Comparison and Synthesis
Each of the five visions of nature summarized here has significant implications for rethinking science, religion, and their relationship; yet more far-reaching implications are possible if these five visions can be brought into closer dialogue, possibly synthesis. As powerful as they are, their very multiplicity implies their limitations: none can be truly comprehensive unless all are somehow included. To invoke the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, we must now attempt to grasp the nature of the elephant itself, and not stop at the powerful, though differing, accounts of its ear, its trunk, its tusk, or its tail. There is an important unity to nature and the reality embraced by science and religion, which we must strive to understand further by bringing these powerful visions into conversation with each other.
There are some important similarities in these visions. All are strong arguments concerning nature in its entirety, not simply weak arguments concerning certain properties of nature. For example, the evolutionary vision attempts to explain all life through the optic of evolution, not just certain forms or aspects of life; similarly, the vision of nature as culture maintains that all knowledge of nature is filtered through cultural lenses, including scientific as well as popular understandings. This common feature will pose challenges for synthesizing these visions, as none necessarily includes room for the others. Yet what may arise from our inquiry may thus be something entirely new for nature, science, and religion.
As strong
arguments, each of the five visions challenges a prevalent metaphysical
dichotomy (see below). The evolutionary vision stresses
the continuity
of all nature, and hence opposes the notion that humans are entirely
separate from nature. The emergent vision not only challenges the reductionist
notion
that nature at all scales of complexity can ultimately be analyzed in
terms of its constituent pieces, but more fundamentally revisits the
larger opposition
between chaos (disorder) and cosmos (the order of nature). The malleable
nature vision challenges the dichotomy between natural and artificial,
in that genetic manipulations of nature are arguably both. The vision
of nature as sacred challenges the distinction between matter (the stuff
of
which nature is ostensibly composed) and spirit, secular and sacred.
The vision of nature as culture challenges the same notion questioned
by the
evolutionary vision, but takes the opposite tack by means of “culturizing” nature
versus “naturalizing” culture.
These five visions of nature are by no means entirely distinct. There
has been a good deal of interest, in particular, in bringing together
the two
scientifically-based visions of evolutionary and emergent nature (witness
for instance a special issue of Complexity
International),
with important implications for human morality and religion (Goodenough
and Deacon 2003). Similarly, the vision of nature as sacred could be
understood as a specific claim made by certain cultural groups, thus
falling under
the vision of nature as culture. In many ways, the vision of malleable
nature is the ontological equivalent of the epistemological argument
of nature as culture: in one, nature is literally constructed, whereas
in
the other it is conceptually constructed. Other linkages are indeed possible:
consider the notion of an embodied mind (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch
1993; Lakoff and Johnson 1999), which links the seemingly opposing
visions of
evolutionary nature and nature as culture, or theological work from an
emergentist perspective (Murphy, Russell, and Peacocke 1995; Clayton
2004), potentially linking emergent nature and nature as sacred. Yet
there are
differences. For instance, the vision of nature as culture can have a
corrosive effect on the realist epistemological assumptions underling
evolutionary
nature and emergent nature (Hayles 1990; Ruse 1999). Similarly, evolutionary
nature may explain, and hence explain away, the vision of nature as sacred
(Boyer 1994, 2001; cf. Peters 2002). These differences may suggest important
points of departure for our comparative and synthetic effort.
What would science be like, what would religion be like, if we admitted the wisdom of all five visions? These visions point to a biophysical and human nature understood as a consequence of common evolutionary processes, as an emergent reality across multiple scales of complexity, as a complex amalgam of natural and artificial processes, as bearing the sacred features of God or spirit, and as bearing the inescapable features of the cultures which have striven to understand it. If these are some major contemporary visions of nature, what future visions of science and religion can we now imagine that respond to their collective wisdom? This is the very difficult, ambitious, and exceedingly worthy question our program addresses, bearing in mind that the ultimate reality of nature, science, and religion is probably far more wonderfully complicated that we will ever be able to grasp. As Sir John Templeton has said in connection with his humble approach in understanding ultimate reality, “Humility [means] admission that god infinitely may exceed anything anyone has ever said of him; and that divinity may be infinitely beyond human comprehension and understanding” (Templeton 2000, 13).
The observations made above do suggest some potential common metaphysical and epistemological characteristics of nature, with important implications for science and religion. At the metaphysical level, nondualism and some form of immanence appear to be preferred over dualism and strict transcendence. At the epistemological level, the twin poles of realism and constructivism yield to a more relational view of scientific and religious truth. This relational view—that truth is not wholly objective nor subjective—helps reframe these visions of nature, science, and religion as inherently metaphorical: as geographer Anne Buttimer has argued, metaphors are powerful, though inescapable, means of apprehending ultimate reality (Buttimer 1993). Perhaps the inescapability of metaphor is precisely what lies at the philosophical and cognitive base of the humble approach espoused by the founder of the John Templeton Foundation.
Ultimately, these potential common features of nature suggest that a science and religion of the future will be built upon a much more integrated metaphysical and epistemological perspective than has existed in past; new visions of nature may, if jointly considered, point science and religion along this more integrated trajectory, and indeed open the door for the one hundredfold increase in spiritual knowledge Sir John Templeton predicts by the end of the 21st century (Templeton 2000).
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