Theologians will recognize that the general title of this series of posts is that of the 1976 translated English title of a book by Wolfart Pannenberg published in 1973 entitled, Wissenschafts Theorie und Theology. My reflections in this blog, however, are entirely my own.
I have often thought that theologians ought to study the philosophy of science. Why? There are two compelling reasons to do so. Theologians should have a grasp of scientific methodology and theory formation because such knowledge will help them understand the nature of truth claims and justification in the natural and social sciences and help them avoid such statements as, "Well it's not confirmed yet; it's only a theory."
The second reason to study the philosophy of science is the more important. We should study how it is that truth comes to be declared in the natural and social sciences so that we have a better appreciation of how it is declared in theology. In what ways are truth claims similar in science and theology and in what ways do they differ? The study of the philosophy of science is helpful for both partners in the science and theology discussion to understand each other.
Some people are surprised perhaps to learn that there is such a discipline as the philosophy of science. They ask what purpose philosophical reflection accomplishes to the results and trajectories of science. Do not scientists already know what they are doing? What could philosophers possibly add to this? Clearly, they don't generally have PhDs in the fields of study that scientists are investigating.
I am of the opinion that philosophy is useful in all kinds of areas about which people do not generally know. In addition to the philosophy of science, there is a philosophy of mathematics, a philosophy of mind, a philosophy of law, and a philosophy of history, to name a few. While philosophers don't generally add to the content of a field of research, their questions can help those within and outside these disciplines to appreciate the particularity of their own intellectual endeavors and the institutional practices they presuppose. Philosophers can help all of us gain clarity on the assumptions within an area of research, assumptions that sometimes have empirical support, or assumptions that rest upon human convention.
I want to provide theologians not knowing much about the philosophy of science some orientation to this important branch of philosophy. I hope that this brief introduction will help theologians think a bit more clearly about the nature of science. Perhaps it will help them think a bit differently about the nature of theology as well.
All of us probably learned in grade school about the scientific method. We learned that scientists do observations which allow them to spot regularities. After finding these regularities, they seek an account as to why. What is it that grounds the regular nature of these regularities. What explains them? The search for explanations lead scientists to offer hypotheses which can explain the occurrence of the regularities. Such hypotheses are explanatory accounts of why the regularity holds. The rectitude of the hypothesis is accomplished via experiment. The story I learned was that hypotheses are experimentally confirmed or disconfirmed.
As a first step in understanding science, this account is quite helpful. It does allow young students to grasp some about the tentative nature of science. Young students should realize that science is a human procedure whereby human conjectures are checked up upon within human experience. Perceptive children might even think about the common adjective of 'procedure', 'conjecture' and 'experience', concluding that science is a very human activity. The really bright and informed among the perceptive might even ask this, "Given that human beings get so much wrong much of the time, how do we know they get so much right in science?"
Given that science is clearly a human activity, and given that people clearly are ignorant and close-minded much of the time -- notice what passes for political conversation in these days -- how could we know that they are not simply being ignorant and close-minded in the doing of science? Millions of people believed in a species of Marxism during the twentieth-century that both failed to explain and predict pheomenena. How do we know with confidence that we are not all equally duped in the compelling theories of today, e.g., Darwinian theory, cosmological theory, psychological and sociological theory?
Despite these global skeptical questions, the scientific method has wide consensus as the way to acquire scientific knowledge. Understanding it more deeply than we did as children is important in evaluating conflicting truth claims that we sometimes encounter in the sciences, it is important for understanding the basic thrust and orientation of science in general, and it is deeply important in the very human activity of day-to-day living where we have to link scientific truth claims with the other types of truth claims in which we are daily involved, particularly the truth-claims of religion.
In reflecting upon science we must make an important distinction between data and theory. The first is what is given in experience, while the second offers a story or an account which both explains how it is that we are given the data we are given, and predicts what our future data might be. For instance, granted that there is a change in sea level at a particular location, what theory best accounts for this rise in sea-level. A theory (or better a bundle of theories) appealing to global warming could best explain the increase in sea level. Moreover, the theory might predict that if the causal mechanism it specifies actually holds, we should this reflected in future data. A theory consists of an account that can both explain the data as it is currently given, and predict on its basis of the account what the future data will be.
Now we might get a bit more technical in our nomenclature and call the scientific method we learned about as children the hypothetical-deductive method. It consists of observation, hypothesis, deduction, experimental confirmation/disconfirmation, and adjustment. People outside science don't often recognize the provisional nature of science. It is always open for adjustment. Theory-tweeking is how science progresses.
Both natural and social science begins with data that is gained through observation. However, the nature of observation itself turns out to be difficult. In any observational situation, there must be some consensus about the nature of what it is one is seeking to observe. Such consensus is necessary to know where to look, as it were. For thousands of years human beings observed the sun rising in the morning and many thought on the basis of this observation that the sun must go around the earth. But this heliocentric hypothesis has been long disproved. The sun does not go around the earth, but the earth goes around the sun. Thus, it is that one cannot observe the sun rising? So what exactly is it that we observe? It is an appearance of the sun rising? But how do we describe such an appearing?
The question of what is given in data turns out to be connected deeply to the question of what theories we are assuming. In the heyday of Logical Positivism in the 20th century, philosophers assumed that they could specify a "given" that was public, objective, and prior to all theory and interpretation. But such a given has proved very difficult to support. Text implies context. The given is always a given within a context of background scientific theory and practice. Most philosophers now believe that there is no objective "unvarnished good news" (Quine) of the given upon which we can base scientific theory.
But scientists have another immediate problem after collecting singular data. They must look for generalizations of that data, and such looking happens over the course of time. I can observe data x a time y and then again at time z, and then at time u, but how do I know that the data I am finding in these three times are the data that I would be able to find at every time, were I able to check it? In other words, how do I know that I am observing a true regularity of nature and not just an accidental generalization I have drawn because of my limited experience? The problem of generalizing from specific instances is called the problem of induction or sometimes Hume's Problem after the great Scottish philosopher, David Hume. No matter how many times we observe a critical correlation in nature, we do not know if it will happen next time. We might have a theory predicting it will and find in our next observation that the thing predicted does not happen, and thus perhaps our entire predictive theory is flawed. Gustav Bergmann said, "Induction is the long arm of science," and he is clearly correct. If we start from the contingency of empirical experience itself, as we must do in science, we must always recognize that we could get things wrong right out of the chute. We might find ourselves building a theory to account for a regularity in nature that is not a real regularity.
Given that we have found data and some generalizations to explain, the next thing we must do is hypothesize a theory from which we can deduce ramifications that we can compare to our experience. A good scientific theory has several characteristics. It must be applicable and adequate to the experimental data, internally consistent and coherent in its formulation, simple in that it posits as few theoretical entities or laws as it can to explain the data, and fecund in that it can ground a continuing research agenda. All of these characteristics of the "best" theories are put to the task of explaining and predicting the empirical data.
How does this way of doing things compare with theology? I would argue that "theological theory" has data too, but that this data is not that which is "given" to the five senses. So what could be the data of theology? One might argue that its data is revelation, but then one must further specify the identity conditions of the term 'revelation'. Perhaps we say that there is a "revelation" of God's activity through Scripture and tradition. But is the first primary over the second, and is there stratification within the former? Are some parts of Scripture more revelatory than others, and if so, how are these differences normed? Moreover, cannot preaching confront the listener in a revelatory way, perhaps more so than simply reading Scripture. Furthermore, theologians often distinguish specific and general revelation, meaning by the latter some intimations within experience of that source which ultimately transcends experience. Perhaps "limit notions" or senses of ultimacy are part of human experience in ways that are useful data for theological theory.
Assuming that there is data, there is often generalization of that data. The experience of ultimacy or that of the sacred is a generalization from experiencing this ultimacy or this experience of the sacred. A little reflection should convince the reader that the same general problems of extending the particular to the general apply in theology as well as in science generally.
If there can be some agreement on what theological data might be, we then could go to work theory construction. Just as scientific theory should be applicable to empirical experience as well as being adequate to it, that is, it must not only apply to the empirical, but it must apply apply deeply to all of the empirical, so too must theological theory apply to our experience, to revelation, to our experience as human beings haunted by the question of God. Moreover, the theory must be deep enough to cover all of that experience. It must give an account of both the experience of the presence of God (immanence) and of God's absence (transcendence).
The theory must be consistent, coherent, fecund, and simple. Just as with science generally, theology cannot have theoretical statements that contradict each other. Why is this the case? It is clear that from a contradiction any proposition whatsoever can be derived. Assume both P and ~P. If P, then P or any arbitrary statement Q. But by disjunctive syllogism, since ~P holds, the given P v Q, Q must hold.
Moreover, just as in science, theological theory must be coherent. This means that the fundamental terms of the theory must mutually presuppose each other and there are not ad hoc assertions holding this or that in order to account for the data. In other words, the first theory much be simple, or at least as simple as a theory can be which asserts both the Trinity and the Incarnation. Finally, the theory must be fecund. One might argue, that the Chalcedon Definition has been extremely fruitful in the history of theology generally. Clearly, the notion of the Trinity has generated centuries of ongoing theological reflection.
Given these similarities, there are overwhelming dissimilarities between the two disciplines (Wissenschaften) as well, and I do not want to minimize that. I have given the above sketch of similarities simply to get the conversation going. I will in the next posts return to the field of the philosophy of science and discuss the Received View, the critique of the Received View, and the new vistas produced by historicism within the philosophy of science.
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