Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons PDF
Preview Evolution and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons
EVOLUTION AND EMERGENCE This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank Evolution and Emergence Systems, Organisms, Persons Edited by NANCEY MURPHY and WILLIAM R. STOEGER, SJ 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 2007 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Evolution and emergence : systems, organisms, persons edited by Nancey Murphy and William R. Stoeger. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0–19–920471–7 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0–19–920471–3 (alk. paper) 1. Emergence (Philosophy) 2. Science–Philosophy. I. Murphy, Nancey C. II. Stoeger, William R. Q175.32.E44E96 2007 500–dc22 2006102305 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–920471–7 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 to Arthur R. Peacocke This page intentionally left blank This page intentionally left blank Preface We, the editors of this volume, had the privilege of joining a small group of faculty members and administrators at the University of San Francisco to plan a conference on the relations between theology and science. We were given free rein to specify the theme of the conference and to suggest speakers. Given that we have quite different academic backgrounds—one a philosopher and the other an astrophysicist— we expected that we would have very different ideas for the theme. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had independently chosen the same topic: that of emergentism, on the positive side, or reductionism on the negative side. Our reasons for the choice were as follows: First, this philosophical issue cuts across many of the more specific controversies regarding science and its implications for theology. Second, this is a problem ripe for solution; recent devel- opments in both science and philosophy have in various ways called reductionism into question, and a variety of resources are at hand for constructing a non-reductive view of reality. One can imagine our excitement, then, in receiving approval from the USF team for mak- ing this the focus of the conference, and also in having the resources at our disposal to bring together scholars who, in our judgment, have the best ideas to offer on this collection of related issues. We express our deep gratitude and appreciation to all those who participated in this stimulating conference, and to those who sup- ported it in any way. These include foremost Stanley Nel, then Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of San Fran- cisco; Paul V. Murphy, director of the St. Ignatius Institute at USF, and two tireless and immensely competent staff members, Nancy Campagna and Barbara St. Marie. The conference was co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. We thank the directors of these two institutions as well: George V. Coyne, SJ, and Robert J. Russell, respectively. Thanks to Jeff Phillips and David Brewer, Ph.D. students at Fuller Semi- nary, for help with the editing and formatting of the book. Rachel Woodforde at Oxford University Press was particularly gracious viii Preface and helpful seeing the typescript through its transformation into a book. Finally, we wish to thank one particular participant in the confer- ence, Arthur R. Peacocke. While Peacocke was one presenter among many, we realized that he had done more than anyone else to provide the background against which the ideas here were developed. Among his many contributions to the current dialogue between science and theology, two are particularly relevant. First, he has been in the fore- front in criticizing positivist views of science. The logical positivists’ manifesto for the unification of the sciences was based on recognition that the sciences could be ordered hierarchically, from physics to the social sciences, on the basis of the complexity of the systems they study; they called for the reduction of each science to the one below, finally intending to show that physics determines the whole of reality. Peacocke’s contributions include the resuscitation of earlier attempts to counter the positivists’ worldview—early writings on emergence and downward causation. The positivists’ assumption was that in the hierarchy of increasingly complex systems, all causation is bottom- up, or, in other words, from part to whole. ‘Downward causation,’ then, means that the whole has a reciprocal causal influence on its own parts. Peacocke has done a great deal to explicate this concept of downward causation, or whole-part constraint, and to justify its employment by means of examples, especially from his own field of biochemistry. Second, Peacocke has offered a model for understanding the rela- tions between theology and the sciences that provides the background for many of the contributors’ work in this area. Beginning with a nonreductive account of the sciences, Peacocke argues that theology belongs at the top for this reason: The hierarchy is ordered in terms of increasing complexity; God in relation to everything else is necessarily the most complex system possible; therefore, theology, as the study of this system, must be the top-most science. This model is valu- able for many reasons. First, the relation between theology and any science can be understood by analogy to the relation of any science to the sciences below it. Second, it provides a way of understanding the claims of many scientists who use science to combat religion: they are simply attempting to replace theology with a materialist metaphysic. Preface ix In gratitude, then, for these immensely important contributions to the theology-science conversation in general and to the work at the USF conference in particular, the participants happily agreed to dedicate this book to Arthur Peacocke. Sadly, Arthur passed away as we were finishing the editorial process. He will be missed by many friends and colleagues, but his legacy of scholarship, vision, and cre- ative dialogue between the natural sciences and theology continues.
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