Stephen Barr, a member of the First Things editorial board and our resident physics expert, was recently on EWTN to discuss his book, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, and the myth that the Christian faith is hostile to science.
Dr. Barr also has a new pamphlet entitled “Science and Religion: the Myth of Conflict” that was published by the U.K.’s Catholic Truth Society
October 27th, 2011 | 5:48 pm
I have the book. Dr. Barr has a gift for explaining the thorniest problems of quantum physics in layman’s terms. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in the manner in which science must leave off and permit faith to take the lead. Understanding follows faith, not the reverse.
October 27th, 2011 | 10:31 pm
Would love Prof. Barr to review Prof. Anthony Rizzi’s ‘The Science Before Science’.
William E. Carroll in his talk celebrating Mariano Artigas ‘Creation and Inertia: The Scientific Revolution and Discourse on Science-and-Religion’ alludes to how Fr Heller’s (and Prof. Barr’s) work would be beautifully complemented by Aristotelian metaphysics.
October 28th, 2011 | 10:09 am
There is much of Aristotelian metaphysics that I accept. Lonergan, who was a Thomist, has been a huge influence on my thinking — and, of course, I have learned much more from reading the Angelic Doctor himself.
I think it is important to remember, however, that St. Thomas was not just an Aristotelian. His ideas were a synthesis in which Aristotelianism was one element. And many of St. Thomas’s most penetrating insights really do not depend on the technical apparatus of Aristotelianism at all. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that an excessive focus on that technical apparatus can cause one to misinterpret or even miss altogether some of the most brilliant ideas in Aquinas.
It is also important to keep in mind that Aristotelianism comes in many varieties. The philosophy of Aristotle himself had several aspects that were not consistent with Christianity (he did not believe in a Creator God, for instance), and others that were not consistent with modern science. So, one must be critical and selective in what one takes from Aristotle — as St. Thomas indeed was.
I would also say that it is not only unnecessary to make use of the whole technical apparatus of Aristotelian philosophy in discussing the issues raised by modern science, it is often unhelpful and even an encumbrance. Most of what St. Thomas had to say that is relevant and helpful to discussions of science can be said in plain language by the use of analogies without compelling one’s reader to master the intricacies of substance/accident/potency/act/hylomorphism etc. To do the latter would lose 99% of your scientific audience in the first 10 minutes.
It is somewhat the same with physics: some of the basic ideas of modern physics — not all of them, to be sure — can be explained to the layman without forcing him to learn the extensive and very difficult mathematical formalism that a precise exposition would require. Especially in interdisciplinary discussions and discussions with laymen (scientific or theological), we should always endeavor to do without technical jargon whenever we can.
I know both Fr. Heller and Dr. Rizzi. (I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Carroll, but will at a conference later this fall, I believe.)
I think that Fr. Heller would agree with much of what I have said above, and suspect Dr. Rizzi would probably disagree with much of it.
October 28th, 2011 | 6:28 pm
MODERN PHYSICS AND ANCIENT FAITH, by Stephen Barr, is an excellent book. I bought a copy a few years ago, and it made accessible important concepts in physics, and how they relate to the Christian faith, for nonphysicists, like me. Especially good, I think, is the area pertaining to the nonphysicality of the mind.
October 29th, 2011 | 11:38 am
Looking forward to Stephen Barr’s book.
I was always struck by a lecture on Aristotle’s Physics that I heard in college. Against all the prejudices of our haughty age which sees no use in all that transpired before the rise of the scientific method, the lecturer called for the revival of the Aristotle’s simplicity. He made a good case in that the experience and observation at the heart of Aristotelianism, which we have dismissed as hopelessly primitive, is in fact a potent antidote to the detached credulity, expertocracy, and faith of modern science.
In other words, science’s position in today’s culture requires us to take the researcher’s word for it, whereas Aristotle was wise and humble enough to say, “Show me in terms my five senses will understand.” Of course this limits the scope of what Aristotelian method might grasp, but it does have one important virtue for our time: it limits the scientist from stepping beyond the purview of his expertise, as far too many scientists tend to do these days.
Which would be more damaging to the culture? A rough and ready and sometimes inaccurate Aristotelian a posteriori induction grasped in all its humility by the popular imagination, or the widespread unshakable faith that insists the natural sciences are the final (or only) arbiter of knowledge?
I’d say the latter is worse, particularly since we have been laboring under its tyrannical epistemology for so long that anyone who is tempted to entertain otherwise is dismissed as insufficiently educated by definition or ignorant of “the latest science” (i.e., heretical). If I hear one more layman say, “We used to think [thus and so] superstition was true! Now we know better!” or “You know the real reason we respond to beauty? It’s GENETIC. When we were frolicking on the steppe…” etc. … I’m going to lead a pitchfork revolution on our institutions of higher learning. Everyone is an expert one evolution now. It’s the only language we have authorized laymen to use to explore the deep questions of existence, and what an inadequate language it is for the task.
And so I hope Dr. Barr is on the forefront of a new Aristotelianism or Thomism, updated as necessary to the age. Scientism has rotted the popular brain.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact