The Mutuality of Theology and Science:
An Example from Time and Thermodynamics
Published in Christian Scholar’s
Review 26 (Fall, 1996), 12-35
Azusa
Pacific University
[now
at Luther Seminary. Email:
apadgett@luthersem.edu]
Return to Alan Padgett's Home Page
A major intellectual issue facing
Christians in the university is the relationship between Christian faith and our
academic commitments. The natural and
social sciences, in particular, can be places where our theological commitments
seem out of place. Can a Christian be a
good sociologist or biologist without splitting her mind into two boxes? While we often hear of the integration of
faith and learning, there is plenty of room for further careful discussion of
the proper relationship between faith and rational knowledge. In this paper I will discuss the
relationship between theology and the sciences. I hope to persuade you that it is possible to integrate both in a
broad Christian worldview, and will explore the example of thermodynamics and
the Christian view of time (or history) as one illustration of the dialogue
between theology and science. In
particular, I will argue that a two-way dialogue can and should take place
between theology and the sciences in the process of developing a Christian
worldview. In pursuing this conclusion
we will canvass the nature of explanation, and levels of explanation in theology
and the sciences. I shall conclude that
large-scale explanations of reality are the place where theology and the
sciences can best be integrated.
On what basis can theology claim to
have anything in common with the sciences?
To start with, theology is a
kind of “science,” a scientia whose goal is true wisdom about God and
humanity. Yet while theology is a
rigorous and scholarly activity yielding knowledge, it is not a purely academic
exercise. Theology arises out of
religious faith, and seeks to meet the needs of the human heart. Theology seeks wisdom about how we can live
happily and well in the world, but such wisdom is also grounded in the truth
about ultimate concerns. As physicist,
priest, and theologian John Polkinghorne argues in many books, there is only
one world.[1]
Both the theologian and the scientist are concerned about the truth
concerning that one world. What is
real? What is true? How do things work? How can we understand ourselves and the
world? These are the kind of larger questions
about reality around which theology and the sciences can build a dialogue.
Do
Theology and Science Conflict?
For too long in the modern period,
theology and the special sciences (that is, the natural and social sciences)
were seen to be at war with one another.
This perspective, called the “conflict model” by Ian Barbour,[2] dominated the thinking of Enlightenment
rationalists. These over-confident
believers in the triumph of science accepted the general “cult of progress”
found in Western culture from the early modern period until the World
Wars. A good example of one such true
believer in scientific “progress” was Andrew D. White (1832-1918), the first
president of Cornell University.
Cornell was the first private university founded in this country on
purely secular principles, the implicit judgment being that religious bias
warps the quest for scientific truth.
Andrew White helped make the conflict model popular in his work, A
History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1896). In the
minds of “enlightened” and truly “scientific” thinkers (as they thought
of themselves) religion too often
resulted in an unnecessary bias that presented a definite obstacle to
scientific progress.
Alas, this warfare model (with science the ultimate victor) is not a
relic of the past. Numerous
contemporary publications still advocate such a position, working from either a
secular humanist or a scientific materialist perspective. A striking example is the recent article by
Norman and Lucia Hall, "Is the War between Science and Religion
Over?" which appeared in The Humanist. The Halls insist that:[3]
While it may
appear open-minded, modest, and comforting to many, this conciliatory view
[that seeks harmony between religion and science] is nonsense. Science and religion are diametrically
opposed at their deepest philosophical levels.
And, because the two worldviews make claims to the same intellectual
territory -- that of the origin of the universe and humankind's relationship to
it -- conflict is inevitable.
I
shall argue that this perspective is completely mistaken. Science and religion are not diametrically
opposed, as the Halls state. The
article by the Halls unfortunately perpetuates the usual errors made in popular
works by scientific materialists. In
particular, they continue to confuse “Science” (capital S!) with their own philosophy or worldview. They need to reflect on the fact that science
is not a worldview. Natural science
yields facts and theories about creation: but facts and theories alone do not
constitute a worldview. The worldview
of the Halls is scientific materialism or naturalism. It is this materialistic worldview -- not the teachings of
science, but a secular philosophy -- that is deeply in conflict with
religion. The ideals and teachings of
modern science are in fact compatible with many worldviews, including
Christianity, as I shall argue.
The warfare model misunderstands the
character of both theology and science.
Science simply cannot answer the questions that are addressed in
religion, nor can religion hope to answer merely scientific questions from its
basis of faith. Religion answers
questions about ultimate concerns and spiritual or moral conundrums. The special sciences are concerned with
factual issues concerning the natural and human world. There is some overlap, of course, but there
should be no ultimate conflict.
While it is certainly true that
prejudice, in the guise of religious faith, has opposed scientific advance, the
warfare model overlooks the important contributions that theology has made to
science, especially at the level of presuppositions and worldview. The warfare model ignores the historical
fact that there would not be any such thing as modern Western science if it
were not for the intellectual influence of the Christian faith. In his Lowell Lectures, Alfred North Whitehead notes the
contributions of theology to the development of science in our cultural
history.[4]
Christian theology has provided the intellectual environment out of
which natural science was able to develop.
By founding a worldview in which reason and order were understood to be
built into the world by a rational God, theology created the intellectual
nursery in which early modern science was born and raised. The history of science contains many
examples which support this conclusion.
Just in physics alone, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, and James Clerk
Maxwell were all influenced in their understanding of the rationality of
Creation by the Christian worldview. Of
course, to suggest that Christianity alone is responsible for the rise of early
modern science, or that science could not have arisen without Christian faith,
is too simplistic an hypothesis. Many
factors were involved, but belief in a rational and mathematical Creator was
certainly central. To explore the
soundness of this historical conclusion concerning the helpfulness of theology
to science, let us consider more fully the example of Galileo, the man
adherents of the warfare model quite often refer to.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was a
brilliant scientist whose work has influenced human culture and fundamentally
shaped our understanding of the world.
He made significant advances in many areas of natural science, and is
justly famous for his work in physics and astronomy. His major methodological contributions to the founding of modern
science were his careful experimental method, and his insistence on the
mathematical form of natural philosophy.
While others engaged in mathematical work and in various kinds of experimentation,
"before Galileo, the systematic appeal to experience in support of
mathematical laws seems to have been lacking."[5] It is to Galileo, then, that we trace the scientific method of
mathematical models supported and tested by experimental data.
It is certainly true that Galileo's
work was opposed by Christian thinkers in his own day, and especially by
conservative factions in the Roman Catholic Church. However, often overlooked is the fact that Galileo, like Kepler
and Newton, was a Christian thinker who understood himself to be a
"Catholic astronomer."[6]
As physicist and theologian Stanley Jaki notes: "Little if any
effort is made, for instance, to recall the role played in Galileo's scientific
methodology by his repeated endorsements of the naturalness of perceiving the
existence of God from the study of the book of nature."[7]
The influence of the Christian worldview on Galileo is clear from
his most influential work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
(1632). Also significant are his
several remarks on the relationship between theology and science, most
importantly his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615).
For Galileo, both the great
"book" of Nature and the book of Scripture equally reveal the greatness
of God. Mathematical models and laws
govern the physical universe because it is created by God. In turn, we can discover these laws through
empirical research:
I think that in
the discussion of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of
scriptural passages, but from sense-experience and necessary [i.e.,
mathematical] demonstrations; for the Holy Bible and the phenomena of nature
proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost
and the latter as the observational executrix of God's commands.[8]
In
our Western history, many factors worked together to aid in the development of
natural science and technology. The
Christian faith was one of these factors.
From[AP1] Galileo we learn that theology and
science are not enemies, but different ways to the truth of God.
What, then, do we understand the
proper model of the relationship between theology and science to be? Our brief glance at Galileo would lead us in
the direction of an open dialogue between theology and the sciences, in which
Christian scholars seek to build a worldview which is consistent with
both. Theology must take its factual
and empirical basis from the best of contemporary science, but may offer a basis
for correcting interpretations of science, or preferring one view over another
within a scientific discipline. In a
similar manner, science can be guided or brought into question by theological
conclusions. Our quest thus becomes the
search for the truth in both disciplines, in order to develop a coherent
worldview that meets our religious needs and satisfies our scientific
thirst for knowledge.
The
Nature of Explanation
In order to develop this “mutuality
model” of the relationship between science and theology, we must look more
closely at the nature of explanation.
Explanation is an important, even central, idea in the quest for
knowledge and understanding. This in turn
raises the question of the nature of explanation in science and theology. Such an approach to the theology-science
dialogue will afford us the opportunity to explore theological explanation in
contrast to other kinds. In this way we
can develop a model of mutual learning and edification between theology and
science, in the development of a coherent worldview. The process of this intellectual exploration will lead us to
three conclusions: (1) theological explanation is similar to explanation in the
natural and social sciences, in that it develops models for a causal
explanation, positing certain entities, with certain natures, powers, and
relationships. (2) Theology assumes the
findings of other disciplines in its explanatory scheme, and as such the
natural and social sciences influence theology. In the same way the findings of theology may send us back to the
other disciplines to rethink the basis of our scientific conclusions, and
change our mind. (3) A consideration of
the nature of levels of explanations, or explanatory schemes (also called
"paradigms"), leaves an open place for a two-way dialogue that can
and should take place between theology and the other disciplines of the
university.
First we need to reflect on just
what an "explanation" is.
Broadly conceived, an explanation is some answer to a "why?"
question.[9] But more narrowly understood, explanations tell us why the world
is the way it is: why rivers run down hill, why clocks run slower in the
presence of greater gravity, why the tides rise and fall, why all the members
of the orchestra arrived at roughly the same time and place for the
performance, and so forth. It is this
sort of "explanation" of why things are the way they are, and why
things happen as they do, that we are now interested in.
These short remarks lead us to
another question: what counts as knowledge or scientia in the sense of
scientific explanation? In the
tradition of Aristotle,[10] perhaps it is best to see a
"cause" as some reason for being, and thus an explanation will be any
answer to a question about why a thing is, or how it got to be that way, or why
things happen as they do. Scientific
explanations, then, are (in part) causal accounts answering our "why"
questions. Yet not all scientific
explanation is causal. Neither Newton's
nor Einstein's laws for gravitation are causal, for example, because they
stipulate the mathematical laws that govern gravitational interaction but do
not tell us what causes gravitational attraction. Instead, various theories of quantum gravity
are now being tested, and if confirmed they will tell us the causes. What the example of gravity indicates is
this: explanation without a causal account is incomplete. Scientists will continue to seek a full
scientific explanation, which will include a causal element in the explanatory
theory. Not all scientific explanation
is causal, but causation is an integral element in explanation in the
sciences. This is, of course, not the
only way to understand scientific explanation, but it is the most promising
view, as well as the one in accord with common sense.[11]
Levels
of Explanation in Science
In my view, dialogue between
theology and the special sciences is best understood as taking place between
different levels of explanation. But
before we can even begin to discuss levels of explanation in the sciences, we
must consider the case of reductionism, or "nothing-buttery" as the
late Donald MacKay was fond of calling it.[12]
The general position we come from is post-Enlightenment, or
"postmodern," taking a holistic approach to our understanding of
reality. Logical positivists and other
modernists often held that things must be dissected, and reduced to their most
simple parts, in order to be understood.
A postenlightenment philosophy will insist that the whole is more than
the sum of the parts.
Let us take a concrete example of
this kind of reductionism in explanation.
F. H. Allport, in his book Social Psychology, in discussing the
group psychology of crowds, wrote that:
given the situation
of the crowd -- that is, of a number of persons within stimulating distance
of one another -- we shall find that the actions of all are nothing more
than the sum of the actions of each taken separately.[13]
Now
clearly there is something correct here.
The action of a crowd is, ontologically, the sum of the actions of each
member. But reductionism of this sort
ignores an important explanatory (that is, an epistemological)
dimension: even if we can explain each person's act individually, what then
escapes explanation is the larger question of why these individuals all act in
a like manner, together, as a unit.
What need an explanation, then, are the similarities of group action,
and of group thinking. Such things
cannot be explained by atomistic methods.
The history of physics has shows a
great tendency toward reductionism and atomism in explanations. Yet even physics has been pushed into a more
holistic frame of explanation in recent times.
One example of this would be the physics of dynamical systems, or chaos
theory -- another would be thermodynamics.
Perhaps the best known example is Quantum Mechanics (QM). Even though Einstein contributed to the
early development of this area of physics, he did not agree with the
anti-deterministic interpretation it was being given. He developed a famous thought-experiment, known as the
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox (EPR), to show the counter-intuitive nature of
QM. Recently, the EPR result has been
given experimental verification, and the thought experiment has actually been
performed in a lab. The entire
discussion is rather complex, but it seems that sub-atomic particles can
communicate with each other as a holistic system, even when such signals are
forbidden by the Special Theory of Relativity when we consider each particle
independently . The EPR result has
caused us to give up "Einstein locality" for sub-atomic systems, and
to treat them in a holistic way.
Biology and psychology, as well, are
disciplines which raise the issue of levels of explanatory schemes most
clearly.[14] The activities of living organisms can be "explained"
from a variety of different perspectives.
Why animals eat, for example, could be approached from a physical,
chemical/thermodynamic, biological, or psychological scheme. It is not clear that any one of these points
of view would necessarily be the correct one. They are all equally valid in terms of their own discipline. A physical scientist might focus on the
chemical, especially the molecular, need for energy. This in turn could lead to an explanation of the living organism
in terms of a thermodynamic system. A
biologist might focus her explanation on the biological organism as a whole,
and its relations to other living things in the ecosystem. Yet again, an animal psychologist would
assume the truth of these other explanations, using them as assumptions to discuss
the complex interactions between the individual, the group, other competitive
species, and the natural environment in the description of eating habits of a
particular species (say, spider monkeys), in particular environments (say, a
given forest).
Once we grant that there are
different sorts of schemes for explaining the same thing, and they do not
reduce to each other, this raises the question of their
inter-relationship. Since the sort of
explanation we have in mind is causal, these schemes postulate certain causal
relationships that hold between things.
They develop models for the nature and powers of the things involved,
their regular causal relations, laws describing the regularities in these
relations, and general theories. What
happens, it seems, is that some levels are more fundamental than others in the
following sense: the accepted results of the scheme at the more fundamental
level is used, and assumed, in the next level up. So particle physics is assumed in thermodynamics, and psychology
and sociology are assumed in history.
It is also possible, although not as
common as one might like, for there to be a two-way dialogue
between levels of explanatory schemes.
A good example of this is the case of gravity: the occurrence of
gravitational force at one level has lead physicist to look for gravity waves,
or gravitons, at a lower level.
Particle physics has also learned a great deal from solid-state physics
(especially the phenomenon of superconductivity) even though particle
physicists in the past have been known to disdain their
"squalid-state" siblings.
Another interesting example is "chaos" or dynamical systems
theory: a view which developed in meteorology (a higher-level physical science)
but has great implications for other levels of physical, as well as biological,
science.
Dialogue between levels is based not
only on the fact that the more fundamental level is assumed in the higher, but
also on the fact that findings in the higher levels can cause us to turn back
to the more fundamental levels to re-think our results and assumptions. Chaos theory is an excellent example of this
from recent science. The gravamen of
this essay is, the same sort of thing is possible in the theology-science
dialogue.
The social sciences use causal explanations,
but of course they also use other types of understanding. The general confusion as to the nature of
understanding in the social sciences is in part the result of there being three
types of understanding at work in the social sciences: (1) ordinary causal
explanations based on natural sciences; (2) socio-psychological causal
explanations, based on social and psychological forces, conventions, and
complex background influences (this area deals with a quite difference kind of
causal "power" from the first) and (3) a hermeneutical concern for
interpretation or understanding, for example, in sociology or history.[15]
It is quite important for the kinds of understanding found in (2) and
(3) that we deal with human beliefs, intentions, desires, drives, and the like
(both for individuals and for collectives) and not merely with physical causal
structures. We cannot possibly consider
all the issues here, even briefly. The
main point is that, while the social sciences involve more than simply causal
explanation, causal explanation is an
important element of social science which cannot be reduced to nor subsumed
under "understanding" (#3 above).
The social sciences likewise
illustrate the fact that whether one explanatory scheme is more fundamental
than another is not always clear. The
inter-relationship may be more complex than our simple "levels"
model. In psychology and sociology, for
example, neither one seems obviously "higher" than the other. Both disciplines use explanatory schemes
which assume the results of the other.
There can be a mutuality of interaction, then, one scheme acting as
fundamental to the other scheme and/or discipline in some respects, but not in
others.
Before considering the case of
explanation in theology we should ponder what counts as explanation. What does a set of beliefs or ideas (the
explanans) have to possess in order to "explain" some phenomena (the
explanandum). The view of Carl Hempel,
whose work is seminal in the field, is that the explanans is a type of
argument, and must include a covering-law or law of nature. In this theory, the explanandum is deduced
from the law, along with certain other facts such as initial conditions and
observational sentences. However, this
"received view" has come under serious philosophical attack. For the most part, this view confuses
logical connections (in arguments) with the kind of physical or psycho-social
connections that we are concerned with in the natural and social sciences. Further, many philosophers have pointed out
that equally good deductions can be made from "explanans" that do not
explain anything. For example, given a
situation in which the morning sun is casting a shadow on a flag pole, we can
"explain" the position of the sun, consistent with the received view,
by the length of the shadow.
What is missing from the covering
law view is a notion of causal connection.
Those who were raised with logical positivism tend to have an allergy to
metaphysics, even after logical positivism had been overthrown. But explanations are always attached to some
metaphysical commitments, as David-Hillel Ruben persuasively argues.[16] Causation is an ineliminable element of scientific explanation.
Many of the various theories of
scientific explanation are, like Hempel's,
empirical and predictive. On
such theories, an explanation is a prediction of how events of that type will
turn out. We use explanations, then, to
manipulate the outcome of events. The
best explanation is "empirically adequate", that is, explains past
observed phenomena and allows the manipulation or prediction of future observed
events.[17]
We are not in fact committed, intellectually, to the acceptance of
non-observable entities and relations posited in scientific theories. There are problems with such views. An emphasis on prediction and
experiment seems adequate for some
types of science, but in many cases explanations are given for events which are
past (as in geology or paleontology or cosmology) or singular and unique (as in
archeology or history or textual criticism).
An explanation can tell us why a certain event occurred, even if it only
happened once. An explanation does not
have to be predictive.
With respect to the empiricism
common in many circles: there is no reason, other than prejudice, to limit
ontology to what humans can observe.
This seems, in fact, to be rather anthropocentric. Reality is not
limited to observable phenomena.
Paleontologists posit the existence of non-observed animals, for
example, to explain the fossil records.
I, for one, believe in dinosaurs.
The restriction of explanantia which deserve rational acceptance to
observable (or observable-in-principle) things is artificial, and contrary to
the actual history of science where previously "unobserved" things
have in fact become observed (e.g. germs).
The extreme empiricism of such views is an example of the futile attempt
to avoid metaphysics in philosophy of science.
One last theory deserves mention:
here scientific explanation is understood an any larger story or intellectual
framework which "makes sense" of the explananda, or makes them
intelligible. The problem here is that
this view is too broad: it allows too many frameworks to pass as scientific
explanations that are pseudo-scientific or even unreasonable (astrology, for
example, or voodoo, or Velikovsky). The
weakness of Pannenberg's excellent book, Theology and the Philosophy of
Science, lies in his following this overly vague conception of scientific
explanation.[18]
The basic problem with all of these theories
can be found in two root issues: (1) the vain attempt to avoid induction in the
philosophy of science, and/or (2) the
equally bankrupt attempt to describe scientific explanation without recourse to
causation. Covering laws, pragmatic
usefulness, intelligibility, prediction: all these have a place in scientific
explanation, but they are not the whole story, any more than causation is. The addition of induction and causation
overcomes the inadequacies of the theories we have just been covering. This leaves us, then, with a view of
explanation that is causal and inductive.
Theological
Explanation
Is there something like
“explanation” of this sort to be found in theology? There certainly are many types of explanation and understanding,
as we have just seen. All scholars
should agree with the idea that theology can explain things in some sense of
the term "explain." Theology
can explain why people act the way they do, for example, in the same way that
any ideology can be utilized in a social scientific explanation. Theology can also explain the set of beliefs
that one finds in a particular religions tradition, without any commitment to
the truth of those beliefs. Our entire
discussion of levels of explanation, however, leads to the idea that theology
does, or can, explain things in a causal way as well.[19]
Ludwig Wittgenstein and his
followers have been pervasive in arguing that religion is not really any kind
of explanation. Even if it is false,
religion is not just a simple mistake.
Surely this much is true: religion is not an explanation for something.[20] Religious belief is much more complex than that. Likewise, language is much more complex than
the simple notion of conveying information.
What also must be said, in the spirit of dialectics, is that language
does after all convey information; and that there is an explanatory dimension
to religious beliefs. A religious
scheme such as astrology, for example, may not be a simple mistake, but it is
still mistaken — is it not? Religious
believers do recognize the impact of experience and reason upon their
belief-systems, and do not always hold on to that system come what may. So Phillips and company misunderstand the
nature of religious belief, when they deny it any explanatory dimension, even
though they are correct in asserting that religion is not an explanation of
something in the way that, say, Darwinian evolution is. Specifically, certain elements in religion, especially those collected in
theologies, do explain elements in the world.
But even if some elements of
religion or theology are explanatory, surely we are not looking for a causal
explanation, are we? In seeking to
answer this question, we turn again to the notion of levels of explanation.
Theology seeks to organize religious
beliefs into a satisfactory world-view and explanatory scheme. There is a lot more to theology, of course:
but theology does seek to know the truth, and also seeks explanations. As such, theology is concerned with the
facts about God: other things are theologically
important in their relationship with him.
Theological explanation is similar
in some ways to the explanatory schemes of the natural and social
sciences. Theology will develop models
of the Ultimate Reality, its nature and powers, as well as models of other
things in relationship to the divine (e.g., humans, the cosmos, the ecosystem).
Theology seeks explanations, and as such it is devoted to the truth, as
Pannenberg rightly argues. However,
theology always takes place in a religious community. There is no generic theology, only Christian, Buddhist, Muslim
theology: the theology of particular religions. Even natural theology occurs within a particular religious
tradition. So these twin concerns,
truth and community, define the horizon of the theologian. As Tillich wrote:
Theology moves
back and forth between two poles, the eternal truth of its foundation and the
temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.
. . .
[F]or the church is the "home" of systematic theology. Here alone do the sources and the norms of
theology have actual existence. [21]
Theological explanation involves
causal explanation, but it is not the same kind of causation that one finds in
the sciences, any more than sociology per se uses the causal notions
found in the natural sciences. Theology
can and does use both natural and social causal explanations. Theology can and does involve hermeneutical,
ethical, and metaphysical issues from philosophy, and some of these indeed can
be understood as a kind of "explanation" (we grant this much to
Pannenberg and his followers). But in
addition to these things, theology posits a unique God-world relationship (or
Ultimate Reality-lifeworld relationship) on the basis of which it seeks
uniquely theological explanatory schemes for certain elements of human
existence, and certain elements of our knowledge of reality derived from
extra-religious sources. Because
theology understands God to be an agent, it explains some elements of reality
on the basis of divine agency. For
example, the Christian doctrine of original sin, if true, is explanatory of
certain facts known to us through history, sociology and psychology. The doctrine of karma in Hinduism, likewise,
is explanatory if true. Surely the
divine does bring about certain facts about the world, if religious
explanations are to be accepted as true.
Of course, if they are merely interesting or pragmatically useful
stories, then the study of religion is reduced to social science, and
theological explanation per se cannot occur.
What
Theology Learns from Science
If I am on track in my suggestions
about the nature of theological explanation, then we need to consider again our
view of the theological task. Theology
is not merely an exercise in making sense of religious experience and beliefs
in a particular community, as some would have us believe. Such an exercise is important, of course,
but is really an aspect of the social sciences (witness the "religious
studies" departments in most universities). Theology is not just about
religious being-in-the world, although it includes that. Theology is about God, and about human
beings in relationship to the divine.
Theology does not seek to develop only pragmatically useful models, but
also accurate models whose pragmatic usefulness is one criterion -- among
others -- of their verisimilitude. Theology seeks the truth about the
Transcendent, or more modestly, theology seeks adequate, reasonably accurate
models and theological principles which are reasonably held to be true. We do not merely seek pragmatically
successful God-talk, but we seek to discover the truth about God.
What seems to have happened in
American theological circles is this: the source of knowledge has been confused
with the subject of that knowledge. This
is actually a very easy mistake to fall into.
It is surely true that what we know about the divine comes to us through
the religious experiences of others and of our own. But this does not imply that the only subject of theology is
religious experience. Scientific
knowledge (say, in physics) is based upon ordinary human experience but it is
not about ordinary human experience.
Likewise the rational, explanatory element in religion (which we call
theology) is not about religious experience, but about the source and subject
of those experiences (God or Ultimate Reality). Theology is about God, too, and not just about the human.
In seeking the truth about the
divine, theology needs the other arts and sciences. In developing its models, theories, principles, and postulated
causal relationships, it assumes the results of the other disciplines. This would include such fields as
philosophy, sociology, physics, history and aesthetics: in short, the whole of
the university faculty. No wonder it's
so difficult to be a theologian!
Theologians do not require a comprehensive view of such fields, of
course, any more than a botanist need be a particle physicist. Yet the results and views of these
disciplines will shape our understanding of the nature of creation in its
relation to the Creator. This is
especially true of any large-scale explanations of reality that come from the
special sciences. For example,
behaviorism in psychology and determinism in philosophy have important
theological implications.
What
Science Learns from Theology
What is not as often acknowledged by
those considering the dialogue between theology and science is that theology
should influence, if we are rational, our beliefs in other fields. The special sciences can and should learn
from theology, and not just the other way around. If on theological grounds we have good reason to affirm the Free
Will Defense, say, then this should cause us to closely examine the evidence
for behaviorism and determinism. If two
or more theories in another discipline are currently of equal status with
respect to their reasonableness, the religious believer is fully justified in
choosing that view which is more in consonance with his theological
world-view. This means that Peter
Berger plays too much the role of "scientific positivist" when he
writes:
Questions raised
within the frame of an empirical discipline (and I would emphatically consider
sociological theory to be within such a frame of reference) are not susceptible
to answers coming out of the frame of reference of a non-empirical and
normative discipline [i.e. theology], just as the reverse procedure is
inadmissible. As such, the argument of
this book stands or falls as an enterprise of sociological theorizing and, as
such, is not amenable to either theological support or theological critique. [22]
Such
a claim to hermetically seal-off the disciplines from each other is empirically
false as an historical hypothesis, and methodologically unsound as a philosophy
of science. There is some truth to
Berger's pontification: theology, philosophy or ethics does not pretend to tell
the scientist what he must believe in terms of his own discipline. The truth must be discovered in each science
by the canons of acceptability found within each discipline. Dogmatics does not want to be dogmatic in
the negative sense! All I am suggesting
is that the results of a more fundamental discipline can be called into
question by a higher-level explanatory scheme, and that this can then send us back
to the other discipline to argue -- on the basis of accepted scientific
evidence and methods within that discipline -- for a different
conclusion. This is in fact what
happens in sciences from time to time in any case.
Theological, philosophical and scientific evidence are all relevant to
answering important worldview questions, and any attempt to hermetically
seal-off these disciplines will lead to incoherence. Neither reality, nor human reason, can be so neatly sliced into
pieces. For example, determinism is
either true or false, and cannot be true "for science" but false
"for religion." As realists
(even as dialectical realists) we are committed to the unity of reality, and
therefore to the unity of truth. There
may well be times in which we cannot decide, given the complexity of a problem,
what the truth is in a particular case.
Scientific evidence and theological conclusions may lead in different
directions, at least for the moment.
Yet the conviction that they
must be in harmony is grounded in the fact, long advocated by Christian
tradition, that God is the creator of the Universe and the author of
revelation. There is one God, one
world, and one truth about that world.
Apart from specific conclusions and
questions in which theology and science can reinforce each other, or
(temporarily) conflict, what can science learn from theology? There are several theological conclusions
that are important to the disciplines of the sciences. For example, God is the creator of the
world, and She is both rational and good.
This has been an important theological datum in the history of Western
science. Science itself is good because
knowledge is good, when it is used properly and in the service of God. However, we cannot live by science
alone. The natural and social sciences
are limited. They are unable to answer
our deepest needs for meaning, values, and purpose. These are theological or philosophical in nature. So science is important, but not
all-important. Science cannot save
us. It is itself based upon important
assumptions and values which it cannot justify in its own terms but must assume
from other disciplines. This, at
least, is some indication of what the sciences can learn from theology. Our model, then, is of theology and the
sciences having a mutual dialogue, each discipline learning from the other, as
we seek a fully adequate philosophy of life that is both true and satisfies our
ethical/existential needs.
An
Example of Mutual Modification: Theology, Time and Thermodynamics
I would like to give a concrete example that will spell-out the
more abstract discussion of the previous section. I have chosen the topic of thermodynamics because of its
intrinsic interest, and because of my interest in the philosophy and theology
of time.
What is time? This is one of the oldest and most difficult
of philosophical conundrums. St.
Augustine asked this question, as did many philosophers before him, including
Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus.
We seem in some ways no closer to knowing the answer to such deep
questions than these men of the past.
But in one area, formerly known as “natural philosophy” and now called
natural science, there has been a great deal of progress in our understanding of
the world, including its temporality. Partly
this is because science limits itself to quantitative questions and
answers. Even in the natural sciences,
however, there is no agreement as to the true nature of time.
In this section we will investigate
what light natural science (thermodynamics
in particular) can cast upon the problem of the nature of time. As a way of exemplifying the model of
theology-science dialogue already developed,
we will include the integration of theology and science around the topic
of time.
Time seems so everyday, so ordinary,
and yet at the same time so enigmatic.
One of the reasons that the problem of time has proven so intractable
involves the many senses of the word.
“Time” can mean many things, from a break in the middle of a sporting
event, to the so-called “fourth
dimension” of our spacetime. Time has
many facets to it, and philosophers and scientists have come to study many
different aspects of time. For example,
there is the question of the “absolute” or “relative” character of time. Does the passage of time reduce to a
relationship between events and things, or can we say, with Newton, that “time
of itself and from its own nature . . . flows equably without relation to
anything external”.[23]
Another important issue in the philosophy of time is this: is “process”,
i.e. the passage of time from past, to present, to future, an objective part of
the natural world or is it mind-dependent and subjective? Many physicists would answer that process is
subjective, and what is fundamental is the geometrical spread of
spacetime, which includes all events as
equally real, whether or not one would call them “past” or “future” or
“present” (pseudo-properties which have no measure and no physical
significance). This latter view I call
the stasis theory of time (also known as the “tenseless” or “B” theory).
Of the many fascinating issues in
the philosophy of time, thermodynamics impinges on two issues: the beginning of
time, and the “arrow” of time. Since
the time of Origen and Augustine,
Christians have asked, “Does time have a beginning?” Is the initial singularity of the Universe
(the “Big Bang”) a beginning in time?
Such a question raises the distinction between physical time as we know
it (what most scientists mean by time, which I call “Measured Time”) and time
plain and simple, or what we might call “pure duration”.[24]
Measured Time is time as we know it in physics: a measurable,
quantitative factor of the universe.
Pure duration is what Measured Time is a measure of; time that can “go by” even though no change
takes place.
On the plausible assumption that we
can distinguish philosophically between time itself and the events that occur
in time, the distinction between Measured Time and pure duration allows us to
distinguish the question of their beginnings.
Does the time of our universe (Measured Time) have a beginning? This is a separate question from, Does pure
duration (time in a metaphysical sense) have a beginning? As we shall see, thermodynamics can help us
answer the first of these questions, although it leaves the latter untouched.
Thermodynamics is also of some help
in answering the question of the “arrow” of time, that is, does time have a
“direction” that it always follows? More
technically, this is known as the “anisotropy” or “asymmetry” of time.[25]
Space is isotropic: we can move freely in it, apart from some force such
as gravity pulling or pushing us in some way.
Time is not like that, according to our everyday experience and common
sense. Time only goes in one direction:
physical systems cannot run backwards against the clock -- or can they? The science of thermodynamics has important
lessons for us in our search for an answer to this question.
Thermodynamics
One of the most interesting areas of
contemporary physics is thermodynamics.
Although studies in quantum mechanics, cosmology or dynamical systems
(“chaos”) have received a great deal of attention in the popular press, and in
books written for the educated general public,[26]
thermodynamics deserves an equal billing. Particular interest in thermodynamics and its implications has
been generated by the work of Ilya Prigogine.[27]
Born in Russia in 1917, Prigogine moved with his family to Belgium,
where he was schooled in the “Brussels School” of physical chemistry. A brilliant student, he eventually because
the leading researcher at this school.
He received the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work in thermodynamics, and
is now widely considered the world’s leading expert in statistical mechanics
and thermodynamics. The Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics at
the University of Texas, Austin is
named after him, and he is currently leading research at both Austin and
Brussels. The work of Prigogine and his
colleagues on the thermodynamics of dissipative structures (systems which
exhibit some stability, even though they are far from equilibrium and
non-linear) has greatly added to the importance of this science for physics,
chemistry and biology.
Modern physics is divided into four
areas: classical physics, quantum mechanics, Relativity physics, and
thermodynamics. The term
“thermodynamics” comes from two Greek words, meaning “heat-movement” and
thermodynamics does indeed study heat.
Perhaps this area of science is best understood as the transfer of heat
and work between and within physical systems.
It focuses on such measures as volume, temperature and pressure in order
to measure the amount of “work” that a system is capable of, that is, how much
free energy it has to work with.
Thermodynamics arose in the 19th
century, from the study of heat and energy in steam engines and other
“macroscopic” systems. There are four
laws of thermodynamics that have arisen from such studies. The Zeroth Law is about temperature, stating
that there is such a measure which different types of systems can have in
common. The First Law arises from the
work of James Prescott Joule, the son of a Manchester brewing family, who
discovered the equivalence of heat and work.
The basic unity of energy in physics, the “Joule”, is named after
him. The First Law states that the
total energy remains conserved even when work is done: energy will always be
conserved in a physical process, even though it may undergo transformation from
free energy to heat.
The Second Law owes it origins to
the work of Rudolf Gottlieb, a German physicist born in 1822, universally known
as Clausius. He noticed that while heat
and work are equivalent, and energy is conserved in the exchange, they are
dissimilar in that work can be fully transformed into heat but heat does not on
its own turn back into useful energy for work.
The Second Law is certainly the most interesting of the four laws of
thermodynamics, and the best known, having wide ramifications for our everyday
life. It can be stated in many
ways. Clausius’ statement was, “Heat
does not pass spontaneously from cold to hot”.
A more universal expression of the Second Law is this: for isolated
systems, entropy always increases.[28]
The introduction of the term
“entropy” leads us into one of the most important concepts in
thermodynamics. Since thermodynamics
studies heat and energy in systems, entropy has to do with these aspects of
physical systems. Although energy is
constant over change for an isolated systems (the First Law), the form or
structure of this energy in the system is not constant. Iron will turn to rust, but rusty iron never
spontaneously becomes clean again. An
open bottle of perfume will send its scent into the air of a room, but the
reverse process never takes place. What
is lost in these processes is capacity for useful work; what is gained in each
process is entropy. Entropy is
difficult to specify, exactly, because its measure differs for different types
of systems. But in each case, entropy
is at a maximum at thermal equilibrium: the state of a system in which all
spontaneous thermodynamic changes are at an end and all free energy has been
used up. For example, an isolated
system of ice and water is a thermal equilibrium when the ice no longer melts
in the water. To take another example,
a marble sent spinning around in a bowl is in thermal equilibrium when the
marble stops rolling around, and settles to the bottom of the bowl.
According to the Second Law,
whenever a change takes place in an isolated system, entropy increases and so
the capacity for useful work (“free energy”) decreases. In the words of the title of Lord Kelvin's
classic 1852 paper on the subject, the Second Law concerns “The Universal
Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy”. Thus even though energy as a whole is
conserved in every change in a system, the capacity for work or useful energy
in the universe decreases. The
implications of this for our understanding of time is our next subject.
Time
and Thermodynamics
Since entropy is always on the
increase, it is possible to give an “arrow” or direction to the time
dimension. This would not seem to be
such a great discovery. Don't we know
the direction of time from our everyday existence? But physicists and philosophers of science have argued that the
“direction” of time is in fact an epiphenomenon, something that is not
fundamental to physical reality. This
is because the classical mechanics which Newton brilliantly formulated, and which
were at one time believed to be fundamental to the Universe, are time
symmetric. Although equations such as
“force is equal to the change in momentum over time” (F=dp/dt) have “time” in
them, in classical mechanics the same equations can describe the same
phenomenon whether t is positive or negative, that is, whether time is going
“backwards” or “forwards”. In the
simple case of colliding billiard balls (or atoms) the equations stay the same
no matter which direction time runs in.
It is not possible to tell which direction time has, when attending only
to this sort of phenomenon.
The advent of thermodynamics and
entropy complicates matters. Suddenly
it seemed that such "time-relative" irreversible processes must boil
down, ultimately, to time symmetrical equations of classical mechanics. Or so it seemed at one time to scientists
dominated by the simplified abstractions of classical Newtonian physics. In more recent times, however, scientists in
a number of fields have begun to note the limitations of classical mechanics
for our understanding of the rough-and-tumble, complex world of irreversible
processes. In quantum mechanics the
“collapse” of the Schroedinger equation during measurement is irreversible. Before the measurement, the exact position
or energy of the particle is a matter of probability, due to the famous
Heisenberg uncertainty principle. After
the collapse of the equation in a measurement, there is an asymmetry in the
particle system based on the “before” and “after” of the experimental intrusion
of measurement. So measurement
introduces irreversibility into sub-atomic physics, even though the equations
of quantum mechanics are time-symmetric.
In the study of dynamical systems, or “chaos” theory, the smallest of
differences in the initial conditions of such complex systems leads to large
differences over time (weather is a good example). Our inability to predict the
outcome of the system, and the complex interaction between elements of a
dynamical system, lead to another kind of irreversible process. In biology, the movement from birth, to full
growth, to death, is likewise irreversible.[29]
The key philosophical issue facing
those who reflect upon time in contemporary science is this: which is really
fundamental? Shall we view the time-symmetrical
physics of wave functions, trajectories, and classical mechanics as truly
fundamental, and interpret irreversible processes in light of them? Or should we view irreversible processes
such as the increase of entropy as fundamental, and view trajectories, wave
functions, and classical mechanics as idealizations and simplifications? There is a growing body of science, lead by
Ilya Prigogine and his colleagues, which is arguing that the second view is the
correct one.[30]
The general philosophical question of which interpretation one should
accept (which I will consider further, below) leads to the issue of the
integration of theology and science.
Time
and Christian Theology
Given our quest for a systematic
Christian worldview, we cannot ignore what theology and the sciences both have
to say on a subject. Theology and
science need to be integrated, especially at the level of large-scale
explanations of the Universe. Time and
history are important dimensions of the Universe. To illustrate the manner in which theology and science can be
integrated, we begin with theological perspectives on this topic. What exactly are Christians committed to
with respect to time? Can we speak
properly of the Christian view of time?
Let us recall the many issues that
the philosophy of time brought up. The
Christian faith is not committed to one view or the other on most of these
problems. Whether time is absolute or
relative, whether there is a relationship between time and change, whether the
process or stasis theory is correct, or even whether Measured Time has a
beginning: none of these are essential to the Christian Faith, to the heart of
the Gospel. For some thinkers, the last
point in particular may come as a surprise.
For example, Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking both assume that “a universe
with no edge in space, no beginning or end in time, [has] nothing for a creator
to do”. This quotation comes from
Sagan's introduction to Hawking's best seller, A Brief History of Time.[31]
In that book Hawking makes the argument that universe is just “there”,
adopting the stasis theory of time, and incorporating some speculative elements
of quantum gravitational theory to argue that the entire Universe exists as a
complete spacetime entity, without need of an initial “bump” of energy from a
Creator to get it going. In fact, the
Universe is a kind of “free lunch”.
While Sagan and Hawking may be fine
scientists, as philosophers and theologians they leave something to be desired.
Christian theologians like Thomas Aquinas have persuasively argued that
Measured Time could be of infinite duration, and the Christian doctrine of
“creation out of nothing” (creatio ex nihilo) could still be true. For the doctrine of creation asserts that
the universe is radically contingent: the Creator's will alone is the ground of
being for our universe, whether Measured Time has a beginning or not. Unlike Plato's Demiurge in the Timaeus,
the Lord of Heaven and Earth did not have any other “stuff” -- other than his
own power, love and freedom -- out of which he had to make the world. But we need to note that the priority of
God's power and will over any and all other things is a logical or causal
priority, not a temporal one. The
doctrine of creation out of nothing does not necessarily imply a beginning to
time. Rather, it points to the radical
dependence of all other beings on the Being of God. After all, where do the laws of nature come from? Where does spacetime come from? Who ordered the delicate balance of forces
in the Universe, that brought forth human life? Despite Hawking and Sagan, the metaphysical and scientific fact
that the Universe is contingent cannot be dispelled by some magic tricks in
theoretical physics.[32]
Is there some aspect of time, then,
which is essential to the Christian faith?
I believe there is. The Gospel
is committed to the fact that time is linear and has a direction. There is a beginning, middle, and end to
human history in Biblical perspective.
The Christian doctrines of Creation, Fall, Salvation-history,
Christology, Soteriology, and Eschatology imply a linear direction to time and
history which is ineliminable from the Christian worldview. Natural religions as well as many of the
philosophies of Greece and Rome did not have such a linear view of history. As Mircea Eliade points out in his
fascinating book, The Myth of the Eternal Return, “The life of archaic
man. . . although it takes place in time, does not record time’s
irreversibility”. One of the important
(but not unique) contributions of Hebrew thought to Western civilization is a
linear conception of history.
“Christian thought tended to transcend, once and for all, the old themes
of eternal repetition”.[33]
As Hendrikus Berkhof demonstrates at length in his excellent little
book, Christ The Meaning of History, the Christian faith is committed to
the meaningfulness of the historical process, and to the once-and-for-all
quality of Christ's redemption for all humanity. He rightly noted that “We must thank . . . Israel for our sense
that history is goal-directed, and that as such it has meaning”.[34]
The Christian view of time, then, is that it has a direction and a
purpose: as such, Christianity is committed to the anisotropy of the temporal
process.
The
Integration of Thermodynamics and Theology
Is it possible for theology and
science to support each other? With
care, as long as we avoid leaping to conclusions and a “God of the gaps”
mentality that would find God wherever there is some unanswered scientific
question, surely there can be some support and even integration between science
and theology. I believe that such
integration takes place most fully at the level of large-scale
explanations. Despite the oft-quoted
remarks of Ernan McMullin (who argued that a Big Bang model does not support
the Christian doctrine of creation and that the doctrine of Creation does not
support a Big Bang model)[35]
I find that theology can support our view of physics and vice versa.[36] According to the “mutuality model”
developed earlier, there needs to be an on-going dialogue between theology and
science in which each discipline learns from the other. Of course theology is only interested in the
most general results of the special sciences, or what I have called “large-scale”
explanations. Science, likewise, must
come to its conclusions based on scientific data and methods, not on the basis
of religious beliefs. Nevertheless, a coherent worldview is desired in
Christian Doctrine (systematic theology), and therefore what we learn from both
theological disciplines and the sciences should be woven together into a larger
picture. A rational believer who seeks a holistic worldview will not be
satisfied with dividing our beliefs into separate boxes. While I agree with Ernan McMullin that
science is complete on its own terms (given its methods, purpose, and
limitations), this does not mean that the natural sciences are in and of
themselves “complete” from a theological or philosophical perspective.[37].
If we are rational, then what we believe as Christians will give shape
to our views of natural science, and what we learn from the sciences will shape
our theological convictions.
Both disciplines must, of course,
come to their own conclusions, based upon their own unique methodologies. I am certainly not proposing we hold to
scientific theories because of theology, or let theology be dictated to by
science. Rather, there is room for a
broader, more general attempt to put together a holistic worldview that
includes what we believe both as Christians and as scientists, especially at
the level of very large explanations of reality.[38]
In the case of explanations of time and history, Christian theology
clearly supports one particular interpretation of time in current physical
science, rather than another plausible and popular view. So the Christian is reasonable in holding to
that theory of time which best fits her theology, as long as both theories are
equally supported by reason and evidence.
The Direction of Time and
Irreversibility. Given that entropy
is always on the increase for any changing matter-energy system in our world,
the dissipation of systems provides us with a fundamental asymmetry or
anisotropy for time. In the section on
thermodynamics and time, above, we ended with a dilemma: either irreversible processes are the “real
world” and classical dynamics and un-collapsed wave equations are a
simplification of it; or the reversible world of classical dynamics and wave
equations is fundamental, and thermodynamics is a special, limiting case. What is important to realize is this: in
either case, what is at stake is not science itself, but our interpretation of
science. In cases such as these,
reflective believers are well within their intellectual rights in accepting that
interpretation which, all other things being equal [!], is in line with her or
his theological and metaphysical worldview.
Given the Christian view of linear time essential to our faith,
Christian philosophers of science will follow Prigogine, and a growing number
of others, in finding the real world to be anisotropic and irreversible in
time. At times the “dialogue” between
theology and science looks like a monologue, with science doing all the
talking. In this case, however,
Christian theology should act as a “control belief” in guiding us to the proper
interpretation of science.[39]
The End and Beginning of Time. I begin with the assumption that the
universe, or better the Material Universe (since I do hold to non-material
objects) is an isolated system.
Physical energy and matter are not being exchanged between our Material
Universe and some other dimension or universe.
The Material Universe, then, contains all the known matter and
energy. In such a system, entropy will
always increase. This means that the
Material Universe, left to its own devices, will come to an end. The Material Universe will some day reach
thermal equilibrium: all free energy will be used-up, and no more “work” will
take place. Whether we predict another
singularity at the end of Measured Time (a “Big Crunch”) or a continual expanse
of lifeless particles into empty space
(a “heat death”) is not of any significance.[40]
The basic point remains the same, from a thermodynamic perspective:
entropy must increase (even if it never reaches an absolute maximum in an ever-expanding
universe). The universe will come to an
end.
Some scientists are uneasy with this
conclusion. There are three objections
to applying thermodynamics to the Material Universe of which I am aware. First, some have suggested that
thermodynamics is questionable when applied to such large entities as an entire
Universe. After all, this science was
developed on small steam engines, not huge galactic clusters. In response I would argue that all physical
cosmological laws were developed on earth, in the study of small, simple
systems. It is an axiom of astronomy
and cosmology that the laws of physics apply throughout all time and space in
the Material Universe. To try and
exempt thermodynamics from such universality is simply an attempt to wiggle out
of the problem. According to all we
know of physics and astronomy, every single astronomical object will eventually
decay, and the resultant matter and energy left over will not have the same
capacity for work (free energy) as the original system. Entropy applies to everything in the
Material Universe.
Secondly, William Drees has argued
against the universal increase of entropy in the Material Universe by
suggesting that it is not a “closed” (he no doubt means “isolated”) system, in
the sense necessary to apply the Second Law.[41]
The expansion of the Material Universe, he suggests, works as if there
were an “environment” into which entropy was carried away, even though there is
no environment for the universe. Here I
find Drees’ argument rather unclear.
Even the radiation given off by the universe, at the edge of its
expansion, is also part of the Material Universe. The expansion itself is a form of thermodynamic exchange, increasing
always the entropy of the whole (radiation, energy, matter) and decreasing the
free energy in the Material Universe.
Empty space is not an “environment” in the thermodynamic sense, i.e.,
something from which energy can be brought into the system, to decrease the
(local) entropy of that system. There
is, I believe, no philosophical or scientific grounds for doubting the fact
that the Material Universe, after billions of years, will come to an end (I
count a ceaseless drifting apart of lifeless particles as an “end”).
Thirdly, Drees also states that the
Second Law is a purely statistical law.
As such, perhaps this universe of low entropy is a (low probability)
fluctuation in an otherwise eternal universe in thermal equilibrium.[42]
Such a “fluctuation” would be very, very unlikely, but if the Second Law
is merely statistical, still possible.
This would allow for the Material Universe to be eternal, while not
running counter to the Second Law.
Ludwig Boltzmann suggested such a model in the 19th Century, and
Hawking's cosmology, perhaps, is of a similar kind. The problem here lies in interpreting the Second Law in a purely
statistical manner. There are real
forces at work in the world, which are the ground of the statistics in the
Second Law. In a merely statistical
interpretation, there is no answer given as to why some states are more
probable (act as “attractors”) than others: the fact that some are is merely
asserted, rather than explained. As
Prigogine wrote on another occasion:[43]
Dissipation
produces entropy. But what then is the
meaning of entropy? Over a century ago,
Boltzmann came up with a most original idea: entropy is related to probability.
. . . It is because the probability
increases that entropy increases. Let
me immediately emphasize that in this perspective the second law would have
great practical importance but would be of no fundamental significance. . .
. By improving our abilities to measure
less and less unlikely events, we could reach a situation in which the second
law would play as small a role as we want.
This is the point of view that is often taken today, but it is difficult
to maintain in the presence of the important constructive role of dissipative
systems.
In
other words, while the merely statistical interpretation of entropy is useful
and important, it is not metaphysically significant or fundamental. Dissipation, not statistics, produces
entropy. “Unlikely” states of affairs,
such as “fluctuations” of the age and extent of our Material Universe in an
otherwise eternal thermal equilibrium, are not merely unlikely but practically
impossible from a thermodynamic perspective.
Given the failure of the above
objections, we can conclude that the Material Universe as we know it will come
to an end. This therefore implies that Measured
Time, the physical time of our universe, must have a beginning. The argument for this conclusion is a simple
one. Either pure duration is of
infinite or finite extension into the past.
If it is finite, then time has a beginning, and thus so does Measured
Time. If pure duration is infinite,
then Measured Time either has a beginning, or it does not. If we begin to think that it has no
beginning (i.e., “began” an infinite time ago), we soon realize that with an infinite
past, we should already have reached the end of Measured Time, since the
Material Universe is of merely finite duration. But we have not reached the end of Measured Time. So Measured Time must have a beginning
(whether pure duration also must have a beginning is another question). Yet even this result (that Measured Time has
a beginning) is important: it adds weight to the conclusion, based on results
from many areas, that the Material Universe is contingent. Thermodynamics therefore helps support one
implication of the Christian doctrine of Creation, namely, that the Universe is
contingent.
Conclusions
We have covered a lot of terrain in
a hurry. Each major point we have made
could be the subject of another article on its own. Still, some progress has been made toward an understanding of the
relationship between thermodynamics and Christian theology. Thermodynamics supports the Christian
doctrine that time is linear, while Christian doctrine supports the dynamic,
irreversible view of fundamental physics.
Both disciplines together lead to the conclusion that the Material
Universe is contingent, having a beginning in time, and again in this way support each other.
In terms of the relationship between
theology and science, we have seen that at least in this small area these disciplines
can be integrated, and they can support each other (by “support” I mean
indirect, inductive support). Of
further methodological interest is this:
in two cases metaphysics (that
is, “large-scale” explanation) has served as an intermediary between theology
and science.. Thermodynamics supports
the Christian doctrine of creation through its metaphysical implications, while
the Christian doctrine of time helps us choose between rival metaphysical
interpretations of basic physics with respect to the “direction” of time. Is not metaphysics, then the proper meeting
place of theology and science?[44]
[1]1 One World (London: SPCK, 1986), Science
and Creation (London: SPCK, 1988), Science and Providence (London:
SPCK, 1989), Reason and Religion (London: SPCK, 1991).
[2] Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of
Science (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 4.
[3] Norman F. and Lucia Hall, "Is the War
between Science and Religion Over?", The Humanist 46/3 (May-June,
1986), 26.
[4] Whitehead, Science and the Modern World
(New York; Macmillan, 1925), chapt. 1.
Many other scholars have argued this same point, although some are
marred by apologetic certainty that science could only have arisen in a
theistic environment (e.g., S. Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978]).
[5] S. Drake, Galileo Studies (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1970), 44.
[6] Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions
of Galileo, tr. and ed. S. Drake (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1957), 168.
[7] Jaki, 47.
[8] Galileo, Discoveries, 182 (from the
"Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina").
[9] This is the view of Sylvian Bromberger,
"Why Questions," in Mind and Cosmos, ed. R. G. Colodny
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh).
[10] Metaphysics,
book A.
[11] Those who reject the idea that causation is an integral aspect of scientific explanation do so, for the most part, because of the many philosophical problems with this concept. Some of the finest minds in Western philosophy have struggled with this difficult philosophical problem, and the related problem of induction. I believe that this problem has a solution, and I am working on a paper entitled, “The Myth of the Problem of Induction.” In the meantime, readers may wish to consult R. G. Swinburne, ed., The Justification of Induction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974) and esp. two fine books by D. C. Stove, Probability and Hume’s Inductive Scepticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press), and The Rationality of Induction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
[12] See Donald M. MacKay, The Clockwork Image (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1974), 30-38.
[13] New York: Houghton Mifflin, 5, his italics.
[14] See also Arthur Peacocke, Creation and
the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), but his understanding
of these levels sometime conflates levels of being (scientific ontology) with
leves of explanation (epistemology).
[15] I would therefore reject the view of W. Pannenberg, Theology and the
Philosophy of Science (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), and of his student
P. Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989), that the social and natural sciences are both
hermeneutical, that both seek "coherence," and that these
considerations alone serve to fully explicate scientific method. What such a view ignores is specifically the
causal element I am emphasizing: an element which is quite different from the
concern of "meaning" in hermeneutics. So it is not enough to simply state, as Stepehn Toulmin does (Foresight
and Understanding [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1961], 81), that
natural scientific explanation amounts to placing an event in a context in
which it is intelligible. Such an
opinion is correct but incomplete.
[16] Explaining Explanation (London:
Routledge, 1990). Ruben also provides
an extensive bibliography on this topic.
[17] As, e.g., Bas van Fraasen argues in The
Scientific Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).
[18] Pannenberg, op. cit., 143-155. I find the same problem with the work of
Clayton (op. cit.). Both attempt
to subsume causal explanation under the banner of hermeneutical understanding
-- a category mistake that results in a mistaken notion of what counts as
theological explanation (Pannenberg, op. cit., 326-345).
[19] This point about causation in theological
explanation is also made, in differing ways, by Swinburne, The Existence of
God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) and E. L. Schoen, Religious
Explanation (London: Routledge, 1985).
Swinburne has been criticized for focusing too much on causal
explanation by Rob Prevost, Probability and Theistic Explanation
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
[20] See, e.g., D. Z. Phillips, Religion
Without Explanation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976).
[21] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology,
vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 3, 48.
[22] The Sacred Canopy (1967; Garden City:
Anchor Books, 1990), 179.
[23] Sir
Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles, F. Cajori ,ed. (Berkeley:
University of California Press , 1947),
6.
[24] For more on the nature of Measured Time,
see A. G. Padgett, God, Eternity
and the Nature of Time (London:
Macmillan, 1992), 7-18.
[25]
In discussing time and thermodynamics, we should carefully
distinguish between the process and stasis
theories, which are about the ontological status of “nowness” or “presentness”
in the physical universe; and the issue
of the anisotropy or “arrow” of time.
While the process theorist, who believes that nowness is objective, is
committed to the anisotropy of time,
the stasis theorist, for whom “past”,
“present” and “future” are merely subjective qualities, can consistent ly
assert either the anisotropy or the isotropy of time .
[26]A good example of this is the
best-seller, S. Hawking, A Brief
History of Time (New York: Bantam,
1988).
[27]See his now standard work, From Being
to Becoming (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1980).
[28]The Third Law is basically about reaching
zero degrees Kelvin, and will not concern us here.
[29]For a readable survey of these an other
topics, see P. Coveney and R.
Highfield, The Arrow of Time (London: W. H. Allen, 1990).
[30]Prigogine, op. cit. and at a more popular level, Prigogine
and I. Stenger, Order out of Chaos (London: Heinemann, 1984).
[31]Hawking, Brief History, x.
[32]For more on creation, contingency and
modern science, see the excellent collection, Ted Peters, ed., Cosmos as
Creation (Nashville: Abingdon,
1989), and also W. B. Drees, Beyond the Big Bang (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court ,1990).
[33] London: Routledge, 1955, citing pp. 86
and 137.
[34] London: SCM, 1966, 21.
[35] E. McMullin “Natural Science and Belief
in a Creator”, in D. M. Byers, ed., Religion, Science, and the Search for
Wisdom (Washington, D.C.: National
Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1987), 39.
[36]
Part of the debate here is over the meaning of “support”. McMullin makes
it clear (ibid.) that by support he means deductive support
(implication, entailment). In this
essay, on the other hand, by “support” I mean inductive, indirect support.
[37] McMullin, “Natural Science”, 14-47.
[38]
I assume that McMullin would also agree with this last point, given what
he says about worldviews at the end of his interesting paper, “How Should Cosmology Relate to
Theology?”, in A. Peacocke, ed., The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth
Century (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Pr., 1981), 51f.
[39]For more on “control beliefs” see N.
Wolterstorff, Reason within the
Bounds of Religion. 2nd ed. (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984).
[40]For more on this topic, see S. Frautschi,
“Entropy in an Expanding Universe”, Science 217 (1982), 593-599.
[41] Drees, 32
[42]ibid. and 227.
[43]
“Irreversibility and Space-time Structure”, in David Griffin, ed., Physics and the Ultimate Significance of
Time (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
1986), 239.
[44]
I wish to thank my wife, Sally Bruyneel Padgett, and my colleagues at
Azusa Pacific --John Culp, Lynn Losie, Don Thorsen, and Steve Wilkens --for
their comments on an earlier version of this essay. I am also grateful to my friends Charles Hughes, Stephen
Palmquist and Bruce Reichenbach, along with an anonymous commentator from CSR,
for their comments and helpful criticisms.
Any errors that remain are my own, of course.