¹ Rahner, Karl, “Natural Science and Reasonable Faith” in Theological Investigations, vol. 21 (New York: Crossroad, 1988), 25.Google Scholar

² According to Pius XII, Humani Generis, paragraph 3896 in Denzinger, Henricus and Schöonmetzer, Adolphus, Enchiridion Symbolorum (Freiburg: Herder, 1963), 779.Google Scholar

³ Darwin, Charles, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1896).Google Scholar

⁴ E.g., Johnson-Laird, Philip M., The Computer and the Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 391.Google Scholar

⁵ For an excellent survey of relevant contemporary neuropsychological studies and speculations on their possible implications in the light of primate and human social activity, see Donald, Merlin, The Origins of the Modern Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

⁶ On a few occasions Rahner is explicit in saying that theology needs to learn from science, e.g., “On the Relationship between Theology and the Contemporary Sciences,” chap. 6 in Theological Investigations, vol. 13, trans. Bourke, David (New York: Seabury, 1975), esp. 88–93.Google Scholar

⁷ Stephen J. Gould is a notable example. The aimlessness of evolution is the major theme of his Wonderful Life (New York: Norton, 1989).Google Scholar The same is true of Dawkins, Richard, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton, 1986).Google Scholar

⁸ Though see the unusual comparison Whitehead makes of his conception of the human “soul,” as a society of actual occasions passing away and coming to be, to Descartes' idea of the ongoing re-creation of the soul as a thinking substance moment by moment by God. See Whitehead, Alfred North, Adventure of Ideas (New York: Macmillan Mentor Books, 1955), 206.Google Scholar The Cartesian thinking substance is intrinsically so different from matter that it presumably could not evolve.

⁹ de Chardin, Pierre Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Bros. 1959), 172.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Peacocke, A. R., Creation and the World of Science (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 102–21.Google Scholar

¹¹ A related question which can be passed over here is the extent to which “mind” is dependent on culture. It is quite possible that a human person born with the capacity for reflective self-consciousness and freedom would fail to achieve that consciousness unless there were a cultural matrix of already developed language and thought-categories to activate that capacity. If this is the case, then reflective self-consciousness is also a product of human history in addition to whatever other causes are involved. See Rahner's thoughts on this in “Science as a Confession?” chap. 25 in Theological Investigations, vol. 3 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967), esp. 385.Google Scholar

¹² E.g. Gelpi, Donald S.J., Life and Light: A Guide to the Theology of Karl Rahner (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1966), 41.Google Scholar

¹³ E.g. again, Gelpi's way of speaking at certain points; ibid., 21, 40.

¹⁴ Rahner, Karl, On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder & Herder, 1961).Google Scholar See in particular the section on “Death as the Separation of Body and Soul,” 24-34.

¹⁵ Rahner, Karl, Hominisation: The Evolutionary Origin of Man as a Theological Problem (New York: Herder & Herder, 1965)Google Scholar, from the larger Das Problem der Hominisation by Rahner, K. and Overhage, P. (Freiburg: Herder, 1958).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Rahner, , Hominisation, 49.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Ibid., 50.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Ibid., 18, 24. And see Rahner, , “Natural Science,” 25Google Scholar, on “Humani Generis.”

²⁰ Rahner, , Hominisation, 66Google Scholar, where Rahner says it is not correct to portray God as a demiurge; and 99, where Rahner cites the origin of the soul as an instance of a general “becoming through self-transcendence” rather than a miracle. For other places about spirit where miracles are rejected see “On Angels,” chap. 18 in Theological Investigations, vol. 19, trans. Quinn, Edward (New York: Crossroad, 1983);Google Scholar and Rahner, , “Natural Science,” 54.Google Scholar

²¹ See Rahner, Karl, “God's Activity in and through Secondary Causes” in Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. Dych, Wm. V. (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 86–89.Google Scholar

²² Rahner, , “Natural Science,” 45.Google Scholar

²³ And “God does not merely create something other than himself—he also gives himself to this other” (Rahner, Karl, “Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World,” chap. 8 in Theological Investigations, vol. 5, trans. Kruger, Karl-H. [Baltimore: Helicon, 1966], 171–72Google Scholar).

²⁴ Rahner, , Hominisation, 87–90.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid., 98-101

²⁶ See also, Rahner, , “Christology within an Evolutionary View of the World,” esp. 165–66.Google Scholar

²⁷ Rahner, , Hominisation, 165.Google Scholar

²⁸ Ibid., 92. Or see Rahner, Karl, “The Unity of Spirit and Matter in the Christian Understanding of Faith,” chap. 12 in Theological Investigations, vol. 6 (Baltimore: Helicon, 1969), 177.Google Scholar Rahner notes (401), that the material in this chapter is taken partly from Hominisation.

²⁹ Rahner, , “Natural Science,” 28–29.Google Scholar

³⁰ Ibid., 34.

³¹ Rahner, , “On Angels,” 265Google Scholar

³² Rahner, , “Christology,” 171–72Google Scholar

³³ Descartes, René, Philosophical Writings, vol. 1 of Discourse on Method (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), part V, #54, 138.Google Scholar The significant aspect here is not the old and well-established distinction between material body and immaterial soul. What was striking in Descartes' thought was his acceptance of the ancient Atomists' belief that matter is fully inert, that every animal body is really just mechanical matter living off the aboriginal energy imparted by God to the universe.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ See his Leviathan (New York: Collier/Macmillan, 1962).Google Scholar Half of this work is spent attacking nonmaterialist “superstitions” and promoting what he saw as a more rational mechanistic viewpoint.

³⁶ Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 1, 105, 5, resp.Google Scholar

³⁷ See Deason, Gary B., “Reformation, Theology, and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature” in God and Nature, ed. Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 178–83.Google Scholar See also McMullin, Ernan, Newton on Matter and Activity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978).Google Scholar

³⁸ As described by Hankins, Thomas L., Science and the Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁹ Cited in Roe, Shirley A., Matter, Life, and Generation: Eighteenth-Century Embryology and the Haller-Wolff Debate (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 1.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Westfall, Richard, The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971), 86–92Google Scholar, describes the history of Harvey's thought. It began with Galen's physiology which employed the idea of various kinds of “natural spirits,” but which also used the model of a mechanical pump as a way to describe the heart's action.

⁴¹ Harvey, William, On Animal Generation in The Works of William Harvey, Sources of Science, 13, trans. Willis, Robert (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1965), based on the 1766 edition;Google Scholar 502, 503, 507.

⁴² Westfall, , Construction of Modern Science, 86–94.Google Scholar

⁴³ Yolton, John C., Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 14–29.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ As described by Brown, Stuart, Leibniz (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 170Google Scholar, based on Leibniz's New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances, #3 [written in 1695].

⁴⁵ William P. D. Wrightman provides a brief description of Franklin's ideas in The Growth of Scientific Ideas (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1951), 215–22.Google Scholar Joseph Toaldo at the University of Padua in 1774 had described the effect of this electric fire and how it might excite bodily fluids. It will not be long before Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley will tell a tale of Dr. Frankenstein's creature vivified by this electrical fire. See Burkhardt, Richard Jr., The Spirit of System: Lamark and Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 64–67.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Driesch, Hans, History and Theory of Vitalism, trans. Ogden, C. K. (London: Macmillan, 1914).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁷ Rahner, , “Natural Science,” 40.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Shirley Roe tells much of the story in her Matter, Life, and Generation by comparing the positions of two eighteenth-century biologists, C. F. Wolff (1734-94) and Albrecht von Haller (1708-77). Her account is worth noting because she raises the issue of how religious beliefs may have been a source of bias in guiding science in this case.

⁴⁹ Harvey, , On Animal Generation, 169–518.Google Scholar See 272-73 for brief use of Aristotle.

⁵⁰ This account is in Hankins, , Science and the Enlightenment, 125-27, 141–45.Google Scholar

⁵¹ See Parkinson, Claire L., Breakthroughs: A Chronology of Great Achievement in Science and Mathematics, 1200-1930 (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1985), 276Google Scholar, for the dates on this and related matters.

⁵² It is ironic that biologists were at first leery of Mendelianism because it seemed too similar to preformationism by supposing that some preformed structure or characteristics were passed on from parent to offspring. See Brush, Stephen G., The History of Modern Science (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1988), 136.Google Scholar

⁵³ Mayr, Ernst, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 245–49.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ See the summary by Needham, Joseph, “Mechanistic Biology and Religious Consciousness” in Science, Religion, and Reality, ed Needham, J (New YorkGeorge Braziller, 1955Google Scholar)

⁵⁵ For a brief analysis, see Richards, Robert, Darwin and the Emergence of the Evolutionary Theories of Mind and behavior (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press, 1987), 190-92, 195–201Google Scholar

⁵⁶ See the selections in Appleman, Philip, ed, Darwin (New YorkNorton, 1979), 132–208Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Jaki, Stanley L., Cosmos and Creator (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1980), 119.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Swinburne, Richard, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 146–47.Google Scholar The title suggests a highly relevant work for the topic of this article. But the book stumbles into ambiguity on the central point. Soul is defined as a state of consciousness, as though it could be just brain activity, even while Swinburne then gives it an undefined substantive existence (see 176-77, 307; or all of chap. 10, etc.).

⁵⁹ Penrose, Roger, The Emperor's New Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Rahner, , “Natural Science,” 44.Google Scholar

⁶¹ For repeated instances of very carefully phrased statements that while spirit and matter are essentially different they are not discontinous, see ibid., esp. 28-46.

⁶² Rahner, Karl, “Reflections on Methodology in Theology,” chap. 3 in Theological Investigations, vol. 11 (New York: Seabury, 1974), 106.Google Scholar

⁶³ Rahner, , “Natural Science,” 19–24.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Ibid., 107.