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Ian G. Barbour
Ian Graeme Barbour is widely regarded as catalyzing a resurgence in scholarly work focused on the constructive engagement between science and religion. Beginning with his contributions in the 1960s, Barbour has been a key conversation partner in developing a framework for analyzing, understanding, and critiquing interactions of various types between science and religion, in both academic and cultural contexts. His description of critical realism has been influential in providing a means of bringing science and religion into dialogue. His fourfold typology is used in courses in colleges, universities, and seminaries the world over. His embrace of process theology serves as a model for a theology of nature. For these reasons and his myriad other contributions to the field, Barbour is considered by many to be the father of the contemporary dialogue between science and religion. Given his role as a key figure in the dialogue, this chapter will outline briefly his life and academic background before examining some of Barbour’s key contributions and approaches to specific issues in science and religion, and conclude with some reflections on Barbour’s legacy.
Life
Ian Graeme Barbour was born in China in 1923, his parents having both taken teaching posts at Yenching University, his mother in religious education, his father in geology. Barbour has described his family’s relationship with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who was in China on paleontological expeditions during Barbour’s youth (Barbour 2004, 17). After several family moves to the United States and the United Kingdom during his youth, he enrolled at Swarthmore College and majored in physics. He was influenced by working with Quakers one summer to register as a conscientious objector during World War Two, and he spent three years on civil service projects during the war. He then pursued a graduate degree in physics, receiving his master’s degree from Duke University. He subsequently earned his PhD from the University of Chicago, where he studied cosmic-ray physics and worked with Enrico Fermi and Edward Teller. As Barbour notes, Teller was recruiting students in the post-war years to work on the hydrogen bomb, but Barbour “wanted to teach in a liberal arts college” (Barbour 2004, 18). Given his preference for college teaching, Barbour was hired to teach physics at Kalamazoo College in Michigan beginning in 1949.
A Ford Foundation fellowship to study theology and ethics in 1953 served as a turning point for Barbour. He took courses at Yale Divinity School, ultimately extending his fellowship for a second year, which allowed him to complete a degree in divinity. The fascination he felt in studying at Yale meant that Barbour, sensitive to his own vocational journey,
then faced a difficult decision. I believed that vocational choice should reflect a person’s abilities, interests and (in a religious context) response to God and human needs. I enjoyed physics and was familiar enough with it that I could teach and still have time for other activities. Moreover I knew that scientists are respected in the academic world, and their voices carry some weight on educational, ethical and religious issues. In addition, I shared the Reformation’s conviction that any useful vocation can serve God and human need. But I increasingly felt that it would be more interesting and more significant to spend at least part of my time learning and teaching in religious studies.
(Barbour 2004, 19)
The opportunity to combine physics and religious studies presented itself at Carleton College, where Barbour was offered a teaching position in both physics and philosophy. A religion department was formed at Carleton in 1960, and Barbour served as its chair. In 1963 he spent a study year at Harvard University, where a seminar with Gordon Kaufman introduced him to the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and some of Whitehead’s interpreters, including Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, and David Ray Griffin.
Barbour published Issues in Science and Religion in 1966, which marked the beginning of a new chapter in the history of religion and science. Barbour’s carefully researched and reasoned approach influenced a generation of scholars to take up questions related to science and religion as their primary vocation, and in fact created the very possibility that such a choice could be made (not without difficulty, to be sure). Along with Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne, Barbour was now at the leading edge of a new academic field focused on interdisciplinary engagement between the natural sciences and religion.
Barbour’s work in science and religion continued into the 1970s, with the publication of Myths, Models, and Paradigms in 1974. Earlier work with colleagues on questions related to developing environmental concerns led to Earth Might Be Fair: Reflections on Ethics, Religion, and Ecology (1973). Ongoing concerns “about ethical issues in the application of science” led Barbour to work on an NSF- and NEH-funded project focused on science, technology, and public policy (Barbour 2004, 20). The volume Technology, Environment, and Human Values (1980) emerged from this work.
Barbour was named the first Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Carleton College in 1981, a post he held until his retirement in 1986. Barbour was invited to deliver the prestigious Gifford lectures in 1989/1990, the content of which was published in two books, Religion in an Age of Science (1990) and Ethics in an Age of Technology (1993).
Barbour’s work in the field was recognized in 1999 when he received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. He donated a signification portion of the monetary award that comes with the Templeton Prize to the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) in Berkeley, California, to support its work fostering constructive engagement between science and religion.
In 2000, Barbour published a brief, accessible volume titled When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? which he structured using the fourfold typology he had developed in his earlier Religion in an Age of Science. He continued his research and writing, publishing a volume that explored evolution, human nature, and the environment, Nature, Human Nature, and God (2002). On the occasion of his eightieth birthday Barbour was honored with a volume dedicated to engaging his thought, Fifty Years in Science and Religion: Ian G. Barbour and His Legacy (Russell 2004).
Barbour has continued to write and publish, engaging in dialogue and debate about aspects of his own work, methodology in science and religion, and specific topics in the science and religion dialogue.
Key Contributions
With a career spanning more than six decades, Barbour has witnessed, participated in, and contributed to the intellectual development of science and religion. Barbour is considered by many the founder of the contemporary dialogue between science and religion. Much of Barbour’s work focuses on methodology, or how it is that one goes about relating science and religion, and that will be the primary focus in what follows. But Barbour also has been concerned with specific aspects of engagement, from physics to neuroscience to evolutionary biology. Barbour is unique in that his contributions have been influential among different groups working in distinct contexts, with research scholars, teachers, students, religious leaders, scientists, theologians, and the wider public. In assessing the various contributions Barbour has made, one can see the levels of engagement he has fostered across these various publics or audiences of his work.
What follows are brief explorations of three of Barbour’s distinctive contributions, two in methodology and one in theological reflection. First, I will review his critical insight about methodology in the 1960s, focused on critical realism. Then, I look at Barbour’s fourfold typology, the most developed version of which appears in the 1990s. Finally, I explore his model for a theology of nature as a method for theology itself.
Beyond Instrumentalism and Classical Realism: Critical Realism
Already in Issues in Science and Religion, Barbour had begun developing a model for understanding method in the sciences. Barbour faced a challenge related to the sources and methods for obtaining knowledge, a challenge that one could argue continues to the present. Fundamentally, Barbour believed that the challenge to religion was one of epistemology: “For many people today the challenge to religious belief arises not from any conflict of content between science and religion but from the assumption that the scientific method is the only road to knowledge” (Barbour 1966, 137). What was needed, then, was an understanding of knowledge that accurately captured and accounted for the success of the scientific method yet accounted for its limits. Against the backdrop of developments in early twentieth-century philosophy of science, which was evolving from empiricist, positivist understandings of science – which emphasized observation and data – to an understanding of science that included cultural, societal, and other factors as having an effect on the way the sciences operate, Barbour set out to identify a middle course that could both accurately capture how scientists operated and provide for a nuanced understanding of the limits of scientific knowledge.
Barbour analyzes four options for how theories are understood in science: (1) as “summaries of data”; (2) as “useful tools”; (3) as “mental structures”; and (4) as “representations of the world” (Barbour 1966, 162–171). In terms of philosophy of science these options are associated with positivism, instrumentalism, idealism, and realism respectively. Barbour describes realism’s key differences from the other three as follows:
Against the positivist, the realist asserts that the real is not the observable. Against the instrumentalist, he affirms that valid concepts are true as well as useful. Against the idealist, he maintains that concepts represent the structure of events in the world. The patterns in the data are not imposed by us, but originate at least in part in objective relationships in nature.
(Barbour 1966, 168)
Realist interpretations of scientific theories are how scientists normally view their work, Barbour argues, yet one cannot overlook “the role of man’s mind in the creation of theories” (Barbour 1966, 172). In other words, “naïve realism” that asserts that scientific concepts can be “thought of as exact and complete replicas of nature as it is in itself,” is not an accurate description of the scientific process (Barbour 1966, 172).
Navigating primarily between classical or naive realism on the one hand and instrumentalism on the other, Barbour develops a middle path he labels “critical realism.” Instead of viewing theories as literal, photographic representations of reality or as useful constructs used to control and predict, critical realism “sees theories as limited accounts of aspects of the world as it interacts with us” (Barbour 2004, 23). On this account, scientific theories are expressed in models and metaphors, requiring human imagination and cognition, that describe aspects of the natural world. These models “are to be taken seriously but not literally,” for they “make tentative ontological claims that there are entities in the world something like those postulated in the models” (Barbour 1990, 43). Through critical realism Barbour is attempting to hold together the scientist’s commitment to a correspondence between theory and an objective reality with a recognition that science also requires interpretation. “There is no simple access to the world as it exists in itself independently of being known, and mental constructs influence the interpretation of all experience,” Barbour writes (Barbour 1966, 172). Critical realism serves to bridge the gap between a purely interpretive and purely objective understanding of reality.
If theories are limited accounts of a single reality, then a question arises as to the criteria by which one adjudicates competing theories. If all theories capture “partial, revisable, abstract but referential knowledge of the world,” then how might one go about assessing a particular theory? (Russell 2004, 46).
Barbour provides four criteria for assessing theories in science. First, and most importantly, a theory can be judged on its agreement with data. Barbour believes in a correspondence theory of truth, where what is true is what most closely describes an objective reality separate from the thinking subject. Thus, that which is true must correspond with that reality. Yet agreement with data does not provide unassailable proof that a theory is true. Rather, this criterion is a strong indicator of a theory’s explanatory potential. Interestingly, Barbour notes that the converse is also the case, that lack of agreement with the data does not prove a theory definitively false, for “ad hoc modifications or unexplained anomalies can be tolerated for an indefinite period” (Barbour 1990, 34–35).
Second, one can assess a theory based on the criterion of coherence. There are two levels of coherence one can explore in this context. One level explores the degree to which a theory is consistent with other theories. If reality is a single reality, then those theories that purport to provide referential knowledge of the world should cohere with one another. Another level involves the internal coherence of a theory, having to do with how well the component parts of a theory fit together. Here one might speak of a theory’s simplicity, elegance, and so forth (Barbour 1990, 34).
Third, a theory can be judged according to its scope. Better theories are more adept at incorporating a wide range of knowledge in a comprehensive fashion. A theory would be valued if its scope “unifies previously disparate domains, if it is supported by a variety of kinds of evidence, or if it is applicable to wide ranges of the relevant variables” (Barbour 1990, 34).
Finally, fertility can serve as a criterion in assessing a theory. For Barbour the key question to ask in this context is, “Is the theory fruitful in encouraging further theoretical elaboration, in generating new hypotheses, and in suggesting new experiments?” Those theories that exhibit fertility have both explanatory power for past observation but also predictive power in generating future research programs.
Behind the criteria lies Barbour’s attempt to incorporate various theories of truth. It was noted above that Barbour espouses a correspondence theory of truth, which aligns with his inclusion of the first criterion focused on agreement with data. By combining this emphasis on correspondence with additional criteria, Barbour ties together three theories of truth: correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic. By supplementing the primary criterion of agreement with data with additional criteria, Barbour accounts for additional theories of truth in assessing a theory’s applicability.
Given a critical realist understanding of scientific theories, including criteria by which such theories should be assessed, Barbour provides a means by which to engage in work that “bridges” science and religion (Russell 2004). Barbour carefully describes the manner in which theory construction in religion is analogous to theory construction in science. By so doing, he is making an argument about the cognitive status of religious claims, just as his description of critical realism in science argues for a particular way of viewing the nature of scientific theories. Religious claims are not simply descriptions of a reality to which one has little access; such claims have cognitive content and are based on a set of data, such as revelation, religious experience, and tradition.1
Yet he is careful to point out where there are differences between method in science and in religion. “Science,” writes Barbour, “is clearly more objective than religion. … The kinds of data from which religion draws are radically different from those in science, and the possibility of testing religious beliefs is much more limited” (Barbour 2000, 26–27). Moreover, religion strives to function as a “way of life” rather than simply a thought pattern or system (27).
Barbour’s Typology: Four Ways of Relating Science and Religion
If critical realism is a critical contribution to methodology, Barbour’s framework for understanding various approaches to relating science and religion serves as a key insight for education and understanding various thinkers and options. Developed over his decades of research and writing, Barbour describes his fourfold typology in full form in Religion in an Age of Science: conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration (Barbour 1990, chapter 1).
Barbour begins by describing conflict as a way of relating science and religion. Either science or religion can be victorious and true, but not both. Further, conflict assumes that victory for one spells defeat for the other. And so it goes with conflict between science and religion. A contemporary example of conflict could include the so-called “new atheists,” who argue that religion is not merely a harmless fantasy but a destructive delusion that should be abandoned for the good of society. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris would be included in Barbour’s description of scientific materialism as an example of conflict between religion and science. Scientific materialism makes two assertions, one about epistemology and one about metaphysics. First, science and the scientific method provide the only reliable way to knowledge, to the exclusion of other ways of knowing, and second, “matter is the fundamental reality in the universe” (Barbour 1990, 4). Scientific materialism is often accompanied by reductionism, either by reducing all scientific explanations to the most fundamental theories in chemistry and physics (epistemological), or by asserting that explanation of a system’s component parts is the most fundamental reality (metaphysical) (Barbour 1990, 4).
Within the category of conflict, Barbour also includes biblical literalism. Barbour’s rationale is that biblical literalism shares with scientific materialism the belief that one must choose between science and religion, and that both “seek knowledge with a sure foundation.” Both biblical literalism and scientific materialism make the mistake of “[failing] to observe the proper boundaries of science” (Barbour 1990, 4).
Conflict between science and religion is not an ideal situation for scientific, theological, and philosophical reasons. Moving beyond conflict, Barbour identifies three possible ways of relating science and religion.
If one wants to minimize conflict between science and religion, then independence is one option. Religion and science can be viewed as separate ways of knowing and explaining the world, and what matters is a discipline’s ability to defend its theories according to the norms and context of that discipline. In other words, there are different methods employed by science and by religion. Moreover, religion and science speak different languages – science speaks of fact, religion speaks of value; science describes how, religion describes why; and so on. The late biologist Stephen Jay Gould labeled this independence “non-overlapping magisteria” to denote this separation of powers between science and religion (Gould 1999, 5). With different methods, domains of exploration, and language, science and religion cannot be in conflict, for they operate in separate spheres. Moving beyond conflict to independence has positive and negative impacts: “If science and religion were totally independent, the possibility of conflict would be avoided, but the possibility of constructive dialogue and mutual enrichment would also be ruled out” (Barbour 1990, 16).
Clearly, Barbour aims to move beyond conflict and independence to greater interaction. Dialogue provides one model for making that move. Why the necessity for moving beyond conflict and independence? For Barbour, there are a number of arguments. First, human experience does not divide itself into discrete experiences that align with disciplinary boundaries; instead, humanity experiences reality as a whole. Second, for Christians, God is the creator of all that is, and if God is the source of the whole of the cosmos, then Christians should seek explanations that do not separate religious faith from the natural world. Finally, the need for a response to the environmental crisis demands a strong theology of nature, grounded in biblical faith commitments and engaged with scientific knowledge of the world.
Given those demands, dialogue between science and religion is a much-needed contribution to scholarly discourse. The potential for dialogue lies in limit or boundary questions and in the recognition of parallels between method in science and religion. Limit questions are those raised by science but that cannot be answered by science alone. The early origins of the universe are one context where limit questions arise, particularly as one gets closer to t = 0, the origin of time at the big bang, and to speculations about what might have preceded t = 0. The orderliness and intelligibility of the universe lead to questions about the nature of nature, and the source of order and intelligibility. Science cannot answer these questions on the basis of science alone, so dialogue with religion is necessary. Additionally, a greater understanding of cultural, societal, and individual factors in the scientific method, combined with a recognition that religion has content that goes beyond the merely subjective, has led to recognition of parallels between scientific and theological method. Though religion does have an added aspect of personal commitment and involvement, religion and science both assess theories in their domains using similar criteria, including scope, coherence, and fruitfulness. Finally, scientific concepts can serve as models for theological reflection, leading to new insights within theology (Barbour 2000, 2–3). Dialogue in any case requires a respectful approach to disciplines – and individuals – in religion and in science.
Integration is one additional option for thinking about relating science and religion. Unlike dialogue, which “starts from general characteristics of science or of nature” (Barbour 1997, 90), integration focuses on “the relationships between theological doctrines and particular scientific theories” (98). Natural theology and a theology of nature are examples of the integration between science and religion. Whereas natural theology looks to design in nature as supportive of God’s existence, a theology of nature develops theories and doctrines that are heavily informed by theories in science. A systematic synthesis of science and religion such as process theology is one version of a natural theology. More will be said about a theology of nature and process thought in the next section below.
Barbour’s fourfold typology has been critiqued and expanded upon by a wide range of authors. Ted Peters expands upon Barbour’s typology in describing eight ways in which science and religion interact. One of Peters’s concerns is that by including scientific creationists within “conflict,” one fails to see the complexity of creationists’ relationship to science. Rather than viewing science as conflicting with religion, Peters (1996) argues, young-earth creationists reject “scientism” rather than science itself. To such individuals, science and religion do not conflict; only scientism and religion do.
Christian Berg has questioned the usefulness of Barbour’s fourfold typology, and proposed as an alternative three dimensions to describe aspects of the relationship between science and religion: epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics (Berg 2004, 69). Among other arguments in favor of dimensions, Berg believes that these three are “more observer-independent than relational categories” such as those Barbour employs (Berg 2004, 71).
Barbour has noted, too, that his typology has been criticized as “too simple and too static to illuminate the complex and changing historical interactions of science and religion” (Barbour 2004, 24–25). He has responded that the typology is useful in identifying common patterns and themes, recognizing that attention needs to be paid to distinguishing features of each position or individual’s thought by “continual return to empirical data” (Barbour 2004, 25).
A Theology of Nature and Process Thought
Since his early writings, Barbour has described his project as a “theology of nature” to capture the set of methodological and theological commitments he is making in bridging science and religion. By way of comparison and in contrast to Barbour, one approach included in integration between science and religion is “natural theology.” Natural theology has a long history in Christian theology as a means of discerning evidence or proof of God’s existence or presence in the world by examining the natural world. Among the better-known examples of natural theology is William Paley, the nineteenth-century theologian. Paley described God’s relationship to nature using the analogy of the watch and a watchmaker. Just as the intricate construction of a watch’s mechanism leads one to postulate the work of a skilled watchmaker, the intricate and complex structures of the natural world lead one to postulate a skillful creator God. Evidence of complexity or apparent design lends proof to the existence of the creator.
Unlike Paley, Barbour argues for a theology of nature. His approach begins with a commitment to the theology of a worshipping community, based on the historical revelation of God. But it incorporates the natural order, emphasizing “the continuity between nature and grace, between impersonal and personal realms, and between language about nature and language about God” (Barbour 1966, 454). The Bible affirms God as the source of all creation, and the world described by science is the same world of God’s active presence. Therefore, theological and doctrinal assertions should be informed by scientific descriptions of the natural world as God’s creation.
Such an approach may result in revisions to classical religious commitments. In a theology of nature, “some traditional doctrines,” according to Barbour, “need to be reformulated in the light of current science” (Barbour 1997, 100). The doctrines of creation, providence, and human nature are prime candidates for such reformulation, for science has provided significant insights into all three areas.
For Barbour a theology of nature has implications for how one engages science and religion, for if there is in fact one world whose origin lies in God, then one should not be content to keep science and religion separate. Additionally, if religion is to affirm God’s active presence in the world, then an understanding of the processes and mechanisms of the natural world is essential for understanding divine action. Barbour summarizes his commitment to a theology of nature informed by process philosophy as follows:
I am in basic agreement with the “Theology of Nature” position, coupled with a cautious use of process philosophy. Too much reliance on science in natural theology can lead to the neglect of the areas of experience that I consider most important religiously. As I see it, the center of the Christian life is an experience of reorientation, the healing of our brokenness in the new wholeness, and the expression of a new relationship to God and to the neighbor … the centrality of redemption need not lead us to belittle creation, for our personal and social lives are intimately bound to the rest of the created order. We are redeemed in and with the world, not from the world. Part of our task, then, is to articulate a theology of nature, for which we will have to draw from both religious and scientific sources.
(Barbour 1997, 195)
From early in his career, the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and theologians influenced by him have influenced Barbour’s theology, a fact he identifies as the most controversial aspect of his work (Barbour 2004, 25). Process thought provides a philosophical bridge for thinking about wholeness and dynamism in creation, while opening up the possibilities for freedom and novelty to arise from natural, regularized processes. Two examples of Barbour’s engagement with process philosophy will serve as models for how he integrates science and religion.
Among its advantages, Barbour sees process philosophy as supporting an ecological view of the natural world, in that it holds that entities are relational and experiential. In the process view, “All creatures have value to God and to each other, and all have intrinsic value as centers of experience” (Barbour 2002, 131). Here Barbour points to panexperientialism in process philosophy, the notion that one can attribute experience even to lower-level entities. Distinctions need to be made between the kinds of experience possible among lower-level entities, as opposed to higher-level experience such as consciousness, yet Barbour argues that every entity has an interior experience. What this means for environmental ethics is that one should exhibit concern for all forms of life, but that one should prioritize life that is capable of higher-order experience (Barbour 2002, 131). In addition to its attribution of experience, process theology emphasizes God’s immanence. God is present in the evolution of each new event yet transcends nature itself. This suggests an attitude toward nature that is neither worship nor exploitation, Barbour argues, but instead focuses on respect and appreciation of nature as “the scene of God’s continuing activity” (Barbour 2002, 132).
In addition to its support of care for creation, process theology for Barbour provides insights into understanding God’s power in relation to creation. Classical Christian commitments to omnipotence typically view God’s power as a combination of (potential) coercive power with love. Rather than coercive power, Barbour interprets process theology as placing an emphasis on empowerment. Moreover, while one approach to understanding God’s power in relationship to freedom is to argue that God self-limits God’s power to allow for human freedom and novelty, Barbour endorses process arguments that there are metaphysical limitations to God’s power. The future is open and unknowable even to God, given human freedom and God’s experience of the temporal aspect of reality. To Barbour this is preferable to seeing God’s power as a self-limitation, which suggests that God could choose to overcome that self-limitation if God so chose (which would simply raise the theodicy question once again).
In assessing the feasibility of applying these and other process concepts to theology, Barbour returns to the four criteria identified for evaluating scientific theories: agreement with data, coherence, scope, and fertility. Barbour recognizes that agreement with data for religion includes engaging the biblical record and the experience of a religious community, and believes that process theology does fit with these religious data. Process theology is coherent with the core of Christian faith, God’s love revealed in Christ, as well as an internally coherent system that integrates many facets of experience. In terms of scope, process attempts to bring together “diverse types of experience – scientific, religious, moral, and aesthetic” (Barbour 1990, 266). Finally, Barbour believes that process theology has the potential to foster new thinking, ethical action, and personal transformation. After a review of these criteria, Barbour concludes, “I believe that by these four criteria the reformulations of classical tradition proposed in process theology are indeed justified” (Barbour 1990, 267).
Barbour describes integration as a way of relating science and religion, focuses on a theology of nature as one way of integrating the two disciplines, and evaluates the viability of process theology to accomplish such integration, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of process thought at each stage. Barbour thus demonstrates the manner in which one might go about engaging science and religion constructively, even if one ultimately rejects process theology as the proper means of integration. He also shows how to apply the criteria for assessing theories in a theological context, recognizing the distinctive features and aspects of theological method.
Conclusion
Ian G. Barbour has contributed much to those interested in exploring the intersections between science and religion. Those reflecting on the intellectual history of the era encompassing the last half of the twentieth century would be wise to pay attention to Barbour’s contributions, for he provides a set of philosophical tools and frameworks that catalyzed further work in bringing disciplines into creative interaction. Critical realism serves as a bridge between science and religion by ensuring clear understandings of epistemology in science and in religion. Barbour’s fourfold typology for ways of relating science and religion provides an accessible framework for learning about various positions, and his efforts at developing a theology of nature informed by process philosophy suggest one logical path for faith in an age of science. These aspects of Barbour’s work have had wide-ranging impact.
Constructive engagement between science and religion is more widespread in Christian theology now than it was in the 1960s. Barbour and those whom he has influenced have provided ways of engaging science and religion in dialogue and perhaps integration. Yet there are areas still unexplored. Barbour himself points to one future direction for development: “The future dialogue must be interreligious as well as interdisciplinary” (Barbour 2004, 21). Barbour and those who have built on his work naturally focused at first on Christian religion and science, though a number of efforts have been undertaken to broaden the scope to include wider representation from the world’s religions in dialogue. Engagement with science may serve as a common ground for inter-religious engagement.2
Whatever the future direction of engagement between science and religion, Barbour has left a significant legacy. The work in the field to date has accomplished much, and ongoing work must engage in the body of work that has originated with Barbour’s insights. As Barbour himself would expect, such work should not be done uncritically, but by evaluating any proposal according to agreement with data, coherence, scope, and fertility. The enduring test will be whether or not the bridge between science and religion built by Barbour and those he has influenced can bear the weight of future traffic.
Notes
1 Robert John Russell has extended this thinking in describing “creative mutual interaction” between science and theology. See Russell (2008).
2 Barbour here cites the Science and the Spiritual Quest (SSQ) project and the fact that, in his opinion, “The participants were more open to each other’s religious views because they respected each other as scientists, and they brought to their discussion some of the spirit of inquiry they had known in science, even as they acknowledged the differences between fields” (Barbour 2004, 21).
References
Barbour, Ian G. 1966. Issues in Science and Religion. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Barbour, Ian G., ed. 1973. Earth Might Be Fair: Reflections on Ethics, Religion and Ecology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Barbour, Ian G. 1974. Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion. London: SCM Press.
Barbour, Ian G. 1980. Technology, Environment, and Human Values. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Barbour, Ian G. 1990. Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures 1989–1991, vol. 1. San Francisco: Harper & Row.
Barbour, Ian G. 1993. Ethics in an Age of Technology: The Gifford Lectures 1989–1991, vol. 2. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
Barbour, Ian G. 1997. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, revised edn. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Barbour, Ian G. 2000. When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Barbour, Ian G. 2002. Nature, Human Nature, and God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Barbour, Ian G. 2004. A Personal Odyssey. In Robert John Russell, ed. Fifty Years in Science and Religion: Ian G. Barbour and His Legacy. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 17–28.
Berg, Christian. 2004. Barbour’s Way(s) of Relating Science and Theology. In Robert John Russell, ed. Fifty Years in Science and Religion: Ian G. Barbour and His Legacy. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 61–75.
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1999. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New York: Ballantine Books.
Peters, Ted. 1996. Theology and Science: Where Are We? Zygon, 31, pp. 323–343.
Russell, Robert John, ed. 2004. Fifty Years in Science and Religion: Ian G. Barbour and His Legacy. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Russell, Robert John. 2008. Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Further Reading
Barbour, Ian G. 1997. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues, revised edn. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. The revised edition of the first volume of Barbour’s Gifford lectures provides the most encompassing and in-depth overview of the historical, philosophical, and theological challenges with which Barbour is most concerned in religion and science.
Barbour, Ian G. 2000. When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. This short, accessible volume is structured around Barbour’s fourfold typology, and provides examples of how the typology is operative in specific areas of science and religion.
Barbour, Ian G. 2002. Nature, Human Nature, and God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Barbour’s most recent book, covering topics in evolution, genetics, human nature, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and environmental ethics. Additionally, the volume includes Barbour’s fullest exploration of his own constructive process theology.
Russell, Robert John, ed. 2004. Fifty Years in Science and Religion: Ian G. Barbour and His Legacy. Aldershot: Ashgate. A Festschrift honoring Barbour’s eightieth birthday, this volume brings together 20 authors who provide critical insights into Barbour’s contributions to methodology, ethics, and theology. The opening chapter is a brief autobiography by Barbour.