
higher animal passes through stages which resemble or recapitulate
successive stages in the evolution of the animal’s distant ancestors.
The principle of parsimony is regularly referenced in evaluating the
merits of competing explanations (as in contemporary debates over
the evolutionary theories of R. A. Fisher and Sewall Wright.)⁷³ So is
simplicity a reliable guide to the validity of a theory?
Karl Popper certainly thought so, declaring that ‘simple statements’
are to be ‘prized more highly than less simple ones because they tell us
more; because their empirical content is greater; and because they are
better testable’.⁷⁴ Popper’s surprisingly positive estimate of the virtue
of simplicity, of course, rests chiefly on his controversial equation of
this concept with the degree of falsifiability of a theory. Yet it is fair to
suggest that the history of the natural sciences lends some support
to the general principle of avoiding conceptually inflated theories.
William of Ockham’s advice—summed up in maxims such as num-
quam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate and frustra fit per plura
quod potest fieri per pauciora—to avoid the unnecessary multiplication
of hypothesis remains valuable; it is not, and was not intended to be,
a touchstone of truth. Modern formulations of ‘Ockham’s Razor’
often have little conceptual connection with Ockham’s own approach,

⁷² Quine, ‘On Simple Theories of a Complex World’.

⁷³ Plutynski, ‘Parsimony and the Fisher-Wright Debate’. Other applications may
be noted, such as Baker, ‘Occam’s Razor in Science’.
⁷⁴ Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 128. Emphasis in original.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 115

which tended to be directed against such conceptually inflationary
notions as a created habit of grace.⁷⁵ Isaac Newton’s first ‘rule of
reasoning in philosophy’ was ‘to admit no more causes of natural
things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their
appearances’.⁷⁶ This approach allows a theory to be envisaged as a
pattern, a way of encoding observational data, which leads to the
suggestion that the pattern chosen should be that which allows
the simplest encoding of this data.⁷⁷ Yet the progress of scientific
knowledge does not invariably lead to the simplest theories. For
example, Kepler showed that the planets did not orbit the sun in
mathematically simple circles, but in the more complex curves of
ellipses, requiring more complex mathematical representation. Simpli-
city cannot be upheld as a general indicator of theoretical validity, any
more than complexity can be regarded as a criterion of falsity.⁷⁸
Richard Swinburne, who makes extensive use of an appeal to
simplicity in support of theistic arguments, asserts that ‘it is an
ultimate a priori epistemic principle that simplicity is evidence of
truth’.⁷⁹ It is far from clear that this is either an a priori principle,
nor that it can be seen as ‘evidence of truth’. A more accurate account
of the situation would be that the comparative success of using
simplicity as a criterion of scientific theories is an a posteriori indi-
cation that it is an indicator of truth. It is difficult to see how
simplicity can be advocated as an a priori criterion of truth without
a set of informing metaphysical assumptions, which themselves add
metaphysical complexity to such a theoretical evaluation.
While many believe that the simplest theory is likely to be the best,
the ultimate foundation of this belief thus remains unclear.⁸⁰ Nor is it
clear whether this privileging of simplicity is really an aesthetic
intuition, rather than a validated empirical tool. Is ‘simplicity’ being

⁷⁵ For the medieval debates, see McGrath, Iustitia Dei, 176–86.

⁷⁶ Christianson, Isaac Newton and the Scientific Revolution, 86.
⁷⁷ Chater, ‘The Search for Simplicity’, 278.
⁷⁸ Bunge, ‘The Weight of Simplicity in the Construction and Assaying of Scientific
Theories’; Elkana, ‘The Myth of Simplicity’.
⁷⁹ Swinburne, Simplicity as Evidence for Truth, 1.
⁸⁰ For example, it could be argued that simplicity enhances truth-finding efficiency:
Kelly, ‘A New Solution to the Puzzle of Simplicity’. For criticism, see Fitzpatrick, ‘Kelly
on Ockham’s Razor and Truth-Finding Efficiency’.
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116 The Territories of Human Reason

understood as a logico-empirical criterion, or as an essentially
aesthetic judgement?⁸¹ And how is the simplicity of a theory to be
measured, so that it becomes meaningful to speak of one theoretical
analysis as being ‘simpler’ than another?⁸² Although the general
human preference for simple patterns has been widely recognized,
simplicity has nevertheless remained a largely intuitive notion,⁸³
perhaps even a matter of personal taste. The deeper question here is
whether a theoretical adjudication is being made on the basis of a
subjective value or a measurable quality—an issue to which we
shall return in considering the role of beauty as a criterion of theory
choice (117–19).
So how might this criterion of simplicity bear upon discussions of
rationality in science and theology? Eliott Sober suggests that three
issues need to be resolved before this criterion can be applied mean-
ingfully: how simplicity is to be measured; how it can be justified; and
how it should be ‘traded-off ’—that is, how it is to be weighed against
other theoretical virtues.⁸⁴ None of these are easily answered. For
example, many argue, in a common-sense manner, that a simpler
theory is more likely to be true. Yet this is essentially a pragmatic
judgement, not an argument for the epistemic grounds of simplicity.
As noted earlier, Swinburne argues that ‘simplicity is evidence for
truth’ in his assertion of the plausibility of the existence of God as a
sense-making device. This might be argued to constitute proper
grounds for the rationality of faith; it is, however, more satisfying
and realistic to see this as consistent with the existence of God, or
congruent with a theistic logic, particularly the distinctive Trinitarian
logic of Christianity, which holds that God created an ordered and
elegant world. Others, however, have argued that the criterion of
simplicity is intrinsically anti-theist or non-theist, in that postulating
the existence of God requires the addition of one item to the existing

⁸¹ Walsh, ‘Occam’s Razor: A Principle of Intellectual Elegance’.

⁸² Hillman, ‘The Measurement of Simplicity’, McAllister, ‘The Simplicity of
Theories’.
⁸³ The concept of ‘Kolmogorov Complexity’ clearly has potential in this respect,
although this has been under-developed to date. See Grünwald and Vitányi, ‘Kolmo-
gorov Complexity and Information Theory’.
⁸⁴ Sober, ‘What Is the Problem of Simplicity?’
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 117

inventory of the universe, hence resulting in a more complex theory.⁸⁵
Theists respond by pointing out that their notion of God is inherently
explanatory; this generative concept of God thus gives rise to, if
anything, a reduction in the number of explanatory elements required
to make sense of the universe.⁸⁶
Yet problems with the use of the criterion of simplicity remain. It is
difficult to define and operationalize the notion, and to provide it with
an independent epistemic foundation. Furthermore, it is by no means
clear that simplicity is a sign of truth, or even an indicator of the
potential long-term success of a theory. Perhaps unsurprisingly,
many philosophers of science now tend to see simplicity therefore
as a desirable quality for theories, while recognizing that many
theories deemed to be valid or successful are not simple.

ELEGANCE AND BEAUTY

Logico-empirical approaches to theory choice extol the importance of

certain virtues, including consistency with known observations, a
capacity to predict, explanatory power, and internal consistency.
Yet many leading theoreticians have emphasized that beauty or
perceived elegance appears to serve as an indicator of theoretical
truth. ‘The affirmation of a great scientific theory is in part an
expression of delight. The theory has an inarticulate component
acclaiming its beauty, and this is essential to the belief that it is
true.’⁸⁷ The theoretical representations of the natural world often
impress observers as beautiful in themselves. The conceptual elegance
of Euclidean geometry was long regarded as one of its chief virtues.
More recently, Newton’s dynamic equations were widely admitted for
their conceptual elegance, displayed even more strikingly by the
symplectic geometry of the Hamiltonian or Lagrangian formalisms.⁸⁸

⁸⁵ This appears to be the argument in Dawkins, The God Delusion.

⁸⁶ Inge, Faith and Its Psychology, 197. For Kepler’s appeal to theological notions in
articulating the unity of nature, see Hon, ‘Kepler’s Revolutionary Astronomy’, 162–73.
⁸⁷ Polanyi, Personal Knowledge, 133. For the general issues, see McAllister, ‘Truth
and Beauty in Scientific Reason’; Barnes, ‘Inference to the Loveliest Explanation’;
Kivy, ‘Science and Aesthetic Appreciation’.
⁸⁸ Penrose, The Road to Reality, 483–91.
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118 The Territories of Human Reason

If beauty does indeed occasionally seem to function as a criterion of
theory choice, the theoretical basis of this function must be said to
remain elusive. It might be argued that scientists have come to
associate ‘beauty’ with ‘truth’ on account of previous experience
of theoretical situations in which this connection proved fruitful.⁸⁹
The association in question is therefore not arbitrary, in that it is
grounded in the features of past successful theories, and the practices
of scientific communities. Or perhaps the perception that a theory
is elegant or beautiful actually reflects its perceived coherence,⁹⁰ so
that beauty is a place-holder for some other quality more easily
harmonized with an essentially logico-empirical approach to theory
choice.
Yet the concept of ‘beauty’ is subjective and contested, leading
some to make the ‘eminently rational decision’ to pursue ‘indicators
of truth in disregard of beauty’.⁹¹ Properties of a theory that have at
some point been considered to be aesthetically attractive have at other
times been considered neutral or displeasing. This suggests to some
that scientific theories gain acceptance on the basis of essentially
rational criteria, with aesthetic criteria being involved subsequently,
often as retrodictive explanations of the theory’s success. The correl-
ation between aesthetic and epistemic values remains unclear. It is an
empirical truth that there sometimes appears to be some correlation
between the perceived beauty of a theory or theoretical representation
of the natural world and its veridicality; yet the nature and extent of
this correlation are sufficiently unclear and unreliable to warrant
scepticism about its capacity to adjudicate between theoretical possi-
bilities. Any connection between ‘beauty’ and ‘truth’ has to be pro-
vided by an additional informing theory, implicit or explicit, in that
such a connection is not itself to be seen as a secure empirical
correlation.
In practice, most of those who equate or elide ‘beauty’ and ‘truth’—
or allow them to be seen as functionally equivalent—do so on the
basis of an unstated or unacknowledged set of assumptions about the

⁸⁹ Kuipers, ‘Beauty, a Road to the Truth’.

⁹⁰ Thagard, ‘Why is Beauty a Road to Truth?’
⁹¹ McAllister, ‘Truth and Beauty in Scientific Reason’, 45.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 119

nature of beauty, which are ultimately not empirical. ‘Beauty serves us
as a schema for truth, a postulated substitute for a reality which we
cannot fathom.’⁹² For many physicists, beauty appears to be framed
primarily in terms of symmetry,⁹³ as exemplified in the truncated
icosahedrons of certain classes of allotropes of carbon. Now sym-
metry may indeed be one element of any theoretical account of
beauty; it cannot, however, be considered to be determinative of the
notion, not least because of its implicit reduction of beauty to a ‘sterile
rigidity’.⁹⁴
Some writers appeal to explicitly theological notions in their cor-
relation of truth and beauty, a theme which played an important role
in the Scottish geologist Hugh Millar’s reflections on the deeper
significance of the beauty of natural forms.⁹⁵ Yet perhaps the more
important function of a theological perspective is that viewing the
world through a Trinitarian theoria allows us to evade the criticism
directed by Erich Heller against Nietzsche’s sense of awe in the
presence of nature—namely, that it amounted to a religio intransitiva,
based on a sense of awe which had no awesome referent.⁹⁶

A CAPACITY TO PREDICT

A sharp distinction is often drawn between the capacity of scientific

theories to predict novel observations, and the purely retrodictive
capacities of religious theories. A capacity to accommodate observa-
tion and experience is, of course, an integral element of a successful
theory, whether scientific or religious. Yet a theory which proves
capable of predicting something hitherto unobserved is widely
regarded as trumping those which merely account for what is already
known.⁹⁷ If E designates evidence which might be held to support

⁹² Zemach, Real Beauty, 36.

⁹³ A classic statement of this is found in Weyl, Symmetry.
⁹⁴ McManus, ‘Symmetry and Asymmetry in Aesthetics and the Arts’.
⁹⁵ Brooke, ‘Like Minds: The God of Hugh Miller’.
⁹⁶ Heller, The Disinherited Mind, 171.
⁹⁷ For a good account of the debate, see White, ‘The Epistemic Advantage of
Prediction over Accommodation’.
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120 The Territories of Human Reason

theory T, then it is often asserted that E offers greater support for T if
it is a novel prediction than a mere accommodation. The capacity to
predict is thus a comparative tool, based on a judgement of the
relative probative weight of E as predicted when compared to the
probative weight of E as accommodated.⁹⁸
It seems entirely plausible that such a generative theory is to be
preferred over one that merely casts a theoretical net over what is
already known. Yet it is important to appreciate that this epistemic
virtue has a social history, being particularly linked with August
Fresnel’s defence of a wave theory of light, challenging the prevailing
Newtonian corpuscular theory. Siméon Denis Poisson pointed out
that, if Fresnel’s theory was right, it followed that if a small circular
disk was used to create a shadow caused by a point source of light, the
centre of that shadow would contain a white spot of light.⁹⁹ This totally
counter-intuitive prediction, which Fresnel himself had failed to
notice, was seen by Poisson as an indication that Fresnel’s theory was
wrong. François Arago, a colleague of Poisson, immediately set out to
investigate this predicted phenomenon—and observed it. The high
drama of this event served to consolidate the view that the capacity
of a theory to predict would, when the predictions were observed,
represent a startlingly persuasive demonstration of its validity.
Yet it proves difficult to identify precisely why a capacity to predict
should be seen as epistemically virtuous.¹⁰⁰ The critical question is
whether evidence is supportive of a theory, and the rigour of the
selection procedure used to generate the evidence. The chronological
ordering of theory and evidence does not ultimately affect the veracity
of a theory. This issue emerged as important in the nineteenth-century
debate between William Whewell and John Stuart Mill over the role of
induction as a scientific method.¹⁰¹ Whewell emphasized the import-
ance of predictive novelty as a core element of the scientific method;
Mill argued that the difference between prediction of novel observa-
tions and theoretical accommodation of existing observations was
purely psychological, and had no ultimate epistemological significance.

⁹⁸ Barnes, The Paradox of Predictivism, 1–7.

⁹⁹ See especially Worrall, ‘Fresnel, Poisson and the White Spot’.
¹⁰⁰ Achinstein, The Book of Evidence, 210–30; Gonzalez, La predicción científica.
¹⁰¹ Snyder, ‘The Mill-Whewell Debate’.
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Furthermore, the nature of certain scientific fields of explanation is
such that they cannot predict in any meaningful sense. Recent studies
in the philosophy of biology have raised interesting questions about
whether prediction really is essential to the scientific method. While
prediction is superior to accommodation in many cases (particularly
when such accommodation is seen to be ‘fudged’, contrived, or
forced), this is not always so.¹⁰² And certain areas of science are
resistant to predictivist approaches, on account of the nature of the
phenomena being observed.
Prediction is not essential to the scientific method. The archaeolo-
gist who studies Neanderthal sites may gain an understanding of the
early genetic history of human beings, which may be enlightening,
but is not predictive in any meaningful sense of the term. A fluid
dynamicist studying the chaotic outcome of convection processes in a
Bénard cell may well understand the basic principles underlying these
processes, but knows that the specific forms that such chaotic phe-
nomena take are, by their very nature, fundamentally unpredict-
able.¹⁰³ Understanding general scientific principles or universal laws
does not generally lead to a deterministic prediction of behaviour.
Charles Darwin was quite clear that his theory of natural selection
did not predict, and could not predict. It could not be proved, but was
to be judged by its capacity to accommodate the evidence.¹⁰⁴ In a
letter praising the perspicuity of F. W. Hutton (1836–1905), Darwin
singled him out for special comment, in that ‘he is one of the very few
who see that the change of species cannot be directly proved, and that
the doctrine must sink or swim according as it groups and explains
phenomena’.¹⁰⁵ This absence of predictive capacity, of course, led

¹⁰² Hitchcock and Sober, ‘Prediction versus Accommodation and the Risk of
Overfitting’. The ‘weak predictivism’ defended by Hitchcock and Sober has parallels
elsewhere: see, for example, the careful assessment of approaches in Lange, ‘The
Apparent Superiority of Prediction to Accommodation as a Side Effect’; Harker,
‘Accommodation and Prediction’.
¹⁰³ For the importance of random events for predictive capacity, see Eagle, ‘Ran-
domness Is Unpredictability’.
¹⁰⁴ See especially the detailed study by Lloyd, ‘The Nature of Darwin’s Support for
the Theory of Natural Selection’.
¹⁰⁵ The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 2, 155. Hutton deserves much
greater attention as a perceptive interpreter of Darwin: see Stenhouse, ‘Darwin’s
Captain’.
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122 The Territories of Human Reason

some philosophers of science, most notably Karl Popper, to suggest
that Darwinism was not really scientific.¹⁰⁶
Perhaps, as some suggest, Darwin’s theory of natural selection may
primarily have given ‘structure to our ignorance’;¹⁰⁷ yet it also pos-
tulated a plausible mechanism for evolution which could give rise to a
fruitful research programme. The nature of those biological observa-
tions was such that a capacity for prediction was not a possible
criterion of evaluation for Darwin in relation to his theory of natural
selection. The capacity of a theory to predict is shaped to no small
extent by the specific object of its investigation. In some cases,
prediction is possible and virtuous; in others, it is not. This does not
reflect any failures of the rationality of the process of theory choice; it
is simply a recognition of the complexity of the realities that theories
are called upon to explain and connect.
Religious theories do not predict in the manner of some scientific
theories;¹⁰⁸ this, however, is not to be seen as a failure in rational
virtue on their part, but as a specific outcome of the object of
theological study, and a reflection of the limiting conditions under
which theology is obliged to proceed.
Thus far, we have considered a number of criteria that might
help assess the reliability of a proposed theory. Others, of course,
could be added, including a range of different epistemic virtues and
vices—such as curiosity and humility, arrogance and dogmatism—
and exploring how they affect a person or group’s capacity to acquire,
assess, and apply knowledge through standard epistemic practices,
such as developing programmes of research, theorizing about their
outcomes, and debating with those who hold rival positions.¹⁰⁹ The
emerging field of ‘virtue epistemology’ highlights the importance of
the character of an investigation, noting the importance of certain
virtues (such as humility, openness, and a willingness to be guided by
evidence) and their corresponding vices (such as arrogance, dogma-
tism, and closed-mindedness) in guiding the process of enquiry.¹¹⁰

¹⁰⁶ Popper, ‘Natural Selection and the Emergence of Mind’. Popper later retracted
this criticism.
¹⁰⁷ The view of Kitcher, Abusing Science, 52.
¹⁰⁸ Moore, Realism and Christian Faith, 50–2.
¹⁰⁹ Baehr, The Inquiring Mind.
¹¹⁰ See Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 3–31.
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Rational Virtues and the Problem of Theory Choice 123

An example of such a vice is epistemic arrogance, which manifests
itself in a disposition to draw illicit inferences regarding entitlements
and exemptions whose consequence is the violation and erosion of
the epistemic norms that regulate collective enquiry.¹¹¹ However,
there is no suggestion that observing such epistemic virtues leads to
explanatory success, in that such success (or failure) is contingent
upon a complex range of factors, many of which lie beyond the
knowledge or control of the epistemic agents involved. Instead, a
more modest claim is made: namely, that the observance of such
epistemic virtues will typically be conducive to enquiry.
The discussion in this chapter has raised two important questions,
neither of which has yet been engaged: first, the question of what it
means to ‘explain’ anything, whether at a scientific or theological
level; and second, the question of the rational processes that are
used in developing such explanations. In the next chapter, we shall
give extended thought to the notion of rational explanation in science
and religion.

¹¹¹ Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 243–50.

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5
Rational Explanation
in Science and Religion

Rationality is often framed in terms of being able to explain our

world—to be able to offer an account, however partial, of the inter-
connections of events and forces in our world that allow us to
understand why certain things happen, or why they happen in a
certain way.¹ Knowing that something has happened, or that some-
thing exists, is not the same as understanding why it happened, or
why it exists. There is a significant gap between knowing that and
knowing why. The belief that there is some reasonable explanation for
what we observe within our world and experience within ourselves
seems to be a universal human intuition; the task of finding such
explanations—to make sense of things—is an integral aspect of the
human engagement with reality, which so often focusses on ‘why-
questions’.² Yet the acceptance of this belief neither answers the
question of what constitutes an ‘explanation’ nor reveals how the
process of explanation actually works. It also remains unclear how
the presumably narrower concept of ‘scientific explanation’ relates to
explanation in general.³
Many theologians and philosophers of religion have also insisted
that there is an explanatory function or dimension to religious belief.
Basil Mitchell, for example, remarks that in its intellectual aspects,

¹ For some helpful discussions of this general theme, see Moore, ‘Varieties of
Sense-Making’; Achinstein, The Nature of Explanation; De Regt and Dieks, ‘A Con-
textual Account of Scientific Understanding’; Friedman, ‘Explanation and Scientific
Understanding’; Newton-Smith, ‘Explanation’.
² See Bromberger, ‘Why-Questions’.
³ Woody, ‘Re-Orienting Discussions of Scientific Explanation’.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 125

‘traditional Christian theism may be regarded as a worldview or
metaphysical system which is in competition with other such systems
and must be judged by its capacity to make sense of all the available
evidence’.⁴ Others would be more cautious, not least in regard to what
form of sense-making Christian theology is able to offer. It is one
thing to confer meaning; it is quite another to offer an explanation of
what happens in the world at large.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO ‘EXPLAIN’?

For many, serious philosophical reflection on the notion of explan-

ation began in 1948, with the publication of Carl G. Hempel and Paul
Oppenheim’s ‘Studies in the Logic of Explanation’.⁵ This work was
intellectually generative, precipitating intense discussion of what it
meant to ‘explain’ observations. By the beginning of the 1960s, there
was growing interest in exploring the ‘three basic components of a
world picture’ in order to achieve a maximum of ‘explanatory coher-
ence’: observed objects and events, unobserved objects and events,
and ‘nomological connections’ between them.⁶ Although Hempel’s
‘deductive-nomological’ model of scientific explanation was quickly
shown to be incapable of encompassing the complexity of the natural
sciences, it nevertheless stimulated intense discussion of alternative
or supplementary accounts of explanation. The notion that explanation
or understanding is about ‘fitting phenomena into a comprehensive
scientific world-picture’ remains both attractive and defensible, even if
there is more that needs to be said.⁷

⁴ Mitchell, The Justification of Religious Belief, 99. Other Christian writers of the
1970s adopted similar positions: see, for example, Richmond, Theology and
Metaphysics.
⁵ Hempel and Oppenheim, ‘Studies in the Logic of Explanation’. For reflections on
its impact and subsequent critical discussion, see Salmon, Four Decades of Scientific
Explanation, 11–50. The recent discovery of the text of Paul Feyerabend’s 1948 essay
‘Der Begriff der Verständlichkeit in der modernen Physik’ offers some important
illuminations of the development of this notion: see Feyerabend, ‘Der Begriff der
Verständlichkeit in der modernen Physik (1948)’.
⁶ Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality, 356.
⁷ For this phrase, see Salmon, Causality and Explanation, 77.
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126 The Territories of Human Reason

One of the happier results of this expanding interest in the concept
of scientific explanation was the reappropriation and development of
older approaches, most notably those of the great Victorian philoso-
pher of science William Whewell (1794–1866). Whewell held that all
observation involves what he terms ‘unconscious inference’, in that
what is observed is actually unconsciously or automatically inter-
preted in terms of a set of ideas. Whewell rejected the somewhat
deficient notion of induction as the mere enumeration of observa-
tions. Instead, Whewell developed the richer idea that induction was a
process of reflection that added something essential to this process of
enumeration—namely, some kind of organizing principle. In the
process of induction, he suggested, ‘there is a New Element added
to the combination [of instances] by the very act of thought by which
they were combined’.⁸ Whewell held that this ‘act of thought’ was to
be understood as a process of ‘colligation’—the mental operation of
bringing together a number of empirical facts by ‘superinducing’
upon them a way of thinking which unites the facts. For Whewell,
this renders them capable of being expressed by a general law, which
both identifies and illuminates the ‘true bond of Unity by which the
phenomena are held together’.⁹
Whewell’s analysis leads to the conclusion that a good theory is
able to ‘colligate’ observations that might hitherto have been regarded
as disconnected, like a string holding together a group of pearls in a
necklace. We might think, for example, of Newton’s theory of gravity
as ‘colligating’ observations that had up to that point been seen as
unconnected—such as the falling of an apple to the ground, and the
orbiting of planets around the sun. This idea of explanation as
colligation of what might otherwise be seen as unrelated and dispar-
ate events underlies the notion of unitative explanation, which we
shall consider presently (132–5).¹⁰
There remains a significant divergence between the natural sci-
ences and social sciences on how ‘explanation’ is to be understood.
This is often framed in terms of the distinction between Verstehen

⁸ Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, 48. For Whewell’s approach
and its wider impact, see Snyder, Reforming Philosophy, 33–94.
⁹ Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, 46.
¹⁰ e.g. Morrison, Unifying Scientific Theories.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 127

(an interpretative understanding) and Erklären (a law-governed
explanation).¹¹ Erklären—the dominant approach to explanation in
the natural sciences—aims to make explanatory sense of an observed
phenomenon by identifying the laws that govern it, whereas Ver-
stehen represents an attempt to make empathetic sense of the phe-
nomenon by looking for the perspective in which the phenomenon
appears to be meaningful and appropriate. The social sciences tend to
the view that aiming for a merely explanatory sense of social phe-
nomena makes it impossible to allow comprehensive knowledge of
these phenomena, in that for such knowledge the observer has to
come to terms with the perceived significance of these events within a
social context. An investigator is thus studying not passive objects,
but active interpretative agents—how people understand their world,
and how that understanding shapes their practice.
Yet the intense discussion of what it means to ‘explain’ something
in the natural sciences has not led to the clarification that many had
hoped for. A recent review of debates about the nature of scientific
explanation suggests that fifty years of intense discussion have led not
to the emergence of a consensus, but, on the contrary, to an increas-
ingly diverse account of the nature of explanation. It is as if a ‘meta-
theory’ is required—‘some deeper theory that explained what it was
about each of these apparently diverse forms of explanation that
makes them explanatory’.¹² The present situation, characterized by
the absence of any such theory, is seen by some influential writers as
‘an embarrassment for the philosophy of science’. The question of
what it means to explain something still remains to be resolved.
Important questions remain about the limits of explanation. In an
important recent discussion of the explanatory capacities of the
natural sciences, Steven Weinberg remarks that it seems clear that
‘we will never be able to explain our most fundamental scientific
principles’.¹³ We can certainly hope to develop a ‘set of simple
universal laws of nature’; these, however, cannot be explained. They
exist; they have explanatory capacity, on the basis of accepted models

¹¹ Apel, ‘The Erklären-Verstehen Controversy in the Philosophy of the Natural and

Human Sciences’.
¹² Newton-Smith, ‘Explanation’, 130–2.
¹³ Weinberg, ‘Can Science Explain Everything?’, 36.
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128 The Territories of Human Reason

of scientific explanation; yet they themselves cannot be explained. An
explanatory regress thus terminates at a certain point.
Cognitive science casts some helpful light on the processes by
which the human brain makes sense of our world.¹⁴ The human
mind has evolved many cognitive tools for this purpose including
abstraction, counterfactual thought, deduction, and induction. One of
the most important of these processes is causal thinking. An individ-
ual’s ability to determine if a precipitating event was the cause of any
given outcome is essential for making sense of the complex world in
which we live. At present, there are four significant psychological
models of causal inference, none of which appears adequate to deal
with all aspects of the phenomenon. Yet it remains unclear what it
means to ‘explain’ something—a difficulty which is compounded by
the multiple meanings of the term ‘explain’ in the first place.¹⁵
These deep-seated and seemingly intractable concerns help to
frame our discussion of the place of explanation in science and in
Christian theology. There are some—such as Christopher Hitchens,
one of the leading representatives of the ‘New Atheism’—who hold
that religion is incapable of explaining anything, and see this as an
epistemic vice. However, the rhetorical force of this bold assertion is
significantly reduced by Hitchens’s striking failure to clarify what he
means by ‘explain’, which, of course, echoes a wider problem within
philosophy in general, and the philosophy of science in particular.
Others similarly argue that religion is unable to explain anything—
but see this distinguishing feature as neutral, if not even a virtue.
Terry Eagleton, for example, is severely critical of those who treat
religion as a fundamentally explanatory phenomenon. ‘Christianity
was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place’,
he argued. ‘It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we
can forget about Chekhov.’¹⁶ Eagleton suggests that believing that
religion is a ‘botched attempt to explain the world’ is about as helpful
as ‘seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus’. There are

¹⁴ See Fugelsang and Dunbar, ‘A Cognitive Neuroscience Framework for Under-

standing Causal Reasoning and the Law’; Operskalski and Barbey, ‘Cognitive Neuro-
science of Causal Reasoning’.
¹⁵ Şerban, ‘What Can Polysemy Tell Us About Theories of Explanation?’
¹⁶ Eagleton, Reason, Faith, and Revolution, 7.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 129

parallels here with the account of science offered by the philosopher
Bas van Fraassen, who rejects as a ‘false ideal’ any notion that ‘explan-
ation is the summum bonum and exact aim of science’,¹⁷ or those who
hold that human ‘understanding’ is a purely subjective phenomenon
that should not be allowed to play a role in the epistemic evaluation of
scientific theories and explanations.¹⁸ Yet this pragmatic approach to
scientific understanding is open to criticism, not least because under-
standing is to be seen as an essential element of the epistemic aims of
science.
While Eagleton is surely right to argue that there is more to Chris-
tianity than an attempt to make sense of things, others would argue
that some kind of explanatory capacity is an integral—though not
necessarily a fundamental or central—theme of the Christian faith.¹⁹
Some critics of religion follow Frazer’s flawed account of religion as a
kind of primitive cosmology, which competes (unsuccessfully) with
the natural sciences as an explanation of reality.²⁰ Yet as I shall indicate
in this chapter, the current understanding of the notion of ‘explan-
ation’ in the natural sciences is actually such that religion can be said to
be capable of ‘explaining’ our world in its own distinct terms.
To develop the way in which the notion of ‘making sense’ or
‘explaining’ is currently understood, we shall focus on the two most
widely discussed approaches to scientific explanation, which focus on
the ideas of causation and unification respectively.

CAUSALITY AS EXPLANATION

If A causes B, then A explains B. This line of thought has played a

significant role in reflection on the nature of explanation, and is seen

¹⁷ van Fraassen, ‘The Pragmatics of Explanation’, 144.

¹⁸ Trout, ‘Scientific Explanation and the Sense of Understanding’.
¹⁹ See the nuanced position developed in Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian
Belief.
²⁰ Dawkins, The God Delusion, 188. For criticisms of this, see Crane, The Meaning
of Belief, ix–xiii. Crane presents religion almost entirely as an intellectual-rational
construct, which seriously limits his appreciation of its imaginative and emotional
dimensions. For a much better account, see Smith, Religion, 20–76.
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130 The Territories of Human Reason

by many as the most intuitive approach. According to Wesley
Salmon, a causal theory of explanation is appropriate because ‘under-
lying causal mechanisms hold the key to our understanding of the
world’.²¹ Amplifying this point, Salmon argues that ‘causal processes,
causal interactions, and causal laws provide the mechanisms by which
the world works; to understand why certain things happen, we need
to see how they are produced by these mechanisms’.²² This type of
approach is open to development in a number of ways, particularly
through the use of Bayesian theory and related paradigms. Causal
patterns may be distinguished from mere correlation by construction
of ‘causal Bayes nets’, which identify patterns of nested contingencies
in a manner that allows non-causal relations to be filtered out.²³
Furthermore, we can assert that A causes B without needing to
know what caused A.²⁴
Neither Salmon nor any recent commentator on causal explan-
ations notes what may well be one of the most important points in its
favour—that causal reasoning can be argued to confer evolutionary
advantages. In their evolutionary history, humans have had to deal
with the threat of predators. Learning to detect agency behind natural
phenomena and events around us could thus confer survival poten-
tial. This has led some to suppose (though this belief remains
unevidenced) that humans have evolved a hypersensitivity in detect-
ing intentional agents at a perceptual level, based on the notion that
failing to detect these causal agents may potentially be more harmful
than incorrectly assuming that agents are absent.²⁵ It remains far
from clear, however, whether this inference is justified.²⁶
Yet problems remain with causal explanations, especially within
the field of quantum theory. Among the most often cited are the

²¹ Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, 260. See
further the detailed discussion and original proposals in Woodward, Making Things
Happen.
²² Salmon, Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, 132.
²³ Gebharter, ‘Causal Exclusion and Causal Bayes Nets’.
²⁴ Lipton, ‘What Good Is an Explanation?’, 8.
²⁵ Boyer, Religion Explained; McCauley, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not.
²⁶ See Maij, van Schie, and van Elk. ‘The Boundary Conditions of the Hypersen-
sitive Agency Detection Device’.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 131

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) correlations, which cannot be exp-
lained by means of direct causal influence or by referring to a
common cause. Salmon was quite clear that his causal-mechanical
model of explanation could not cope with this specific case.²⁷ Some
would argue that this difficulty is only to be expected, in that ‘quan-
tum physics is only indirectly a science of reality but more immedi-
ately a science of knowledge’.²⁸ The significance of this problem
might, of course, be deflected by pointing out that any version of
quantum theory is strongly interpretative; or by appealing to forms of
quantum mechanics (such as those developed by Louis de Broglie and
David Bohm) which are framed in causative terms. Yet although
there is a clear diversity of preference within the field of quantum
mechanics, these two approaches are regarded by most as inferior
options.²⁹ Underlying this is perhaps something more fundamental:
the absence of a generalized account of causation in the first place.
Hume’s concerns about the notion have never been properly resolved;
although many solutions have been proposed, none has secured
widespread acceptance.³⁰
A further issue that needs to be noted here is the interconnection
between physical causation and explanation. Which is prior? Philip
Kitcher argued that ‘the “because” of causation is always derivative
from the “because” of explanation’.³¹ In other words, our causal
judgements merely echo the explanatory relationships that result
from our attempts to construct unified theories of nature. There is
thus no independent causal order which our explanations must
capture or represent.
A final concern that needs to be raised relates to the notion of
mathematical explanation.³² The ‘unreasonable effectiveness’ of

²⁷ Unfortunately, Woodward does not engage with quantum theory in general, or

this specific topic, describing it as a ‘recherché case’: Woodward, Making Things
Happen, 92.
²⁸ Brukner and Zeilinger, ‘Quantum Physics as a Science of Information’, 47–8.
²⁹ Brown and Wallace, ‘Solving the Measurement Problem’. For the diversity of
approaches, see Schlosshauer, Kofler, and Zeilinger, ‘A Snapshot of Foundational
Attitudes toward Quantum Mechanics’.
³⁰ One of the most interesting is Dowe, Physical Causation. For others, see Sosa
and Tooley, Causation.
³¹ Kitcher, ‘Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World’, 477.
³² On which see Barrow, ‘Mathematical Explanation’.
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132 The Territories of Human Reason

mathematics in being able to represent some fundamental features of
the universe is well known.³³ When scientists try to make sense of the
complexities of our world, they use ‘mathematics as their torch’. It
is far from clear why this is the case. ‘The miracle of the appropri-
ateness of the language of mathematics to the formulation of the laws
of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor
deserve’.³⁴ Yet mathematics is able to achieve this explanatory func-
tion without being causative in any meaningful sense of the word. It
seems that causation is best seen as one explanatory strategy among
others; not all causes are explanatory, nor are all explanations causal
in character.

UNIFICATION AS EXPLANATION

The most influential alternative to the causal-mechanical approach is

at present the unificationist conception of explanatory understand-
ing, which holds that science achieves explanation by uncovering a
unified picture of the world. A scientific explanation can thus be
understood as providing a unified account of a range of different
phenomena. To understand any given phenomenon is to see how it
fits together with other phenomena within a unified whole, discerning
the fundamental unity that underlies the apparent diversity of the
phenomena themselves.³⁵
Historically, it is easy to show that theory unification has clearly
played an important role in the development of the natural sciences.
Paradigmatic examples include René Descartes’s unification of algebra
and geometry, Isaac Newton’s unification of terrestrial and celestial
theories of motion, and James Clerk Maxwell’s unification of electri-
city and magnetism.³⁶ Yet this is simply one form of unification, in

³³ Wigner, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics’.

³⁴ Wigner, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics’, 9.
³⁵ See Bartelborth, ‘Explanatory Unification’; Plutynski, ‘Explanatory Unification
and the Early Synthesis’; Schweder, ‘A Defense of a Unificationist Theory of
Explanation’.
³⁶ On which see Grosholz, ‘Descartes’ Unification of Algebra and Geometry’;
Morrison, ‘A Study in Theory Unification’; eadem, Unifying Scientific Theories, 4.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 133

which phenomena that were previously regarded as having quite
different causes or explanations were realized to be the outcome of a
common set of mechanisms or causal relationships—as in Newton’s
demonstration that the orbits of the planets and the motion of terres-
trial objects falling freely close to the surface of the earth are actually
due to the same force of gravity and obey the same laws of motion.
To understand the point at issue, we may reflect on the transition
from classical Newtonian mechanics to relativistic quantum mech-
anics, which took place during the first few decades of the twentieth
century.³⁷ In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, classical mech-
anics was seen as a self-sufficient and intellectually autonomous area
of theory, capable of accounting for what could be observed in nature.
Based on the extensive earlier observational and analytical work
of individuals such as Nicolas Copernicus, Johann Kepler, Galileo
Galilei, and Isaac Newton, classical mechanics was widely regarded as
a fundamental theory, capable of mathematical formalization.³⁸ It did
not need to be positioned within a richer intellectual framework to be
understood, but was an autonomous and essentially complete theory.
Yet following the work of Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Niels
Bohr in the early twentieth century, it was realized that classical
mechanics was a special, limiting case of a more complete theory. As
the theory of quantum mechanics developed in response to a growing
body of evidence which older theoretical models simply could not
accommodate, it became clear that relativistic quantum mechanics
was the more fundamental theory, capable of far greater explanatory
capacity. And, perhaps most importantly of all for our purposes, this
more fundamental theory was able to account for both the successes
and the failures of classical mechanics, by identifying its limited
sphere of validity. The ‘correspondence principle’, first identified by
Niels Bohr in 1923, sets out, clearly and elegantly, how quantum
mechanics reduces to classical mechanics under certain limits.³⁹

³⁷ This topic is covered in standard textbooks, such as Tang, Fundamentals of

Quantum Mechanics.
³⁸ Illiffe, ‘Newton, God, and the Mathematics of the Two Books’.
³⁹ For comment, see Pais, Niels Bohr’s Times, in Physics, Philosophy and Polity,
192–6.
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134 The Territories of Human Reason

Neither relativistic quantum mechanics nor quantum field theory
invalidated classical mechanics; they showed that it was rather a
special case of a more comprehensive and complex theory.⁴⁰ The
classical model was thus accounted for on the basis of the greater
explanatory capacity of the relativistic model, and the limits of their
correspondence established. And, perhaps more importantly, the
relativistic approach explained why the classical theory worked in
certain situations, and not in others. Its validity was affirmed within
specific limits.
We see here an important and well-understood insight from the
world of scientific theory development: that a better theory is able to
accommodate all the valid insights of an earlier theory, while at
the same time expanding its horizons and identifying the basis of its
plausibility.⁴¹ A theory with considerable explanatory capacity is able
to create conceptual space, valid under certain limiting yet significant
conditions, for a theory which might, at first sight, appear to be quite
independent, yet, on closer examination, turns out to be a special case
of the higher-order theory, which provides a unifying framework
which colligates and correlates theories that might have been seen
to be inconsistent or incoherent.
Yet there are other forms of unification, such as the creation of a
common classificatory scheme or descriptive vocabulary where no
such scheme previously existed (such as Linnaeus’ comprehensive
system of biological classification), or the creation of a common
mathematical framework or formalism which can be applied to
many different classes of phenomena. In 1989, Philip Kitcher pre-
sented an early formulation of the unificationist approach, which
emphasized the importance of discerning common patterns within
nature as the basis of explanation:⁴²
Understanding the phenomena is not simply a matter of reducing the
‘fundamental incomprehensibilities’ but of seeing connections, common

⁴⁰ See, for example, Landsman, Mathematical Topics between Classical and Quan-
tum Mechanics, 7–10.
⁴¹ For ‘progress as incorporation’ in the development of scientific theories, see John
Losee, Theories of Scientific Progress: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2004,
5–61.
⁴² Kitcher, ‘Explanatory Unification and the Causal Structure of the World’, 432.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 135

patterns, in what initially appeared to be different situations. . . . Science
advances our understanding of nature by showing us how to derive descrip-
tions of many phenomena, using the same patterns of derivation again and
again, and, in demonstrating this, it teaches us how to reduce the number of
types of facts we have to accept as ultimate (or brute).
Unificationist approaches to scientific explanation hold that success-
ful explanations unify our knowledge of the world, in that they allow
what might otherwise be seen as disparate and disconnected obser-
vations to be seen as aspects of a greater overall explanatory pattern.
The unifying power of a scientific theory could thus be argued to
increase in proportion to its generality, its simplicity, and its cohe-
sion. Explanations contribute to our understanding of the world by
showing how phenomena can be embedded within general nomic
patterns that we recognize in the world. Explanation is thus about the
articulation of a theory’s capacity to systematize or render a set of
observations coherent, by allowing them to be seen within a specific
informing context.

TWO APPROACHES TO EXPLANATION:

ONTIC AND EPISTEMIC

Some philosophers have argued that these two accounts of exp-

lanation illustrate two distinct—yet potentially complementary—
approaches to our understanding of how the natural sciences work:
‘epistemic’ and ‘ontic’. This distinction is due to Wesley Salmon, who
argued that ontic accounts of explanation hold that explanations
involve the identification of those ontic structures in the world
which are responsible for the production of the phenomena that are
to be explained, whereas epistemic accounts hold that explanation is
concerned with making phenomena understandable, predictable, or
intelligible by setting them in an informing context.⁴³ Although the
manner in which the categories of ‘ontic’ and ‘epistemic’ explanations

⁴³ Salmon, Causality and Explanation; idem, Four Decades of Scientific Explan-

ation. For a good summary and evaluation of Salmon’s ontic approach, see Wright,
‘The Ontic Conception of Scientific Explanation’.
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136 The Territories of Human Reason

are framed has since shifted slightly,⁴⁴ this dichotomy has proved
helpful in exploring different approaches to explanation, and how
they might relate to one another.
Epistemic accounts assign an essential role to the conceptual struc-
tures by which an explanation is conveyed, and tend to understand
explanation as a cognitive achievement. Hempel’s older Deductive-
Nomological approach falls into this category, as does the unifica-
tionist approach. Here, an explanation is fundamentally seen as
demonstrating how certain observations or existing theories can be
subsumed under, or incorporated within, a wider generalization.
Causal accounts of explanation, however, are ontic, holding that an
explanation identifies the causal process or mechanism that gives rise
to what is observed.⁴⁵ Explanation is thus about the exploration of the
metaphysics and epistemology of mechanisms.⁴⁶ Given the respec-
tive merits of both approaches, it should be no cause for surprise that
some philosophers have tried to develop an approach to explanation
that merges aspects of unificationist and causal models.⁴⁷ Such
accounts of explanation attempt to reconcile the ontic and epistemic
approaches to explanation, arguing that the best explanations fulfil
epistemic and ontic norms and roles simultaneously. It could, for
example, be argued that a unitative explanation of a set of obser-
vations cannot be fully successful unless it is fundamentally con-
strained to be grounded in a true or accurate view of the world, and
getting things right in this way is not itself fundamentally constrained
or determined by any epistemic norms.⁴⁸ This view thus asserts the
normative priority of ontic norms, but not their exclusivity. Yet there
is a growing awareness that no single account of explanation is, in
the first place, adequate, and in the second, superior. We may have to
come to terms with such approaches simply being different,⁴⁹ and
trying to correlate them as best we can.

⁴⁴ Illari, ‘Mechanistic Explanation: Integrating the Ontic and Epistemic’.

⁴⁵ Craver, ‘The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation’.
⁴⁶ See especially Machamer, ‘Activities and Causation’.
⁴⁷ Such as Strevens, ‘The Causal and Unification Approaches to Explanation Uni-
fied’; Bangu, ‘Scientific Explanation and Understanding: Unificationism Reconsidered’.
⁴⁸ Craver and Kaiser, ‘Mechanisms and Laws: Clarifying the Debate’.
⁴⁹ Craver, ‘The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation’, 35.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 137

Yet any distinction between epistemic and ontic accounts of
causality is fuzzy, partly because of the entanglement of theory and
observation. Many would suggest that an epistemic framework is
unconsciously or covertly deployed in making ontic judgements
about causality. Inferring any ‘causal structures’ is thus a matter of
faith, resting on certain judgements and interpretations.⁵⁰ It is well
known that such a reasoning process can go awry, so that causality
may be ‘observed’ or inferred when there is no causal process in the
first place. For example, some argue that belief in gods arises from the
perception of agency or causality, so that natural events are inter-
preted as caused by supernatural agents.⁵¹

RELIGIOUS EXPLANATION: SOME GENERAL

REFLECTIONS

We have already noted that some theologians and philosophers of

religion take an essentially Wittgensteinian approach to its explana-
tory function, seeing religious statements as meaningless (Bedeutungs
los) and nonsense (Unsinn).⁵² Wittgenstein’s position is actually more
nuanced than this influential interpretation suggests. To begin with,
Wittgenstein had concerns about the ‘meaningfulness’ of any attempt
to represent the world philosophically.⁵³ Furthermore, his provoca-
tive suggestion that philosophical problems might be seen ‘from a
religious point of view’ did not mean that he conceived them as
religious problems, but rather that he discerned ‘a similarity, or

⁵⁰ Sloman, Causal Models, 46–9; 101–14. See also Shadish, Cook, and Campbell,
Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference, 1–32.
⁵¹ Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God?; Maij, van Schie, and van Elk, ‘The
Boundary Conditions of the Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device’.
⁵² For a particularly influential statement of this position, see Phillips, Religion
without Explanation. For criticism, see van Holten, ‘Does Religion Explain Anything?’
⁵³ Note especially Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, }4.003: ‘Die meis-
ten Sätze und Fragen, welche über philosophische Dingen geschrieben worden sind,
sind nicht falsch, sondern unsinnig.’
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138 The Territories of Human Reason

similarities, between his conception of philosophy and something
that is characteristic of religious thinking’.⁵⁴
Most theologians, however, would argue that Christianity does
offer an explanatory framework,⁵⁵ even if this is not its primary
focus, often using visual imagery to develop this theme. The French
philosopher Simone Weil (1909–43) is a good recent example of this
approach:⁵⁶
If I light an electric torch at night out of doors, I don’t judge its power by
looking at the bulb, but by seeing how many objects it lights up. The
brightness of a source of light is appreciated by the illumination it projects
upon non-luminous objects. The value of a religious or, more generally, a
spiritual way of life is appreciated by the amount of illumination thrown
upon the things of this world.
The ability to illuminate reality is an important measure of the
reliability of a theory, and an indicator of its truth. This perception
underlies Karl Popper’s ‘searchlight’ approach to scientific theory
generation, in which theories or hypotheses are developed to ascer-
tain how well they illuminate the world of observation.⁵⁷
The philosopher Keith Yandell offers a representative account of
this explanatory or sense-making aspect of religion:⁵⁸
A religion is a conceptual system that provides an interpretation of the world
and the place of human beings in it, bases an account of how life should be
lived given that interpretation, and expresses this interpretation and lifestyle
in a set of rituals, institutions and practices.
Now it could easily be objected that such explanatory frameworks are
found beyond the category of religion—for example, in Marxism, or
the ‘universal Darwinism’ of Richard Dawkins.⁵⁹ Nevertheless, while

⁵⁴ Malcolm, Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View?, 24.

⁵⁵ For a good survey of approaches, see Dawes, Theism and Explanation.
⁵⁶ Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks. London: Oxford University Press,
1970, 147.
⁵⁷ Popper first seems to use this approach in his unpublished PhD thesis Zur
Methodenfrage der Denkpsychologie (1928). See ter Hark, ‘Searching for the Search-
light Theory’, 466. For a more popular application of this ‘searchlight’ approach, see
Pennock, Tower of Babel, 53–4.
⁵⁸ Yandell, Philosophy of Religion, 16.
⁵⁹ On this ‘universal Darwinism’, see Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain, 78–90.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 139

this explanatory capacity may not be a distinguishing feature of
religion, setting it apart from everything else, it can certainly be
argued to be characteristic of it.
It is the Christian vision of reality as a whole—rather than any of its
individual components—that proves imaginatively and rationally
compelling. Individual observations of nature do not ‘prove’ Chris-
tianity to be true; rather, Christianity validates itself by its ability to
make sense of those observations. As W. V. O. Quine argues in his
‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, what really matters is the ability of a
theory as a whole to make sense of the world. Our beliefs are linked in
an interconnected web that relates to sensory experience at its bound-
aries, not at its core.⁶⁰ The only valid test of a belief, Quine argued, is
thus whether our experience fits into an overall interconnected web of
beliefs.⁶¹
This is an important element of C. S. Lewis’s theistic account of
religious explanation, which is often summed up in his signature
statement from an Oxford lecture of 1945: ‘I believe in Christianity
as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but
because by it I see everything else.’⁶² For Lewis, belief in God is both
evidenced and evidencing. There are hints here of the self-evidencing
explanations noted by Carl Hempel, in which what is explained
constitutes an important element of our reasons for believing that
the explanation itself is correct.⁶³ This may be set alongside Wittgen-
stein’s observation that one and the same proposition or idea may at
one point be treated as something that is to be tested, and at another
as a rule of testing.⁶⁴
Peter Lipton provides an example of this circularity drawn from
modern cosmology, noting that the velocity of recession of a galaxy is
held to explain the red shift of its characteristic spectrum, even if the
observation of that shift is itself an essential part of the scientific

⁶⁰ Quine’s argument is weakened at this point by his ahistorical and purely logical
approach to the topic, which contrasts sharply with that of Pierre Duhem: see Pietsch,
‘Defending Underdetermination or Why the Historical Perspective Makes a
Difference’.
⁶¹ Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’.
⁶² Lewis, Essay Collection, 21.
⁶³ Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 370–4.
⁶⁴ Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 98.
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140 The Territories of Human Reason

evidence that the galaxy is indeed receding at that the specified
velocity.⁶⁵ Self-evidencing explanations thus exhibit a kind of circu-
larity, which can be set out as follows: A explains B while B justifies
A. There is nothing invalid or improper about this form of explana-
tory argument, which is widely encountered in scientific explanation.
Good explanations may be self-evidencing, even if this appears to
involve at least some degree of self-referential circularity. For Lewis,
Christian theology is to be seen as intellectually capacious, capable of
accommodating the complexities of observation and experience, and
is to be judged partly by that capacity.
A more theologically sophisticated account of this approach was
developed by the philosopher of religion Ian T. Ramsey in 1964. For
Ramsey, the best way of evaluating the correspondence between
theology and experience or observation was by trying to assess the
degree of ‘empirical fit’ between the theory and the empirical world.⁶⁶
The theological model works more like the fitting of a boot or a shoe than like
the “yes” or “no” of a roll call. In other words, we have a particular doctrine
which, like a preferred and selected shoe, starts by appearing to meet our
empirical needs. But on closer fitting to the phenomena the shoe may
pinch . . . The test of a shoe is measured by its ability to match a wide range
of phenomena, by its overall success in meeting a variety of needs. Here is
what I might call the method of empirical fit which is displayed by theo-
logical theorizing.

RELIGIOUS EXPLANATION: ONTIC AND EPISTEMIC

William Lycan, in reflecting on human judgement and justification,

insisted that ‘all justified reasoning is fundamentally explanatory
reasoning that aims at maximizing the “explanatory coherence” of
one’s total belief system’.⁶⁷ The question of how a belief system is
derived is seen as secondary; the critical question is its capacity to
make sense of things. Beliefs are to be judged ‘through the roles they

⁶⁵ Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, 24.

⁶⁶ Ramsey, Models and Mystery, 17. See further Tilley, ‘Ian Ramsey and Empirical Fit’.
⁶⁷ Lycan, Judgement and Justification, 128.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 141

play in a maximally coherent explanatory system and not because of
anything in particular to do with the mechanisms that produced
them’.⁶⁸ This statement needs to be set alongside a wider discussion
about a ‘logic of discovery’ and a ‘logic of justification’, noted earlier
(159–64).
Religious explanation can be set within this informing context,
while still bearing a clear family resemblance to other modes of
knowledge generation. Ernst Sosa offered an account of justification
of beliefs which, while having widespread applicability, is of particular
importance for theological rationality: ‘A belief is justified only if it
fits coherently within the epistemic perspective of the believer.’⁶⁹ For
Sosa, the justification of any of our beliefs always takes place within
an epistemic perspective.
Christianity gives rise to such epistemic perspectives—yet with
nested or embedded ontic elements. The theological frameworks set
out by Augustine of Hippo, Athanasius of Alexandria, Blaise Pascal,
and C. S. Lewis all—though in their different ways—set out a core
belief that a rational God created a coherent and rational (logikos)
universe, whose structures reflect the character of its creator, and are
capable of being grasped by the human mind, and their significance
appreciated and represented, if only dimly and partially. This frame-
work of belief incorporates both ontic and epistemic elements. In the
first place, it affirms that the being of the universe ultimately derives
from the being of God; in the second, it affirms that humanity, in
bearing the image of God, has a created capacity to engage, interpret,
and understand the universe.⁷⁰ More specifically, it affirms that the
Christian ‘belief system’ is capable of accommodating our observa-
tions and experiences within an intelligible and coherent greater
whole.⁷¹
This general theme is predominant in the thought of C. S. Lewis,
and is best seen in his ‘argument from desire,’ as set out in Mere

⁶⁸ Lycan, Judgement and Justification, 172–3.

⁶⁹ Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective, 145.
⁷⁰ See here especially Peters, The Logic of the Heart. For the relation of the ontic
and noetic dimensions of Barth’s doctrine of creation, see Gabriel, Barth’s Doctrine of
Creation, 15–16.
⁷¹ McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 41–68.
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142 The Territories of Human Reason

Christianity.⁷² As noted earlier (105), Lewis’s explanandum lies in the
domain of human experience: many long for something of ultimate
significance, only to find their hopes dashed and frustrated when they
attain it. ‘There was something we grasped at, in that first moment
of longing, which just fades away in the reality.’⁷³ So what does
this experience mean? What interpretative framework explains this
experience, and offers an indication of its origins and goal?
Lewis’s argument is often set out in the following way:
1. Every natural or innate desire in us corresponds to a real object
that can satisfy the desire.
2. There exists a desire within us that nothing created or finite can
satisfy.
3. There thus exists something beyond the realms of the created and
finite which can satisfy this desire.
A closer examination of Lewis’s argument, however, suggests that it
is actually framed using what Lewis himself termed ‘supposals’.
Suppose there is a God who created us to relate to him, as Christianity
affirms to be the case.⁷⁴ This provides an intellectual framework
which explains why only God is able to fulfil the deepest longings of
humanity, so that we will never be satisfied by anything that is created
or finite. Does not this framework fit in well with what we actually
experience of reality? And is not this resonance of supposal and
observation indicative of the truth of the supposal in the first place?
This is the style of thinking, bearing a strong resemblance to what
Peirce styles ‘abduction’, which leads to his conclusion that ‘if I find in
myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most
probable explanation is that I was made for another world’.⁷⁵ The
structure of Lewis’s argument can thus be set out as follows.

⁷² McGrath, ‘Arrows of Joy: Lewis’s Argument from Desire’.

⁷³ Lewis, Mere Christianity, 135.
⁷⁴ For this idea of a ‘supposal’, see Lewis’s letters to Mrs Hook, 29 December 1958;
The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper, 3 vols. San Francisco:
HarperOne, 2004–6, vol. 3, 1004–5; and to Sophia Storr, 24 December 1959; Letters,
vol. 3, 1113–14. ‘Supposing there was a world like Narnia, and supposing, like ours, it
needed redemption, let us imagine what sort of Incarnation and Redemption Christ
would have there’ (1113).
⁷⁵ Lewis, Mere Christianity, 136–7.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 143

1. We experience a ‘desire which no experience in this world can
satisfy’.
2. Suppose that the Christian way of thinking is right, and that this
desire is interpreted within its framework; these resonances or
harmonies with experience would then be expected.
3. Therefore there are additional grounds for holding that the belief
system of Christianity is true.
Lewis’s approach thus melds both ontic (‘this is the way things are’)
and epistemic (‘this enables us to understand things’) elements, hold-
ing them both to be true, while leaving open the question of which is to
be given priority or privilege. In practice, Lewis’s trajectory of thought
is from the ontic to the epistemic: in other words, the structure of the
world, when seen from a Christian perspective, leads to a certain way of
thinking about the world—or, to remain more faithful to Lewis’s own
way of speaking, a certain way of seeing reality. Lewis thus adopts what
comes close to a unificationist approach to explanation, while never-
theless grounding this in an ontic account of reality.
Other theologians would speak more explicitly about a distinct
‘Trinitarian logic’ of the Christian faith,⁷⁶ distinguishing this from
theistic or deistic alternatives, and seeing this as having potential
explanatory capacity exceeding those offered by philosophers of
religion, who tend to avoid discussion of Trinitarian conceptions of
God, or reflection on their potential to illuminate the world.⁷⁷

THEOLOGY, ONTOLOGY, AND EXPLANATION

Earlier, we noted epistemic approaches to explanation which seeks to

offer a unified account of scientific theories about the world. So do

⁷⁶ See, for example, Polkinghorne, ‘Physics and Metaphysics in a Trinitarian

Perspective’; Torrance, God and Rationality, 3–27; Lemeni, ‘The Rationality of the
World and Human Reason as Expressed in the Theology of Father Dumitru
Stăniloae’.
⁷⁷ For examples, see Dawes, Theism and Explanation; O’Connor, Theism and
Ultimate Explanation. O’Connor’s carefully constructed case for identifying a ‘neces-
sary being’ with a ‘transcendent, personal creator’ (Theism and Ultimate Explanation,
86–110, 130–42) establishes an affinity, but not an absolute identity, with a Christian
understanding of God.
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144 The Territories of Human Reason

these successful unifications simply relate to formalizations of nature,
or might they be seen as pointing to the ontological unity of nature, so
that a ‘successful phenomenological theory’ can be seen as evidence
for ‘an ontological interpretation of theoretical parameters’?⁷⁸ This
points to the fundamental source of explanatory power lying in
ontology—an understanding of the way things are, of the fundamental
order of things—and thus suggests that there is, as most scholars now
seem to accept, an irreducible ontic element in the process of explan-
ation. Pierre Duhem (1861–1916) thus argued that to explain some-
thing ‘is to strip reality of the appearances covering it like veils, in
order to see this naked reality face to face’.⁷⁹ It is by discovering the
‘big picture’ that its individual elements are able to be both known
and understood; explanation is about the location of an event or
observation within this deeper context.
Classical Christian theology develops such a vision of reality, which
it believes to have both explanatory capacity and virtue. It is not a
form of ‘onto-theology’, based on a priori first principles, but rather
emerges from wrestling with the foundational events of the Christian
faith. Nor is this explanatory capacity to be seen as the primary aspect
of religious faith, even though the ability to make sense of the world
and identify patterns of meaning is an important element of any
religious system, and serves an important psychological function.⁸⁰
The early Pauline letters of the New Testament, for example, focus on
the theme of salvation in Christ, which is affirmed as a universal
possibility, extending beyond the people of Israel. Yet even within the
New Testament, an emergent Trinitarianism can be discerned, both
as a framework that arises from the narrative of Jesus Christ and as a
framework which interprets this narrative.⁸¹ Trinitarianism is a good
example of the kind of self-evidencing explanations noted by Carl
Hempel, in which the quality of what is explained constitutes a
ground for believing that the explanation itself is correct (139–40).

⁷⁸ Morrison, Unifying Scientific Theories, 108.

⁷⁹ Duhem La théorie physique, 3–4. ‘Expliquer, explicare, c’est dépouiller la réalité
des apparences qui l’enveloppent comme des voiles, afin de voir cette réalité nue et
face à face.’
⁸⁰ Wolf, Meaning in Life; Wong, The Human Quest for Meaning.
⁸¹ For the development and contemporary interpretation of this doctrine, see
Woźniak and Maspero, eds, Rethinking Trinitarian Theology.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 145

Christians believe in the Trinity, partly because they believe it
arises naturally from the narratives and emerging doctrinal state-
ments of the New Testament, and partly because this framework
provides a lens which interprets their experiences and observations.
Such a framework, for example, can be argued to be presupposed in
Julian of Norwich’s attempt to make sense of her complex experi-
ences, allowing her to make the transition from what she saw to who
was showing it to her, and appreciating its implications.⁸² Such a
framework enables a response to the human experience of suffering
which safeguards the transcendence of God, while at the same time
allowing such suffering to be seen in a way that is both meaningful
and generative.⁸³ In each of these two examples, the doctrine of the
Trinity functions as a theoria, a way of beholding things, allowing us
to see our world in a new way, and also to understand our experience
in a new way.⁸⁴ It provides an informing perspective, an interpretative
framework, which enables us to discern how events and experiences
fit into broader patterns. It thus offers primarily, yet not exclusively,
an epistemic model of explanation, by throwing a conceptual net over
the complexities of experience, so that these may both be captured
and colligated. To understand something is to locate it within a web
of meaning.

A CASE STUDY: AQUINAS’S ‘SECOND WAY’

This basic approach is found in Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Five Ways’, often

misleadingly described as ‘proofs of God’s existence’. Traditionally,
many writers have sought to demonstrate the intrinsic rationality of
arguments for the existence of God. Although some take these to
prove God’s existence, these lines of argument are really affirmations
of the fundamental rationality of Christian belief.⁸⁵ Such arguments,

⁸² Watson, ‘The Trinitarian Hermeneutic in Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of

Divine Love’, 67–72.
⁸³ Coman, ‘Suffering in the Trinitarian Pattern of Redemption’.
⁸⁴ A theme developed at several points by the German theologian Eberhard Jüngel.
See especially Jüngel, Erfahrungen mit der Erfahrung.
⁸⁵ Davis, God, Reason and Theistic Proofs, 189–90.
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146 The Territories of Human Reason

whether ontic or epistemic, are generally deployed to show that
theists are rational in their belief in the existence of God, although
the strategies developed range across a range of options, including:
arguing that it is more rational to believe that God exists than it is to
deny that God exists; demonstrating that it is more rational to believe
that God exists than to be agnostic on the existence of God; or that it
is as rational to believe in God as it is to believe in many of the things
that atheist philosophers often believe in (such as the existence of
‘other minds’ or the objectivity of moral right and wrong). Aquinas’s
approach is of especial interest, on account of the explicit connection
he proposes between the existence of God and the human capacity to
make sense of our world.
For Aquinas, God can be considered to be an explanatory agent,
whose existence and nature provide a retrospective explanation of
various aspects of our experience of the world—such as the ordering
of the world, or our sense of goodness or beauty. In the 1948 debate
between Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston, Russell ruled out
there being any explanation of the universe. ‘The universe is just
there, and that’s all.’⁸⁶ Aquinas, however, takes the view that it is
reasonable to seek an explanation of why the world exists, and why it
has its distinct characteristics. The Universe is seen to require ‘an
explanation in terms of a relationship to something other than
itself ’—that is, God.⁸⁷ A similar point is made by Thomas Nagel,
who argues that the existence of our universe requires a larger
explanatory context than scientific laws, in that such a limited explan-
ation ‘would still have to refer to features of some larger reality that
contained or gave rise to it’.⁸⁸
Aquinas’s approach to explanation is generally causal, perhaps even
mechanical. Consider the structure of the second of the ‘Five Ways,’
the ratio causae efficientis, which can be set out in four stages.⁸⁹
1. We observe an order of efficient causes in the things we see around us.
2. Yet we do not observe, and cannot expect to observe, anything that
is the efficient cause of itself.

⁸⁶ Russell and Copleston, ‘Debate on the Existence of God’, 175.

⁸⁷ Martin, Thomas Aquinas, 118.
⁸⁸ Nagel, ‘Why Is There Anything?’, 28.
⁸⁹ Martin, Thomas Aquinas, 146–53.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 147

3. It is not possible that there should be an infinite series of efficient
causes.
4. Therefore we must suppose that there is some prime efficient cause
(prima causa efficiens), which is what everyone calls ‘God’.
My concern here is not to evaluate the reliability of this argu-
ment⁹⁰—which Aquinas clearly presents as a ratio for believing in
God—but to point out that Aquinas sees it as offering a causal
explanation of what is observed and experienced within the world.
Although Aquinas’s approach is ontic rather than epistemic, the
context within which it is set presupposes some form of conceptual
integration of both ontic and epistemic modes of explanation, even if
this is not developed at this point in the Summa Theologiae.
This approach has, of course, been developed by many modern
philosophers, who have argued for the existence of a transcendent
necessary being that is the ground for an ultimate explanation of why
particular contingent beings exist and undergo particular events.⁹¹
Theism in general (and Christianity in particular) are held to consider
it important ‘to articulate a theoretical framework that makes possible
ultimate explanation of reality’.⁹² The question of how such a tran-
scendent being relates to a specific notion of God—such as the ‘God of
the Christians’ (Tertullian)—requires further discussion. Some have
argued for developing a case for the existence of such a transcendent
being on the basis of its capacity to explain the existence and character
of the world, and then sought to correlate this with the Christian God;
others have developed approaches which seek to demonstrate the
explanatory capacity of the Christian understanding of God, seeing
such a capacity as an indicator of such a God’s existence. Yet this
specific approach to explanation also includes a critical element, in
that it poses the question of how a purely naturalist or materialist
interpretation of our world can account for the appearance, through
the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry, of conscious beings
such as ourselves, who prove to be capable of discovering those laws
and understanding the universe that they govern.⁹³

⁹⁰ For a critical assessment, see Kenny, The Five Ways, 34–45.

⁹¹ See especially O’Connor, Theism and Ultimate Explanation.
⁹² O’Connor, Theism and Ultimate Explanation, 65.
⁹³ This is a recurring theme in Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies.
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148 The Territories of Human Reason

THE IMAGE OF GOD AND RELIGIOUS

EXPLANATION

We need to note a theological motif which has played a significant

role in Christian reflection on the capacity of the human mind to
interpret the world. It has often been noted that many leading
scientists of the Renaissance saw theology as offering an imaginative
template that enabled them to make sense of the world.⁹⁴ Yet many
theologians regarded the notion of humanity bearing the ‘image of
God’ as having important epistemic outcomes, including a propensity
or capacity to discern God within creation. The idea of the ‘image of
God’ is biblical;⁹⁵ yet the notion was developed in significant manners
within the Christian theological tradition,⁹⁶ which often conceived it
as a rational or imaginative template which enabled or facilitated the
discernment of a theistic explanation of the world. In Harmonices
Mundi, the theologically informed astronomer Johann Kepler argued
that the fact of humanity’s bearing the imago Dei predisposed
humans to think mathematically, and thus grasp the structure of
the created order:⁹⁷
In that geometry is part of the divine mind from the origins of time, even
from before the origins of time (for what is there in God that is not also from
God?), it has provided God with the patterns for the creation of the world,
and has been transferred to humanity with the image of God.
The ‘image of God’ is seen here not as an explanation in itself, but
rather as a rational or imaginative template that facilitates such
explanation in the first place. A similar view was taken by William
Whewell, whose inductive scientific method reflects his belief that the
‘Fundamental Ideas’ which we use to organize our sciences resemble
the ideas used by God in the creation of the physical universe. God

⁹⁴ See, for example, Hon, ‘Kepler’s Revolutionary Astronomy’.

⁹⁵ Middleton, The Liberating Image, 15–90.
⁹⁶ Waap, Gottebenbildlichkeit und Identität; Robinson, Understanding the ‘Imago
Dei’. For more recent interpretations, see Burdett, ‘The Image of God and Human
Uniqueness’.
⁹⁷ Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 6, 233.
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has created our minds such that they contain these ideas (or their
‘germs’), so that ‘they can and must agree with the world’.⁹⁸
One of the most creative interpretations of the imago Dei was
developed by Dorothy L. Sayers, who was convinced that Christianity
gave her a tool by which she might ‘make sense of the universe’,
disclosing hidden patterns and allowing meaning to be discerned
within its otherwise opaque mysteries. Where The Nine Tailors
(1934) addressed the ‘mystery of the universe’, Gaudy Night (1935)
engaged the ‘mystery of the human heart’.⁹⁹ Sayers’s partly autobio-
graphical work, Cat O’Mary, makes reference to this quest for
meaning, and the intellectual pleasure it brought to its central char-
acter, Katherine. ‘When Katherine sat down to prepare a passage of
Molière, she experienced the actual physical satisfaction of plaiting
and weaving together innumerable threads to make a pattern, a
tapestry, a created beauty.’¹⁰⁰
Sayers came to believe that such patterns were not human inven-
tions, but represented an embedded pattern of the creative human
mind,¹⁰¹ itself echoing the deeper patterns of divine rationality. In
The Mind of the Maker (1934), Sayers offered what is essentially an
outworking of her own distinct notion of the ‘image of God’ in
humanity as a kind of imaginative template, which predisposes
human beings to think and imagine in certain ways.¹⁰² The ‘same
pattern of the creative mind’ is evident in both theology and art, and
points to a deeper inbuilt imaginative template, which enables and
encourages human beings to discern patterns in the deepest aspects of
life. Sayers was inclined to think that the patterns of human creative
processes ‘correspond to the actual structure of the living universe’, so
that the ‘pattern of the creative mind’ is to be seen as an ‘eternal Idea’
rooted in the being of God.¹⁰³

⁹⁸ Whewell, On the Philosophy of Discovery, 359.

⁹⁹ Kenney, The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, 53–119.
¹⁰⁰ Sayers, Child and Woman of Her Time, 97.
¹⁰¹ Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, 171–3.
¹⁰² Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, 15–24.
¹⁰³ Sayers, The Mind of the Maker, 172–3.
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150 The Territories of Human Reason

UNDERSTANDING AND EXPLAINING:

A RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE

Earlier in this work (126–7), we briefly noted the complex (and

contested) distinction between Verstehen and Erklären, broadly
marking the boundaries of the social and natural sciences. So how
does religious explanation fit into this dichotomy? It seems clear that
most religious writers operate with a dual model of explanation,
incorporating both these elements, affirming the importance of
understanding and informing the complex world of lived experience
from the point of view of those who actually inhabit it.
A Christian ‘theory’—or, perhaps better, a Christian imaginar-
ium¹⁰⁴—thus aims to describe, explain, and enhance our understand-
ing of the world, with a view to enabling and informing principled
action within it. From what has already been said, such a theory has
both ontic and epistemic elements; it also has existential outcomes,
which are probably best framed in terms of the affirmation of
meaning.
H. Richard Niebuhr’s 1941 essay ‘The Story of Our Lives’ argued
that Christians should focus on the capacity of the ‘irreplaceable and
untranslatable’ narrative of faith to generate meaning.¹⁰⁵ This story
was not an argument for the existence of God, but a simple recital of
the events surrounding Jesus Christ, and an invitation to become part
of that story. How participants understand being part of such a shared
history is not framed in terms of a detached scientific explanation of
life, but rather about a subjective, committed, and engaged attitude to
existence, resting on a set of implicit assumptions that need to be
unpacked and given systematic formulation. Niebuhr’s essay saw a
new interest emerge in the capacity of the Christian story to generate
moral values and frameworks of meaning, which expanded (rather
than marginalized) its ontic and epistemic dimensions.
The philosopher Iris Murdoch is one of many writers to emphasize
the ‘calming’ and ‘whole-making’ effect of ways of looking at the

¹⁰⁴ For this term, see McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 41–7.

¹⁰⁵ Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation, 23–46.
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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 151

world that, by generating a comprehensive vision of the world, allow
it to be seen as ultimately rational and meaningful.¹⁰⁶ Christian
theologians have, since the earliest times, argued that such seeming
irrationalities as the presence of suffering in the world do not con-
stitute a challenge to the notions of meaning and purpose that
are embedded within the Christian faith. Augustine of Hippo, for
example, set out an approach to the presence of evil within the world
which affirmed the original integrity, goodness, and rationality of the
world. Evil and suffering arose from a misuse of freedom, the effects
of which are being remedied and transformed through redemption.
Augustine argues that the believer is enabled to make sense of the
enigmas of suffering and evil in the world by recalling its original
goodness, and looking forward to its final renewal and restoration
in heaven.
Yet the default position of contemporary Western culture tends to
echo the view of the physicist Steven Weinberg, that the natural
sciences disclose a meaningless universe. Scientific explanation entails
the denial or evacuation of meaning. ‘The more the universe seems
comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.’¹⁰⁷ Nothing seems to
fits together. There is no big picture. So do new scientific ideas destroy
any idea of a meaningful reality? The English poet John Donne
expressed similar anxieties in the early seventeenth century, as new
scientific discoveries seemed to erode any sense of connectedness and
continuity within the world.
The New Testament, however, speaks of all things ‘holding
together’ or being ‘knit together’ in Christ (Colossians 1:17), thus
suggesting that a hidden coherence lies beneath the external semb-
lances of our world.¹⁰⁸ Christianity provides a framework which
allows an affirmation of the coherence of reality. However fragmented
our world of experience may appear, there is a half-glimpsed ‘bigger
picture’ which holds things together, its threads connecting together
in a web of meaning what might otherwise seem incoherent and
pointless. This is a major theme in one of the finest Christian literary
classics—Dante’s Divine Comedy. As this great Renaissance poem

¹⁰⁶ Murdoch, Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, 7.

¹⁰⁷ Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, 154.
¹⁰⁸ Tanzella-Nitti, ‘La dimensione cristologica dell’intelligibilità del reale’.
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152 The Territories of Human Reason

draws to its close, Dante catches a glimpse of the unity of the cosmos,
in which its aspects and levels are seen to converge into a single
whole. This insight, of course, is tantalizingly denied to him from
his perspective on earth; yet once grasped, this perspective enables
him to see his work in a new light. There is a hidden web of meaning
and connectedness behind the ephemeral and seemingly incoherent
world that we experience.
This way of seeing things engages what is perhaps the greatest
threat to any perception of meaningfulness in life or in our world—its
seeming disorder and incoherence. Yet there is a deeper issue here. As
we noted earlier in this work, John Dewey argued that the ‘deepest
problem of modern life’ was our collective and individual failure to
integrate our ‘thoughts about the world’ with our thoughts about
‘value and purpose’.¹⁰⁹ If there is not an outright incoherence here,
there is at least a disconnection between the realm of understanding
the cognitive issue of how we and our world function, and the deeper
existential question of what we and our world mean. Christianity
offers a ‘big picture’ of reality which values and respects the natural
sciences, while insisting that there is more that needs to be said about
deeper questions of value and meaning. For Karl Popper, such ‘ultim-
ate questions’ lay beyond the scope of the scientific method, yet were
clearly seen as important by many human beings.
Perhaps the greatest threat to any sense of the coherence of reality
is posed by the existence of pain and suffering. Christianity provides
a series of possible mental maps which position illness and suffering
in such a manner as to allow them to be seen as coherent, meaning-
ful, and potentially positive, allowing them to foster personal growth
and development. Some of these maps—such as those offered by
Augustine of Hippo, Ignatius Loyola, and Edith Stein—portray illness
as something that is not part of God’s intention for humanity, but
which can nevertheless be used as means of growth; other maps, such
as that developed by Martin Luther, tend to hold suffering as some-
thing which God permits, with the objective of stripping away illu-
sions of immortality and confronting human beings with the harsh
reality of their frailty and transience.

¹⁰⁹ Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, 255.

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Rational Explanation in Science and Religion 153

Such Christian frameworks of meaning encourage a positive
expectation on the part of believers that something may be learned
and gained through illness and suffering. They make available new
ways of thinking about life, and catalyse the emergence of more
mature judgements and attitudes. Although this consideration has
clear implications for Christian attitudes to illness and their out-
comes, it is increasingly being recognized as being of significance in
coping with ageing—an increasingly important phenomenon in
Western culture.
For many of its leading theologians, Christianity is concerned with
the meaningful inhabitation of our world, and offers a developed and
nuanced understanding of what that meaning might be and how it
plays out in real life. As we have argued in this closing section, it holds
together ontic, epistemic, and existential aspects of the human quest
to make sense of our world. To make sense of our world is not an end
in itself, but the starting point for its meaningful inhabitation.
So what forms of reasoning allow us to make sense of our world? In
the next chapter, we shall consider the scientific and theological
application of deductive, inductive, and abductive modes of analysis.
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6
From Observation to Theory
Deduction, Induction, and Abduction

The greatest stimulus to the exploration of the rationality of the

universe is a sense of wonder at its immensity, beauty, strangeness,
and solemnity.¹ Yet that sense of wonder proves generative, creating a
desire to understand our beautiful and mysterious universe, and our
own place within it. It precipitates a process of reflection, grounded in
what we observe, stimulated by our sense of wonder, and directed
towards grasping at least something of the greater vision of reality
that lies behind what we can observe. There is a rich tradition of
engagement with such questions within the Christian theological
tradition, especially during the Middle Ages.² The beauty and order-
ing of nature were seen as outcomes of their divine creation, and
reflecting the greater beauty and wisdom of God.³ Indeed, many
argue that this tradition of reflection did much to lay the ground
for a religiously motivated emergence of the natural sciences in
western Europe—for example, through the formulation of a natural
theology which gradually transitioned into a natural philosophy.
So what rational strategies underlie a transition from the observa-
tion of our world to the identification and development of its

¹ Hesse, ‘Mit dem Erstaunen fängt es an’, 7–10; Falardeau, ‘Le sens du merveilleux’;
Evans, Why Believe?, 32.
² See, for example, Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Creation; Hannam, God’s
Philosophers.
³ McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 41–99.
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From Observation to Theory 155

patterns, and their potential implications?⁴ The enterprise once
known as ‘natural philosophy’⁵—which has now been displaced by
the somewhat different notion of ‘natural science’—placed consider-
able emphasis on the discernment of intelligibility within nature, and
the epistemic virtue of being able to identify the deeper structures
which lay behind events and entities in the natural world:⁶
The hallmark of natural philosophy is its stress on intelligibility: it takes
natural phenomena and tries to account for them in ways that not only hold
together logically, but also rest on ideas and assumptions that seem right,
that make sense; ideas that seem natural.
So how is this process of interpretation of our world to be carried out?
One possibility is to use human reason to tell us—in effect to
determine—what kind of world we inhabit. The natural sciences are
to be seen as a principled rebuttal of such a procedure. Far from
laying down in advance what the world ought to be like (on the basis
of some presupposed philosophical or theological system), the natural
sciences seek to discover what it is like by empirical investigation
and rational reflection upon observations. The physical world is too
complex to allow its structures, forms, or purposes to be predeter-
mined by human reason—unless, of course, there is some compelling
a priori reason for believing that the human mind can determine the
structure of our world independently of any encounter or engage-
ment with that world. No such compelling reasons have yet been
adduced. The natural scientist—especially one who has struggled with
quantum theory—is unlikely to ask ‘Is it reasonable to believe this?’ as
if the human mind could determine beforehand the rational character
of our world. The proper question is this: ‘What evidence might lead
me to believe this?’

⁴ In practice, psychological research indicates that science does not use new or
hitherto neglected modes of reasoning in exploring nature; it simply applies everyday
modes of thinking in more precise ways to a specific set of observations. For further
discussion, see Dunbar and Klahr, ‘Scientific Thinking and Reasoning’; Dunbar, ‘How
Scientists Really Reason’; Feist, The Psychology of Science and the Origins of the
Scientific Mind, 186–217.
⁵ For the transition from ‘natural philosophy’ to ‘natural science’ in the nineteenth
century, see Cahan, From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences.
⁶ Dear, The Intelligibility of Nature, 173.
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156 The Territories of Human Reason

These considerations lay behind Karl Popper’s emphatic declaration
that truth is above human authority.⁷ Popper was critical of the idea
that we should justify our knowledge by ‘positive reasons’—that is, by
‘reasons capable of establishing them’, which were deemed to be secure,
and hence did not themselves require demonstration. Truth cannot be
established by decree; only by investigation. Popper argued that recog-
nizing that truth is above human authority was essential to good
philosophy and good science. ‘Without this idea there can be no
objective standards of inquiry; no criticism of our conjectures; no
groping for the unknown; no quest for knowledge.’⁸ Popper’s criticism
of self-evident or foundational ideas mandates an empirical engage-
ment with the natural world, demanding a rational engagement with
observation, in order to develop theories. Yet neither reason nor
observation are ‘authorities’; they are tools to help us in the task of
interpreting and understanding our world.⁹ ‘All theories are, and
remain hypotheses: they are conjecture (doxa) as opposed to indubit-
able knowledge (episteme).’¹⁰
Popper’s concerns need to be taken seriously, as we reflect on the
process of moving from observation of our world to the development
and evaluation of theories about that world. There is widespread
concern within the scientific community that the way in which
science is taught to teenagers in high schools tends to entail present-
ing science chiefly as episteme rather than doxa, as a body of reliable
and stable information—thus failing to explain the corrigibility and
provisionality of scientific theories, and the complexity of the journey
from observation to theory.¹¹
Science is often taught more as dogma—a set of unequivocal, uncontested
and unquestioned facts—more akin to the way people are indoctrinated into
a faith than into a critical, questioning community.
Both the manner in which observations are acquired and the way they
are interpreted need critical examination. In this chapter, we shall

⁷ Popper, ‘Truth without Authority’, 56–7.

⁸ Popper, ‘Truth without Authority’, 57.
⁹ Popper, ‘Truth without Authority’, 55.
¹⁰ Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 103–4.
¹¹ Osborne, ‘Teaching Critical Thinking?’, 54. See also Osborne, Simon, and Collins,
‘Attitudes towards Science’.
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From Observation to Theory 157

reflect on the rational basis of theory development, and the character
and reliability of the styles of reasoning that lie behind the formula-
tion of theories.
Where Aristotle merely encouraged his readers to accumulate obser-
vations about the natural world, nineteenth-century empirical philo-
sophers such as William Whewell pointed to the need to interpret and
integrate them, thus discerning what patterns or greater picture
might be intimated by those observations. In the early seventeenth
century, Francis Bacon suggested that empirical philosophers—the
word ‘scientist’ was not widely used until the late 1830s—are like ants,
in that they simply accumulate observations. Rationalists, Bacon sug-
gested, resemble ‘spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own sub-
stance’. Yet for Bacon the true natural philosopher is like a bee, which
‘gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but
transforms and digests it by a power of its own’.¹² For Bacon, observa-
tions had to be transformed and digested within the human mind.
A process of analysis and synthesis underlay the transition from empir-
ical observation to theoretical interpretation. Observation and theory
were connected; they were nevertheless distinct.
In this chapter, we shall consider the process of theory devel-
opment in the natural sciences and Christian theology, focussing
especially on the rational criteria which guided and governed it. We
begin by considering the way in which theories and observation
are entangled.

THE ENTANGLEMENT OF THEORY

AND OBSERVATION

It is widely agreed that there is ‘intimate and inevitable entanglement’

between observation and theory,¹³ in that what is observed is modu-
lated by both the human observer, and the theoretical link between
an observed value and its interpreted significance. This point is

¹² Bacon, The New Organon, 79.

¹³ Kuhn, ‘Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?’, 267.
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158 The Territories of Human Reason

important for two reasons: first, in assessing the difficulties inherent
in attempting to represent our complex universe through the redu-
cing lenses of scientific theories or models; and second, in reminding
us how our observation of the universe is shaped by those theoretical
lenses in the first place. The New Atheist philosopher A. C. Grayling
argued that theological reasoning was unacceptable to a rational
person, because it was undertaken within ‘the premises and param-
eters’ of a system.¹⁴ Yet this overlooks the obvious fact that most
human thinking—particularly scientific discourse—is elaborated
within ‘the premises and parameters’ of some system or other,
including mathematics and logic. Observation and interpretation
intertwine in an inescapable circularity.
For example, the current estimate of the age of the universe is
roughly 13.8 billion years. But how do we know this, in the absence of
any continuous chronological monitoring of this history? After all, in
1919, the universe was thought to be of indefinite or infinite age; in
1929, based on an early determination of Hubble’s constant, it was
believed to be two billion years old. Current estimates of the age of the
universe are based on observations that are interpreted within ‘the
premises and parameters’ of the Lambda-CDM model.¹⁵ The obser-
vations themselves tell us nothing about the age of the universe.
Science does not read off the age of the universe directly; rather, it
interprets certain observations within the framework of the Lambda-
CDM (or ‘concordance’) model to derive the age of the universe. The
speeds and distances of those galaxies are also not observed directly,
but are inferred on the basis of ‘the premises and parameters’ of
additional physical theories—such as the correlation between velocity
and the Doppler red shift.¹⁶ Yet the instrumental observation of
certain parameters presupposes some (provisional and corrigible)
theoretical correlation between an observed parameter and a second
parameter which is inaccessible to observation.¹⁷

¹⁴ Grayling, The God Argument, 66.

¹⁵ This model incorporates certain important assumptions, most notably that the
universe is homogenous and isotropic. For the problems that this raises, see Merritt,
‘Cosmology and Convention’.
¹⁶ Harrison, ‘The Redshift-Distance and Velocity-Distance Laws’.
¹⁷ For the philosophical issues this raises, see van Fraassen, Scientific Representa-
tion, 93–111.
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From Observation to Theory 159

Furthermore, the Lambda-CDM model faces conceptual difficulties,
most notably a long-standing concern about significant anomalies,
such as the following:¹⁸ the ‘Lithium Problem’, the ‘Core–Cusp Prob-
lem’, the ‘Missing Satellites Problem’, the ‘Missing Baryons Problem’,
and the ‘Too Big to Fail Problem’. Although these are generally pre-
sented as problems that remain to be solved from within the existing
Lambda-CDM model, it is possible to argue that they really ought to be
regarded as falsifications of the model.¹⁹
This entanglement of theory and observation has potentially sig-
nificant implications for the generation and testing of theories. If
observation is ‘theory-laden’, how can we speak of ‘observationally
equivalent theories’?²⁰ If scientific observations depend on presumed
theoretical frameworks, an objective empirical test of theories and
hypotheses by independent observation and experience would seem
to be impossible owing to the implicit circularity of any possible
empirical assessment of the theory. In practice, once this difficulty
is realized, and its negative implications for a naïve scientific positiv-
ism are appreciated, strategies can be developed to deal with it.²¹

LOGICS OF DISCOVERY AND JUSTIFICATION

In an influential essay of 1973, Mary Hesse suggested that natural

science was to be thought of as essentially a learning device consisting
of a receptor, a theorizer, and a predictor.²² Empirical information is
received from the environment, and stimulates a process of analysis
and synthesis, leading to the generation of theories, and subsequently
to evaluating such theories through considering how its account of
reality correlates with experience. The second two elements of Hesse’s
analogy correspond to the processes generally described as the logics
of discovery and justification.

¹⁸ Merritt, ‘Cosmology and Convention’, 42.

¹⁹ See the careful argument presented in Kroupa, ‘The Dark Matter Crisis’.
²⁰ Adam, Theoriebeladenheit und Objektivität, 25–50.
²¹ See, for example, the constructive proposals set out in Buzzoni, ‘Erkennt-
nistheoretische und ontologische Probleme der theoretischen Begriffe’.
²² Hesse, ‘Models of Theory Change’.
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160 The Territories of Human Reason

The natural sciences represent a complex intellectual enterprise
that essentially consists of two interdependent episodes: the first,
developing a hypothesis, is essentially imaginative or creative; the
second, in which such a hypothesis is interrogated, is fundamentally
critical. To advance a hypothesis is a creative exercise. However, such
scientific hypotheses or theories must also be subject to critical
examination and empirical testing.
A ‘theory’ can be understood as an imaginative conjecture of what
might be true that provides the intellectual incentive to investigate
whether this might indeed be the case. Karl Popper’s brief account of
the nature of theory serves as an excellent starting point for our
discussion.²³
Scientific theories are universal statements. Like all linguistic representations
they are systems of signs or symbols . . . Theories are nets cast to catch what
we call “the world”; to rationalize, to explain and to master it. We endeavor
to make the mesh ever finer and finer.
Popper’s approach is, of course, open to further development—for
example, we should be noting how theory can used as a ‘sensitizing
device’ to view and inhabit the world in a certain way, thus leading to
a cultivation of attentiveness towards it.²⁴ Yet for the purposes of this
chapter, Popper’s definition is perfectly serviceable. It allows us to ask
this question: what intellectual processes and conventions lead from
an observation of the world to the acceptance of such ‘universal
statements’? In this chapter, we shall consider the three types of
reasoning—deductive, inductive, and abductive—which might be
involved in this process, and indicate their respective strengths and
weaknesses, both in the natural sciences and their counterparts in
theology.
We must, however, first give some thought to the process by which
possible theoretical models might be developed. The great French
biologist Claude Bernard (1813–78) identified the two stages of
the scientific method as the formulation of a testable hypothesis and
the subsequent testing of such a hypothesis by observation and

²³ Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 37–8.

²⁴ Klein and Myers, ‘A Set of Principles for Conducting and Evaluating Interpretive
Field Studies in Information Systems’, 75.
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From Observation to Theory 161

experiment. Bernard was clear that such scientific theories remained
partial and provisional. Theories, he declared, were ‘only partial and
provisional truths’ which represent nothing more than ‘the current
state of our understanding and are bound to be modified by the
growth of science’.²⁵
A historical example nicely illustrates the questions that need to be
raised. The structure of benzene (C6H6) puzzled nineteenth-century
chemists. How could its highly polyunsaturated structure be repre-
sented theoretically? In 1865, August Kekulé set out the radical new
idea that benzene possessed a cyclical structure. Kekulé did not
explain the ‘logic of discovery’ lying behind this idea at that time,
although his subsequent work provided an extensive ‘logic of justifi-
cation’ for the ring structure of benzene. It was only in 1890, at a
celebration marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of this suggestion—
by then widely accepted—that Kekulé explained how this idea came
to him.²⁶ While drowsing in front of his fire, he had a vision of a
snake chasing its own tail, which suggested an annular structure.
While the origins of this idea might indeed be somewhat speculative,
even mystical, the fact remains that, when such a structure was
proposed for benzene and was checked out against the evidence, it
seemed to account for it satisfactorily. The manner of its derivation
might be opaque; the manner of its verification was, however, clear—
and ultimately persuasive.
Many have found Kekulé’s dream helpful in trying to understand
the process by which new ways of understanding our world or
envisaging reality arise.²⁷ Kekulé’s new way of envisaging the molecu-
lar structure of benzene was unquestionably grounded in a deep
knowledge of its chemical properties; yet what crystallized and inte-
grated that knowledge was an act of imaginative discernment, rather
than rational dissection. Considerations such as this have led some to
conclude that it is not possible to prescribe a single logical method or
research practice that produces new ideas, or to reconstruct logically

²⁵ Bernard, Introduction à l’étude de la médecine expérimentale, 64–80.

²⁶ Kekulé, ‘Benzolfest Rede’. ‘Eine der Schlangen erfasste den eigenen Schwanz und
höhnisch wirbelte das Gebilde vor meinen Augen.’
²⁷ See, for example, Fischer, Wie der Mensch seine Welt neu erschaffen hat, 190–2.
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162 The Territories of Human Reason

the process of discovery.²⁸ The importance of the imagination in
scientific discovery has long been recognized, despite attempts to
marginalize or suppress this in the interests of a rationalist agenda.²⁹
‘The act of discovery escapes logical analysis; there are no logical rules
in terms of which a “discovery machine” could be constructed that
would take over the creative function of the genius.’³⁰ This suggests
that the process of articulating and developing new theories is best
seen, not as a philosophical, but as a psychological question.
However, such imaginative leaps and correlations represent only
one of several approaches to the development of theories, and they
must not be considered either typical or normative. Indeed, despite
the obvious examples of scientific discovery that are clearly acci-
dental or owe their origins to an act of imagination, some philo-
sophers of science would still argue that hypothesis generation and
theory construction are fundamentally and characteristically rational
processes.³¹
Once a theory is proposed, it needs to be evaluated. At this point, a
‘logic of justification’ enters the picture, in that the proposed new
theory can be subjected to a number of tests, such as its internal
coherence, its capacity to represent observations, and its ability to
make novel predictions or generate research programmes. Some see
this process as a rule-based process, where others see the process of
justification as implicitly requiring elements of discovery. For
example, in order to justify a theory, it is necessary to ‘discover’ an
appropriate test or set of criteria adapted to this new theory.³²
There has been much discussion about the criteria that might be
used to justify a theory. Irritated by what he regarded as the excessive
plasticity of Freudianism and Marxism, Karl Popper proposed falsi-
fiability as a criterion of demarcation between the empirical sciences
and other forms of knowledge.³³ Popper’s argument that scientific
hypotheses should be falsifiable rather than simply verifiable posits an

²⁸ Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 7–8.

²⁹ See especially the classic account of Beveridge, The Art of Scientific Investigation,
53–63.
³⁰ Reichenbach, The Rise of Scientific Philosophy, 231.
³¹ See, for example, Nersessian, ‘How Do Scientists Think?’
³² As argued by Nickles, ‘Discovery’.
³³ Díez, ‘Falsificationism and the Structure of Theories’.
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From Observation to Theory 163

asymmetry between the falsifiability and the verifiability of universal
statements: a universal statement can be falsified if it is found to be
inconsistent with a single observation; such a statement cannot,
however, be proven to be true by virtue of the truth of an array of
particular observations, no matter how numerous these may be.
Yet falsifiability is perhaps a blunt tool; as Pierre Duhem pointed
out, a physicist simply is not in a position to submit any given isolated
hypothesis to experimental test, in that the experiment can only
indicate that one hypothesis within a larger group of hypotheses
requires revision—but not which specific element of this ensemble
of hypotheses is at fault. ‘An experiment in physics can never con-
demn an isolated hypothesis but only a whole theoretical group (un
ensemble théoretique).’³⁴ Quine’s reformulation of Duhem’s argu-
ment makes the same point succinctly: ‘our statements about the
external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually,
but only as a corporate body’.³⁵
A historical example which illustrates the difficulties associated
with falsification is provided by the observed orbital perturbations
of the planet Uranus. The observed motion of Uranus, discovered in
March 1781 (although observed earlier, and mistaken for a star), was
not what was predicted on the basis of Newtonian mechanics. Popper
thus concluded that this was a prima facie case of the falsification
of Newton’s gravitational theory.³⁶ Others at the time, however,
held that a possible explanation lay in challenging the uninterrogated
assumption that no planets lay beyond Uranus, and that its observed
orbital perturbation might reflect the gravitational influence of a
trans-Uranic planet. This possibility was championed by Alexis
Bouvard (1767–1843); calculations of mathematicians in England
and France led to the discovery of the trans-Uranic planet Neptune
in 1846. Once more, the planet had been observed earlier, but had
again been mistaken for a fixed star. For Popper, the hypothesis of a
trans-Uranic planet represented an evasion of the falsification of
Newton’s theory of gravitation; for others, of course, it represented

³⁴ Duhem, La théorie physique, 284.

³⁵ Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, 41.
³⁶ For an excellent analysis, see Bamford, ‘Popper and His Commentators on the
Discovery of Neptune’.
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164 The Territories of Human Reason

an attempt to find what aspect of Newton’s theory needed revision,
rather than its wholesale rejection. This second view has prevailed as a
more reliable account of scientific practice.
The relation of the processes of discovery and justification is agreed
to be complex,³⁷ especially when the contexts of both discovery and
justification are taken into account. Yet although it is clearly helpful
to distinguish them, they cannot entirely be separated. In essence, a
distinction is drawn between the processes of conceiving a theory and
validating that theory—in other words, establishing its epistemic
support.
Natural scientists use a variety of reasoning processes in developing
and validating theories. Three of these may be singled out for special
consideration: deductive, inductive, and abductive patterns of reason-
ing. Charles Peirce suggested that their relationship in the logic of
scientific discovery might be conceived in the following way: discov-
ery begins with abduction, in which some hypothesis is formulated to
explain some problem; next comes deduction, in which this hypoth-
esis is rendered precise and predictions are deduced; and finally
induction, in which the hypothesis is tested by experience.³⁸ Yet
although these three processes of thought are typical of the sciences,
they are only distinctively scientific in relation to their objects of
investigation, and are regularly used in other contexts. We shall
consider each in what follows.

DEDUCTION IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES

The natural sciences deal with an accumulation of observations,

leading to reflection on what patterns of correlation or association
might be identified, and hence how they might be explained—an issue
which we considered in some detail in the previous chapter.
This suggests that the most natural reasoning processes that are

³⁷ See especially Schickore and Steinle, eds, Revisiting Discovery and Justification;
Hoyningen-Huene, ‘Context of Discovery and Context of Justification’.
³⁸ Rodrigues, ‘The Method of Scientific Discovery in Peirce’s Philosophy’.
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From Observation to Theory 165

appropriate to the natural sciences are inductive and abductive, rather
than the forms of deductive argument that are based on general
principles.
Furthermore, the syllogistic structure of deductive reasoning
entails the risk of at least one of its premises, once thought to be
self-evidently true, being shown to be corrigible and provisional,
subject to correction or even repudiation through more sophisticated
methods of investigation or a general increase in the available evi-
dence. A trivial familiar example illustrates this point:
Premise 1: All swans are white.
Premise 2: I observe a swan.
Conclusion: The swan I observe is white.
The deductive force of this might have seemed self-evident to
Europeans in the seventeenth century. However, reports of the
discovery of black swans in Western Australia in 1697 by Dutch
explorers led by Willem de Vlamingh called into question the empir-
ical basis of the first of the premises,³⁹ and the reliability of the
conclusion. The swan in question was probably white, on statistical
grounds; it was not, as once might have been thought, necessarily
white. The problem, as Hume pointed out, is that no finite number of
empirical observations can be held to entail an absolute or secure
generalization.⁴⁰
Yet while there is some truth in this general observation, it is
important to note that deductive forms of reasoning play a critical
role in the Deductive-Nomological approach to scientific explanation
(136). This approach, which was highly influential in the 1950s and
1960s,⁴¹ is especially associated with Carl G. Hempel (1905–97). For
Hempel, empirical phenomena could be explained by demonstrating
that they fit into a ‘nomic nexus of observed regularities’.⁴² For
Hempel, scientific explanation ‘aims at showing that the event in

³⁹ Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery, 82–3. A similar point was made by John
Stuart Mill in his System of Logic (1843).
⁴⁰ Boulter, The Rediscovery of Common Sense Philosophy, 77.
⁴¹ For comment on its influence, see Salmon, Four Decades of Scientific Explan-
ation, 3–89.
⁴² Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 488.
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166 The Territories of Human Reason

question was not a “matter of chance”, but was to be expected in view
of certain antecedent or simultaneous conditions’.⁴³
For Hempel, the role of laws in deductive-nomological explanation
is to connect the explanandum with the particular explanans. Not all
explanations are causal; the key point is to establish a ‘nomic nexus’
which explains what is observed. An explanation is thus essentially a
deductive derivation of the occurrence of the event to be explained
from a set of true propositions, which include at least one statement
of a general scientific law. Such an explanation ‘shows that, given the
particular circumstances and the laws in question, the occurrence of
the phenomenon was to be expected; and it is in this sense that the
explanation enables us to understand why the phenomenon
occurred’.⁴⁴
There are, of course, some concerns about this approach. Consider,
for example, Hempel’s contrasting of two statements:⁴⁵
1. All members of the Greensbury School Board for 1964 are bald.
2. All gases expand when heated under constant pressure.
Hempel argues that if the first such statement is true, it is so
accidentally, and cannot be used as the basis of a deductive argument.
The second of these generalizations, however, has the status of a
natural law, and thus has explanatory capacity. The explanans can
account for the explanandum in the second case, but not the first. Yet
what if it were unexpectedly shown that there were exceptions to the
apparent generality that gases expand when heated under constant
pressure? It is, of course, improbable; yet the history of the natural
sciences is replete with once seemingly secure generalizations which
were subsequently shown to have exceptions (such as black swans)—
exceptions which often served as gateways to a deeper understanding
of the phenomena in question.
Hempel’s approach is now generally seen as of historical interest,
representing an early phase in scientific explanation which has given
way to more reliable alternatives which place greater emphasis on

⁴³ Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 235.

⁴⁴ Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 337.
⁴⁵ Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 339.
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From Observation to Theory 167

causal approaches to explanation.⁴⁶ The question is whether the
explanans which Hempel sees as providing a deductive basis for
explanation is actually the outcome of an incomplete inductive
sequence, which is necessarily open to correction and supplementa-
tion over time, as a result of the accumulation of observations.
Inductive reasoning fails to arrive at universal truths, which can
become the basis of secure processes of deduction. No matter how
many singular statements may be accumulated, no universal state-
ment can be logically justified on the basis of such an accumulation of
observations. Even if all swans hitherto observed are white, it remains
a logical possibility that the next swan will not be white.
Yet the importance of deductive reasoning within the natural
sciences is reaffirmed by the so-called ‘Hypothetico–Deductive Method’,
which in effect proposes a hypothesis for testing on the basis of the
assumption that it is correct, and proceeds to enquire what observations
might be expected to follow if it is indeed true. Such a hypothesis
might be empirically falsified by determining whether or not certain
logical consequences of the hypothesis, ascertained by deduction, are
found to agree with the state of affairs actually found in the empirical
world.⁴⁷ Yet even in this rational strategy, some form of induction
seems to be entailed in the generation of legitimate hypotheses in
many cases.

DEDUCTION IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

While the rationality of Christian theology can be explored in many

ways, attention has traditionally focussed on the specific issue of the
rationality of theistic belief. While many still speak of ‘proofs for the
existence of God’, it seems clear that Anselm of Canterbury’s ‘onto-
logical argument’ and Thomas Aquinas’s ‘Five Ways’ and related
approaches are really affirmations of the rationality of belief in God.⁴⁸

⁴⁶ Akeroyd, ‘Mechanistic Explanation Versus Deductive-Nomological Explanation’.

⁴⁷ For evaluations of this approach, see Gemes, ‘Hypothetico-Deductivism’; Sprenger,
‘Hypothetico-Deductive Confirmation’.
⁴⁸ Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, 221: ‘Our verdict on these reformulated
versions of St. Anselm’s argument must be as follows. They cannot, perhaps, be said
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168 The Territories of Human Reason

Religious apologists of any opinion—including Christian apologists—
are drawn to deductive arguments for the existence of God, in that such
a priori arguments do not depend upon external validation for support.
The validity of a deductive argument can be ascertained before, or
even without, empirical validation, in that it rests on statements that
are true in themselves. Many regard Anselm of Canterbury’s so-called
‘ontological argument’—although it must be stressed that Anselm did
not describe it in such terms—as having the status of a deductive
argument based on a priori truths. The argument may be set out
as follows:⁴⁹
1. God is the greatest possible being—something than which nothing
greater can be conceived.
2. If God exists only in the mind as an idea, then a greater being
could be imagined to exist both in the mind and in reality.
3. This being would then be greater than God.
4. God therefore cannot exist only as an idea in the mind.
5. God therefore exists both as an idea and in reality.
The argument is open to criticism—indeed, some would argue, to
logical inversion. Yet it retains a certain fascination, in that it articu-
lates an idea which has obstinately refused to go away.
Yet there are other deductive approaches which merit consider-
ation. Classic versions of the cosmological argument, as set out by
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), have appealed to the ‘Prin-
ciple of Sufficient Reason’ in developing a deductive argument that is
held to succeed in demonstrating the existence of God. Other deduct-
ive arguments from contingency have aimed to establish the existence
of a necessary or non-contingent being as an explanation of the
existence of contingent beings.⁵⁰ Of particular interest are recent

to prove or establish their conclusion. But since it is rational to accept their central
premise, they do show that it is rational to accept that conclusion.’
⁴⁹ For an excellent summary of Anselm’s argument and its interpretation and
assessment, see Leftow, ‘The Ontological Argument’.
⁵⁰ Gale and Pruss, ‘A New Cosmological Argument’.
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From Observation to Theory 169

developments of the kalām cosmological argument which are widely
regarded as falling into the category of deductive thinking. Although
such arguments originated from within an Islamic context, they have
recently been reframed by the Christian philosopher William Lane
Craig.⁵¹ In general terms the argument can be set out as follows:⁵²
1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, there exists a cause of the existence of the universe.
Craig then argues that since no scientific explanation (framed in
terms of physical laws) can provide a causal account of the origin of
the universe, the cause must be personal. In other words, an explan-
ation is to be given in terms of a personal agent—which is clearly
indicative of some form of theism, such as Christianity. Craig’s
particular way of formulating this argument has been criticized for
some of its assumptions, such as a dynamic theory of time and the
metaphysical impossibility of an actual infinite; it can, however, be
reframed to avoid these particular concerns.⁵³
Premise (1) is stated as if it were an unquestionable a priori truth,
which can lead to certain reliable deductions. The idea that everything
is caused by something is, of course, a widely accepted notion, and
underlies ontic approaches to scientific explanation, noted earlier
(129). In a letter of February 1754, possibly written to John Stewart,
then Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University, David
Hume declared that he ‘never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that
any thing might arise without a Cause’,⁵⁴ clearly regarding this
as unthinkable. Yet it is unclear how Hume defended this pos-
ition. Hume asserts that his certainty of the falsity of the proposition
that anything might arise without a cause arises ‘neither from Intu-
ition nor Demonstration, but from some other Source’. Although at
times Craig himself appears to treat this principle as an empirical

⁵¹ Craig, The Kalām Cosmological Argument. See also Copan and Craig, eds, The
Kalām Cosmological Argument.
⁵² For a variant formulation, see Loke, God and Ultimate Origins, 85–107.
⁵³ Oderberg, ‘Traversal of the Infinite, the “Big Bang” and the Kalām Cosmological
Argument’.
⁵⁴ Hume, Letters, vol. 1, 187. The original manuscript of this letter does not include
the name of the addressee: see Hume, Letters, vol. 1, 185, note 5.
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170 The Territories of Human Reason

generalization based on our ordinary and scientific experiences, or
perhaps as an intuition that something cannot come out of nothing.
Yet this involves a subtle change in the epistemic status of Premise (1)
from an a priori truth to an a posteriori generalization.
Premise (2) is presented as a factual statement; it is, in fact, the
regnant interpretation of a suite of observations of the universe, which
achieved dominance in the second half of the twentieth century. It is
not a self-evident truth, and would not have been accepted as true by
the scientific community during earlier periods of history.⁵⁵ The
idea that ‘the universe began to exist’ is not itself an observation,
but an interpretation of observations, and once more lacks the
status of being an a priori truth capable of bearing substantial epi-
stemic weight.
Yet although such arguments may lack the certainty that some
hope for, they certainly represent forceful affirmations of the ration-
ality of theistic belief, even if there remains a ‘gap’ between the
philosophical notion of an eternal necessary being and the specifically
Christian conception of God.

INDUCTION IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES

For many philosophers of science, inductive reasoning is both the

hallmark and the point of vulnerability of scientific thinking. In
essence, inductive reasoning involves the observation of a series of
events and attempts to discover what theoretical framework might
best accommodate them. Such a theoretical framework, once inferred,
can serve to explain future observations—just as anomalous observa-
tion may serve to disconfirm the original conclusions.
The principle of inductive thinking is easily stated, yet proves more
difficult to apply. Many writers have noted the lack of clarity con-
cerning both the process by which such extrapolation occurs, the
intellectual mechanisms by which theoretical frameworks might be
derived, and the criteria to be used in developing such frameworks.⁵⁶

⁵⁵ Kragh, Conceptions of Cosmos from Myths to the Accelerating Universe, 125–63.

⁵⁶ Nickerson, ‘Teaching Reasoning’, 410–11.
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From Observation to Theory 171

Widely accepted standards are available for evaluating the quality of
deductive reasoning; however to evaluate inductive reasoning is a matter of
considerable debate. Whitehead’s reference to the theory of induction as ‘the
despair of philosophy’ reflects the frustration that scholars have experienced
in trying to codify inductive reasoning; but recognition of the importance of
this type of reasoning is seen in Polya’s observation that ‘in dealing with
problems of any kind, we need inductive reasoning of some kind’.
This palpable sense of frustration arises from a recognition of David
Hume’s critique of inductive methods,⁵⁷ set alongside the brute fact
that, despite its manifest and manifold intellectual shortcomings, the
method seems to deliver results. This dilemma is nicely captured by
Charles Darwin, whose Origin of Species (1859) can be interpreted as
one of the nineteenth century’s most successful applications of
inductive reasoning. Darwin was alert to the criticisms offered of
this form of reasoning, but held that its pragmatic value could hardly
be overlooked. ‘It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe
method of arguing; but it is a method used in judging the common
events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural
philosophers.’⁵⁸
While Darwin may have overstated his use of Baconian inductiv-
ism to enhance the public credibility of his argument,⁵⁹ there is little
doubt that Darwin’s approach is fundamentally inductive at many
points. For Darwin, the test for his theory of natural selection was its
capacity to accommodate a large range of biological phenomena,
including some which were otherwise obscure or puzzling, when
interpreted in terms of rival theories, such as special creation or
Lamarckian transformism. ‘Light has been thrown on several facts,
which on the belief of independent acts of creation are utterly
obscure.’⁶⁰
So what observations did Darwin have in mind? The Origin of
Species set out a series of biological phenomena which his theory of
natural selection seemed to explain in a more elegant and less forced
manner than its two main alternatives. How, for example, was the

⁵⁷ Millican, ‘Hume’s Sceptical Doubts Concerning Induction’.

⁵⁸ Darwin, Origin of Species, 444.
⁵⁹ As argued by Ayala, ‘Darwin and the Scientific Method’.
⁶⁰ Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 164.
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172 The Territories of Human Reason

uneven geographical distribution of life forms throughout the world,
especially marked in the peculiarities of island populations, to be
accounted for? Or how could the persistence of ‘rudimentary struc-
tures’, which have no apparent or predictable function—such as the
nipples of male mammals, the rudiments of a pelvis and hind limbs in
snakes, and wings on many flightless birds—be explained? Darwin’s
theory offered an explanatory elegance which he considered to be
superior to rival interpretations of these observations. Darwin’s argu-
ment was helped to no small extent by the plausible analogy between
the familiar breeding technique of ‘artificial selection’ and the
hypothesized mechanism of ‘natural selection’.⁶¹
Detailed studies of other scientists’ research practices and rational
strategies have confirmed the role of inductive thinking within the
natural sciences. Paul Thagard, for example, studied how such a form
of reasoning led Robin Warren and Barry Marshall to propose that
peptic ulcers are generally caused, not by excess acidity or stress, but
by a bacterial infection.⁶² Thagard, however, was careful to note how
this research involved research strategies that combined serendipity,
questioning, and search.
Induction, by its nature, can never deliver certainty. Hume’s cri-
tique of inductivism remains important—yet most natural scientists
argue that pragmatically it makes little difference to the scientific
method. But what of induction in theology?

INDUCTION IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Inductive approaches to demonstrating the rationality of Christian

belief can be found throughout history, although these gained prom-
inence in the aftermath of the scientific revolution. The apologetic
strategy often known as ‘physico-theology’, which became increas-
ingly important in the early eighteenth century, argued inductively
from the perceived order or beauty of the natural world to the

⁶¹ Largent, ‘Darwin’s Analogy between Artificial and Natural Selection in the

Origin of Species’.
⁶² Thagard, How Scientists Explain Disease, 39–97.
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From Observation to Theory 173

inference that a God lay behind both its existence and its character.⁶³
Although such approaches often inferred divine origination from the
structures of the physical world, some developed such arguments
based on an appeal to the beauty and complexity of the biological
realm. The most important and influential of these, however, was
developed in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) is essentially an inductive
argument for the existence of God as ‘contriver’—that is, designer and
constructor—of the natural world, based on an accumulation of
observational data and reflection. The fundamental argumentative
strategy is that the best explanation of such complex structures is a
creator God.⁶⁴ While the work gained popular traction through its
skilful deployment of the analogy of God as a watchmaker, its core
logical argument is that nature shows such evidence of ‘contrivance’
that its complexity and functionality cannot be ascribed to chance.⁶⁵
Darwin’s subsequent suggestion that such complex and adapted
structures might evolve through natural means seemed to many to
evacuate Paley’s argument of its imaginative plausibility.⁶⁶
In recent years, Christian philosophers and apologists have become
increasingly interested in inductive approaches to the rationality of
faith, especially in relation to the question of the existence of God,
while avoiding the scientific pitfalls associated with earlier attempts.
Richard Swinburne, for example, develops an essentially inductive
approach to the rationality of faith, arguing that the existence of God
is to be seen as the ‘best explanation’ of what is observed within the
world, when seen as part of a larger cumulative case. For Swinburne,
the existence of the universe can be made comprehensible if we
suppose that it is brought about by God.⁶⁷
Swinburne sets this inductive approach within a wider framework,
grounded in the core belief that ‘the fact that there is a universe needs
explaining’. So which explanation is the best? Since ‘it is reasonable to
suppose’ that there is an explanation of the universe in the first

⁶³ Harrison, ‘Physico-Theology and the Mixed Sciences’; Mandelbrote, ‘The Uses

of Natural Theology in Seventeenth-Century England’.
⁶⁴ Gliboff, ‘Paley’s Design Argument as an Inference to the Best Explanation’.
⁶⁵ McGrath, ‘Chance and Providence in the Thought of William Paley’.
⁶⁶ Ayala, ‘In William Paley’s Shadow’.
⁶⁷ Swinburne, The Existence of God, 9–10.
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174 The Territories of Human Reason

place,⁶⁸ Swinburne suggests that the question to be determined is
which of two rival theories is more reasonable: the naturalist view that
science can provide a natural explanation for the existence of this
universe, or the theistic view that the universe and its phenomena
exist because of the intentional causal activity of a personal being.
Swinburne’s task is thus to identify possible explanations of the
universe, and to determine which of these is ‘best’. In making this
decision, Swinburne does not see himself as required to prove the
existence of God; rather, simply to show that the existence of God,
however unlikely this might appear as an independent hypothesis, is
better at explaining our nexus of observations and experiences. A priori,
theism might perhaps seem very unlikely; yet, Swinburne argues, it is far
more likely than its explanatory rivals. In developing this kind of
inductive cosmological argument, however, Swinburne makes the (con-
tested) criterion of simplicity the deciding factor between competing
hypotheses concerning the existence of the universe.⁶⁹
One of Swinburne’s most significant contributions to assessing the
rationality of theistic belief is his articulation of the case for theism in
terms of Bayes’s theorem. Swinburne holds that the evidence con-
sidered raises the overall probability of the theistic hypothesis above
0.5. Yet the deployment of Bayes’s theorem raises some questions
that are not entirely resolved in Swinburne’s discussion. The use of
Bayesian approaches requires, for example, agreement concerning the
prior probability of the thesis under assessment and the probability of
each piece of evidence given as background knowledge. There is no
consensus on the prior probability of there being a God, which
remains a topic of debate and discussion.⁷⁰ Nevertheless, Swinburne’s
overall project is unquestionably one of the most important exhib-
itions of a rational defence of theism to appear in recent years,
highlighting how a range of inductive tools can be deployed in
affirming the fundamental rationality of theistic belief.

⁶⁸ Swinburne, The Existence of God, 75.

⁶⁹ Ostrowick, ‘Is Theism a Simple, and Hence, Probable, Explanation for the
Universe?’
⁷⁰ Some of these issues are considered in an excellent collection of essays edited by
Swinburne: see Swinburne, ed., Bayes’s Theorem. Especially in his Warranted Chris-
tian Belief (2000), Alvin Plantinga is critical of Bayesian approaches: see Portugal,
‘Plantinga and the Bayesian Justification of Beliefs’.
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From Observation to Theory 175

ABDUCTION IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES

The third reasoning method which plays an important role in the

natural sciences has come to be known as ‘abduction’. According to
the philosopher and scientist Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914), abduc-
tion is the process by which observational activity leads to a process of
imaginative generation, with the object of determining what intellec-
tual frameworks might make sense of them. Peirce’s model of discov-
ery takes the individual as a cognizing agent in the world, whose
knowledge arises through sensory experience, and is developed
through model building and empirical testing.⁷¹ As Peirce under-
stands this approach, abduction is basically a kind of creative ‘search
strategy’ which leads to the identification or creation of some ‘prom-
ising explanatory conjecture which is then subject to further test’.⁷² In
an unpublished and undated lecture, he described abduction as⁷³
. . . that process in which the mind goes over all the facts the [sic] case,
absorbs them, digests them, sleeps over them, assimilates them, dreams of
them, and finally is prompted to deliver them in a form, which, if it adds
something to them, does so only because the addition serves to render
intelligible what without it, is unintelligible.
For Peirce, abduction is a quest for a plausible framework for the
accommodation of surprising observations. ‘By plausible I mean that
a theory that has not yet been subjected to any test, although more or
less surprising phenomena have occurred which it would explain if it
were true, is in itself of such a character as to recommend it for
further examination.’⁷⁴ The characteristic trajectory of such an
abductive approach could thus be set out as follows.⁷⁵

⁷¹ Kirklik and Storkerson, ‘Naturalizing Peirce’s Semiotics’, 34–5.

⁷² Schurz, ‘Patterns of Abduction’, 205. More generally, see Paavola, ‘Abduction as
a Logic of Discovery’; Magnani, Abduction, Reason, and Science; McKaughan, ‘From
Ugly Duckling to Swan’.
⁷³ MS 857: 4–5; cited in McKaughan, ‘From Ugly Duckling to Swan’, 466. On the
creative aspects of abduction, see Prendinger and Ishizuka, ‘A Creative Abduction
Approach to Scientific and Knowledge Discovery’.
⁷⁴ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 2, 662.
⁷⁵ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 189.
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176 The Territories of Human Reason

1. The puzzling phenomena A and B are observed.
2. But if C were true, then A and B would follow as a matter of course.
3. Hence, there is reason to suspect that C is true.
This naturally raises the question of how abduction functions as a
‘logic of discovery’. How is C to be generated? How might a given
epistemic framework be developed and proposed that might accom-
modate A and B, before subsequently being subjected to a process of
critical evaluation? Peirce himself is quite clear that there are multiple
possibilities here—including those which he categorizes in terms of
inspiration and imagination. There are multiple logics of discovery;
nevertheless, they are all to be subjected to a logic of verification, in
which any proposed framework of interpretation is checked out
against the observable facts. Theories are not to be judged by how
they are devised, but by their capacity to accommodate observation
and experience.
A related approach is found in N. R. Hanson’s reflections on the
advance of scientific knowledge, which identified three common
elements within ‘the logic of scientific discovery’:⁷⁶
1. The observation of some ‘surprising’ or ‘astonishing phenomena’,
which represent anomalies within existing ways of thinking. This
‘astonishment’ may arise because the observations are in conflict
with existing theoretical accounts.
2. The realization that these phenomena would no longer seem to be
astonishing if a certain hypothesis (or set of hypotheses) H per-
tained. These observations would be expected on the basis of H,
which would act as an explanation for them.
3. The conclusion that there is therefore good reason to for propos-
ing that H be considered to be correct, and proceeding to confirm
this by appropriate means.
Like Peirce, Hanson identifies astonishing or surprising observa-
tions as a fundamental motivation in stimulating and guiding the

⁷⁶ Hanson, ‘Is There a Logic of Scientific Discovery?’, 104. See also Schaffner,
Discovery and Explanation in Biology and Medicine, 11–13. For the abductive aspect
of Hanson’s approach, see Paavola, ‘Hansonian and Harmanian Abduction as Models
of Discovery’.
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From Observation to Theory 177

enterprise of scientific discovery. Is there a theoretical standpoint
from which these observations would not be astonishing, or even
merely anomalous, but would be expected?
For Peirce, abduction is a creative and corrigible process, repre-
senting the ‘provisional adoption of an explanatory hypothesis’ as a
way of making sense of a set of observations.⁷⁷ Abduction is a distinct
and generative form of logical inference, which is the ‘only kind of
argument which starts a new idea’⁷⁸ or serves as ‘the process
of forming explanatory hypotheses’.⁷⁹ It often consists of an ‘act of
insight’ that ‘comes to us like a flash’.⁸⁰ Peirce’s language here sug-
gests that abduction can be compared to the creative and aesthetic
dimensions of human perception, in which the explanatory hypoth-
esis ‘has to be invented ex novo’, in an act of creative imagination as
much as of rational analysis. Indeed, Peirce himself notes that at times
‘abductive inference shades into perceptual judgment without any
sharp line of demarcation between them’.⁸¹ For this reason, we find
Peirce using a variety of images and concepts to articulate what he
means by abduction—such as pattern recognition, in which a con-
fused tangle of things is made intelligible; the interrogation of a
system in order to disclose its structures; and developing an instinct
for the best explanation of phenomena.⁸²
Peirce noted that the empirical evidence may suggest a number of
possible abductions, forcing clarification of how the preferred abduc-
tion is to be identified. Critically, Peirce argued that abduction was
fundamentally innovatory and creative, generating new ideas and
insights in response to ‘surprising facts’. Peirce further suggested
that the human mind appears to have an instinctive capacity to relate
to nature. There is an innate resonance between the human mind and
nature, in that the mind has ‘a natural bent in accordance with
nature’.⁸³ Peirce sees this ‘insight’ as an instinctive capacity, not to

⁷⁷ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 4, 541 n. 1.

⁷⁸ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 2, 96.
⁷⁹ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 171.
⁸⁰ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 181.
⁸¹ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 181.
⁸² See Hookway, ‘Interrogatives and Uncontrollable Abductions;’ idem, Truth,
Rationality, and Pragmatism, 21–43.
⁸³ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 6, 478.
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178 The Territories of Human Reason

be confused with the ‘powers of reason’, but rather belonging to ‘the
same general class of operations to which Perceptive Judgments
belong’.⁸⁴ This propensity may be the outcome of nurture as much
as nature, representing embedded patterns of thinking as much as
inborn instincts. Where others held that the emergence of novel
scientific ideas was essentially random, not governed by any discern-
ible logic,⁸⁵ Peirce holds that there is some innate human propensity
to find its way to the right abduction, while leaving open how this
capacity to explain might itself be explained.
Peirce’s abductive approach to scientific explanation received little
attention until several decades after his death, and suffered from
misunderstanding on the part of his interpreters.⁸⁶ It is, however,
now firmly established as a mode of thinking which is appropriate in
certain contexts, including the natural sciences.

ABDUCTION IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

As we noted earlier, the philosopher Charles Peirce was instrumental

in developing abductive modes of thought, and demonstrating
their resonance with scientific reasoning. This form of reasoning is
not yet widely encountered within Christian theology, although there
are indications that its considerable theological potential is coming to
be appreciated.⁸⁷ For this reason, we shall focus in this section on
Peirce himself, who applied this approach to theological questions,
developing his own distinct approach to the rationality of religious
belief.
Peirce developed an argument for the existence of God which he
framed within the practice of ‘musement’—an imaginatively playful
reflection on the content and structures of the world, unfettered by

⁸⁴ Peirce, Collected Papers, vol. 5, 173.

⁸⁵ Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 20–1.
⁸⁶ McKaughan, ‘From Ugly Duckling to Swan’, 447–54.
⁸⁷ For example, Ben Quash’s application of this mode of thinking to pneumatol-
ogy, and Peter Ochs’s account of its role in biblical interpretation: Quash, Found
Theology, 208–26; Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture.
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From Observation to Theory 179

rules or laws.⁸⁸ Peirce’s thought is here guided by his theory that there
is ‘latent tendency toward belief in God’ within every human being.⁸⁹
This being so, the thought of God is bound to arise—not as a result of
any formal logic or reasoning process, but more through the process
of free imaginative play.⁹⁰
In the Pure Play of Musement the idea of God’s reality will be sooner or later
to be found an attractive fancy, which the Muser will develop in various
ways. The more he ponders it, the more it will find response in every part of
his mind, for its beauty, for its supplying an ideal of life, and for its
thoroughly satisfactory explanation of his whole threefold environment.
Concerns might easily be raised here, not least because, like Kant before
him, Peirce seems curiously inattentive to the social and cultural
embeddedness of the process of reflection. Surely musing is shaped,
at least to some extent and in some manner, by culture and tradition?
Yet Peirce’s point is perhaps misunderstood. Abduction is, at least
in part, about an imaginative questing for the best explanation of
otherwise puzzling observations. For Peirce, an abductive reasoning
strategy is called for precisely because the idea of God derives from
‘immediate experience’, and hence cannot adequately be accommo-
dated within alternative models of reasoning.⁹¹ There is an interesting
parallel here with the biologist Simon Conway Morris’s reflections on
the phenomenon of convergent evolution. Why does the evolutionary
process, so often thought of as shaped by random forces and radical
contingency,⁹² end up converging on certain specific forms? Conway
Morris argues that the number of evolutionary endpoints is limited,
and argues for the predictability of evolutionary outcomes, not in
terms of genetic details but rather their broad phenotypic manifest-
ations. Convergent evolution is to be understood as ‘the recurrent
tendency of biological organization to arrive at the same solution to a
particular need’.⁹³

⁸⁸ Peirce, Collected Works, vol. 6, 458. See further Clanton, ‘The Structure of
C. S. Peirce’s Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’.
⁸⁹ Peirce, Collected Works, vol. 6, 487.
⁹⁰ Peirce, Collected Works, vol. 6, 465.
⁹¹ See the discussion in Ejsing, Theology of Anticipation, 148–53.
⁹² Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, 1019–20.
⁹³ Conway Morris, Life’s Solution, xii.
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180 The Territories of Human Reason

For Conway Morris, the phenomenon of convergent evolution
reveals the existence of stable regions—‘islands of stability’—in bio-
logical space.⁹⁴ Evolution regularly appears to ‘converge’ on a rela-
tively small number of possible outcomes: ‘the evolutionary routes are
many, but the destinations are limited’.⁹⁵ Even an essentially random
search process will end up identifying stable outcomes in biological
space.⁹⁶
Peirce seems to develop a similar line of thought. The process of
‘musement’ is a creative search engine, enabling an imaginative play-
ing with possible explanations of the rich world of observation and
experience, which converges on the notion of God precisely because it
is to be seen as an island of conceptual stability. As we, for example,
walk beneath a night sky, contemplating the ‘stars in the silence’, we
find ourselves playfully meditating, not according to fixed logical
rules but in an imaginatively rich and unbounded manner, during
which the ‘idea of there being a God’ constantly surfaces for consid-
eration.⁹⁷ Peirce offers an unexplained explanation of this conver-
gence of such musement on the idea of God: a ‘latent tendency toward
belief in God’ within human beings.⁹⁸ Although Peirce does not make
such a move, this ‘tendency’ can be located within the broader
explanatory framework offered by a Trinitarian theological schema.⁹⁹
As noted earlier, relatively few Christian theologians to date have
explicitly adopted abductive modes of reasoning. However, such
modes of thought can easily be identified in the writings of theolo-
gians, even if they are not specifically identified in this way. For
example, C. S. Lewis’s assertion of the rationality of religious
belief in Mere Christianity (1952) makes use of what are clearly
abductive strategies. Lewis’s ‘argument from desire’ (141–3) is not a
deductive argument for the existence of God, but is essentially an

⁹⁴ Conway Morris, Life’s Solution, 127.

⁹⁵ Conway Morris, Life’s Solution, 24.
⁹⁶ Conway Morris offers the example of the discovery of Easter Island as an
example of such an inevitable discovery: Conway Morris, Life’s Solution, 19–21.
⁹⁷ Peirce, Collected Works, vol. 6, 501.
⁹⁸ Peirce, Collected Works, vol. 6, 487.
⁹⁹ For an explicit engagement with Peirce on this point, see Robinson, God and the
World of Signs, 308–12. More generally, see Feingold, The Natural Desire to See God
According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters; Janz, God, the Mind’s Desire.
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From Observation to Theory 181

abductive argument, primarily for the existence of Heaven or ‘another
world’, and secondarily for the existence of God.
This brief account of the three main reasoning processes deployed
in science and Christian theology shows how the three modes of
reasoning traditionally designated as abduction, induction, and
abduction are deployed in both science and Christian theology. The
differences are primarily concerned with their intellectual substrates,
rather than the rational processes. While both assume that it is
possible to make sense of the world, within certain limits, the natural
sciences tend to focus on the world of nature, while Christian the-
ology focusses on nature and history, especially certain episodes
within history which can be regarded as mediating or embodying
divine disclosure.¹⁰⁰

¹⁰⁰ Collins, Trinitarian Theology, West and East, 65–88.

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7
Complexity and Mystery
The Limits of Rationality in Science and Religion

What happens if the human mind is confronted with something that

is so vast that it is incapable of accommodating it? Can this incapacity
to accommodate be considered an indication of irrationality? Or is it
better seen as an indication of the limits of human reason, an intim-
ation of the constraints placed on our capacity to engage and repre-
sent our world, and an accompanying plea for epistemic humility?
These are not new questions, and have been discussed since the pre-
Socratic period in philosophy. Yet they arguably have become of
greater significance in the relatively recent past, partly because of
the interest in the categories of both the ‘irrational’ and ‘mysterious’
in both religion and the natural sciences.

MYSTERY AND IRRATIONALITY

In his Idea of the Holy (1917), Rudolf Otto developed the concept of
the numinous as a means of expressing what he considered to be the
‘irrational’ aspects of the holy or sacred, which he held to be founda-
tional to religious experience and existence.¹ For Otto, the numinous
can be understood as an experience of a mysterious terror and awe
(mysterium tremendum et fascinans) in the presence of that which is
‘totally other’ (das ganz Andere), and is thus not capable of being

¹ Otto, Das Heilige. For analysis, see Schüz, Mysterium Tremendum, 98–297.
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Complexity and Mystery 183

expressed directly using human language. Otto distinguished various
aspects of the numinous, including the generation of a sense of awe
(das Schauervolle), a sense of being overwhelmed (das Übermächtige),
and an experience of energization (das Energische). Otto’s conception
of an irrational or numinous aspect of religion that lies beyond
conceptual description and is accessible only through experience
has proved significant in the study of religion; it is, however, of
particular importance to any serious attempt to reflect on the reli-
gious category of mystery. While the qualities that Otto associates
with the numinous can be linked with the human experience of vast
or frightening natural phenomena—such as violent thunderstorms—
they nevertheless have a particular association with religious contexts.
Otto is careful to avoid the suggestion that irrational means ratio-
nally deficient; his judicious use of complementary terms such as
‘non-rational’ or ‘trans-rational’ nuances his discussion, indicating
that the mystery at the heart of religion is something that overwhelms
and saturates human rational capacities. By holding the ‘rational and
non-rational elements of religion together in creative tension’,² Otto
avoids reducing religion to the rational spirituality of the Enlightenment.
Related trends can be seen in early Greek philosophy. Although
many have presented classical Greek culture as a manifesto of ration-
alism, perhaps even as a precursor of the Enlightenment,³ there are
good reasons for suspecting the entanglement of philosophical reflec-
tion and the mystery cults,⁴ pointing to a more complex notion of
‘reason’ than some might allow. It is clear that the Greek writers of
the Archaic Age (c.750–480 BC) and the Classical Age (c.480–323 BC)
were aware of the limitations of reason in grasping the complexity of
the world, acknowledging that some aspects of its behaviour seemed
to elude rational analysis.⁵

² Raphael, Rudolf Otto and the Concept of Holiness, 22. Mircea Eliade locates Das
Heilige against a backdrop of ‘irrationalistic philosophies and ideologies’ to emerge
after the First World War: Eliade, ‘The Quest for the “Origins” of Religion’, 162.
³ For example, see Israel, Enlightenment Contested, 3.
⁴ Riedweg, Mysterienterminologie bei Platon, Philon, und Klemens von Alexan-
drien; Martín-Velasco and Blanco, eds, Greek Philosophy and Mystery Cults; Kingsley,
Peter. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic, 71–132.
⁵ Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 254. For a wider discussion, see Elster,
Ulysses and the Sirens; idem, Ulysses Unbound.
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184 The Territories of Human Reason

[The philosophers] who created the first European rationalism were never—
until the Hellenistic Age—‘mere’ rationalists: that is to say, they were deeply
and imaginatively aware of the power, the wonder and the peril of the
Irrational. But they could describe what went on below the threshold of
consciousness only in mythological or symbolic language; they had no
instrument for understanding it, still less for controlling it.
The category of the ‘irrational’, however, is inadequate as an account
of human responses to the world which lie beyond the realm of
the rational. Beauty and wonder, for example, are difficult to
accommodate within the highly restrictive binary proposed by the
rational–irrational framework. For Aristotle, wonder was a gateway
experience, itself neither rational nor irrational, for the intellectual
exploration of the universe. Part of that task of investigation is
governed by the need sozein ta phainomena⁶—to respect and safe-
guard the deliverances of observation and experience—while at the
same time realizing that these point beyond themselves, often open-
ing up deeper questions which call out for theoretical responses.⁷
More recently attention has focussed on the experience of awe—a
feeling induced by the experience of vastness that requires some sort
of mental accommodation to overwhelming new information. Recent
studies in the psychology of awe have located its origins as lying in the
fundamental inability of human cognitive processes to cope with the
phenomenon of vastness, which compel us to expand our under-
standing of the world to accommodate this new information.
Examples of such vast phenomena include the night sky, physical
landscapes, and intellectual systems—such as Marxism or Christian-
ity. Studies suggest that an experience of awe creates a new receptivity
towards increasing understanding, thus offering a powerful stimulus
to the scientific engagement with nature. The fundamental inability of
the human mind to take in the vastness of a conceptually irreducible
nature inevitably subverts the adequacy of or any claim to finality on
the part of all attempts to categorize or represent it. It is not difficult
to see how Whitehead’s cautionary remarks about science might find

⁶ Aristotle, De Caelo, 293a25; 296b6; 297a4. Contra Duhem, this phrase does not
need to be interpreted in an instrumentalist manner: Duhem, Sauver les apparences,
13–37.
⁷ Miller, In the Throe of Wonder, 3.
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Complexity and Mystery 185

a wider application: ‘Should we not mistrust the jaunty assurance
with which each generation believes it has at last got the concepts
with which to make sense of the world?’⁸
There are clearly affinities here with the notion of a ‘mystery’.
Although many forms of rationalism tend to portray the category of
‘mystery’ in terms of a crudely disguised irrationality or an evaded
opportunity for rational analysis, it is better understood as something
which is too great for the human mind to take in fully, often thereby
forcing an appeal to the imagination, rather than the reason. The
American theoretical physicist Richard Feynman (1918–88) thus
argued that the human imagination often finds itself ‘stretched to
the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really
there, but just to comprehend those things which are there’.⁹ An
expanded vision of reason, supplemented by the imagination, is
often required to capture the vision of a grand theory—whether
scientific, political, or theological.
The concept of ‘mystery’ is thus not to be understood in terms of a
crude contradiction of human rationality, but as something which
calls into question the capacity of the human mind to gain a full grasp
of our complex universe, thus exposing the limits of human ration-
ality. This point is clearly recognized by Richard Dawkins, who
remarks that the human mind, seemingly adapted to cope with the
natural threats and opportunities upon which our survival arguably
depends, struggles to take in the vastness of our mysterious universe.
‘Modern physics teaches us that there is more to truth than meets the
eye; or than meets the all too limited human mind, evolved as it
was to cope with medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds
through medium distances in Africa.’¹⁰ Most evolutionary theorists
would agree; the human mind developed in order to ensure our
survival, rather than investigate the deep structure of the universe.
Dawkins’s explicit reference to the ‘all too limited human mind’
might cause anxiety in some quarters; others, however, will see this as
a welcome and appropriate acknowledgement of the limits of the
human mind, and of the difficult questions this raises for situations or

⁸ Whitehead, The Concept of Nature, 104.

⁹ Feynman, The Character of Physical Law, 127–8.
¹⁰ Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain, 19.
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186 The Territories of Human Reason

phenomena which lie on its boundaries. The concept of ‘mystery’
does not legitimate the irrational, but highlights the possibility that
we might restrict ourselves to the world of what can be proved to be
‘rational’—and in doing so, needlessly confine ourselves within an
intellectual prison of our own making. Max Weber spoke of this
capacity of rationalism to enfold and trap human existence in systems
based purely on teleological efficiency, rational calculation, and con-
trol as a stahlhartes Gehäuse, often rendered into English as an ‘iron
cage’, but better translated as a ‘shell that is as hard as steel’—and thus
impervious to challenge and assault.¹¹ Yet it requires to be ques-
tioned, in terms of both its grounds and its outcomes.
A receptivity towards mystery creates the possibility of conceptual
enlargement,¹² potentially liberating us from the limits of Weber’s
shell of steel. This theme is prominent in the writings of Giambattista
Vico, who argued that the human mind can only fully grasp what
human beings have themselves constructed, and is challenged and
humbled when it attempts to cope with the vastness of the created
order. Vico’s use of the term ‘mystery’ is not easy to define, in that
it occupies intellectual territory bordering the regions of the deliber-
ately concealed, the intellectually impenetrable, and the hermeneut-
ically polyvalent.¹³ For Vico, the world of nature could be known fully
only by God, in that God created this natural order; human beings
ought therefore to focus on their own creations—such as the world
of culture—which they could expect to grasp more fully.¹⁴ Vico’s
approach thus suggests that both the natural sciences and Christian
theology must struggle to gain even a partial grasp of the greater
reality which is the object of their study, since both nature and God lie
beyond human creation or control.
Many theologians would disagree with such a statement, arguing
that this fails to do justice to the Christian view that God wills to be
disclosed, whereas nature is open to our unaided investigations.¹⁵
Yet Vico’s approach can easily be reframed within the classical
Renaissance notion of the ‘Two Books’—the created order itself,

¹¹ Baehr, ‘The “Iron Cage” and the “Shell as Hard as Steel” ’.

¹² Kidd, ‘Receptivity to Mystery’.
¹³ Mazzotta, The New Map of the World, 115–39.
¹⁴ Vico, La scienza nuova, 231–2. ¹⁵ Torrance, Theological Science, 299.
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Complexity and Mystery 187

and the Christian Bible, both of which demand engagement and
interpretation.¹⁶ This naturally opens up the question of how the
natural sciences and Christian theology envisage and explore the
concept of ‘mystery’.

MYSTERY IN SCIENCE

The term ‘mystery’ is regularly used within the natural sciences in the
general sense of ‘something that is presently not understood’—but
which, of course, might well be comprehended in the future, as new
evidence accumulates and new theoretical models are developed. In
its non-religious sense, the term essentially designates the domains of
the uncomprehended and the unexplained. Most scientific writers
tend to see the idea of mystery as a temporary staging post in the
narrative of scientific advance. Adopting what is in effect an attitude
of promissory rationalization, a mystery is glossed as a temporary
inexplicability. What is mysterious today is expected to be explained
tomorrow. A good example of this approach may be seen in Charles
Darwin’s explanation of the phenomenon of biological diversity, first
set out in his Origin of Species.
For Charles Darwin, the question of the historical origin of species
was the ‘mystery of mysteries’.¹⁷ The phrase was not new to Darwin,
who rather borrowed it from the astronomer Sir John Herschel, who
used it to refer to ‘the replacement of extinct species by others’.¹⁸ The
solution to a mystery lies in the discovery of a higher-order theory
that allows what presently seems incomprehensible or incoherent to
be seen in a new way. Darwin’s answer to Herschel’s riddle was to find
a theory which made intelligible what otherwise might seem
mysterious—the theory of descent with modification by natural
selection.

¹⁶ Mews, ‘The World as Text’.

¹⁷ Darwin, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1.
¹⁸ See Herschel’s 1836 letter to Charles Lyell, published as an appendix to
Charles Babbage’s Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (1837): Cannon, ‘The Impact of
Uniformitarianism’.
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188 The Territories of Human Reason

For Darwin, a good theory allowed things to be seen in a new way,
so that patterns of connections and continuities could be discerned
beneath the surface of apparent happenstance and coincidence. Such
a theory imposed a rational net over the complexities of experience.
His theory of natural selection illuminated the evidence, leading to a
growing sense that the previously inexplicable had, in fact, a plausible
explanation. Certain ‘mysteries’ thus cease to be mysterious when
they are illuminated by an informing theory, which in effect generates
an intellectual framework within which they are rendered intelligible
or predictable.
Yet other mysteries remain. For some, the riddle of dark energy is
now the most profound mystery in all of science. Earlier scientists—
such as Galileo, Kepler, and Newton—thought of as the actual universe
as essentially coextensive with the observed universe. It is today thought
that the observable universe represents in reality only four per cent of
what really exists. Twenty-three per cent of the universe is now thought
to consist of dark matter, and seventy-three per cent of dark energy.
So why should rational people believe in ‘dark matter’, when it is
invisible? Dark matter is a hypothesis—a postulated form of matter
which would explain a number of otherwise puzzling astronomical
observations. Although dark matter cannot be directly observed, its
existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects,
such as the motions of visible matter and gravitational lensing. Like
Newton’s concept of gravity, an unobserved and unobservable hypo-
thetical entity is invoked to explain what can be observed.
So does the notion of mystery, as used within the natural sciences,
now mean little more than that which is at present scientifically
inexplicable, but is expected to be explained in the future? Many
might agree; yet there is a persistent note of caution sounded within
at least some sections of the scientific community concerning its
explanatory achievements. It is still profoundly puzzling why the
deep structures of the universe can be represented mathematically.
As Eugene Wigner suggested, ‘the miracle of the appropriateness of
the language of mathematics to the formulation of the laws of physics
is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve’.¹⁹

¹⁹ Wigner, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics’.

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Complexity and Mystery 189

Sometimes abstract mathematical theories that were originally
developed without any practical application in mind later turn out
to be powerfully predictive physical models.²⁰ For Wigner, this was a
mystery that called out for an explanation.
Werner Heisenberg is one of many who argue that a good scientific
theory would aim to ‘do justice to every new experience, to every
accessible domain of the world’.²¹ Yet while Heisenberg celebrated the
capacity of scientific theories to develop conceptualities adapted to
the domain of reality under investigation within a specific discipline,
he nevertheless noted that they were challenged by the ‘bottomless
depth’ and ‘impenetrable darkness’ of the universe, and the short-
comings of the human intellectual struggle to find a language
adequate to engage and represent this.²²
For Heisenberg, there is a sense of mystery about our universe, in
that every scientific advance simply opens up new questions, often
calling into question the capacity of human minds and language to
cope with the external reality that we call the universe. ‘Every time
when there is an understanding of a new reality, their sphere of
validity appears to be pushed yet one more step into an impenetrable
darkness that lies behind the ideas language is able to express.’²³ The
concept of mystery can thus be seen to articulate the failures of
human language to give an adequate description of the complex
granularity of our universe.
Yet the growing influence of scientism on popular culture has led
to resistance to the notion of mystery as a valid scientific category. As
we have seen, scientism affirms the ‘exclusive sufficiency’ of natural
scientific descriptions of the world, so that a ‘mystery’ is recategorized
in terms of that which has not yet been explained by science. Whereas
a ‘mystery’ in the strict sense of the term points to a vast and
conceptually irreducible reality, from this scientistic stance it is seen
simply as a transient feature of the human quest to make sense of the
world, rather than as an irreducible and ineliminable aspect of that

²⁰ For examples and discussion, see Mario Livio, Is God a Mathematician? New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.
²¹ Heisenberg, Die Ordnung der Wirklichkeit, 38–52.
²² Heisenberg, Die Ordnung der Wirklichkeit, 44.
²³ Heisenberg, Die Ordnung der Wirklichkeit, 44.
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190 The Territories of Human Reason

quest. Whereas philosophers of science such as Bas van Fraassen
speak of a stance of ‘abiding wonder’ at the world,²⁴ or a sense that
the world is not exhausted by scientific description, scientism depicts
this as merely reflecting the limits on our present understanding
of the world, which will be overcome with the progress of time and
research.²⁵
Albert Einstein is perhaps one of the most significant scientists to
reflect on the notion of mystery. Although he was not a mystic in any
meaningful sense of the term,²⁶ Einstein was clear that a sense of ‘the
mysterious (das Geheimnisvolle)’ was the source of all true art and
science.²⁷ Possibly picking up on Otto, Einstein suggests that the
‘experience of mysteriousness (das Erlebnis des Geheimnisvollen)’,
perhaps mingled with fear, is reflected in religion. Yet Einstein does
not equate ‘the mysterious’ with ‘the irrational’, seeing it rather as a
gateway experience which opens the way to a rational understanding
of the world, to the extent to which this is possible. ‘What I see in
nature is a magnificent structure that we can only grasp imper-
fectly.’²⁸ Einstein however, saw his recognition of the merits of a
receptivity towards mystery as leading not to an irrational mysticism,
but to a yearning to grasp nature more fully, if still incompletely and
inadequately.

MYSTERY IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY

Earlier in this volume, we have highlighted the explanatory cap-

aciousness of the Christian faith. This does not, however, mean that
the Christian faith offers the clarity of a solution to a puzzle, in that

²⁴ van Fraassen, The Empirical Stance, 47–8.

²⁵ Cooper, ‘Living with Mystery’, 6.
²⁶ Jammer, Einstein and Religion, 125–7.
²⁷ Einstein, Mein Weltbild, 420.
²⁸ Dukas, Albert Einstein, 132: ‘Was ich in der Natur sehe, ist eine großartige
Struktur, die wir nur sehr unvollkommen zu erfassen vermögen . . . Dies ist ein echt
religiöses Gefühl, das nichts mit Mystizismus zu schaffen hat.’ This quote dates from
1954 or 1955.
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Complexity and Mystery 191

God is seen as something—someone—who resists reduction to
rational commonplaces.²⁹
At [the] heart [of the Christian faith] is the understanding of Christ as the
divine mysterion: an idea central to the epistles of the Apostle Paul. This
secret is a secret that has been told; but despite that it remains a secret,
because what has been declared cannot be simply grasped, since it is God’s
secret, and God is beyond any human comprehension.
This notion plays an important role in the New Testament epistles,
designating a distinct aspect of the Christian revelation³⁰—the ‘mys-
tery that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but
has now been revealed’ (Colossians 1:26).
For later writers such as Maximus the Confessor, the term ‘mystery’
fundamentally designated the notion of the conceptual immensity or
ontological vastness of God. A mystery is resistant to interpretative
closure or intellectual reduction, ultimately transcending any attempt
at a limiting definition—precisely because this limits what must be
allowed to remain open. The English theologian Charles Gore high-
lighted the importance of this point, noting the limits of language to
comprehend the mystery of the divine:³¹
Human language never can express adequately divine realities. A constant
tendency to apologize for human speech, a great element of agnosticism, an
awful sense of unfathomed depths beyond the little that is made known, is
always present to the mind of theologians who know what they are about, in
conceiving or expressing God.
Although the concept of ‘mystery’ was used extensively by patristic
writers,³² and remains important for many theologians today,³³ a
sense of unease remains over the possible elision of the category of
‘mystery’ with that of the ‘irrational’. Where some elements of the
Enlightenment insisted that the investigation of reality should be

²⁹ Louth, Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition, 205. See also Louth, Discern-
ing the Mystery.
³⁰ Lang, Mystery and the Making of a Christian Historical Consciousness, 9–128.
³¹ Gore, The Incarnation of the Son of God, 105–6.
³² See the richly documented discussion in Fiedrowicz, Handbuch der Patristik,
642–59.
³³ Louth, Discerning the Mystery, 132–47.
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192 The Territories of Human Reason

capable of being expressed using clear and distinct ideas, the concept
of mystery is profoundly and intrinsically resistant to any such
conceptual closure. It is not difficult to see how the resistance of
such a mystery to such forms of rational interrogation came to be
seen by some as an indication of its fundamental irrationality, rather
than its necessary resistance to such reductionist analysis.
The French theologian and philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973)
helpfully drew a distinction between ‘problems’ and ‘mysteries’.³⁴ For
Marcel, the world of problems is the domain of science, rational
enquiry, and technical control. We live in a ‘broken world (un monde
cassé)’, which is resistant to a disinterested total comprehension. This
‘broken world’ is ‘riddled with problems’ on the one hand and, on the
other, is ‘determined to allow no room for mystery’.³⁵ For Marcel, a
problem is something which can be viewed objectively, and for which
we can find a possible solution. A mystery, however, is something
which we cannot view objectively, precisely because we cannot separate
ourselves from it.³⁶
A problem is something which I meet, which I find completely before me, but
which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in
which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a
sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me
loses its meaning and initial validity.
While problems can give rise to universal or generalized solutions,
mysteries simply do not admit such generalized solutions. To ask
about the meaning of life as if it were a mere object to be analysed
disinterestedly is in effect to act as if the answers have no bearing on
our own existence.
Life, according to Marcel, is thus not a problem to be solved but a
mystery to be lived. The existence of suffering, for example, is thus to
be seen as a mystery that can never be fully grasped, rather than as an
intellectual problem that can be mastered and subdued.³⁷ We find
ourselves unable to place ourselves wholly outside a mystery in order

³⁴ See especially Marcel, Being and Having.

³⁵ Marcel, The Philosophy of Existentialism, 12. For a good discussion, see Tobin,
‘Toward an Epistemology of Mysticism’.
³⁶ Marcel, Being and Having, 117.
³⁷ See, for example, the discussion in Labbé, ‘La souffrance: problème ou mystère’.
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Complexity and Mystery 193

to investigate it, in that there is no objective stance, no Archimedean
standpoint, from which I can observe it. In the case of suffering or
evil, we have to come to terms that these are things we experience, not
simply observe.³⁸
Evil which is only stated or observed is no longer evil which is suffered: in
fact, it ceases to be evil. In reality, I can only grasp it as evil in the
measure in which it touches me—that is to say, in the measure in which
I am involved . . . Being ‘involved’ is the fundamental fact.
Marcel’s ideas were developed in a more explicitly theological manner
by the English philosophical theologian Austin Farrer, who defines
the realm of the problematic as ‘the field in which there are right
answers’. The realm of mystery, however, involves engagement with
reality at such a level that it cannot be investigated in terms of
‘determinate and soluble problems’. The theologian, Farrer argues,
is not faced with the limited and manageable relation which arises
between a conceptual instrument and physical objects; rather, we are
confronted ‘with the object itself, in all its fullness’, and this object
presents itself, not as ‘a cluster of problems but as a single though
manifold mystery’.³⁹ It is tempting to reduce a mystery to a set of
problems, on the basis of the mistaken belief that the mystery is the
mere sum of the individual (soluble) problems.
Marcel’s approach involves the distinction between a problem and
a mystery, not the rejection of the category of the problematic as such.
His position is rather that problem-oriented approaches have their
own distinct domains of competence—for example, in relation to
scientific understanding and technological advance. Yet the difficulty
is that some allow a problem-solving approach to the world to
become imperialistic, holding that such an approach alone has the
right to judge all knowledge and truth on the basis of ‘criteria
appropriate only to the aspect of the objective’.⁴⁰ For Marcel, subject-
ive involvement and participation are a precondition for gaining an
authentic and distinctive knowledge of a mystery.

³⁸ Marcel, Philosophy of Existentialism, 19.

³⁹ Farrer, The Glass of Vision, 72. It is interesting to note that Farrer’s wife,
Katherine, translated Être et avoir into English.
⁴⁰ Keen, Gabriel Marcel, 19.
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194 The Territories of Human Reason

So how does Marcel understand rational reflection to fit into his
framework? Marcel is clear that such reflection is necessary and appro-
priate in coming to know both problems and mysteries; nevertheless,
he argues that a distinction must be drawn between primary reflection,
which is the type of rational thought involved in problem-solving, and
secondary reflection, by which we know a mystery.⁴¹ Primary reflec-
tion is thus analytic, in that it seeks to achieve clarity about the world of
abstraction, objectification, and verification; whereas secondary reflec-
tion is synthetic, in that it seeks to frame a wider and richer under-
standing of the meaning of human existence by integrating its many
facets. Whereas primary reflection seeks to dissolve the unity of
experience in an act of analysis, secondary reflection is ‘recuperative’,
in that it seeks to recapture or reclaim the unity of experience.
The analysis presented by Marcel and Farrer points to the peren-
nial nature of the theological task, in that each generation is called
upon to wrestle with a mystery, knowing that it possesses a certain
inexhaustibility which cannot be grasped or fully comprehended by
any one writer or era. The problematical is the domain of science and
rational enquiry. Once a problem is solved there is no more interest
in it. A mystery, however, challenges, refreshes, and reinvigorates the
theological task, not least through the expectation that fresh light has
yet to break forth from mysteries which have been wrestled with by
previous generations. The process of wrestling with a mystery thus
remains open, not closed. What one generation inherits from another
is not so much definitive answers as a shared commitment to the
process of wrestling.
Similarly, our minds struggle to even begin to cope with the
immensity and majesty of God. Christian theology has long recog-
nized that it is impossible for us to represent or describe God
adequately using human language. The sheer vastness of God causes
human images and words to falter, if not break down completely, as
they try to depict God fully and faithfully. A mystery is not something
that is contradicted by reason, but is rather something that exceeds
reason’s capacity to discern and describe—thus transcending, rather
than contradicting, reason. As the Puritan writer Richard Baxter once

⁴¹ Sweetman, The Vision of Gabriel Marcel, 55–60.

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Complexity and Mystery 195

remarked, we may well know God; yet to comprehend God fully lies
beyond our capacity.⁴² For Marcel, a mystery can be ‘known’; it
cannot, however, be fully and objectively comprehended. ‘The mys-
terious is not the unknowable, the unknowable is only the limiting
case of the problematic.’⁴³
To speak of some aspect of nature or God as a ‘mystery’ is not to
attempt to shut down the reflective process, but to stimulate it, by
opening the mind to intellectual vistas that are simply too deep and
broad to be fully apprehended by our limited human vision. We can
only cope with such a mystery either by filtering out what little we can
grasp, and hope that the rest is unimportant; or by reducing it to what
our minds can accommodate and thus to the rationally manageable.
Inevitably, both these strategies end up distorting, disfiguring, and
misleading, presenting God as something that one can know about,
rather than one who is known, and by being known, is found to be
transformative and regenerative.
Augustine of Hippo stressed the limits of our ability to capture God
in neat formulae. ‘If you think you have grasped God, it is not God you
have grasped’—si comprehendis non est Deus.⁴⁴ Anything that we can
grasp fully and completely cannot be God, precisely because it would
be so limited and impoverished if it could be fully grasped by the
human mind. If you can get your mind around it, it is not God, but is
rather something else that you might incorrectly think is God. It is easy
to create a god in our own likeness—a self-serving human invention
that may bear some passing similarity to God, but falls far short of the
glory and majesty of the God who created and redeemed the world.

THE TRINITY AS MYSTERY

Some suggest that mystery is merely a superstitious person’s way of

referring to an irrationality. For many outside the Christian commu-
nity, the doctrine of the Trinity is a classic instance of the irrationality

⁴² Baxter, Practical Works, vol. 13, 29.

⁴³ Marcel, Being and Having, 118.
⁴⁴ Augustine, Sermo 117.3.5. Cf. van Bavel, ‘God in between Affirmation and
Negation According to Augustine’.
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196 The Territories of Human Reason

of faith; for Christian theologians, however, it is an equally classic
example of a mystery, a vision of God which is too vast to be captured
by the human mind, forcing the human mind to adapt to its contours,
rather than permitting the mind to reduce this vision of God
to intellectually manageable proportions. The theological notion of
‘glory’ articulates a fundamental theme of the Christian faith: that in
the end, the human mind is not capable of accommodating the
conceptual vastness of God, who overwhelms our mental capacities.
During the ‘Age of Reason’, the rationality of this doctrine came
under radical scrutiny. Early criticisms of the doctrine tended to
reflect a desire for the theological simplicity of the New Testament,
and a suspicion of what was seen as a promiscuous inflation
of biblical ideas, especially in scholastic theology.⁴⁵ Although Isaac
Newton’s anti-Trinitarianism may have reflected the increasingly
rationalist outlook of his age, it seems to have been mainly a conse-
quence of his biblical hermeneutics,⁴⁶ particularly a concern that the
doctrine was ultimately idolatrous. Newton’s views were, in certain
ways, typical of his age. Most leading theologians of the seventeenth
century seem to have held on to the doctrine of the Trinity out of
respect for tradition,⁴⁷ while privately conceding that it seemed
irrational in respect of both its foundations and modes of expression,
and offered little in the way of spiritual or theological benefits.⁴⁸
A routine defence of this doctrine seems to have been seen as being
little more than a formal expectation on the part of orthodox theolo-
gians. There was no sense that the doctrine preserved or articulated
something of fundamental importance, or served as the foundation or
summation of key themes of faith, or even an anticipation of the
twentieth-century theologian Emil Brunner’s notion of the Trinity as
a ‘security doctrine (Schutzlehre)’, protecting Christian theology
against deficient notions of God.⁴⁹

⁴⁵ For early German anti-Trinitarianism, see Dingel and Daugirdas, Antitrinitar-

ische Streitigkeiten, 3–17. For Michael Servetus’s anti-Trinitarianism, see especially
Sánchez-Blanco, Michael Servets Kritik an der Trinitätslehre, 58–60.
⁴⁶ Mandelbrote, ‘Eighteenth-Century Reactions to Newton’s Anti-Trinitarianism’.
⁴⁷ Rogers, ‘Stillingfleet, Locke and the Trinity’.
⁴⁸ For a detailed account, see Lim, Mystery Unveiled.
⁴⁹ Brunner, Dogmatik I, 206.
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Complexity and Mystery 197

The theological generations to follow Newton tended to adopt an
essentially deist notion of God in their public defence of Christianity,
seeing this as minimally counterintuitive to the norms of an emerging
rational and scientific professional culture, and yet sufficiently ortho-
dox to resonate with those of a still predominantly religious—in
this case, predominantly Anglican—society.⁵⁰ Deism—a distinctly
English phenomenon—is best seen as a rationally maximized notion
of God which set out to secure cultural compliance and conformity at
a time of cultural change and uncertainty.
Many Western theologians of the eighteenth—and even the
twentieth—century seem to have taken the view that the ‘Age of
Reason’ had achieved a permanent cultural hegemony, and that as a
result theology had little option other than to submit to its rational
norms. As late as 1977, Leslie Houlden argued that ‘we must accept
our lot, bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment, and make the most
of it’. Few would now agree. Houlden’s failure to grasp the signifi-
cance of the postmodern deconstruction of Enlightenment rational
norms is puzzling; his indifference to the revival of Trinitarian the-
ology is culpable. Today, the doctrine of the Trinity is central to
Christian theological discourse. Karl Barth and Karl Rahner have
catalysed a major programme of theological retrieval, in which the
rationality and utility of the doctrine of the Trinity have been reaf-
firmed.⁵¹ The doctrine of the Trinity is seen to articulate the distinct
theological logic of the Christian faith,⁵² inviting a comparison and
correlation with other notions of rationality, rather than leading to
the assimilation of such a theological rationality to the norms of the
‘Age of Reason’.
The theological notion of mystery is illuminated by the psychology
of awe. The psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt devel-
oped a prototype approach to the experience of awe, which has at its
heart two distinctive themes—the vastness of nature and the cognitive

⁵⁰ Mandelbrote, ‘The Uses of Natural Theology in Seventeenth-Century England’.

⁵¹ See Davis, Kendall, and O’Collins, eds, The Trinity.
⁵² For careful analysis of an early modern statement of this approach, see Burton,
The Hallowing of Logic, 72–94. More generally, see Coakley, ‘Living into the Mystery
of the Holy Trinity’.
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198 The Territories of Human Reason

process of accommodation.⁵³ Vastness is here to be understood as
‘anything that is experienced as being much larger than the self, or the
self ’s ordinary level of experience or frame of reference’. It may refer
simply to physical size, or to more subtle markers of vastness, such as
social signs or symbolic markers. Accommodation refers to the pro-
cess identified by Jean Piaget (1896–1980), professor of genetic and
experimental psychology at the University of Geneva from 1940 to
1971. Piaget defined this as the process by which human mental
structures undergo an adjustment in the face of the challenge posed
by new experiences. Thus it would be possible to experience a sense of
awe through realization of the ‘breadth and scope of a grand theory’,
such as evolutionary theory—or the Christian vision of reality.
We propose that prototypical awe involves a challenge to or negation of
mental structures when they fail to make sense of an experience of something
vast. Such experiences can be disorientating and even frightening . . . They
also often involve feelings of enlightenment and even rebirth, when mental
structures expand to accommodate truths never before known. We stress
that awe involves a need for accommodation, which may or not be satisfied.
The success of one’s attempt at accommodation may partially explain why
awe can be both terrifying (when one fails to understand) and enlightening
(when one succeeds).
For Piaget, human beings interact with their environment through a
process of ‘reflecting abstraction (l’abstraction réfléchissante)’. Human
beings are not born with such structures, nor do they absorb them
passively from their environment: they construct them through a
process of interaction (which Piaget terms ‘equilibration’), in which
an equilibrium is achieved between assimilation and accommodation.
Assimilation may be defined as the ‘act of incorporating objects or
aspects of objects into learned activities’, whereas accommodation is
‘the modification of an activity or ability in the face of environmental
demands’.⁵⁴ These interact in an adaptive process which permits new
information or observation to be fitted into already existing cognitive
structures, leading to equilibration, in which a balance is maintained

⁵³ Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt, ‘Approaching Awe, a Moral, Spiritual and
Aesthetic Emotion’, Cognition and Emotion 17 (2003): 297–314.
⁵⁴ As defined by Lefrançois, Theories of Human Learning, 329–30.
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Complexity and Mystery 199

‘between assimilation (using old learning) and accommodation
(changing behaviour; learning new things)’. Assimilation can thus be
thought of as applying an existing scheme of thought to a new situ-
ation, initiating a process of comparison and evaluation.⁵⁵ At times,
that may lead to the realization that the old way of thinking is not
capable of coping with what is being observed, forcing a modification
of this scheme—in other words, accommodation.
A mystery is thus something that is conceptually vast which trig-
gers a process of accommodation. Keltner and Haidt identify the
possible outcomes of a failure to comprehend an experience of
something that is vast, which includes fear and disorientation. This
is not, it must be emphasized, an affirmation of the irrationality of
nature or of human responses to nature; it is simply a recognition of
the challenges that human cognitive processes experience when con-
fronted with something immense.
On the basis of this discussion, it seems that the concept of mystery
retains validity as a framing device for approaching the human
experience of vastness—whether in the form of natural landscapes,
conceptual systems, or the apprehension of the universe—which
overwhelms the human mind, and thus encourages reductionist or
assimilationist coping strategies which in effect reduce reality to what
can be managed. The concept of mystery represents a protest against
such strategies, demanding the preservation of the phenomena, irre-
spective of how difficult they may be to grasp or comprehend.

ON BEING RECEPTIVE TO MYSTERY

It is a matter for some regret that there has been relatively little
philosophical discussion of the category of ‘mystery’. Yet it is not
difficult to understand a reluctance to engage with this notion, given
both its intrinsic resistance to definition on the one hand, and the
associations, however unjustified these might be, with irrationalism
or specifically religious ideas, which might be deemed to lie beyond

⁵⁵ Lefrançois, Theories of Human Learning, 335.

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200 The Territories of Human Reason

the legitimate scope of philosophy on the other. Yet perhaps one of the
most important concerns is the tension between the category of a
‘mystery’ and the characteristic Enlightenment demand for clear and
distinct ideas about ourselves and our world.⁵⁶ This reflects Descartes’s
influential principle of clear and distinct perception, as set out in his
‘Third Meditation’,⁵⁷ which Descartes himself regarded as supportive
of belief in a good and perfect God, yet which later thinkers came to
see as inimical to a Trinitarian notion of God.⁵⁸ There is a sense in
which a ‘mystery’ is something which cannot be reduced to such well-
defined ideas; to neutralize its threat to the authority of reason, it was
therefore necessary for rationalists to classify this as an irrational
belief, rather than something which exposed the limits of reason.
David E. Cooper and John Cottingham should be noted here as
examples of significant contemporary philosophical voices which
affirm the central importance of ‘experiences of mystery’ or ‘intim-
ations of the transcendent’ for religion, even though they diverge
somewhat in their understandings of quite what form such experi-
ences and intimations might take.⁵⁹ Cottingham explores the notion
of religion—or being religious—in terms of living in responsive
awareness of the ‘mystery of existence’. For Cooper, we have to face
up to reality’s being ‘ineffable and mysterious’, in that ‘no account of
the world’ could count as a ‘description of reality as such’, since any
such descriptions would ultimately reflect or be shaped by the preju-
dices, purposes, practices, and perspectives of those who devise them.
A point which emerges from the recent work of both Cooper and
Cottingham is the need to come to terms with the limited hold which
the human mind has on reality.⁶⁰ Although they express this in
different ways, there are some common themes which emerge from
their reflections. ‘Mystery’ refers to or involves the recognition of
something that is ‘beyond the human’, whether this is understood
metaphysically as a transcendent reality that resists reduction to

⁵⁶ A topic explored in detail in Lifschitz, Language and Enlightenment. See also

Kenshur, Dilemmas of Enlightenment, 97–100.
⁵⁷ Marion, ‘The General Rule of Truth in the Third Meditation’.
⁵⁸ Powell, The Trinity in German Thought, 60–3.
⁵⁹ Cooper, The Measure of Things; idem, ‘Living with Mystery’; Cottingham,
‘Religion and the Mystery of Existence’.
⁶⁰ For a good discussion, see Kidd, ‘Receptivity to Mystery’.
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Complexity and Mystery 201

human terms, or epistemologically as a realization, however reluctant,
that the world simply cannot be reduced to the humanly comprehen-
sible without intellectual distortion or degradation.

MYSTERY: AN INVITATION
TO DEEPER REFLECTION

Some critics of religion have suggested that an appeal to mystery

represents an illegitimate attempt to shut down reflection on the
nature of the universe, or a perverse celebration of human irration-
ality. Others, however, see this as a necessary and proper recognition
of the complexity of our universe, and the limits placed upon human
cognition. Colin McGinn and others have developed an approach
which might be termed ‘epistemic mysterianism’.⁶¹ On this view, what
makes a mystery intractable for us is primarily the poverty of our
epistemic capacities, not the way the world is. While there are problems
with such an approach, it nevertheless highlights the potential impli-
cations of the limits placed on human cognitive processing.
Yet when properly understood, the theological category of ‘mys-
tery’ simultaneously draws us to itself by its depth and luminosity,
while frustrating our capacity to dissect it, and reduce it to manage-
able components. This point was made with particular clarity by
Leonardo Boff:⁶²
Seeing mystery in this perspective enables us to understand how it provokes
reverence, the only possible attitude to what is supreme and final in our lives.
Instead of strangling reason, it invites expansion of the mind and heart.
A mystery invites engagement, yet resists closure. Part of the ration-
alist discontent with a mystery lies in its quest for the closure of such
questions in clear and distinct Cartesian terms. Yet such a closure is
ultimately ‘the imposition of fixity on openness’,⁶³ limiting our cap-
acity to revisit a mystery and reflect further on its significance and
meaning. The human desire for a firm answer to a question and an

⁶¹ Kriegel, ‘The New Mysterianism and the Thesis of Cognitive Closure’.

⁶² Boff, Trinity and Society, 159. ⁶³ Lawson, Closure, 5.
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202 The Territories of Human Reason

aversion to ambiguity is reflected in a ‘seize and freeze’ mentality,⁶⁴
which reflects a perceived need to foreclose a complex discussion,
perhaps arising from an ideological prejudice which is resistant to
evidential interrogation and challenge.⁶⁵
To speak of aspects of our world as a ‘mystery’ may indeed
represent a disinclination or inability on the part of some to engage
seriously and profoundly with the complexity of our world, and may
thus be an indicator of an implicit irrationalism. Yet there are other
possibilities, perhaps the most important of which is a profound
respect for the singularity of our universe, resulting in a principled
refusal to rush into premature closure of something that, by its very
nature, demands extended reflection, and may ultimately prove to lie
beyond an innate human capacity to comprehend those possibilities
fully. That, however, does not require the mystery itself nor its human
interpreters to be deemed to be ‘irrational’. It is simply a recognition
that some aspects of our complex world may lie beyond our capacity
to grasp them fully, linked to a suggestion that we recognize our
rational limits, rather than force reality into a Procrustean mould
predetermined by the limits of our reason.

⁶⁴ Kruglanski and Webster, ‘Motivated Closing of the Mind’.

⁶⁵ Roets and van Hiel, ‘Allport’s Prejudiced Personality Today’.
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8
Rational Consilience
Some Closing Reflections on
Science and Christian Theology

At the end of the twentieth century, the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson

reintroduced the term ‘consilience’ to refer to a vision of the bringing
together of outcomes and insights from different fields of knowledge,
while linking this notion to the Enlightenment’s goal of creating a
grand unified knowledge built upon a set of universal laws,¹ and to
the privileged place of the natural sciences within that goal. That
vision, as we have noted, ultimately rested on an unsustainable idea of
a universal rationality. So can the goal of bringing together such
insights from multiple facets of human creativity and reflection—
including science and theology—survive the lingering death of the
notion of a universal rationality? In this final chapter, I shall suggest
that it can, and will offer a brief exploration of how it might be
implemented—not to solve the issues, but rather to catalyse further
discussion of this important intellectual and cultural theme.
Yet rational consilience can be achieved without relying on out-
dated Enlightenment assumptions or succumbing to the temptations
of scientism. Wilson’s vision of consilience rests on a reaffirmation of
the Enlightenment idea of knowledge (which has become unsustain-
able), and the privileging of science (which is both unwarranted and
unwise). Wilson himself was an advocate of intellectual colonization,
arguing that the humanities and social sciences should be seen as

¹ Wilson, Consilience, 8–9.

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204 The Territories of Human Reason

little more than ‘specialized branches of biology’.² The diversity of
approaches evident within the natural sciences makes it clear that we
cannot talk about ‘science’ in general, but have to recognize the
distinctiveness of each scientific discipline, and its associated rational
beliefs and practices. Bruno Latour’s suggestion that we need to move
from a ‘culture of science’ to a ‘culture of research’ is helpful in
refocussing discussion on research objectives, while emphasizing the
importance of interconnection between disciplines themselves, as
well as the society they serve.³ Transdisciplinarity offers a much better
framework for the achievement of real consilience than the approach
commended by Wilson himself.

TOWARDS A ‘BIG PICTURE’:

A METAPHYSICAL TURN

The physicist and Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner once remarked that
science is constantly searching for the ‘ultimate truth’, which he
defined as ‘a picture which is a consistent fusion into a single unit
of the little pictures, formed on the various aspects of nature’.⁴ It is a
powerful image, hinting at a fragmentary picture of an unassimilated
accumulation of experience and observation, and raising the question
of how, whether, and to what extent, a unified view of nature might be
achieved. As I opened this work by reflecting on the challenges facing
anyone trying to integrate—or even intertwine—our ‘thoughts about
the world’ with our thoughts about ‘value and purpose’, it seems
appropriate to end this work by attempting to map out a framework
within which this might be attempted, if not completely accom-
plished. Can we achieve a unified picture? For a single grand narra-
tive?⁵ Or must we settle for a dappled world, in which each domain

² Wilson, Sociobiology, 547.

³ Latour, ‘From the World of Science to the World of Research?’ For its further
development, see Maasen, Lengwiler, and Guggenheim, ‘Practices of Transdisciplin-
ary Research’.
⁴ Wigner, ‘The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics’.
⁵ For the theological potential of this notion, see Sandler, ‘Christentum als große
Erzählung’.
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Rational Consilience 205

represents an intellectual island characterized by its own distinct and
local rationality?
This latter view, recently championed by Nancy Cartwright, picks
up on Otto Neurath’s criticism of ‘one great scientific theory’ into
which all the intelligible phenomena of nature can be fitted in ‘a
unique, complete and deductively closed set of precise statements’.⁶
For Cartwright, we live and think within a ‘dappled world’ in which
each aspect of reality has its own separate truth and its distinct
‘model’. Yet while Cartwright’s analysis has some important criti-
cisms to make of those who present natural scientists as ‘nomological
machines’ aiming to construct a complete and deductively closed
set of statements, she fails to engage what, for most natural scient-
ists, is the most obvious and plausible way of correlating different
aspects of the scientific enterprise—namely, scientific knowledge as a
multiply-connected web.⁷ Cartwright’s failure to recognize this inter-
connectedness is evident in her presentation of classical Newtonian
mechanics, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and Maxwell’s
electromagnetic theory as logically independent and separate, when
they are clearly to be seen as different yet interconnected aspects of the
same physical theory. Cartwright tends to think of these theories as
existing in ‘cocoons’. This may well be true in the case of Freudianism;
whereas epistemic approaches to scientific explanation emphasize the
capacity of good theories to interconnect, and thus to break down
interdisciplinary barriers. ‘In the modern state of science, no discovery
lives in a cocoon; rather it is built within and upon the entire inter-
connected structure of what we already know.’⁸
So what kind of ‘interconnected structure’ might this be? The central
argument of this work is that any such discussion about integration of
disciplinary insights or perspectives must be set in the context of an
actual and legitimate plurality of methodologies and rationalities
across intellectual disciplines, along with a principled refusal to accord
privilege to any beyond its own domain of competency. This book has
sought to subvert some older and influential discussions of the

⁶ Cartwright, Dappled World, 5–7.

⁷ See the important criticisms in Anderson, ‘Science: A “Dappled World” or a
“Seamless Web”?’
⁸ Anderson, ‘Science: A “Dappled World” or a “Seamless Web”?’, 490–1.
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206 The Territories of Human Reason

rationality of faith, primarily those associated with certain sections of
the Enlightenment, which portray human rationality as a universal
norm, independent of culture, history, or disciplinary specificity. The
best antidote to such a superficial account of rationality is to present a
more nuanced and complex reading of the situation, which is attentive
to empirical findings in the social and psychological sciences. Although
this notion of a historically and culturally invariant rationality lingers
in some quarters, it is clear that we need to consider what the impli-
cations of ‘Multiple Situated Rationalities’ might be for discussion of
the relation between any intellectual disciplines, including the relation
of the natural sciences with Christian theology.
On the basis of her social constructivist (mis)reading of some
recent scientific discussions, Cartwright argues for a ‘metaphysical
nomological pluralism’;⁹ I see no persuasive reason to do this, and
argue that it is better to think in terms of our world as an ontological
unity which demands and deserves a methodological pluralism,
which gives rise to an interconnected web of ideas and images of
scientific theories. On the basis of the evidence presented in this book,
I suggest that we should rather think in terms of the principled
colligation of ‘little pictures’, creating a larger picture, a seamless
web of cross-relationships—perhaps to be visualized as a panorama,
which connects and coordinates these snapshots.
The quest to construct such a ‘big picture’ of reality is often framed
in metaphysical terms. While the nature and place of metaphysics in
scientific and theological reasoning remain an open question, there is
sympathy for the views that the task of metaphysics is to ‘explain the
world’ in terms of its fundamental structures, or to explore the
‘ontological commitments’ of well-established scientific theories.¹⁰
The same task is also undertaken by Christian theology, which is
more amenable to exploring its metaphysical aspects.¹¹
Any satisfactory and healthy Christian theology simply cannot dispense
with, or be constructed in isolation from, some overall metaphysical scheme
or vision which somehow articulates into a rational unity [our] experience
and knowledge of the world, taken in the widest possible sense.

⁹ Cartwright, Dappled World, 31. ¹⁰ Sider, Writing the Book of the World.
¹¹ Richmond, Theology and Metaphysics, xi.
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Rational Consilience 207

Yet this does not mean that metaphysics determines either scientific
or theological analysis; it is rather the outcome of that process of
analysis, which leads to a quest for a unifying, or at least coordinating,
framework that holds together coherently the multiple insights that
have been gained.
The natural sciences are characterized by their empirical stance,
and a principled refusal to accept predetermined theories or accounts
of our world, laid down in advance by other scientists, philosophers,
or theologians. Many would argue that the natural sciences make no a
priori claims or assumptions, but generate their theories through a
constant probing of reality through observation, experimentation, and
theoretical reflection. In this sense, scientific knowledge is essentially
and characteristically a posteriori—the outcome, not the precondition
or presupposition, of an empirical method. No metaphysical assump-
tions are required for the scientific enterprise,¹² other than the arguably
functional or pragmatic assumption that nature is uniform.¹³
The Vienna Circle adopted a radical empiricism which in effect
limited meaningful statements to what could be verified from obser-
vation. Its failings were obvious. Karl Popper pointed out that such an
empiricism ‘did not exclude obvious metaphysical statements; but it
did exclude the most important and interesting of all scientific state-
ments, that is to say, the scientific theories, the universal laws of
nature’.¹⁴ Those who develop empirical stances today—such as Bas
van Fraassen—are more attentive to the ‘phenomenology of scientific
activity’, which includes a pragmatic motivation for scientists to
construct theories that describe unobservable structures beyond the
phenomena, given that this methodology has in the past generated
empirically adequate theories.¹⁵ An empiricist can adopt an essen-
tially pragmatic commitment to metaphysical theories, understand-
ing these as ways the world might be, in much the same way as a
constructive empiricist has a pragmatic commitment to theoretical

¹² Ladyman and Ross, Every Thing Must Go.

¹³ An assumption which is, of course, problematic in itself: see Rowan, ‘Stove on
the Rationality of Induction and the Uniformity Thesis’.
¹⁴ Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 281.
¹⁵ van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, 80–3.
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208 The Territories of Human Reason

superstructures, and recognizes the value of realist interpretations of
science as accounts of ways the world might be.
These lines of thought point to the possibility of an a posteriori
metaphysics—a provisional way of envisaging the world, which
results from the rigorous application of an empirical method on the
one hand, and a willingness to hypothesize a deeper unobservable
structure beyond those phenomena, within which specific scientific
disciplines operate, on the other. On this view, an implicit metaphys-
ics underlies any empirical science, in that it provides the framework
within which such sciences are conceived, undertaken, and related
to one another. Yet such a framework is understood as provisional
and corrigible, open to revision as scientific investigation of the
world continues.
A similar pattern of thought can be discerned within Christian
theology. Although some theologians draw on a ‘first philosophy’ to
lay down an a priori framework within which theology is to be
undertaken, most resist this, holding that the Christian theology is
not grounded in some presupposed metaphysics, but represents a way
of thinking about and imagining our world which is disclosed
through Scripture, and passed down and consolidated through the
Christian community, which here functions as an ‘epistemic commu-
nity’. For most, Christian theology is ultimately grounded, not in
philosophical ‘first principles’, but in a narrative—especially as this
focusses on the history of Jesus Christ.¹⁶ Some early Christian theo-
logians, embedded in a Hellenistic cultural context, used the language
of Greek metaphysics in developing their theology (for example, in
the statements of the Council of Chalcedon); this, however, is not to
be seen as an assimilation of Christology to secular Greek thought,
but a strategic deployment of its vocabulary to map the contours of
the Christian vision of reality, which is rooted in (and is to be
evaluated on the basis of) the New Testament.¹⁷
Christian theology is seen as an extended reflection on essentially
empirical data—primarily the narrative of Jesus Christ—with the
object of developing the larger account of reality that this intimates

¹⁶ See the seminal account of this process of reflection on a foundational narrative

in Niebuhr, The Meaning of Revelation, 23–46.
¹⁷ O’Leary, Questioning Back, vii–xvii.
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Rational Consilience 209

and enfolds. This process of reflection gradually leads to the emergence
of a greater vision of the world which could be described as ‘meta-
physical’. Christian theology aspires to articulate such a ‘scheme or
vision’, especially in highlighting its capacity to hold together our
experience of the world as a coherent whole. ‘This is our first demand
of religion—that it should illumine life and make it a whole.’¹⁸
This process of grasping a complex interconnected structure lies
beyond the capacity of any one discipline, and involves an individual
thinker developing a first-person mental map of reality which enables
us to imagine such a coordinated reality, and begin to grasp the
nature and implications of its interconnections.¹⁹
Reality is one and truth indivisible. Each special science aims at truth, seeking
to portray accurately some part of reality. But the various portrayals of
different parts of reality must, if they are all to be true, fit together to make
a portrait which can be true of reality as a whole. No special science can
arrogate to itself the task of rendering mutually consistent the various partial
portraits: that task can alone belong to an overarching science of being, that
is to ontology.
In attempting to construct such a ‘big picture’ of reality, we need to
attempt to colligate disciplinary insights, while recognizing that no
discipline in itself can hope to provide a universally acceptable
rendering of a metaphysical vision like this which renders such
insights into a rational unity.
In his remarkable essay ‘Resuming the Enlightenment Quest’,
Edward O. Wilson notes the growing trend to regard the natural
sciences, social sciences, and humanities as separated ‘by an epis-
temological discontinuity, in particular by possession of different
categories of truth, autonomous ways of knowing, and languages
largely untranslatable into those of the natural sciences’. Yet this, he
argues, can be challenged and countered by an appeal to ‘phenomena
bound up with the material origins and functioning of the human
brain’, thus providing a basis for the unity of knowledge which
privileges the biological sciences.²⁰ Yet Wilson’s approach to consili-
ence fails to address the issue, not least because it implies that we can

¹⁸ Wood, In Pursuit of Truth, 102. ¹⁹ Lowe, The Four-Category Ontology, 4.

²⁰ Wilson, ‘Resuming the Enlightenment Quest’, 17.
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210 The Territories of Human Reason

infer the content of human thought from knowledge of the underlying
brain mechanisms.²¹ Where Wilson proposes a hierarchical materi-
alist unification, based on the intellectual hegemony of the natural
sciences, I instead propose to think in terms of webs of disciplinary
interconnection and cross-fertilization, which avoids such privileging
of specific disciplines, and is attentive and respectful to their intellec-
tual approaches and practices.

THE COLLIGATION OF INSIGHTS

Werner Heisenberg suggested that the Copenhagen approach to

quantum theory implied that we do not know nature directly, but
rather indirectly, as a result of our methods of investigation.²² Yet if
we think of nature as a totality, Heisenberg’s line of thought leads us
to the conclusion that a multiplicity of research methods leads to a
corresponding plurality of perspectives or insights, which thus require
to be integrated, coordinated, or colligated in order to allow the best
possible overall representation of nature.
Although Heisenberg himself does not use the term ‘pluralism’ in
describing his own position, the position that he develops in his later
writings recognizes the complexity of both the natural world and
human experience, and offers an account of this which recognizes a
plurality of approaches and intellectual outcomes.²³ Perhaps most
importantly, Heisenberg was able to accommodate both art and
religion within his overall approach, distinguishing these methodo-
logically from the sciences, while affirming their intellectual and
cultural legitimacy and distinctiveness.²⁴

²¹ Davis, ‘The Importance of Human Individuality for Sociobiology’.

²² Heisenberg, ‘Die Kopenhagener Deutung der Quantentheorie’, 85: ‘Und wir
müssen uns daran erinnern, daß das, was wir beobachten, nicht die Natur selbst ist,
sondern Natur, die unserer Art der Fragestellung ausgesetzt ist.’ The Copenhagen
interpretation, of course, is only one of a range of options within the field: see
Schlosshauer, Kofler, and Zeilinger, ‘A Snapshot of Foundational Attitudes toward
Quantum Mechanics’.
²³ Schiemann, ‘Welt im Wandel’, 310–11.
²⁴ See especially Heisenberg, ‘Naturwissenschaftliche und religiöse Wahrheit’, 348–9.
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Rational Consilience 211

I have already referred several times in this work to Steven Rose’s
fable about five biologists on a picnic who offer quite distinct
accounts of why a frog jumps (59; 66–7). Their five different answers
reflect the different perspectives and methodologies of the five dis-
ciplines here represented; nevertheless, they are capable of being
correlated and colligated, to yield a larger account of why the frog
jumped than that provided by any single perspective. Yet this
account is not merely additive; it expands our overall account of
this phenomenon, presenting a whole that is greater than its con-
stituent parts.
The ‘colligation’ was used by the empirical philosopher William
Whewell, who conceived it as an ‘act of thought’ that brings together a
number of empirical facts by ‘superinducing’ upon them a way of
thinking which unites the facts, in much the same way as a string
holds together the pearls of a necklace.²⁵ Where Whewell tended to
think of colligation as the connection of observations, however, I shall
use the term to refer to the epistemic process of constructing a ‘big
picture’ that is capable of accommodating and interconnecting mul-
tiple notions or insights, drawn from across intellectual disciplines,
distinguished by their operative rationalities.
This colligation neither resolves, nor depends on resolving, two
significant issues. First, like any scientific theory, each of these dis-
ciplinary accounts has to be regarded as provisional and corrigible,
subject to correction through the ongoing processes of theoretical
refinement and evidentiary accumulation. And secondly, this colliga-
tion of perspectives does not involve the integration or reconciliation
of the distinct methodologies or operational rationalities of these
disciplines. Each discipline retains its own distinctive identity, while
nevertheless being able to engage in a meaningful and constructive
conversation with other fields of enquiry, contributing to an inter-
connected web of insight. This point is clearly of relevance to any
attempt to colligate insights from multiple disciplines, characterized
by quite different operative rationalities—such as the natural sciences
and Christian theology, the focus of this work.

²⁵ Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 2, 46.

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212 The Territories of Human Reason

In such cases, any such colligation will be contested, not least
because of the methodological asymmetry between the disciplines.
Such a colligation is to be seen as characterized by two principles:
1. It is a matter of choice, reflecting the personal epistemic conclu-
sions of the individual thinker (or a group of thinkers), rather than
being compelled by publicly unassailable evidential warrants. As
has been emphasized in this work, such a commitment will rest on
what a given thinker may consider to be a rational judgement for
reasons that may not be seen as compelling by those within other
traditions of rationality.
2. It usually involves making connections at different levels of analysis,
especially in colligating levels of functional explanation on the one
hand, and levels of meaning or value on the other. Once more, this
does not involve suspension of rational judgement on the part of
individuals or communities wishing to make such connections.
To illustrate these points, we shall consider the way in which the
natural sciences might be brought into conversation with socialism.

A CASE STUDY IN COLLIGATION:

SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM

The analysis presented in this volume suggests that each intellectual

discipline develops its own distinct research methods, embodying its
own account of rationality, in a manner that is found to be appropriate
for its specific disciplinary tasks and goals. The application of these
methods results in certain intellectual outcomes. As we have stressed,
these outcomes are often to be seen as provisional, reflecting a histor-
ically situated consensus within a given epistemic community, which is
subject to revision and correction in the light of continuous theoretical
reflection and the accumulation of relevant evidence. Yet a diversity of
methods does not preclude a correlation of their outcomes.
A case study may be helpful in illuminating this point. Mary
Midgley has noted how Marxism, one of the ‘two great secular faiths
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Rational Consilience 213

of our day’, exhibits ‘religious-looking features’,²⁶ thus suggesting that
attempts to correlate science and socialism might serve as an analogy
for the correlation of science and theology, if only to some limited
extent. Although Karl Marx did not give a particularly high profile
to the scientific status of socialism in his early works,²⁷ late
nineteenth-century Marxism came to regard it as integral to its self-
understanding.²⁸ Friedrich Engels’ famous essay ‘Socialisme utopique
et socialisme scientifique’ (1880) is generally regarded as crystallizing
the core themes of such a scientific socialism.²⁹
In its strong form, the notion of ‘scientific socialism’ articulates
what one might term the ‘scientific inevitability of socialism’. Perhaps
the most familiar statement of this is found in Engels’ address at Karl
Marx’s funeral at Highgate Cemetery, London in March 1883: ‘just as
Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx
discovered the law of development of human history.’³⁰ Marx sought
to formalize and codify socialism as a socio-economic theory that was
rigorously grounded in the objective scientific study of history.³¹ This
‘scientific socialism (wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus)’ established as its
primary principle the belief—which it presented as an objective
outcome of scientific research—that all historical eras are shaped by
their economic conditions, and give rise to inequalities in political,
social, and economic power leading to social stratification. This
process was expedited by the rise of industrial capitalism during the
second half of the nineteenth century. For Engels, the system of
scientific socialism described the inevitable collapse of capitalism
and its subsequent replacement by a classless and stateless socialist
system. Few now regard this as ‘scientific’ in any meaningful sense of

²⁶ Midgley, Evolution as a Religion, 17–18. Midgley holds that the second such
‘secular faith’ is Darwinism.
²⁷ Marx’s relatively few references to the natural sciences are discussed in Griese
and Sandkühler, eds. Karl Marx—Zwischen Philosophie und Naturwissenschaften.
²⁸ Quante, Schweikard, and Hoesch, Marx-Handbuch, 280–304.
²⁹ A German translation appeared in 1882. For its basic themes, see Thomas,
Marxism and Scientific Socialism, 35–49.
³⁰ Thomas, Marxism and Scientific Socialism, 1–2.
³¹ Höppner, ‘Karl Marx—Begründer des Wissenschaftlichen Kommunismus’.
Marx’s analysis echoes the strongly positivist understanding of history then emerging
within Germany: Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition, 254–6.
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214 The Territories of Human Reason

the term, not least because it presupposed its core doctrine of class
warfare, and retrojected this on to earlier periods of history. However,
this is not the core issue for our purposes; the key point is that
socialism—a political system of meaning and value—was correlated
with an allegedly ‘objective’ scientific analysis of history and culture,
which was argued to predict the inevitable triumph of those values.³²
Yet alongside this, we must note a second approach, which is weaker
in its apologetic claims yet potentially far more plausible as a mean-
ingful worldview—namely, the notion that there is a fundamental
resonance between socialist values and a scientific culture.³³ Although
there were attempts to develop socialist theory in ways that paralleled
the objectivity of the sciences, in order to confer on it a comparable
objectivity, many German socialists of the late nineteenth century
regarded the natural sciences and socialism as sharing progressivist
values, allowing for an at least partial alignment of their ideologies.³⁴
Stuart Hampshire argued that socialism was a ‘set of moral injunctions
which seem to [him] clearly right and rationally justifiable’;³⁵ yet the
methods by which one might demonstrate that such values are ‘ration-
ally justifiable’ will not be the same as those by which one might
demonstrate that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. Yet this does
not prevent a contemporary cosmologist from being a socialist. Dif-
ferent rational toolkits have to be developed and adapted for different
tasks and goals; yet this does not mean that their outcomes cannot be
correlated within a thinking person’s view of the world.
So what interpretative frameworks might inform this colligation of
science and socialism? How is this process of colligation to be visu-
alized? As we have seen (59–65), the visual metaphor of perspectives
is capable of incorporating both the notion of different angular
or spatial perspectives on reality, and multiple levels of reality.
Those who wish to defend this colligation are neither confusing nor
identifying socialism with science—for example, by blurring their

³² For the later development and application of these ideas, see Joravsky, Soviet
Marxism and Natural Science, 1917–1932.
³³ It remains an open question, of course, what those values are, and the extent to
which they are distinctive of socialism: see especially Collier, ‘Scientific Socialism and
the Question of Socialist Values’.
³⁴ See the careful study of Bayertz, ‘Naturwissenschaft und Sozialismus’.
³⁵ Kołakowski and Hampshire, The Socialist Idea, 249.
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Rational Consilience 215

distinctive boundaries. Rather, it is a process of weaving multiple
threads together, without losing sight of the identity and distinctive
nature of those threads, and remaining interested in seeing what
pattern emerges from this process of aligning and interconnecting.
It might be objected that this is a fuzzy way of engaging our world,
lacking the clinical precision of logic. This is a fair point; yet it needs
to be put into context. It is an empirical observation that human
beings seem to construct their identities and understand their worlds
using multiple narratives,³⁶ bringing religious, political, social, and
cultural ideas together within an imaginative framework as we try to
make sense of things. There is no logical contradiction here, in that
the insights of the natural sciences and socialist theory operate at
different levels. Indeed, these could be supplemented further, with
the addition of a Christian perspective, such as that found in the
Christian socialism of R. H. Tawney.³⁷
The point being made here is that a commitment to both the
scientific method and to socialism, whether as a set of ideas or as
embodied action, is not intellectually incoherent. It might be ques-
tioned by those with alternative political perspectives; yet generically
the colligation of these two perspectives is intellectually legitimate,
and is easily instanced from leading figures in the past and present.
Albert Einstein is a good example of a physicist with strongly
socialist inclinations who saw his political and social values as inter-
connected with—though not determined by—the scientific method.
In many ways, Einstein is an example of the kind of person that
E. O. Wilson described as a ‘synthesizer’—someone who can bring
multiple disciplines together, and open up a deeper and richer way of
envisioning our world, and acting within it.³⁸ Indeed, Einstein
models the interdisciplinary ‘consilience’—the term is borrowed from
Whewell—that Wilson believes is essential for contemporary culture,
especially through bringing the science and humanities into productive
dialogue. The increasing complexity of the world mandates such

³⁶ Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 63–94.

³⁷ Marsden, ‘Richard Tawney: Moral Theology and the Social Order’.
³⁸ Wilson, Consilience, 294.
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216 The Territories of Human Reason

transgression of disciplinary boundaries, in order to achieve wisdom
and insight. Einstein saw this as socially significant; more important,
he also saw it as intellectually acceptable and meaningful.
In his neglected 1949 essay ‘Why Socialism?’³⁹ Einstein argued that
the natural sciences cannot create moral goals, even though it may
provide means by which they could be achieved. Those goals do not
originate from science; yet science might be the catalyst for their
implementation. It is interesting to note that Einstein had used a
similar intellectual framework ten years earlier in arguing for a
constructive engagement between the natural sciences and religion.⁴⁰
Einstein here argued that ‘the scientific method can teach us nothing
else beyond how facts are related to, and conditioned by, each other’.
Human beings, however, need more than what a ‘purely rational
conception of our existence’ is able to offer. Yet opening up such
fundamental questions of meaning and value does not cause us to
lapse into some kind of superstitious irrationality. ‘Objective know-
ledge provides us with powerful instruments for the achievements of
certain ends, but the ultimate goal itself and the longing to reach it
must come from another source.’ For Einstein, the fundamental
beliefs which are ‘necessary and determinant for our conduct and
judgments’ cannot be developed or sustained in a ‘solid scientific
way’. Einstein thus framed the natural sciences in a way that created
space for moral or spiritual values—including those arising from
socialism or religion.
We need, however, to return to Stuart Hampshire to make a further
point. Noting that human beings have lived on the basis of very
different conceptions of the ‘good life’—including socialism—
Hampshire argues that no individual or community can avoid con-
flicts arising from incompatible moral beliefs, which cannot be
resolved intellectually.⁴¹ Philosophers may have tried in the past to
find some underlying moral idea of justice which could resolve these
conflicts, and would be valid at all times and in all places; these efforts,
however, have been unsuccessful.⁴² In one sense, therefore, Einstein’s

³⁹ Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 151–8.

⁴⁰ Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, 41–9.
⁴¹ Hampshire, Justice is Conflict, 37.
⁴² See especially the extended argument in Hampshire, Innocence and Experience.
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Rational Consilience 217

colligation of physics and socialism involves bringing a set of robust
beliefs arising from the empirical method together with a set of
somewhat more tentative (in terms of their epistemic grounds) beliefs
concerning morality and social justice. These two sets of beliefs are
not merely derived by different methods and operative rationalities;
their epistemic warrants are significantly different.
This might lead some to draw the conclusion that this colligation is
unwarranted, perhaps even irrational, on the basis of the concern that
these two sets of principles cannot be adhered to simultaneously
without some degree of cognitive dissonance, incoherence, or incon-
sistency. There may well be merit in this concern; yet we have to come
to terms with the brute fact that human beings do this all the time,
and do not see fundamental difficulties in doing so. This colligation is
psychologically plausible, and generates practices that are found to be
meaningful. Natural scientists do hold political beliefs,⁴³ despite their
failure to conform to the criteria of scientific rationality, and find
ways of integrating these beliefs and values within their personal
maps of reality. The political commitments of leading mathemat-
icians are also instructive in making this same point.⁴⁴
These reflections serve to reinforce the fundamental point to
emerge from the analysis of rationality presented in this volume—
namely, that people are perfectly capable of weaving together out-
comes or insights from multiple disciplines and sources, characterized
by quite distinct procedures and rationalities, without losing their
character as rational reflective agents. Our complex world requires a
plurality of rational methods for its investigation and meaningful
inhabitation, and no one such method can be regarded as normative
in every respect. Normativity is discipline-specific. We cannot develop
a hybrid rationality which is valid across disciplines; rather, we have to
work with the specific rationalities of each discipline, and seek to bring
together their outcomes as best we can.

⁴³ See the 2009 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People &
the Press in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS).
⁴⁴ Alberts, ‘On Connecting Socialism and Mathematics’.
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218 The Territories of Human Reason

A CASE STUDY IN COLLIGATION:

SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY

As our discussion of the relation of the natural sciences and socialism

has made clear, it is both intellectually possible and legitimate for
scientists to hold political commitments, despite the obvious rational
asymmetry between scientific and political beliefs. The latter reflect
beliefs and values which lie beyond the scope of the scientific method;
they are not to be considered anti-scientific for that reason, but simply
non-scientific. Similarly, the natural sciences and Christian theology
belong at different locations on intellectual maps. It is not as if
Christian theology offers a deficient or outdated version of science,
which is corrected or discredited by professional scientists. It is cer-
tainly true that some early twentieth-century anthropologists took the
view that religion is a primitive form of science, perhaps choosing to
read the Bible as offering a deficient scientific account of the origins of
the universe, when its primary concern is clearly to deal with ultimate
questions about the nature and destiny of humanity, and how God
relates to and transforms the human situation.⁴⁵
Science and theology are different; there may be important bound-
ary issues that need to be engaged, but they are not competing for the
same explanatory territory, even though some representatives of each
make inflated, occasionally even imperialist, claims on the other’s
domain.⁴⁶ Some scientists may object to religion on the ground that
it appeals to the category of the ‘supernatural’, which is clearly at odds
with scientific naturalism. Yet terms such as ‘spiritual’ or ‘supernatural’
are notoriously resistant to precise definition. Paul Draper suggests
that a ‘supernatural entity’ is one that can affect the natural world
without being part of it.⁴⁷ By definition, this includes God; yet it also
seems to include Platonic mathematical realities, which we discover
rather than invent—an idea that is integral to some mathematical
conceptualizations of our universe and its functioning.⁴⁸ Theologians

⁴⁵ See Jones, Can Science Explain Religion?, 187–8.

⁴⁶ See Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion.
⁴⁷ For an attempt at definition, see Draper, ‘God, Science, and Naturalism’.
⁴⁸ For these notions and their important to scientific theorizing, see Penrose, The
Road to Reality, 11–17, 1028–9; Ye, ‘Naturalism and Abstract Entities’.
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Rational Consilience 219

would further object that this reduces God to an entity within the
universe, rather than the grounds of that universe. ‘Rationalism tries to
find a place for God in its picture of the world. But God . . . is rather the
canvas on which the picture is painted, or the frame in which it is set.’⁴⁹
In his important and influential account of the rationality of
traditions (81–3), Alasdair MacIntyre suggests that a viable intellec-
tual tradition should be able to offer a rational account of the exist-
ence of rival traditions. Can each of these epistemic communities
make sense of the existence of the other, based on their own distinct
rationality?⁵⁰ The intellectual resilience of both science and theology
is evident in the fact that both offer, from their own perspectives,
scientific explanations of religious belief and behaviour, and theo-
logical explanations of the legitimacy and scope of the natural sci-
ences.⁵¹ The success of such explanations may be contested within
and across these two traditions; yet they both offer rational resources
that allow such explanations to be developed and applied. There is, as
we noted earlier (31; 48), no tradition-independent perspective on
this issue, no normative and objective ‘view from nowhere’ which
can be justified on the basis of either a privileged perspective or a
universal rationality. Perhaps this view enjoyed a ‘Golden Age’ in
Western Europe during the eighteenth century, before the critical
interrogation of such ideas gained pace in the later twentieth century.
As we argued earlier (59–65), the notion of the natural sciences and
Christian theology offering differing perspectives on a complex reality
has considerable potential in facilitating this process of colligation of
insights, especially when this is understood to combine different
angles of approach and different levels of engagement. For example,
there is a growing realization that meaning is rarely bundled with
scientific discovery; it must be created through narratives of the kind
in which Christian theology excels.

⁴⁹ Inge, Faith and Its Psychology, 197. For Kepler’s appeal to theological notions in
articulating the unity of nature, see Hon, ‘Kepler’s Revolutionary Astronomy’, 162–73.
⁵⁰ It is thus no accident that Christian theologians from the second century
onwards have taken care to show how a Christian metanarrative is able to account
for the existence of other religious traditions, as well as presenting Christianity as their
fulfilment. For some recent examples of this approach, see Sparks, ‘The Fulfilment
Theology of Jean Daniélou, Karl Rahner and Jacques Dupuis’. More generally, see
Sandler, ‘Christentum als große Erzählung’.
⁵¹ See Jones, Can Science Explain Religion?, 14–97.
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220 The Territories of Human Reason

A particularly important instance of this issue relates to the
question of human nature and identity—always an important topic,
but increasingly pertinent to the growing debates about the ethics of
human technological enhancement. How might scientific and theo-
logical insights be colligated? Are they simply being aggregated, and
thus treated as disconnected and discrete insights, which are
unaffected by being brought together in this? Or are they being
integrated, by being allowed to interact, challenge, and enrich each
other—and thus being changed by this process of interactive juxta-
position? Or might there be a third possibility—a conceptual novum,
which emerges from the process of interaction of science and the-
ology, yet is vouchsafed by neither of these in isolation?
Consider the following three aspects of human nature, drawn
respectively from evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology, and
Christian theology. All would command a degree of support within
their respective epistemic communities, while remaining subject to
continuing reflection and evaluation.
1. Human beings are genetically predisposed to act in selfish ways,
even if that may occasionally express itself in seemingly altruistic
modes of behaviour.⁵²
2. Human beings are predisposed to use narratives to recall the past,
preserve their individual and communal identity, and construct
systems of meaning.⁵³
3. Human beings are sinful, alienated from God and their true
destiny, and stand in need of salvation.⁵⁴
These three ideas could easily be placed in isolated compartments,
treated as disconnected concepts. Yet they can also be interconnected
by means of an appropriate framing device or perspective.
For example, many consider that narratives serve an explanatory
function.⁵⁵ All three insights noted above can be woven together

⁵² The position of Richard Dawkins. For a critical discussion of its origins and
legacy, see McGrath, Dawkins’ God, 32–56.
⁵³ Ochs and Capps, ‘Narrating the Self ’; Hinchman and Hinchman, eds, Memory,
Identity, Community.
⁵⁴ For this theme in Augustine, see Couenhoven, Stricken by Sin, Cured by Christ,
19–57.
⁵⁵ See the discussion in Klauk, ‘Is There Such a Thing as Narrative Explanation?’
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Rational Consilience 221

through allowing the Christian narrative of sin and the scientific
narrative of evolution to inform and critique each other.⁵⁶ Such
an interweaving of narratives respects their distinct identities (and
the manner of their generation), while aiming to encourage cross-
fertilization and enrichment. It is not difficult to see how this could be
extended—for example, by asking how the Christian narrative
of creation interacts with the scientific narrative of the origins of
the universe.
As already noted, the spatial framework of perspectives and levels
provides a convenient and imaginatively plausible means of holding
together the ontological unity of nature and the deployment of a
plurality of methods in its exploration. ‘Creation’ and ‘origination’
can be seen as different perspectives on reality, each embedded within
its own set of assumptions. The functional explanation of the universe
can be enriched and expanded by recognizing the possibility of levels
of meaning and value, which exist and are discerned using different
conceptual toolboxes. Such an approach moves us far beyond the arid
explanatory reductionism we find in some sectors of the natural
sciences, opening up the discussion of human identity and function-
ality in productive and illuminating manners—not least by challen-
ging the explanatory finality and totality of any single discipline, or its
practical applicability to the entire range of tasks and problems facing
human beings, as individuals and social communities.
Yet the object of this monograph is not to answer these questions,
but to show that a rational approach can be developed to allow them
to be engaged, leading to the weaving together of multiple insights
and approaches. In what follows, we shall offer a brief sketch of what
one such approach might look like.

RATIONALITY: A COHESIVE APPROACH

This work has offered a detailed analysis of human rationality, pri-

marily in the natural sciences and secondarily in Christian theology,
aiming to move the framework of discussion away from an outdated

⁵⁶ For an excellent example of such an approach, see Nielsen, Sin and Selfish Genes.
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222 The Territories of Human Reason

notion of a single rationality to which all disciplines should conform,
to a range of multiply situated rationalities, which arise authentically
and naturally as a result of the specificity of the various forms of
human knowledge production. Its emphasis has fallen on mapping
the territories of human reason, as a prelude to the task of offering an
enriched account of the possible interweaving and interconnection of
the natural sciences and Christian theology.
The main concern of this work is thus to provide intellectual
justification for and facilitation to a meaningful conversation between
the natural sciences and Christian theology, without compromising
the rationality of this joint enterprise—or the two individual
enterprises—in the first place. While this focus on the relation of
science and theology has wider interdisciplinary relevance, it is trea-
ted here as a subject of significance in its own right, given the high
cultural profiles of both science and religion, and especially the
continuing importance of finding meaning for the subjective well-
being of individuals.
This work has set out to map the territories of human reason.
Cultural psychology suggests that the abstract potentialities of the
human mind—such as the abilities to think and act, to develop norms
and values, and to discern purpose and meaning—cannot be under-
stood to exist outside a cultural context. They are, so to speak,
emergent, realizing their full potential and displaying their developed
forms within the behavioural and symbolic context of a community.⁵⁷
The exercise of human cognition within specific cultural and discip-
linary contexts leads to the conceptual fragmentation of our single
world, partly through focussing on only certain aspects of that world,
and partly because of the emergence of distinct notions of rationality
in response to specific disciplinary tasks. The question is whether
these fragmentary insights can be reconnected, so that a cohesive
account of our world can be reconstituted.
We may live in a world that is an ontological unity, but this world is
investigated and represented on the basis of an epistemological plur-
alism, offering us a bricolage of unintegrated insights and perceptions
arising from different disciplinary or cultural perspectives on our

⁵⁷ See especially Cassaniti and Menon, eds, Universalism without Uniformity.

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Rational Consilience 223

world, or scientific engagement with its different levels.⁵⁸ It is not
difficult to develop theoretical nets which help us visualize the inter-
connectedness of these perceptions, or understand how they arise
from the exercise of their specific disciplinary rationalities. What
remains stubbornly elusive is their failure to provide means of cali-
brating their respective reliabilities, or to offer a theoretical frame-
work that allows the settling of boundary disputes, or a precise
coordination of their interactions.
There are many strategies that might be developed and deployed
to cope with this situation. This diversity might be seen simply as
something which is to be acknowledged and respected, rather than as
something which can be integrated into a coherent theoretical frame-
work. On this approach, the important thing is to hold these insights
together, without resolving the tensions that this causes. This is prag-
matically helpful—for example, in allowing an enhanced appreciation
of the complexity and dynamics of human communities.⁵⁹ It is, how-
ever, an unsatisfactory strategy at a theoretical level, offering appar-
ently eclectic and descriptive accounts of a complex reality which are
seen to lack conceptual rigour. While its pragmatism may seem to
some to be the only realistic way forward, it lacks the capacity to offer a
convincing intellectual account of the coordination of such insights
and outcomes, and at best leads to these insights being placed in
parallel columns, without any hope of integration or connection.
This difficulty is particularly evident in what now seems to be the
failure of attempts to develop a comprehensive account of human
nature. Reductionist approaches may have a certain conceptual neat-
ness and simplicity; they fail, however, to do justice to the complexity
of human nature, or to account for the emergence of certain proper-
ties or functions at higher levels of the system.⁶⁰ Perhaps even more
problematically, there is disagreement about the fundamental nature

⁵⁸ I borrow this phrase from Nina Lykke, who speaks of the transgressing of
disciplinary boundaries as allowing for ‘a theoretical and methodological bricolage
that allows for new synergies to emerge’: Lykke, ‘Women’s/Gender/Feminist
Studies—A Post-Disciplinary Discipline?’, 96.
⁵⁹ For a good example of this kind of approach, and an exploration of its practical
benefits, see Larsen and Stock, ‘Capturing Contrasted Realities’.
⁶⁰ For a detailed discussion, see Ellis, How Can Physics Underlie the Mind?,
291–382.
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224 The Territories of Human Reason

of the perspectives to be integrated, and the manner in which this is to
be achieved.⁶¹ How are such disciplinary insights to be ranked in any
such integrative approach? And given that so many are provisional
and contested, how can a stable model result? Even a quick compari-
son of major recent writings on the theme shows an astonishing
variety of multiperspectival scientific ‘takes’ on human nature, and
no obvious way of resolving their divergent outcomes.⁶² These con-
cerns have led some to suggest that it is no longer meaningful to speak
of ‘human nature’.
A second approach is to suggest that, given the multiplicity of
rationalities, it might be possible to proceed on the basis of their
lowest common denominator—in effect constructing a hybrid or
pragmatic rationality for the purposes of resolving disputes or incorp-
orating different perspectives into a decision-making process.⁶³ Such
an approach may have merits in some contexts; it remains, however,
of questionable academic utility, given its pragmatic orientation. The
really interesting question concerns not the baseline, but what may be
built upon it.
A third approach might be to develop a ‘meta-rationality’—a grand
theory of human rationality which is capable of accommodating such
divergences across disciplines, and allowing them to be seen within a
greater whole. This is perhaps the most ambitious way of engaging
the issue, and has considerable imaginative appeal. There are, how-
ever, some troubling questions here about perspectival privilege,
which parallel those associated with intellectually flawed attempts to
deal with religious diversity by proposing that all religious traditions
are to be seen as different yet equally valid responses to ‘The Real’.⁶⁴
There is a serious risk of intellectual colonization, in which the
perspectives of one epistemic community are treated as normative

⁶¹ See the important discussions in Fuentes and Visala, eds, Verbs, Bones, and Brains.
⁶² Compare, for example, the approaches and outcomes found in two influential
recent works: Pinker, The Blank Slate, and Prinz, Beyond Human Nature. For a
helpful summary of such divergent approaches, see Pojman, Who Are We?
⁶³ Bouwmeester, The Social Construction of Rationality, 18–43. For an excellent
example of such an approach in practical situations, see Li, Ashkanasy, and Ahlstrom,
‘The Rationality of Emotions’.
⁶⁴ D’Costa, ‘Whose Objectivity? Which Neutrality?’
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Rational Consilience 225

or privileged, and in effect are used to enfold other communities
within its scope.
For the Christian theologian, one attractive possibility is to see a
Trinitarian ‘big picture’ as having the intellectual and imaginative
capacity to function as such a ‘meta-rationality’, for example in
accommodating the existence of other religious traditions, or provid-
ing a framework for grasping the relation of the sciences and
theology.⁶⁵ While this ‘meta-rationality’ is specific to the Christian
tradition, and thus carries little epistemic weight beyond its bound-
aries, it nevertheless informs a distinctively Christian approach to an
understanding of the relation of the natural sciences and theology,
and provides a robust foundation and framework for transdisciplin-
ary conversations and research. Such rational specificity is to be seen
not as a liability, but as a distinctive characteristic which plays into
and informs any Christian discussion of the relation of theology and
other disciplines, and—at least to a Christian constituency—offers a
theoretical framework capable of holding together multiple insights
concerning our complex world. This possibility clearly needs further
development, which cannot be undertaken in this present volume,
which has focussed rather on the question of human rationality which
underlies such an enterprise.
So what might be concluded? If E. O. Wilson is right, the future of
human civilization depends on ‘synthesizers’—those who can make
connections across disciplines. ‘We are drowning in information,
while starving for wisdom.’⁶⁶ As Wilson recognizes, science and
religion are, and will remain, major elements of our culture; they
need to talk meaningfully to each other. Wisdom, it is widely agreed,
is not to be equated with knowledge; rather, it can be thought of as a
‘deeper rationality’ which represents the integration of insights, and
the application of these to real life. It is more than simply knowing
facts; it is about colligating them, and hence grasping and enacting
their coherence-making and meaning-generating properties.

⁶⁵ See, for example, Kärkkäinen, Trinity and Religious Pluralism; Polkinghorne,

‘Physics and Metaphysics in a Trinitarian Perspective’; Reich, ‘The Doctrine of the
Trinity as a Model for Structuring the Relations Between Science and Theology’.
⁶⁶ Wilson, Consilience, 294. For Wilson’s assumption of the legitimate hegemony
of the sciences in this conversation, see Segerstrale, ‘Wilson and the Unification
of Science’.
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226 The Territories of Human Reason

As Wilson hints, the debate has moved beyond whether the natural
sciences, politics, and religious belief are ‘compatible’ with one
another, as if there were some rational norm, some privileged point
of adjudication, by which this question might be answered. The
evidence is uncontestable: many people do consider these multiple
perspectives to be mutually compatible, even enriching. The conver-
sation needs to move on, perhaps drawing on the insights of the
psychology of cognitive interdisciplinarity, which actively seeks to
understand how individuals can—and do—hold together multiple
perspectives, drawn from different disciplines.⁶⁷ How can we reverse
the excesses of specialization, and create room for interdisciplinary or
transdisciplinary cross-fertilization? One route is through the culti-
vation of epistemic dependence, in which multiple thinkers bring
about a shared expansion of a group’s vision; another is the rediscov-
ery of the Renaissance vision, in which individuals try to absorb as
much knowledge as they can in their quest for wisdom. There is,
however, a limit to what an individual can grasp of a discipline
without being an active participant in its community of research.
We need a better approach than that which Wilson himself offers
to achieve the noble ambition of consilience—namely, an approach
that is responsive to the massive shifts in our understanding of the
territory of human reason, which require us to leave behind some
of the Enlightenment’s own methods and assumptions if we are to
achieve some of its broader goals. Perhaps the approach set out in this
work provides a more reliable and generous framework for that
conversation, offering intellectual hospitality to multiple approaches,
and welcoming all to the table of rational discussion. The complexity
of the question and its attending issues, however, are such that this
conversation may never reach a firm conclusion, however interesting
and productive it may become.

⁶⁷ For an important study, see Bromme, ‘Beyond One’s Own Perspective’.

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Index

abductive approaches to investigating Brooke, John Hedley 6–7

reality 175–82 Brunner, Emil 196
akratic actions 23
d’Alembert, Jean Baptiste le Rond 34–5 Cartwright, Nancy 205–6
Anselm of Canterbury 167–8 Castoriadis, Cornelius 25
Aquinas see Thomas Aquinas certainty, craving for, as epistemic
Arago, François 120 vice 36–7
arguments for the existence of God Chalcedon, Council of 208
as affirmations of the rationality of Clayton, Philip 1–2, 104
Christianity 145–6 ‘clear and distinct ideas’, and
Aquinas’s Five Ways 145–7, 167 rationalism 200, 201–2
Aquinas’s Second Way 145–8 cognitive interdisciplinarity 226
arguments from design 173 Cold War rationality 36
arguments from desire 105–6, 141–3, collectivizing of human reason 36–7,
180–1 76–80
Kalam argument 169 Collingwood, R. G. 35
ontological arguments 167–8 common sense 28–31
Aristotle 20, 32, 75, 184 ‘conflict’ model of science and
Arianism 108 religion 6, 8–9, 13, 55–6
Athanasius of Alexandria 108 foundational role in the ‘New
Atkins, Peter 9, 57 Atheism’ 9–10
Augustine of Hippo 109, 151, consilience 14, 203–4
152, 195 Conway Morris, Simon 179–80
Cooper, David E. 200
Bacon, Francis 111, 157 Copenhagen approach to quantum
Barbour, Ian 55, 73 theory 10, 210
Barth, Karl 141 n. 70, 197 Copernicus, Nicholas 75, 133
Baxter, Richard 194–5 Coplestone, Frederick 146
Bayes’s theorem 130, 174 Cottingham, John 200
benzene, discovery of ring structure 160 Coulson, Charles A. 63–5
Berger, Peter 76 Craig, William Lane 169–70
Bernard, Claude 160 Crick, Francis 70
‘Beyond Rationality’ research criteria of theory evaluation 101–26
programme 40 beauty 117–19
Bhaskar, Roy 14, 67–8 capacity to predict novel
black swans, and deductive observations 119–22
reasoning 165–6 coherence, internal 106–9
Boff, Leonardo 201 correspondence with an external
Bohm, David 131 reality 106–9
Bohr, Niels 133 elegance 117–19
Bonaparte, Napoleon 47 objectivity 110–12
bootstrapping, rational 20 n. 9 simplicity 113–16
Bouvard, Alexis 163 critical realism 14, 67–9
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284 Index
cultural invariance, assumption of 30–1 epistemological decolonialization 88
cultural metanarratives 25–6 epistemological pluralism in natural
sciences 2–3, 10, 59, 67–8, 143–4,
d’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste le Rond 34–5 206, 221
Dalton, John 97 Erklären–Verstehen distinction 30,
Dante Alighieri 151–2 126–7, 150–1
dark energy 188 Evans-Pritchard, Edward Evan 29
Darwin, Charles 75, 97, 98, 101, 121–2, explanation 125–53
171–2, 187–8 causal approaches 129–32
Dawkins, Richard 138, 185 deductive-nomological approach 125,
de Broglie, Louis 131 136, 165–7
de Vlamingh, Willem 165 difficulties in defining what it means
deductive approaches to the to ‘explain’ 125–8
investigation of reality 125, 136, epistemic approaches 135–7,
164–9 140–3
deductive-nomological approach to Erklären–Verstehen distinction 30,
scientific explanation 125, 136, 126–7, 150–1
165–7 inference to best explanation 101–6
deism 143, 197 ontic approaches 135–7, 140–5, 169
Dennett, Daniel 11 religious approaches 137–53
Descartes, René 19, 132, 200 self-evidencing explanations 102,
Destutt de Tracy, Antoine Louis 139–40, 144
Claude 22, 46–7 unificationist approaches 132–5
Dewey, John 4, 13, 46, 152
domain-specific approaches to scientific falsification and theory testing 114, 159,
rationality 38–40 162–3, 167
Draper, Paul 218 Farrer, Austin 193
Duhem, Pierre 40, 144, 163 Feyerabend, Paul 3 n. 8, 9–10, 125 n. 5
Feynman, Richard 185
Eagleton, Terry 128–9 Fisher, R. A. 114
Einstein, Albert 98, 133, 190, 215–16 Frazer, James George 12, 129
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Fresnel, August 120
correlations 131
endoxos, as cultural criterion of Gadamer, Hans Georg 79
rationality 32 Galileo, Galilei 65, 133
Engels, Friedrich 213 Gaukroger, Stephen 110
English Enlightenment 27–8 Geertz, Clifford 11, 29
Enlightenment, The Giere, Ronald J. 61
concepts of rationality 3–4, 22, 27, 32, Gore, Charles 107–8
34–5, 44, 46, 54, 69, 73, 79, 80, 84–5, Grayling, A. C. 158
88, 203 Gregory, Brad 30
definitional problems
concerning 33–4 Haidt, Jonathan 197–9
in England 27–8 Halley, Edmund 103
and intellectual colonialism 87–8 Hamman, Johann Georg 77
epistemic communities 76–9 Hampshire, Stuart 214, 216–17
epistemic dependency and ‘big Hanson, N. R. 176–7
science’ 90 Harman, Gilbert 103
epistemic virtues 95–6, 106–10 Harrison, Peter 7–8
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Index 285
Heidegger, Martin 29, 79, 112 Kuhn, Thomas 99
Heisenberg, Werner 10, 189, 210–11 Kurtz, Paul 79
Heller, Erich 119
Hempel, Carl G. 125, 136, 144, 165–7 Lambda-CDM cosmological
Herschel, John 187 model 158–9
Hesse, Mary 159 Latour, Bruno 89, 204
heuristics and biases research Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 168
programme 25 Lewis, C. S. 60, 95, 104, 108, 139, 141–3,
Hitchens, Christopher 37, 128 180–1
Hobbes, Thomas 32–3 lex orandi, lex credendi 91–2, 112
Hume, David 85, 131, 169, 171–2 Lindbeck, George 108 n. 50
critique of induction 165, 170–2 Linnaeus, Carl 134
Hutton, Frederick W. 121 Lipton, Peter 139–40
Huygens, Christiaan 103 Locke, John 19, 77
Hypothetico-Deductive approach 167 London School of Economics ‘Beyond
Rationality’ programme 40
ideology 22–3, 46–9 logic of discovery 141, 159–64, 176
as rationalist alternative to logic of justification 159–64
theology 46 logical positivism 1
Marx’s critique of 47–8 Luther, Martin 52–3, 75, 152
image of God 148–51 Lycan, William 140
imagination, role of in scientific theory
development 162, 177, 185 MacIntyre, Alasdair 81–3, 219
inductive approaches to investigating Magic 31, 52
reality 100, 170–5 Manhattan Project 90
inference to best explanation, and theory Marcel, Gabriel 192–4
choice 101–6 Marx, Karl 47–8, 213
integral theory 14 mathematics as torch 132
intelligence, distinguished from mathesis universalis 69
rationality 42–3 Maximus the Confessor 191
interdisciplinarity 2 n. 3 Maxwell, James Clerk 132
irrationality 20, 23, 26–8, 35–6, 45–6, McGinn, Colin 201
50, 52, 182–7 Mendelssohn, Moses 80
‘metaphysical nomological pluralism’
Joyce, James 54 (Cartwright) 205–6
Julian of Norwich 145 Midgley, Mary 5, 58, 212–13
Mill, John Stuart 120
Kagan, Jerome 41–2 Millar, Hugh 119
Kalam argument for the existence of Mitchell, Basil 105
God 169 Morin, Edgar 14
Kant, Immanuel 33–4 multiple levels of real world 65–9
Kekulé, August 160 multiple modernities 43–4
Keltner, Decher 197–9 multiple perspectives on real
Kepler, Johann 115, 148 world 59–65
Kidd, Ian 57 multiple rationalities 39–41
Kierkegaard, Søren 53 musement, as theory-generating
Kitcher, Philip 131, 134 strategy 178–9
Knorr Cetina, Karin 89 mystery
Kornblith, Hilary 96 not equivalent to irrationality 182–6
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286 Index
mystery (cont.) Planck, Max 133
in natural sciences 187–90 Plato 60
as theological category 190–7 pluralism, epistemological, in natural
sciences 2–3, 10, 59, 67–8, 143–4,
Nagel, Thomas 33, 80, 146 206, 221
natural philosophy 54, 154–5 Poisson, Siméon Denis 120
natural sciences Pope, Alexander 37
criteria of theory choice 106–23 Popper, Karl 114, 122, 138, 152, 160,
development of theories 97–106 162, 207
as empirical undertakings 4–5, 11–12, postmodern-modern binary, inadequacy
155–7, 159–60, 207 of 44–5
epistemological pluralism of the practice, turn to, in contemporary
sciences 2–3, 10, 59, 67–8, 143–4, theory 38
206, 221 prediction in relation to theory
communal aspects of scientific choice 119–22
knowledge 89–91 Prosper of Aquitaine 91
concepts of scientific psychology of cognitive
explanation 125–37 interdisciplinarity 226
and mystery 187–90 Putnam, Hilary 107
natural theology 154
Neurath, Otto 205 Quine, W. V. O. 139, 163
‘New Atheism’ 9–10, 37
Newton, Isaac 24 n. 32, 54, 85, 115, 117, Rahner, Karl 197
132, 196 Ramsey, Ian T. 140
Niebuhr, H. Richard 150 rational virtues and theory choice
Nietzsche, Friedrich 35, 60–1, 80 beauty 117–19
numinous, category of 182–3 capacity to predict novel
observations 119–22
objectivity, as epistemological virtue 31 coherence, internal 106–9
Ockham, William of see William of correspondence with an external
Ockham reality 106–9
ontological unity of nature 2, 10, 59, elegance 117–19
67–8, 143–4, 206, 221 objectivity 110–12
Oppenheim, Paul 125 simplicity 113–16
Ortega y Gasset, José 22 n. 19 rationality
Otto, Rudolf 182–3 and akratic actions 23
Oxford Enzyme Group 90–1 changing conceptions of 19–22
and Cold War 36
Paley, William 173 and ‘common sense’ 28–31
Pannenberg, Wolfhart 107 correlation of rationalities 53–6
parsimony, principle of 114–15 as culturally embedded 23–4, 25–6,
Peirce, Charles S. 46, 164, 175–8 27–31, 41
pensée complexe 14 Enlightenment notion of 3–4, 22, 27,
perspectival realism 61–3 32, 34–5, 44, 46, 54, 69, 73, 79, 80,
perspectivalism 84–5, 88, 203
in Nietzsche 60–1, 80 as epistemic 42
in Plato 60 as historically situated 23–4
physico-theology 172–3 and human cognitive processes 25
Piaget, Jean 198–9 and human sensorium 24
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Index 287
distinguished from intelligence 42–3 sensorium, human 24
as instrumental 42 Sergeant, John 77
multiple situated rationalities 2, 14–16, Simon, Herbert A. 82
39–42, 206 Sober, Elliott 116
as physically embodied 23–4, 27–31 social imaginary 25, 46–7, 87
‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ as social Sosa, Ernst 141
binary 27 Spinoza, Baruch 80
role models of embodied Stein, Edith 152
rationality 32–4 stratification of reality 65–9
and social imaginaries 25, 46–7, 87 supernatural, as problematic
as socially constructed concepts and category 218–19
practices 41, 76–91 Swinburne, Richard 115, 117, 173–4
and social location 75–6
in social sciences 29–30 Tawney, R. H. 215
transversal approaches to 45, 73 Taylor, Charles 25, 28, 84–6
reasoning, human Tertullian, alleged irrationality of 53
abductive approaches 175–82 Thagard, Paul 103, 172
deductive approaches 164–9 theology, Christian
inductive approaches 170–5 as communal activity 76, 91–2
limited capacity to grasp distinguished from philosophical
reality 185–6, 200–1, 202 deism or theism 14, 98–9,
sufficient reason, principle of 168 208–9, 225
religion forms of reasoning within 167–70,
difficulties in defining 10–11, 52–3 172–5, 178–82
evolutionary theories of origins 72–3 relationship with worship and
and magic 52 prayer 91–2, 112
science and religion, as theory, nature of 97–101
interdisciplinary field 50–1, 92 theory-laden character of
Rescher, Nicholas 28 observation 157–9
Robinson, Marilynn 12 Thomas Aquinas 75, 167
Rose, Steven 2, 59–60, 66, 211 Tolkien, J. R. R. 108
Rueger, Alexander 61–2 Torrance, Thomas F. 68
Ruskin, John 111–12 Toulmin, Stephen 80–1
Russell, Bertrand 35–6, 146 transdisciplinarity 2 n. 3, 204
transversal reasoning 45, 73
Salmon, Wesley 130, 135 Trinity, doctrine of 143–5, 180–1
Sartre, Jean-Paul 19 n. 1 as a theoria 145
Sayers, Dorothy L. 149 ‘Two Books’ tradition 186–7
Scholz, Heinrich 69
Schrag, Calvin 45 n. 117 under-determination of theory by
scientific method 4–5, 9–10, 11–12, evidence 102
155–7, 159–60, 207 Uranus, and falsification 163–4
scientific socialism 212–14
scientism 56–9, 71–2 Valcárcel, Vicente Fernández 54
as intellectual colonization of the van Fraassen, Bas 129, 190, 207
humanities 203–4 van Huyssteen, Wentzel 44–5
intellectual motivations for 57 Vico, Giambattista 186–7
searchlight approach to theory Vienna Circle 207
development 138 ‘view from nowhere’ 31, 48, 111, 219
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 4/10/2018, SPi

288 Index
von Baier, Karl Ernst 114 Wigner, Eugene 188–9, 204
von Helmholtz, Hermann 85 Wilber, Ken 14, 21 n. 12
William of Ockham 114
Wainwright, William J. 105 Wilson, Edward O. 14, 203–4, 209–10,
‘warfare’ model of science and 225–6
religion 6, 8–9, 13, 55–6 Winch, Peter 29–30
foundational role in the ‘New ‘wise’, the 32–5
Atheism’ 9–10 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 5–7, 20, 21, 79,
Weber, Max 43, 186 137–8
Weil, Simone 138 wonder, as a gateway experience 154–5,
Weinberg, Steven 151 184, 190
Welsch, Wolfgang 45 World Health Organization 69–70
Whewell, William 120, 126, Wright, Sewell G. 114
148–9, 211
Whitehead, Alfred North 184–5 Yandell, Keith 138