Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Against Method in Science and Religion: Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology by Josh ReevesWhitney A. BaumanAgainst Method in Science and Religion: Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology. Josh Reeves. London, UK: Routledge, 2019. 154 pp. $170.00 hard-cover; $54.95 paperback; $39.71 eBook.Josh Reeves has written a very accessible and well-argued book for those interested in the field known as “science and religion.” It is a timely book that I would use in conversation with other works that are questioning the continued validity and usefulness of modern Western university disciplines. In a world that is marked by globalization and climate change, and one in which many histories, religions, cultures, and possible futures come into contact with and change one another, perhaps we need to rethink what we mean by both “science” and “religion.”The general argument of the book is that Western scholars of science and religion have, until very recently paid more attention to the philosophy of science rather than the history of science. As such, these scholars have participated in a form of “methodological fetishism” (9) and have leaned too heavily on the idea that the sciences participate in some sort of unified program. In particular, Reeves deals with three figures within theology and science (I think it is important to distinguish theology from religion more clearly than the author does), whose research programs seek to place the claims of theology on some type of equal footing with the claims of science.Nancey Murphy, for instance, applies Imre Lakatos’s idea of core and auxiliary hypotheses to theology (40). Murphy’s project is trying to show how theology can be scientific by using this methodology (49). Though recognizing that knowledge in both theology and science change over time, it is most often auxiliary hypotheses rather than the core hypotheses that need to be altered. In this way, scientific and theological programs can remain in continuity over time, rather than experiencing disjointed paradigm shifts.Alister McGrath opts, instead, for a type of “critical realism” (56). There is a real world pushing back against human ideas and concepts and science can give us valid information about that world, but we must critically analyze the data since no data is raw (59). Against some post-modern claims, McGrath still argues that ontology determines epistemology (61). Reeves argues that McGrath fails to analyze older, discarded theories in his reading of the development of various scientific discoveries, thereby paving over the historical knowledge from the sciences that we would now see as outdated. This serves [End Page 96] to support an illusion that there is some sort of “global realism” that connects all sciences in a common ground and narrative (68).Finally, J. Wentzel van Huyssteen starts from the idea that there is no global common ground and sets out to offer a post-foundational theology based upon post-foundational philosophies of science and epistemology (78). For van Huyssteen, rationality is intersubjective, embodied and emerges from eco-social contexts, and thus, he highlights the serious problem of projecting a unified, global rationality as a unified basis for the sciences (82). Instead, he constructs a trans-local rationality that takes into account the multiple perspectives making up what we think of as a unified understanding of reason (84). Reeves argues that while this may be a step along the way to a method for “theology and science,” it does not offer us a way to navigate differences between conflicting knowledge claims (93). I would suggest that this is precisely the point of a post-foundational project: there is no overarching value but rather common grounds must be gained through dialogues, conversations, and translations.After engaging with these three philosophical theologians, Reeves proceeds to the second part of the book, in which he more directly criticizes distinct concepts of “religion” and “science” historically. For instance, he describes the tendency of early historians of science and those in the field of “science and religion” to erase the religiosity of early figures such as Isaac Newton and Francis Bacon (107). These figures mixed theological ideas with what we might call magical ideas in order to further develop natural...