Book contents
- After Science and Religion
- Reviews
- After Science and Religion
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Modern Historians on ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Chapter 1 Science and Religion as Historical Traditions
- Chapter 2 The Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Problem
- Part II Beyond ‘Science and Religion’
- Part III Philosophical Problems with ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Part IV Before Science and Religion
- References
- Index
Chapter 1 - Science and Religion as Historical Traditions
from Part I - Modern Historians on ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2022
- After Science and Religion
- Reviews
- After Science and Religion
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Modern Historians on ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Chapter 1 Science and Religion as Historical Traditions
- Chapter 2 The Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Problem
- Part II Beyond ‘Science and Religion’
- Part III Philosophical Problems with ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’
- Part IV Before Science and Religion
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter investigates the conditions for dialogue between science and religion, and asks what makes dialogue possible or desirable. Sometimes, dialogue has simply amounted to theology and religion accommodating themselves to the sciences, and this can serve to reinforce unhelpful ways of categorising science and religion. Different models for dialogue are suggested by past relations between natural philosophy and religion, understood as formative practices (rather than proposition-generating activities). An alternative approach is also suggested by the problem of incommensurability, initially applied in different ways by Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Alasdair MacIntyre to the relations between competing scientific frameworks, but which is also applicable also to science–religion relations. Thinking of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ in terms of historical traditions, to use MacIntyre’s expression, leads to a different understanding of their possible relationships. Historical and sociological descriptions of scientific and religious practices, in short, should play a more prominent role in our understandings of sciences, religions, and their relations.
Keywords
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- Information
- After Science and ReligionFresh Perspectives from Philosophy and Theology, pp. 15 - 34Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022
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