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How to Relate Science and Religion: AMultidimensional ModelTaede A. Smedesaa Faculty of Theology, Leiden University, The NetherlandsPublished online: 06 May 2014.

To cite this article: Taede A. Smedes (2005) How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidimensional Model, ArsDisputandi, 5:1, 107-111

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Ars DisputandiVolume 5 (2005)ISSN: 15665399

Taede A. SmedesFACULTY OF THEOLOGY,LEIDEN UNIVERSITY, THE

NETHERLANDS

How to Relate Science and Religion: AMultidimensional Model

By Mikael Stenmark

Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans PublishingCompany, 2004; xx + 287 pp.; pb. $ 28.00; ISBN: 08282823x.

[1] Publications in the eld of `science and religion' are booming business.New books on the subject appear almost every day. However, rarely does oneencounter a book of philosophical depth that attempts tomap out themany social,philosophical, and religious complexities of the interaction between science andreligion. This book by the Swedish philosopher of religion Mikael Stenmark triesto provide this. This book can be considered as the third part of a trilogy, of whichthe rst two volumes are Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life1,and Scientism.2 The book presently under review, with themore general titleHowto Relate Science and Religion takes up and extends ideas and arguments fromthe former books but it also attempts to take the religion and science discussionto a higher level.

[2] The heart of the book is Stenmark's `multilevel' or `multidimensional'model of possible relationships between science and religion. This model Sten-mark describes as `a relational model . . . that takes into account the fact thatscience and religion are social and dynamic practices and thus not static entities.Therefore it is not possible to determine a priori where the borderline goes be-tween science and religion since that could change as these practices develop andtransform over time' (12). This multidimensional model should be able to mapthe interactions between science and religion, while acknowledging the contextualcharacter of those interactions. Relations between science and religion are pos-sible at four levels: the social level (the social interactions between practitionersof both science and religion), the teleological level (the aims that practitionersof both science and religion have in mind when they do what they do), the epis-temological level (beliefs, methods, theories and concepts), and the theoreticallevel (the subject matter and content of both science and religion). The rest ofthe book is structured according to these levels. Chapter 1 introduces Stenmark'smultidimensional model. Chapter 2 deals with the social dimension of scienceand religion. Chapter 3 deals with the aims of science and religion. Chapters 46deal with the epistemological dimension, and chapters 79 with the theoretical

1. Rationality in Science, Religion, and Everyday Life: A Critical Evaluation of FourModels of Rationality (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press 1995).

2. Scientism: Science, Ethics and Religion (Aldershot: Ashgate 2001).

c July 19, 2005, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows:Taede A. Smedes, `Review of How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidimensional Model,' Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 5 (2005), paragraph number.

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Taede A. Smedes: Review of How to Relate Science and Religion: A Multidimensional Model

dimension. Finally, chapter 9 sums up the conclusions and discusses the rela-tion and differences between Stenmark's model and Ian Barbour's well-knownfour-fold model of `conict,' `independence,' `dialogue,' and `integration.'

[3] This is by no means an easy book to read. Not because of Stenmark'sstyle of writing, which is careful, accessible and unhampered by technical ter-minology, but because of the book's organic and multi-layered character. It ispartly a collection of several articles that Stenmark has published in recent years.However, Stenmark thoroughly reworked the articles so as to bring out moreclearly the interdependence of the several strands of argument contained in hiswork. So, one could say, the book is an `emergent phenomenon' growing fromdifferent and seemingly independent elements into a new, coherent, and uniedwhole structured around his multidimensional model. Also, the book containsreplies to critical responses Stenmark has received over the last years. He repliesto criticisms by Vincent Brmmer, Wentzel van Huyssteen and Gordon Kaufman.This again indicates the organic unity of the book, as partly the product of a livelyinteraction between scholars from different backgrounds. However, it also wantsto stimulate further discussions and so does not purport to give denite answersto all questions. Even more, the book hardly contains any straight answers, butStenmark develops a set of conceptual distinctions and offers different possibil-ities of approaching discussions about the relation between science and religionwhile also warning for pitfalls. This means that the book is really about relatingscience and religion: it is a philosophical, theological, and methodological meta-exploration of themany issues arising from the question how to relate science andreligion. Thus one will not nd any discussion about, for instance, how Big Bangcosmology relates to the Christian creation stories. But one will nd thoroughdiscussions on, for instance, rationality in religion and science and the relationbetween ideology and science.

[4] Stenmark constantly emphasizes plurality. There is a plurality of so-cial practices (learning process, the place of authority, individual and collectivepractices), of goals (epistemic and practical, personal and collective, manifest andlatent), of epistemologies (i.e. views on what epistemological criteria dene sci-ence and whether or not those criteria are also applicable in religion; is God ahypothesis?; evidentialism, language-games, postfoundationalism, pragmatism;is there something like a religious rationality?), and there is a plurality of theo-retical issues (e.g. how scientic data relate to religious beliefs; do science andreligion overlap?; can and should science shape religion or is it rather the otherway around?). In addition to plurality Stenmark also distinguishes some trendsin the eld of science and religion. There are `scientic expansionists' who ar-gue that `the boundaries of science can and should be expanded in such a waythat something that has not been understood as science can now become a partof science' (xixii). Stenmark dealt with scientic expansionism in his previousbook on Scientism and so pays relatively little attention to it here. More attentionis devoted to the group of `religious expansionists' (those who maintain `that theboundaries of religion could and should be expanded in such a way that religionin some way becomes an important element of the scientic enterprise' [xii]) and

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`ideological expansionists' (those who argue that the sciences are or should bepoliticized or ideologized on the basis of class or gender). Finally, there are `sci-entic or religious restrictionists' who argue that science and religion should bekept separate. Stenmark provides a lot of conceptual distinctions and gives an ex-tremely balanced and nuanced account of different positions as well as argumentsfor or against those positions. The only alternative Stenmark explicitly rejects isthe `independence' position, since he argues that `everything we can learn in onearea of life from another area that can improve our cognitive performance oughtto be taken into consideration by rational people' (59, 81). I do admit, however,that all this nuance and argumentation sometimes tired me out, even though I amconscious of the fact that the reality of the matter is even more complex.

[5] I found especially interesting Stenmark's discussion of the (potential)inuence of religion and ideology upon science in chapters 8 and 9. He showshimself to be quite open-minded to ideology3 and religion in science. Stenmarkargues that `the idea of a worldview-neutral science should be abandoned' (207) complete scientic objectivity is an illusion. Actual scientic practice is `lled withideological and religious partisanship and bias' (207). But this is not necessarilya bad thing. Quite the contrary, Stenmark argues that in the `problem-stating,'`development' and `application' phases of science, ideological and religious factorscan be fruitful for scientic research, if only one is explicit about one's worldviewand allows for a plurality of other possible worldviews (cf. 219f.). According toStenmark, religions and ideologies could be allowed `to have a heuristic role inconstruing hypotheses within the sciences' (223). This is quite an interesting andpotentially controversial statement in an era where vehement discussions aboutfor instance Intelligent Design start swarming the intellectual globe.4 Stenmarkanswers the main question whether worldview has and should have a place inscience afrmatively, with one major exception: in the `justication' phase, `ide-ologies and religionsoughtnot tobe among the grounds for accepting and rejectingtheories in science. Theories should be accepted by the scientic community onlyin the light of considerations that involve empirical data, other accepted theo-ries, and cognitive values such as consistency, simplicity, and explanatory power'(231). In theory-validation ideological and religious convictions should be leftout. If one takes Stenmark's arguments seriously (without the intention of mak-ing him an ID-sympathizer), one thus should give the ID-hypothesis the benet ofdoubt, while acknowledging that the real benchmark test for ID comes in justifyingthe ID-hypothesis by empirical validation. Whether or not the ID-hypothesis isreligiously inspired and is being propagated by scholars with mainly protestantbackgrounds should be of no importance as long as the ultimate validation of dataproceeds without recourse to any specic worldview.

3. Stenmark uses `ideology' in this context to refer to `a system of beliefs and values whichare held in common by a group and which have a sociopolitical function' (195).

4. At the time of writing this review, a major discussion in the Netherlands about ID hasbeen going on for some time, initiated by the Minister of Education, Maria van der Hoeven. ManyDutch critics of ID argue that it is a kind of creationismand therefore does not deserve any scienticcredit.

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[6] However, this also brings me to my rst critical remark. Stenmarkargues that `The justication of scientic theory should not be determined bymoral, personal, ideological, or religious ideas, but by interscientic norms' (231).However, he does not make clear what those interscientic norms are, exceptthat they involve `empirical data, other accepted theories, and cognitive valuessuch as consistency, simplicity, and explanatory power' (231). It seems then thatStenmark argues that these interscientic norms constitute a `neutral zone' inwhich scientic theories can be judged. However, how did these norms cometo be? Are these norms themselves neutral? Are empirical data neutral? Andif so, what about the theory-ladenness of empirical data? The point is that ID-proponents claim that science is nowhere neutral, but rests in all its phases on anaturalist metaphysics. Similar criticisms of the neutrality of science can be heardfrom Marxists, feminists and many other critics of science. I agree that, in itself,the ideal of a worldview neutral justication phase has something about it, but atthe same time, it is difcult to see how it ever can be.

[7] When I read the book, two other remarks came to mind. First, Sten-mark argues for a contextual and dynamic approach to the science and religiondialogue. However, he does not really specify how this contextuality should betaken. `Dynamic' seems to have a temporal ring to it, indicating that the characterof the dialogue can change over time. However, as David Livingstone has pointedout recently5, there is also a strong geographical aspect to the dynamics of science,so that the character of the science and religion dialogue changes possibly from re-gion to region. Stenmark does not explicitly address this spatial aspect of regionalvariation. Nor does he address alterations in the public perceptions on scienceand/or religion which may also inuence the interaction. Secondly and relatedto the rst point, Stenmark nowhere mentions how interactions between scienceand religion can change. Most of the examples in the book (such as Plantinga'splea for an 'augustinian science' or RichardDawkins's scientic expansionism) aretaken from the contemporary science and religion and thus have a static character,mirroring some positions in the present science and religion spectrum. Stenmarkmay argue that it is the task of historians to describe the changes in the interac-tions,6 but it would have been nice if he had mentioned some historical examplesthat illustrate the dynamic character of the dialogue.

[8] Despite these critical remarks, I believe this is one of themore importantworks that has come out of the science and religion eld recently, but it is difcultto predict the impact of this book. As Stenmark shows in the last chapter, Bar-bour's four-foldmodel is useful for its simplicity, but ultimately unconvincing and

5. Cf. D.N. Livingstone, Science, Space and Hermeneutics: Hettner-Lecture 2001. Hei-delberg: Department of Geography, Heidelberg University 2002 and Putting Science in its Place:Geographies of Scientic Knowledge. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press 2003.

6. He argues for `a scientic education which contains a study of examples of worldviewinuences on past and present scientic research, so that scientists can develop a better and lessnave understanding of how their own and other people's ideological or religious commitmentsinteract with scientic practice at different levels' (249). In my view, this gives to historians acrucial role in studying and describing histories of science and religion interactions.

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even incoherent. Stenmark's model, although admittedly also a simplication,seems to do more justice to the complexity and contextuality of reality, but at theexpense of simplicity. Simply put: it is not as intuitively graspable as Barbour'smodel. Nonetheless, Stenmark has developed in this book a basic but very usefulconceptual instrumentation for scholars to assess specic discussions on the rela-tion between science and religion. It should be of interest to all those interestedin the interaction of science and religion.

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