Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:00:02.608Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Emergence, reductionism and the stratification of reality in science and theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2011

Ross H. McKenzie
Ross H. McKenzie*
Affiliation:
School of Physical Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The success of reductionism as a method in the natural sciences has heavily influenced modern theology, much of which attempts to reduce theology to other disciplines. However, the past few decades in science have shown the limitations of reductionism and the importance of emergence. The properties of complex systems with many constituents cannot be understood solely in terms of the constituent components and their interactions. I illustrate emergent properties and concepts with specific examples from geometry, condensed matter physics, chemistry and molecular biology. Emergence leads to a stratification of reality which affirms that ontology determines epistemology. To show the significance of emergence for the dialogue between theology and the natural sciences parallels are drawn with the theology of Karl Barth. The approach here is distinctly different from most writing on emergence and theology which embraces ‘strong’ emergence (which most scientists consider speculative), an immanent God and does not engage with orthodox Christian theology. Aspects of Barth's theology which are particularly relevant include his view that theology is an autonomous discipline which is not reducible to anthropology or history, the irreducible character of revelation, and the emphasis that ontology determines epistemology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 211 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Anderson, P. W., ‘More is Different’, Science 177 (1972), p. 393CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. For a more recent perspective see Anderson, P. W., ‘More is Different: One More Time’, in Ong, N. P. and Bhatt, R. N. (eds), More is Different: Fifty Years of Condensed Matter Physics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 1–8Google Scholar.

2 Holland, J., Emergence: From Chaos to Order (Oxford: OUP, 2000)Google Scholar; Johnson, S., Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (London: Penguin, 2002)Google Scholar. Laughlin, R. B., A Different Universe: Reinventing Physics from the Bottom Down (New York: Basic Books, 2005)Google Scholar. Related issues are also discussed in Gell-Mann, M., The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex (New York: W. H. Freeman and Owl Books, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 Laughlin, R. B. and Pines, D., ‘The Theory of Everything’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA) 97 (2000), p. 28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wen, X.-G., Quantum Field Theory of Many-Body Systems: From the Origin of Sound to an Origin of Light and Electrons (Oxford: OUP, 2004)Google Scholar. The introductory chapter begins with emergence.

4 See articles in Zygon 41/3 (2006). Clayton, P. and Davies, P. C. W. (eds), The Re-Emergence of Emergence:The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion (Oxford: OUP, 2006)Google Scholar. Clayton, P., Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (Oxford: OUP, 2004)Google Scholar. Gregersen, N. H. (ed.), From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning (Oxford, and New York: OUP, 2003)Google Scholar. Murphy, N. and Stoeger, W. R. (eds), Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons (Oxford: OUP, 2007)Google Scholar. Morowitz, H., The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex (Oxford: OUP, 2002)Google Scholar.

5 McGrath, A. E., A Scientific Theology, vol. 2, Reality, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2002)Google Scholar. McGrath, A. E., The Order of Things: Explorations in Scientific Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 101–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 McGrath, Scientific Theology, vol. 2, Reality.

7 Murphy, N. and Stoeger, W. R., ‘Arthur Peacocke’, Theology and Science 5/1 (2007), p. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Morowitz, Emergence of Everything, p. 24.

9 Ibid., p. 195.

10 P. Clayton, Science and Theology News (Oct. 2004), www.stnews.org/archives/2004_october/feat_emergence_1004.html.

11 S. Weinberg, ‘From BCS to LHC’, CERN Courier, 21 Jan. 2008, http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/32522.

12 McGrath, A. E., The Foundations of Dialogue in Science and Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 208–9Google Scholar.

13 Clayton, The Re-Emergence of Emergence, p. 320.

14 Proctor, James D., ‘Resolving Multiple Visions of Nature, Science, and Religion’, Zygon 39/3 (2004), pp. 637–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Weinberg, Steven, Facing up: Science and its Cultural Adversaries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 107–22Google Scholar.

16 Honderich, T. (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 1995), pp. 750–1Google Scholar.

17 M. Poole, Reductionism: Help or Hindrance in Science and Religion, Faraday Paper, 6, www.faraday-institute.org.

18 Luisi, P. L., ‘Emergence in Chemistry: Chemistry as the Embodiment of Emergence’, Foundations of Chemistry 4 (2002), pp. 183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Following Schroeder, Luisi associates this with ‘downward causation’. However, others use this term in the sense of strong emergence: Clayton and Davies, Re-Emergence of Emergence.

20 See e.g. the introductions and references in Davies, P. C. W., ‘Emergent Biological Principles and the Computational Properties of the Universe’, Complexity 10 (2004), pp. 11–15 and in Clayton and DaviesCrossRefGoogle Scholar, Re-Emergence of Emergence.

21 R. Manning, ‘Mere Summing up? Some Considerations on the History of the Concept of Emergence and its Significance for Science and Religion’, Science and Christian Belief 19 (2007), pp. 37–58.

22 Clayton, The Re-Emergence of Emergence, pp. 2–4.

23 Honderich, T. (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: OUP, 1995), pp. 750–1Google Scholar.

24 Polanyi, Michael, The Tacit Dimension (New York: Doubleday, 1966)Google Scholar.

25 Silberstein, M. and McGeever, J., ‘The Search for Ontological Emergence’, Philosophical Quarterly 49 (1999), p. 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Anderson, ‘More is Different’.

27 Laughlin and Pines, ‘Theory of Everything’. Wen, Quantum Field Theory. Coleman, P., ‘Many Body Physics: Unfinished Revolution’, Annals Henri Poincaré 4 (2003), S2, pp. 559–580CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 For a discussion of whether quasiparticles are ‘real’ see, Gelfert, A., ‘Manipulative Success and the Unreal’, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 17 (2003), pp. 245–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Falkenburg, B., Particle Metaphysics: A Critical Account of Sub-Atomic Reality (Berlin: Springer, 2007), esp. pp. 243–6Google Scholar.

29 McKenzie, R. H., ‘Quantum Many-Body Physics: 2D or Not 2D?’ Nature Physics 3 (2007), p. 756CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Laughlin, A Different Universe, p. 107.

31 von Klitzing, K., Dorda, G. and Pepper, M., ‘New Method for High-Accuracy Determination of the Fine-Structure Constant Based on Quantized Hall Resistance’, Physical Review Letters 45 (1980), p. 494CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Hoffmann, R., The Same and Not the Same (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 19–20Google ScholarPubMed.

33 Malrieu, J. P., ‘Quantum Chemistry and its Unachieved Missions’, Journal of Molecular Structure (Theochem) 424 (1998), pp. 83–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Schaefer, H. F. Iii, ‘Odorless Chemistry: A Gentle Reductionist Companion To Experiment’, Journal Of The Chinese Chemical Society 43 (1996), Pp. 109–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Shaik, S., ‘Is my Chemical Universe Localized or Delocalized? Is there a Future for Chemical Concepts’, New Journal of Chemistry 31 (2007), pp. 2015–2128CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Luisi, ‘Emergence in Chemistry’.

37 Schroeder, J., ‘Emergence: Non-Deducibility or Downward Causation?’, Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1998), p. 434Google Scholar.

38 Knight, J., ‘Bridging the Culture Gap’, Nature 419 (2002), p. 244CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

39 Peacocke, A., The Physical Chemistry of Biological Organisation (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989)Google Scholar.

40 Noble, D., The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome (Oxford: OUP, 2006)Google Scholar.

41 R. H. McKenzie, ‘Philosophical Issues Associated with Emergent Phenomena in the Physical Sciences’, to be submitted to International Studies in the Philosophy of Science.

42 G. F. R. Ellis, ‘Physics and the Real World’, Physics Today (July 2005), p. 49.

43 Anderson, P. W., ‘Emergence, Reductionism and the Seamless Web: When and Why is Science Right’, Current Science 78/6 (2000), p. 1 (based on the Pagels lecture, Aspen, 1999)Google Scholar.

44 L. Kadanoff, ‘Models, Morals, and Metaphors’, Physics Today (Feb. 2002), p. 10.

45 A helpful comparison of the views of van Til, Henry and others to Barth is Vanhoozer, K., ‘A Person of the Book? Barth on Biblical Authority and Interpretation’, in Chung, S.W. (ed.), Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), pp. 26–59Google Scholar.

46 Manning, ‘Mere Summing up?’

47 For an accessible introduction to Barth's thought, see esp. Barth's own works, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction, trans. G. Foley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1963); and Dogmatics in Outline, trans. G. T. Thomson (London: SCM, 1949).

48 Barth, K., Church Dogmatics, ed. Torrance, T. F. and Bromiley, G. W. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–75)Google Scholar. For general overviews of the Church Dogmatics, see Bromiley, G. W., Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979)Google Scholar; Busch, E., The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth's Theology, trans. Bromiley, G. W. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004)Google Scholar; and Webster, J., Barth (2nd edn; London: Continuum, 2004)Google Scholar.

49 However, Barth's theology need not be interpreted as opposing all forms of natural theology. Torrance, T. F., ‘Natural Theology in the Thought of Karl Barth’, in Torrance, T. F., Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), pp. 136–59Google Scholar. McGrath, Order of Things, pp. 87–8. A categorisation of five types of natural theology, and an account of Barth's relationship to these types, is given by Fergusson, David, ‘Types of Natural Theology’, in Shults, F. LeRon (ed.), The Evolution of Rationality: Interdisciplinary Essays in Honor of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 380–93Google Scholar.

50 Barth declined to enter into dialogue with the natural sciences – see his preface to Church Dogmatics III/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), pp. ix–x. See also Sherman, Robert, The Shift to Modernity: Christ and the Doctrine of Creation in the Theologies of Schleiermacher and Barth (London: T&T Clark, 2005), pp. 48–61Google Scholar.

51 See C. B. Anderson, ‘The Crisis of Theological Science: A Contextual Study of the Development of Karl Barth's Concept of Theology as Science from 1901–1923’ (PhD dissertation, Princeton Theological Seminary, 2005); and McCormack, Bruce L., ‘Theology and Science: Karl Barth's Contribution to an Ongoing Debate’, Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 22 (2006), pp. 56–9Google Scholar.

52 See e.g. Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, trans. McDonagh, Francis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), pp. 265–76Google Scholar.

53 See esp. Torrance, T. F., Theological Science (Oxford: OUP, 1969)Google Scholar; and The Ground and Grammar of Theology (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1980).

54 McGrath, A Scientific Theology. For a discussion of McGrath's project and its relationship to Barth, see Benjamin Myers, ‘Alister McGrath's Scientific Theology’, in McGrath, Order of Things, pp. 1–20.

55 McKenzie, R. H. and Myers, B., ‘Dialectical Critical Realism in Science and Theology: Quantum Physics and Karl Barth’, Science and Christian Belief 20/1 (2008), p. 49Google Scholar. Earlier attempts to bring Barth into dialogue with quantum physics include Howe, Günter and Timm, Hermann, Die Christenheit im Atomzeitalter (Stuttgart: Klett, 1970)Google Scholar; Stavenga, Gerben J., ‘Physik auf dem Wege zur Theologie’, Zeitschrift für dialektische Theologie 3 (1987), pp. 29–44Google Scholar; Loder, J. E. and Neidhardt, W. J., ‘Barth, Bohr, and Dialectic’, in Richardson, W. M. and Wildman, W. J. (eds), Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 271–89Google Scholar; and McGrath, A. E., The Foundations of Dialogue in Science and Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), pp. 198–205Google Scholar.

56 Barth, CD III/1, p. x.

57 Barth, K., The Epistle to the Romans, trans. from the 6th edn by Hoskyns, E. C., (Oxford: OUP, 1933), p. 1Google Scholar.

58 Barth, CD I/1, p. viii.

59 There will be debate about how well defined the ontology is. However, as this article emphasises, such questions also arise in the physical sciences.

60 Barth, CD I/1, pp. 8–11. Here Barth is speaking not of ‘natural science’ but of ‘science’ in the broadest sense, since the German term Wissenschaft means ‘academic discipline’ or ‘field of study’.

61 Barth, CD I/1, pp. 315, 320, 324.

62 Laughlin and Pines, ‘Theory of Everything’.

63 Barth, Evangelical Theology, p. 9.

64 Laughlin, A Different Universe, pp. 77–8.

65 Brüggemann, W., Genesis (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982), p. 111Google Scholar.

66 Copan, Paul and Craig, William Lane, Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2004)Google Scholar; for a review see Newman, B., CASE 8 (2005), p. 21Google Scholar.

67 Webster, J., Barth (2nd edn; London: Continuum, 2004), ch. 5Google Scholar.

68 Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 44.

69 Gunton, C., The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (2nd edn; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), p. 152Google Scholar.

70 I thank Joel Corney, Alister McGrath, Ben Myers and Leigh Trevaskis for helpful comments and discussions.