Science and Theology Diverse Resolutions of an Interdisciplinary Gap by the New Priesthood of Science

Abstract

In an age where the trend towards secularization has been slowed down, new religions and ideological movements are competing with the more traditional positions to be found in society. Those who are anxious to justify their own particular position share only one criterion for comparison with those holding other positions: a belief in the epistemological efficacy of science. A new priesthood of scientist has emerged to offer justification in the name of science for a variety of ideological positions and to explain to a bewildered public what the real relationship is between the various disciplines of science and those of theology or moral and political philosophy. This paper describes the variety of positions taken up by the new priesthood, typifying these as Fundamentalism, Orthodoxy; Liberalism, Modernism, Agnosticism and Atheism.     

Authors, Editors and Authority in the Postmodern Academy

Textbooks are presented, by their authors and publishers, as authoritative statements regarding the nature of a scientific discipline or sub-discipline: in Kuhn's words, they are the "vehicles for the perpetuation of normal science." One of the main contributions of postmodern and poststructuralist thought, however, has been to challenge the nature of power and authority in the academy, a challenge that has been widely taken up in contemporary geographical research. There has been much less impact on textbook production and other teaching resources, however, where the "authority of the disembodied scholar" still holds sway. This is illustrated with respect to readers, collections of both original and reprinted pieces (the latter often in abridged form) where editorial authority ("this is what I think you should read") is frequently as firm as its predecessor, authorial authority. The reasons for this are sought in contemporary developments in higher education.     

Priestly Despotism: The Problem of Unruly Clerics in Marsilius of Padua's Defensor Pacis1

This article explores how Marsilius's theory of “priestly despotism” underpins his understanding of the civic body's secular authority and autonomy. Marsilius defends this autonomy not only with respect to truly secular matters but also with respect to the citizens' future in the afterlife; consequently, it affects the outlook of the entire commonwealth. In Marsilius's view, though he never doubts the need for the priesthood in the commonwealth, priests represent a fundamental threat to the stability and well‐being of the community. Marsilius redefines the position of priesthood to ensure the political stability of the commonwealth by minimizing the danger of internal turmoil. The topic of “priestly despotism” also reveals the internal consistency and logic of Defensor Pacis's first and second discourse by demonstrating how arguments introduced and developed in the first discourse are consistently applied in the second discourse.     

Liberal Government,Civil Society and Faith Communities

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between faith communities and the liberal system of government which operates in contemporary Britain. The problem addressed is as follows: liberal democracy relies upon the assumption of the validity of certain general truths: human rights, social justice, individual autonomy, and so on. In our postmodern society, however, social fragmentation has eroded the validity of such assumptions, leaving no universal or neutral benchmark through which to judge competing truth-claims. In particular, different faith traditions posit potentially incommensurable claims about what constitutes a good society. This article assesses the suggestion that in our pluralistic and differentiated society, more and more social decisions should be left to the market or to private rather than collective judgment and responsibility. It suggests various possibilities for reconceptualizing liberalism: for instance, as a modus vivendi providing a framework within which different moral outlooks can ‘live and let live’, but suggests that liberalism can have a positive moral content of its own, and need not be merely a coping mechanism for dealing with diversity.     

Leviathans Old and New: What Collingwood Saw in Hobbes

Summary

R. G. Collingwood presented his major work of political philosophy, The New Leviathan, as an updated version of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan. However, his reasons for taking Hobbes's great work as his inspiration have puzzled and eluded many Collingwood scholars, while those interested in the reception of Hobbes's ideas have largely neglected the New Leviathan. In this essay I reveal what Collingwood saw in Hobbes's political philosophy and show how his reading of Hobbes both diverges from other prominent interpretations of the time and invites us to reassess Hobbes's complex association with the origins of liberalism. In doing so, I focus on Collingwood's science of mind, his ideas on society and authority, and his dialectical theory of politics, in each case showing how he engaged with Hobbes in order to elucidate his own vision of civilisation. That vision is based on the development of social consciousness, which involves people coming to understand the body politic as a joint enterprise whereby they confer authority upon those who rule.     

Mobile Media as New Forms of Spatialization

Abstract

The physical space has historically served as an important support for human expression. However, the production of location-based information has been consciously used as means of social control by the hegemonic power, which decides what can be publicly displayed, and what should be hidden. With the development of mobile media, space has gained new dimensions, resulting in a sort of hybrid space where digital information overlays the physical space revealing what was previous unknown about a place. As mobile devices become increasingly present in our society, they should be understood as a social interface to our experience of space, serving not only as means to consume information, but also tools for communication. This paper discuss the current mobile media practices, such as mapping, urban electronic annotations, location-based mobile games, and smart mobs, which creates opportunities for new forms of human expression, reappropriations of space, and contestation of hegemonic power.     

The credibility of scientific expertise in a culture of suspicion

Abstract

Scientists and other technical experts in the UK increasingly complain that their credibility is being eroded and that the public is ever more reluctant to believe what they say. This is sometimes seen as a part of a larger 'problem of trust', afflicting all our major institutions: science attracts suspicion because it is no longer perceived as independent and is regarded instead as tied to the interests of those institutions. But it is suggested here that the credibility of scientific expertise actually remains remarkably high, that the so called 'problem of trust' is not a problem at all, and that the rise of a culture of suspicion, which does admittedly cause experts some slight inconvenience at times, is nonetheless something they should welcome and encourage.     

Albert Einsteln as Seen by Artists

Abstract

To commemorate the 80th birthday on 9 December 1980 of Dr Joseph Needham – a Member of our Editorial Board – we are here publishing a somewhat condensed progress report of what has been rightly called ‘the greatest single act of historical synthesis and intercultural communication ever attempted by one man’. After describing its contents, Dr Needham gives a preliminary outline of his methodology, how he has quarried Chinese literature and iconography, how he has immersed himself in China's living tradition to interpret correctly her past and how he has mastered the often century-old technical terminology of Chinese science – only thus could he build his oecumenical university. He concludes here with the hope that this vast study, so felicitously begun, will continue ‘as limitless as is all history’.     

To Piss in or Piss Out: Gerrard Winstanley and the Radical's Dilemma

Abstract

‘Are we called to be prophets or pragmatists? Voices crying in the wilderness, or whisperers in the corridors of power?’ Radicals in every generation have to face the question. Gerrard Winstanley, ‘True Leveller’ leader and Christian communist, faced it in the English revolution of 1649. Was he a Utopian prophet or an early practitioner of critical engagement? ‘He was sometimes one, sometimes the other, and often both at the same time. As such, he speaks to our postmodern condition, where pragmatism is the life of all.’     

Cartography,geographic information,and public policy

Abstract

Cartography is as much a policy science as it is a graphic art and science. The inevitable demise of the paper map as the principal medium of geographic communication and the increasing concentration of mapping activities and geographic data base development in large public‐sector agencies argue in favour of replacing the current emphasis on map production with one involving policy. A focus on mapping policy will reverse the unfortunate split between cartography and geography.     

Aiming for a Just Society

Abstract

I think it is time that theologians, as well as the Church at large, speak up and speak to the social injustice we are faced with because of the economical collapse in Iceland in autumn 2008. If we think theology (i.e. the discourse about God) does not happen in a vacuum, if we think it is affected by, and is also affecting its context, then theology must have a part to play in the political discourse. If we think everything related to our human condition is affecting our understanding and our talk about God, then all theology has to be political in the most inclusive sense of the word. In this article the intention is to test major theological terms against the situation we are faced with in our society, which is recovering from an economic collapse. Thus the question: to what extent are key theological terms useful when we need to address the outgrowth of social injustice and self-inflicted economical catastrophe?     

Tom Stoppard’s Big Picture: The Chaos that is Our World

Abstract

Issues arising from discussions regarding the ‘two cultures’ of science and art are many and varied. Tom Stoppard’s very active utilization of science in many of his plays has resulted in his work — especially the quantum mechanics-informed Hapgood and the chaotics-informed Arcadia — being held up as paradigmatic of one science/art position or another. Often, critical approaches to these plays involve a checklist of scientific facts, implying that the goal of such art is to serve as a delivery device for scientific breakthroughs. While plays, novels, and movies of various sorts may have such goals in mind, Stoppard’s plays do not comfortably fill that agenda, critical arguments to the contrary notwithstanding. Neither do Stoppard’s plays show particular interest in engaging any debate about the superiority of one ‘culture’ over the other. In his two ‘science plays’ in particular, what Stoppard offers is an enrichment of both science and art through metaphorical intertwinings that suggest experience is best served when both camps collaborate. The bigger picture that results argues an overlap in epistemology, namely revealing the uncanny similarity in which artist and scientist approach the material that is our universe.     

John Reader,Blurred Encounters: A Reasoned Practice of Faith

Abstract

With reference to both religious and secular utopias and paradise stories, David Boulton suggests that in a postmodern world which has abandoned absolutes and grand narratives, literary utopias still have the power to inspire and motivate when understood and interpreted as poetry before politics, and art before science. Inspirational rather than instrumental, utopias offer us ‘enabling dreams’, picturing a better world of the imagination, and motivating us to help build the New Jerusalem.     

Economic theory and European society: The influence of J.M. Keynes1

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.¹We have changed, by insensible degrees, our philosophy of economic life, our notions of what is reasonable and what is tolerable; and we have done this without changing our technique or our copybook maxims. Hence our tears and troubles.²     

Structuralism and common sense

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. ¹

We have changed, by insensible degrees, our philosophy of economic life, our notions of what is reasonable and what is tolerable; and we have done this without changing our technique or our copybook maxims. Hence our tears and troubles. ²      

Political Science in Mexico: Cold War and Post-Cold War Context

Abstract

Through a critical consideration of recent proposals urging the use of “citizen forums” or “mini-publics” on issues involving science, this article reflects on the challenge posed to democracy and democratic decision making by the intellectual authority of modern science. Though the danger of a descent into technocracy is real and pressing, arguably the most serious challenge to democracy today, these novel “deliberative democratic” institutions are unpromising as a corrective beyond the local level, and may actually exacerbate the problem. The article concludes with a consideration of alternatives.     

Exotericism and the Untroubled Race for the Future

Abstract

The simple case against the philosophic practice of exoteric writing is that it takes too long. Especially short of time are those who would contribute to or even attempt to keep up with the advance of what used to be called natural philosophy. The assumption of progress in science has been purchased with the relentless specialization of its practitioners. In theory transparent to inquiry, in practice specialized, science may be not just anti-exoteric but esoteric.     

Governing science before it governs us

Abstract

In this article I reflect on the motivation behind my latest book, ‘The governance of science: ideology and the future of the open society’, which is traceable to Karl Popper's dictum that scientists let their ideas die in their stead. I take this insight as the mark of our humanity more generally, even though we are on the verge of losing it. I argue that this is because, over the past century, the material and psychic investments in particular research trajectories have made it increasingly difficult to envisage what it would be like to pursue scientific inquiry in a substantially different way. I begin by discussing the historical significance of rhetoric in distinguishing between our privately held beliefs and publicly expressed theories, and then showing how this necessary – albeit morally ambivalent – distinction has been compromised with the onset of ‘big science’, first in physics and now in biology. We are thus saddled with a conception of scientific progress that threatens to render us, in evolutionary terms, overadapted to our environments. At the end of the article, I suggest some ways in which we may overcome the problem, at least in terms of the emerging ‘bioliberal’ regime.     

Performing on the Beaches of the Mind: An Essay

History—the past transformed into words or paint or dance or play—is always a performance. An everyday performance as we present our selective narratives about what has happened at the kitchen table, to the courts, to the taxman, at the graveside. A quite staged performance when we present it to our examiners, to the collegiality of our disciplines, whenever we play the role of “historian.” History is theater, a place of thea (in the Greek, a place of seeing). The complexities of living are seen in story. Rigidity, patter, and “spin” will always destroy the theater in our history performances. That is because we are postmodern. The novelists, the painters, the composers, the filmmakers give us the tropes of our day, alert us to the fictions in our non‐fiction, and give us our freedoms. How do I persuade anyone that the above theory is true? By thea, by seeing its truth. By performing. I have a true story to tell about beaches and those who cross them—Paul Gauguin, Herman Melville, and I.     

Approaching selfhood

Often overlooked is the fact that postmodern theory brought to the fore a crisis in the humanities. The implied universalism of the current “iconic turn” in postmodern thinking is a blow to the traditional sciences grouped around national literatures and cultures. In the 1980's, postmodern practitioners in the United States began to assault the discursive practices of the mainstream under the banner of cultural studies. The current crisis in the humanities surfaced in the emancipation of the various studies from their traditional fields in the humanities. The German Studies practiced today in the United States for instance, has no counterpart in Germany's traditional departments of Deutsche Philologie. Whereas the icon in the United States has become an object of investigation for the various studies, it has not yet displaced the littera in Germany's literary sciences. However in the 1990's, the historical sciences in Germany responded to the challenge of the various studies by directing their attention not to cultural studies, but to cultural history, with its well-defined set of methodologies. But what kind of cultural history is it? Is it built on 19th century German foundations, or is it grafted to current North American notions of post-industrial culture? In this paper I show that the supposed opposition between cultural studies and cultural history is artificial. Through a close reading of Hayden White's extremist questioning of historical practice in Metahistory (1973), I demonstrate that there is no opposition between the icon and the littera in this recent radical critique of mainstream humanistic science. The vehement German reaction to his North American assault on European Kultur is based on a misunderstanding of White's premises. Rather than being constructed on a hodgepodge of postmodern approaches, I show that White's postmodern history is in fact conventionally grounded in 19th century Nietzschean thinking.