Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking: chapter 3 (part 1)

In this chapter Dowe examines some seventeenth century figures, Descartes, Galileo and Bacon to see how religious ideas have influenced their science.

Prior to the seventeenth century Aristotelian deductivism – epitomised in Euclid’s Elements – dominated European thought.

The concept of the image of God was taken as axiomatic in the seventeenth century – it played a fundamental role in an optimistic view of science for Descartes, Galileo and Bacon.

René Descartes’ (1596-1650) Meditations on First Philosophy attempted to do for knowledge what Euclid’s Elements did for geometry in his Elements – place it on a deductive edifice derived from certain truths.

For Descartes the ‘book of nature’ was written in the language of mathematics and ‘we rational souls have a truth-reaching capacity for reading that book.’ (Dowe, p. 63) Nature is readily readable.

Galileo took this even further than Descartes – mathematics ‘reaches a standard of infallibility that mirrors God’s understanding’. (Dowe, p. 65)

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) has been described as the father of modern science. His New Organon developed with the intention of replacing Aristotle’s Organon. Bacon rejected Aristotelian scholasticism, he wanted to synthesise practice (experiment) with discourse (theory). He had three requirements for obtaining new knowledge: discard all personal feelings and biases; observe a large sample of relevant data; deduce from the facts generalisations about nature.

So, from sufficient observations we can draw conclusions; this is an inductive rather than deductive process.

Bacon believed that true knowledge would lead to practical application: knowledge is power. Knowledge gives us power over nature. Eighty years after Bacon’s death the Royal Society took up his vision of the scientific method.

John Kok receives Dooyeweerd award

John Kok, author of Vollenhoven: His Early Development ( 1992); Patterns of the Western Mind: A Reformed Christian Perspective (1996); and Celebrating the Vision: The Reformed Perspective of Dordt College (ed., 2004) as well as the editor of a forthcoming Vollehoven Reader and professor of philosophy at Dordt College, has received the prestigious Herman Dooyeweerd Award.

Galileo Redux

An interesting article on Galileo: Galieo Redux by Steve Kellemeyer, draws a parallel between the way Galileo was treated and how the proponents of ID are treated today.

Tom Wright lectures

The Bishop of Durham, N. T[om] Wright, has some excellent lectures given at Seattle Pacific University available on-line:

The Christian Challenge in the Postmodern World

Decoding The Da Vinci Code

The Bible and Christian Imagination

God, 9/11, the Tsunami, and the New Problem of Evil


There is also a
A Conversation With N.T. Wright

Roy Clouser article

I have just added another article by Roy Clouser to the Clouser pages of the All of Life Redeemed website: "Religious Language: A New Look at an Old Problem" it was originally published in Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition , Ed. Hart, Van derHoeven, & Wolterstorff. (Lanham: University Press of America, 1983).

Dooyeweerd's New Critique

Two bloggers are independently going through Dooyeweerd's magnum opus The New Critique of Theoretical Thought. Elbert Bass will be reading through the original Dutch translation (here) and Paul Robinson will start on the English translation (here and here). There are differences between the two versions and it will be interesting to see if this comes out in their blogging.

Latin squares (aka Sudoku)

Sudoku (aka Su Doko, Sudoko, Soduko), is the latest craze to hit the UK. I first came across it about six months ago in a Times newspaper. The six out of the top 40 best sellers in The Guardian's bestseller's list are all Sudoko books! The concept is fiendishly simple: there is a 9 × 9 grid which is split up into nine smaller 3 × 3 grids, all the 3 × 3 grids, rows and columns must contain all nine numbers.

Sudoko apparently came to the UK via Japan. However, it was first invented by the Swiss Leonard Euler around 1798, though he called it Latin squares. Euler was an extraordinary and prolific mathematican, see the Euler archive. He was also a committed Christian. Dan Graves in his Scientists of Faith has this to say of Euler:

Euler retained his firm Calvinist beliefs throughout life, holding daily prayer and worship in his home and sometimes preaching.

cited here.

It rather ironic that The Independent newspaper boasts that no mathematics is needed to solve it! I think they are getting confused with maths and arithmetic; there is a lot of maths going on! See here for example.

There are a number of Sudoko solvers on the web; books on how to solve them by, for example, Robin Wilson and Carol Voderman; as well as books of them; and there is no shortage Sudoko puzzles on-line to have a go at.

More new blogs

I've recently come across three great new blogs:

Refractions by artist Makoto Fujimura, detailing his journey in art, faith and travels (HT Gideon Strauss);

Every square inch a neocalvinist group blog (HT Macht); and

Reformatorische by Gregory Baus of Honest to Blog. This blog will host Greg's musings and academic thoughts while he studies at the VU, Amsterdam.

Enjoy!

Virtual Network for Christian Teachers

The Stapleford Centre and the Association of Christian Teachers have launched a number of on-line forums to help put Christian teachers in touch. At present there are forums (fora?) for English, maths, RE and headteachers here.

New books on and by Vollenhoven

Dordt College Press have recently published a new book on D. H. Th. Vollenhoven by Kor Bril Vollenhoven's Problem-Historical Method (Dordt College Press, June 2005)



I have just ordered mine from amazon.

Two more books by Vollenhoven due out at the end of August:
Introduction to Philosophy (pbk)
Isagôgè Philosophiae: Introduction to Philosophy (Hbk)


The paperback is the English only of Vollenhoven's intro, the hardcover has both Dutch and English. Preface by Calvin Seerveld and (long) Foreword by Anthony Tol.

Harry James Bishop 1 Nov 1994 - 2 Aug 2005

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All of life redeemed update

I have just finished adding three new papers to the All of life redeemed website. These are:
Roy Clouser's 'A sketch of Dooyeweerd's view of science' and Chris Gousmett's 'The Christ of the Spirit in Athanasius and Kuyper' and 'Dooyeweerd on faith and apostasy'.

Recently I have also added a list of philosophy and theology books that Colin Lanfear has for sale; they are exceptional value!

Current reading

Current listening

Odds and sod

For an Islamic view of Intelligent Design: The Non-Science of Intelligent Design by Ahmed K. Sultan Salem.

For a Dooyeweerdian view of science: A New Look at Scientific Enquiry by Magnus Verbrugge (HT Prosthesis).

Byron Borger's new blog (HT Gideon Strauss)

Paul Robinson has a neat way of giving an historical perspective on philosophy.

I've previously blogged on Dan Brown's erroneous conflict view of science and religion; here are some sites sites that identify other errors in his book Demons and Angels (HT Wikipedia).

Enjoy!

How to find your position on Genesis and science. Click on the image to see it enlarged.

Genesis and science

There are a number of ways that Christians have attempted to reconcile science and the early chapters of Genesis. Two questions are crucial to the position Christians take on science and Genesis:

1. Is the earth old?

2. Do we have a common ancestor?

(i) Extreme creationists reject the scientific evidence and hold onto a literal six-day creation, they claim that the earth is young and we don’t have a common ancestor e.g Henry Morris (ed.) Scientific Creationism (1974).

(ii) Progressive creationists adopt some sort of age-day or revelatory-day view of Genesis 1 and thus accept an old earth but reject a common ancestor, e.g. Pattle P. T. Pun Evolution (1982).

(iii) Theistic evolutionists would accept that while God created matter and natural laws, life evolved, the earth is old and we do have a common ancestor e.g R. J. Berry (1988).

The nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a number of ways of relating the early chapters of Genesis with science.

Position	Advocates	Work	Date
Flood geology/ creation science	E.G. White	Spiritual Gifts	1864
	George McReady Price	The New Geology	1923
	Byron Nelson	The Deluge Story in Stone	1931
	A.M. Rehwinkel	The Flood in the Light of the Bible	1951
	H.W. Clark	The New Diluvialism	1946
	Henry M. Morris & John C. Whitcomb	The Genesis Flood	1961
Local creation	John Pye Smith	On the Relation Between the Holy Scriptures and Certain parts of Geological Science	1839
Ideal time view	Philip Henry Grosse	Omphalos	1857
Gap theory	Buckland	Bridgewater Treatises VI	1837
	Adam Sedgwick	Discourses on the Studies of the University of Cambridge
	Robert Chalmers	The evidence and authority of the Christian Revelation	1817
	John H. Pratt	Scripture and Science not at variance	1857
	J.H. Kurtz	Bible and astronomy	1842
	G.H. Pember	Earth’s Earliest Ages	1876
	C.I. Scofield	Scofield Bible	1909
	Harry Rimmer	Modern Science and the Genesis Record	1937
Age-day	G. S. Faber	Genius and object	1823
	Buffon	Epoques de la Nature	1778
	James Dana	Manual of Geology	1863
	J.W. Dawson	Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science	1877
	Edwin K. Gedeney	in Modern Science and Christian Faith	1948
Pictorial day	J.H. Kurtz	Bible and Astronomy	1857
	Hugh Miller	Testimony of the Rocks	1849
	A.H. Strong	Systematic Theology	1907
	Canon Dorlodot	Darwinism & Catholic Thought	1923
	L.F. Gruber	The Six Creative Days
	J. Pohle	God: The Author of Nature and the Supernatural	1942
	P.J. Wiseman	Creation Revealed in Six Days	1948

Flood geology or creationism, subsumes science with a literal six-day creation reading of scripture.

Local creation. The special act of creation by God was limited to a small area of the ancient near East.

Ideal time view. How old was Adam when God created him? He was apparently created with the appearance of age. The earth could likewise be created with the appearance of age, so this view purports.

Gap theory. In order to reconcile the geologists’ old earth view with the prima facie young earth view of Genesis a gap was inserted in Gen 1:2. God created in Genesis 1:1, this was followed by a catastrophe in Gen 1:2, and was followed by a re-creation in 1:3; 1:2 could provide the geologists with as much time as they required!

Age day. This view holds that the days of creation were periods of time representing the development of the earth.

Pictorial day. The days of creation in Genesis 1 are the days of revelation by God to 'Moses' of the successive acts of creation.

Adapted from Steve Bishop ‘A typology for science and religion’ Evangelical Quarterly 72 (1) (2000) 35-56. When I get time I'll put on some links.

Science and religion quotes 8

The fact is that the doctrine of Evolution does not affect the substance of Paley's argument at all. The marks of design which he had pointed out remain marks of design still even if we accept the doctrine of Evolution to the full. What is touched by this doctrine is not the evidence of design but the mode in which the design was executed. ... He [God] did not make the things, we may say; no, but He made them make themselves.

Frederick Temple, Lord Bishop of Exeter, The Relations Between Religion and Science

(London: MacMillan, 1884) pp. 113-5.

Galileo, Darwin, and Hawking: chapter 2

In Chapter 1 Dowe looked at the hermeneutics of Scripture, in Chapter 2 he examines the hermeneutics of science and religion.

He starts by defining realism and antirealism (aka instrumentalism or fictionalism). He then goes on to looks at Osiander, the preface writer of Copernicus’ On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres, Pierre Duhem and Bas van Fraassen as advocates of antirealism in science and then Feuerbach, Tillich and Wittgenstein as examples of those who take an antirealist view of religion.

Andreas Osiander (1498–1552) in the controversial preface to Copernicus’ work maintained that the book should be read as mathematical devices for accommodating the astronomical data. Dowe writes: ‘In this case it is science, rather than religion, that gives way in order that the two can be held together’ (p. 42).

Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) maintained that the fault in the ‘Galileo affair’ was Galileo’s inadequate philosphy of science. If Galileo has held to an antirealist view it would have avoided a clash with the papal authorities. For Duhem it is religion- he was a conservative Thomist Catholic - that provides us with ultimate truth, not science.

Bas van Fraassen advocates constructive empiricism: science provides us with empirically adequate theories - i.e. they fit with current data. A theory can be accepted without necessarily believing it literally.

Dowe isn’t impressed with antirealism - and neither are most practising scientists - despite the fact that it circumvents a conflict between science and religion. Antirealism provides us with an independence model of the relationship between science and religion. I felt that here Dowe could have expanded more on why antirealism is unsatisfactory.

He then moves on to answer the question, ‘Can antirealism about religion secure harmony between science and religion?’ To do this he examines the views of Feueurbach, Tillich and the later Wittgenstein.

For Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) the answer is no, his is a conflict view as science shows that earlier forms of religion were false.

Paul Tillich (1886-1965) takes a harmony approach, but neither his approach or Feuerbach’s are as antirealist as Osiander, Duhem or van Fraassen. This though is not the case with the later Wittgenstein (1889-1951). For Wittgenstein ‘religion [unlike science] is not a fact-stating domain' (p 56). Hence science and religion are independent, they belong to different domains. Whereas Osiander has a blanket antirealism for science, Wittegnstien has a blanket antirealism for science; both views enabled a harmony to exist between science and religion. However, Dowe – rightly in my opinion – notes that Wittgenstein’s approach is not satisfactory, his religion is unrecognisable as far as orthodox theism is concerned.