Over the past thirty years, discussions about the relationships between contemporary science and theology have come to occupy an important place in the intellectual landscape. The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) provides an important venue for such discussions, and the essays collected in the volume under review are extended versions of presentations made at the April 2000 meeting of ESSSAT in Lyon. The book itself is part of a larger series, Issues in Science and Theology. In various ways, these essays call into question the notion that there is in nature a fundamental dichotomy between order and disorder, such that one must choose between one or the other in describing features of nature. Similarly, the authors argue that theology, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, need not conclude that one must ultimately reject chance and indeterminism in nature in order to safeguard belief in God. Thus, a new understanding of divine design would not require that everything in nature ‘has to be intelligently designed for special purposes’. The essays in this book seek to ‘cast new light’ on the relationship between design and disorder. Since so often modern approaches to the relationship between God and nature have depended upon arguments from design in nature, this book is welcome. The introduction contains useful paragraph-long descriptions of each essay.
Ulf Görman, one of the contributors (and also one of the editors), contends that recent trends in both science and theology have challenged traditional interpretations of order. In particular, he thinks that chaos theory ‘shows that our received view of determinism’ is far too limited. Many of the other contributors would agree with his general observation that ‘the understanding of God's providence, pre-knowledge, and predestination [must] be understood in new ways in the light of chaos theory’. Similarly, conceptions of self-organization and constitutive self-assembly, as well as versions of complexity theory, especially in biology and chemistry, present challenges to traditional notions of divine action. Go¨ rman observes that ‘the traditional concept of divine activity has been too much associated with an idea of causal determinism connected with seventeenth-century scientific ideas, which are nowadays abandoned by science’.
The contributors to this collection of essays are distinguished scholars who have written both in their own areas of special expertise as well as on the interrelationship between theology and science. John Barrow points out how contemporary science shows us that ‘chaos and order have been found to coexist in a curious symbiosis’. The classic example which he uses, and which appears in other essays in the volume, is that of the growth of a sand-pile, grain by grain of sand falling in a chaotic manner, such that the pile evolves in an erratic way. As the pile of sand grows, ‘sandfalls of all sizes occur, and their effect is to maintain the overall gradient of the sand-pile in equilibrium, just on the verge of collapse’. This self-sustaining process is what has been called ‘self-organizing criticality’ by its discoverer, the Danish physicist, Per Bak. Barrow thinks that, as with the sand-pile, there are many natural systems in which order develops on a large-scale through the combination of many small-scale events ‘that hover on the brink of instability’. Applying this model to evolutionary processes, Barrow writes: ‘The chain of living creatures maintains an overall balance despite the constant impact of extinctions, changes of habitat, disease and disaster, that conspire to create ‘local avalanches.’ Occasional extinctions open up new niches, and allow diversity to flourish anew, until equilibrium is temporarily reestablished’.
Niels Gregersen offers the most sophisticated attempt to understand the implications for theology of complexity theory and various versions of self-organization in nature. He is particularly good at showing the differences among general notions of self-organization, self-organizing criticality, and theories of autopoiesis (put forth especially by Umberto Maturana and Francisco Varela).
John Brooke, the distinguished historian of science, challenges traditional interpretations of Darwin's attitude toward natural theology. According to Brooke, Darwin set out not to destroy natural theology, but to reform it. The ‘young Darwin found God in nature rather than deduced God's existence from it’. Historical studies, such as Brooke's, can help us to avoid simplistic notions of an incompatibility between natural theology and evolutionary biology.
Christoph Theobold, SJ, argues that theologians do not need traditional understandings of purpose (finality) as they seek to bring together the various levels of cosmic, biological, and historical evolution. He offers a particularly insightful discussion of the different senses of the ‘anthropic principle’ and their relation to teleology. Theobold is the only author in the book who refers to a Thomistic understanding of divine causality and how, for St. Thomas, God is the creator in such a way that the ‘autonomous operation of secondary causes’ is not challenged. Theobold is critical of those who try to find in versions of the anthropic principle some similarity with arguments advanced by St. Thomas in his natural philosophy.
Other authors who contribute to this volume are: John Puddlefoot, Isabelle Stengers, Alexei Nesteruk, and Willem Drees. The book offers an excellent account of many of the ways in which the traditional discussion of design and disorder in science and theology has been transformed, not only by advances in science, but also by reflections in theology. Some of the essays reveal a characteristic shortcoming in much of the contemporary ‘dialogue’ between theology and science: the absence of a sophisticated natural philosophy. The authors are correct in seeing how frequently modern notions of divine causality are rooted in conceptions of causality associated with developments in the seventeenth-century and how, accordingly, contemporary science has challenged these conceptions. But a danger both in the seventeenth-century and today is to move too quickly from developments in the natural sciences to revisions in theology. Only when the discoveries of science are integrated into a broader philosophy of nature ought they to play a role in theological reflections.
Might it not be the case, as Christoph Theobold briefly suggested, that a return to Thomistic categories of analysis would provide a useful partner for any dialogue between theology and the natural sciences? In this respect it would be good to remember that Thomas Aquinas does not have an argument for the existence of God based on design, at least as design has come to be seen in modern thought.
