A possible chapter for the project Sources of the Jesuit SelfRonald Anderson, S.J.
February 21, 1998
Tentative title: "Jesuit writings on the interrelationship between Science and Religion: negotiating and navigating boundaries"
1) Jesuits have had a long history of engagement with issues to do with the relationship between science and religion. My intent for this chapter is to explore some of this history, focusing largely on recent writings by Jesuits and attending closely to the manner in which boundaries are drawn between science and religion.
2) My impression so far is that one of the distinguishing features of these writings (certainly recent writings) is the stress on the need to maintain clear disciplinary boundaries between science (natural knowledge) and religion (revealed knowledge). Each is seen as having its own subject matter, object of inquiry, and defining set of practices. Often a hierarchical ordering of the disciplines is presented with positions such as: "science raises questions for theology, questions it cannot answer itself."
3) If correct, as my preliminary impressions suggest, I'm interesting in identifying the origins of this stress on clear boundaries. Some tentative exploratory questions:
i) to what extent can a common philosophical background account for such an emphasis on boundaries, one, for example, with a stress on a systematic ordering of knowledge into disciplines marked by clear boundaries (characteristic of older versions of Thomism)?ii) are they reactions to a globalizing type of "scientism" or conversely, a move to reassure scientists that theology is not out to interfere with science?
iii) to what extend (in general) do disciplinary commitments and institutional contexts and identities provide insight into the nature of Jesuit writings on science and religion?
iv) is the stress on disciplinary boundaries a reflection of particular practices of Jesuit life, especially those that serve to define our identity as Jesuits and the various mechanisms of control and power relations that feature or have featured in Jesuit life? is there something in our training and Ignatian heritage to account for the emphasis on boundaries?
v) is there a correspondence between such boundaries and those present in our understanding(s) of our relationship to "secular" activities?
vi) is the stress made in order to avoid past conflicts between science and religion? is it a cautious move made to ensure orthodoxy?
vii) (importantly) are there indications that this trend can be traced back to positions held by Jesuits in the Church-science controversies in the Scientific Revolution of the 16th-17th centuries such as those developed in disputes on the status of Copernican astronomy, positions forged as we navigated through the dangers of the Inquisition and ecclesiastical power struggles in an age of restrictive orthodoxies. Likewise, can any influence of the Ratio Studiorum, with its disciplinary boundaries and traditional (Tridentine) ordering of disciplines, be traced in Jesuit writings on science and religion?
4) The feature of clear disciplinary boundaries maintained by Jesuits (if correct) places these writings in a somewhat different world from recent writings such as: "The spiritual universe : how quantum physics proves the existence of the soul" by Fred Alan Wolf. (1996). "The physics of immortality : modern cosmology, God, and the resurrection of the dead"by Frank J. Tipler (1994), God and the New Physics by Paul Davies (1983). All these books maintain a close interrelationship between scientific and theological speculation where traditional categories are mixed and traditional boundaries crossed (as their titles suggest).
Ronald Anderson, S.J.
(ronald.anderson@bc.edu)
February 21, 1998