The Threshold of the Scientific Rationality

The impact of religious-driven world-views
in scientific innovation through the history of science

STOQ Research Project
at the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce

Workshop Program (Rome, 19-21 November 2015)

List of Abstracts

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This project intends to explore, on a historical basis and with interdisciplinary methodology, the impact of philosophical and religious factors on the process that leads to the creation of innovative scientific views. Its aims to make an original contribution to the study of the relationship between philosophy, religion and science by following a specific methodological perspective in which the role of pre-conceptions, ground-concepts and general world-views in the process of formulating a new theory or a new discovery, will be explored. These concepts will then be traced back to philosophical and religious views to reveal the mutual interaction of science, philosophy and religion.

1. Background: Science as source of progress and innovations

Science has always been, since its initial development in Ancient times to the present technological culture, one of the most important driving forces of both progress and innovation in human affairs. New technologies are the immediate motor of practical transformations in human life. Theoretical science, on the other hand, has always been the necessary source of every technological development that aims to be permanent and effective. Therefore, science gives us both the possibility of understanding natural reality and obtaining an extended dominion over nature, by means of experimental and technological discoveries.

The innovative role of science seems to be an incontrovertible fact. What are the basic forces that enable us able to obtain technological dominion over nature, and give us the possibility of accumulating theoretical scientific insights? The intense discussions carried by the philosophy of science, especially during twentieth century, have clearly stressed the complex interrelation between theory and practice. Specially, the theoryladen character of every experimental approach has been clearly stated by authors of very different intellectual backgrounds, such as Hanson, Kuhn, Quine, Polanyi, and others. Scientific progress and innovation, and the consequent innovation in human life and human affairs, cannot be explained as a necessary by-product of logical or analytic thought, experimental method and technological capacities. All of them are deeply interwoven with our theoretical insights, values perception, and our seeking for a sound meaning of reality from every human perspective, including the religious or transcendent dimension.

1.2 Religion, and science: a complex relationship

The question of religion’s role in scientific development has notoriously produced a series of strong confrontations during the last 150 years. From the “Conflict Thesis”, of Draper and White, at the end of nineteenth century, to Dawkins’ “New Atheism”, it has been often asserted that there is a radical opposition between Religion and Science. This conflicting perspective has been often proposed by stressing the relevance of historical
clashes between religious individuals or communities and the scientific world, or stressing the epistemological differences between scientific experimental method and religious faith and doctrines. On the other hand, it has been also proposed that there exists a deep and positive interaction between religion with science. Historical and sociological analysis often proposes that modern experimental science was born in a religious shaped culture, and most of the founders of modern science were actually sincere believers. These theses (cf. Moore, Hoykaas or Jaki,) were often rejected as tainted by an “apologetic” bias.

Main currents in the history of science accept today the existence of a complex spectrum of relationships between religion and science. Their relationship cannot be reduced to a straightforward account of either opposition or harmony. Religious beliefs and scientific methods operate at very different levels. Their mutual relationship might not operate, in many instances, as a direct impact leading to either support or deny the value of the counterpart. Rather, the mutual influences might be more subtly nuanced, as, for example, through the notions that form the philosophical and conceptual basis upon which a scientific theory might be holistically built, and the contents in which religious faith are theologically expressed.

1.3 Exploring the impact of religion in scientific innovation

It is in this context, therefore, that we propose here to examine the impact of philosophy and religion in scientific innovation. Instead of directing our attention to analyzing a straight confrontation between the content of scientific theories and religious doctrines we will try to examine how Religion can shape in some aspect the conceptual basis (the “cosmovision” or “world-view”, according to some authors) upon which new scientific
concepts and insights originate.

That requires an examination of the ground philosophical and rational concepts used by innovative and breakthrough scientists, in their reflections about the nature of physical bodies and, in general, about physical reality, and also, perhaps, of non-physical reality: mental acts, underlying forces acting in natural processes, etc. Further, it will also be necessary to look at the epistemic character attributed to these realities, which makes them in some way “open” to scientific inquiry. This epistemic dimension of the basic entities of the real world constraints in some way the fundamental questions that scientists ask, and can determine the spectrum of operative interactions available to them to develop experimental methods.

In this way, it will be possible to examine, first, how religious beliefs might establish some constraints on the basic conceptual schemes that underlie the birth of scientific theories. Secondly, it will clarify to what extent this conceptual basis can contribute to theoretical and practical innovation in science.

Certainly, these constraints can be both positive and negative. An important part of the project will be to determine the conditions through which a religious-driven worldview can lead to a reinforcement of the innovative forces in scientific reflection, and those conditions that, contrarily, will create some resistance to a particular line of research, or will deviate it in different directions, perhaps without further perspectives.

In order to achieve tenable results, we will consider mainly what we have called the “threshold” of scientific rationality. We do not plan, for this reason, to analyze in detail a specific and delimited period of science, but instead concentrate on some particular cases in which the passage from one kind of rationality to another are clearly shown. That necessarily means to take into account a broad temporal interval, because the different fields of modern science have experienced their “threshold of scientific rationality” at very different times: the beginning of seventeenth century, in the fundamental theories of mechanics; during the second half of seventeenth century, in fields as anatomy and physiology of the nervous system (neuroscience), or geology; in the eighteenth century, in chemistry and electrostatic science; or in the nineteenth century, in electromagnetism, thermodynamics and evolutionary biology.

2. Interdisciplinary research on the threshold of scientific rationality

On this basis, the Project “The Threshold of Scientific Rationality” aims to conduct a wide interdisciplinary research of case studies in which the relevance of philosophical and religious views and concepts on the progress and innovation in science can be traced.

Our project aims aims to explore the impact of philosophical and religious views and religious factors in the process of scientific creativity. By exploring a wide spectrum of creative periods in different sciences (mainly physico-mathematical, biological and medical sciences), we hope to shed some light on the different ways in which religion can be relevant and has influenced scientific innovation. Because science and technology are among the most important factors in the development of human affairs, the study will help us understand how innovation occurs in human lives and history.

Particularly, our project aims to explore and attempt to answer some important questions related to religion and innovation:

1. How do religious factors influence the development of theoretical and experimental processes that leads to creation and novelty? It is possible to find any constant pattern in the way they operate?
2. Have there been, throughout history, “explicit” religious attitudes favoring specific lines of research that have produced innovation? Or on the contrary have there been other religious attitudes which have been an obstacle to science and perhaps leading it into a stalling process? Is there a similar process in regards to explicitly anti-religious attitudes?
3. Is there evidence of other ways in which religion has influenced the development of science and innovation? Does religion determine pre-scientific concepts that shape or modify, in some way, our comprehension of reality. Can these world-views have any impact on the way in which science is practiced? Have they any impact in how questions arise, how problems are defined and explored, what kind of solutions are explored?
4. In such cases, how are world-views related to religious doctrines? Should philosophical concepts or world-views be interpreted as consequence of religious doctrines or dogmas? Are there other sources for these preconceptions? Are religious doctrines in some cases interpreted according to precedent world-views? What are the effects on science?
5. What are the main religious factors that can influence the development of science? Some conditions could derive from practical aspects: moral constrictions, rites, education, the common sensibility that has been developed in a religious ambient. There are also theoretical conditions, derived from theological doctrine: questions about the meaning of the world, the fundamental levels of reality, causes and forces acting into the world, etc. We can also find epistemological conditions, related to how we understand the human capacity of grasping, in some way, a real, objective world.
6. What is the manner in which these different questions can shape our ability to innovate and obtain new insights on reality? Can they forbid or impose particular directions to research? Would some of them suggest an avenue of action that could grant some progress in our knowledge of the world?

3. Workshop on The Threshold of the Scientific Rationality

A Workshop reserved to Research Project's members will be held in Rome at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross,  in November, 19-21.

The workshop will provide an occasion of fruitful discussion in order to develop the final version. It will help the researchers to elaborate a synthetic view of the results and significance of the different cases, that hopefully will enlarge the comprehension of the relevance of religious factors in the process the “threshold” of the different sciences.