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Barbour's 4 Models

The passage discusses Ian Barbour's four-fold paradigm for how science and theology can interact or relate to each other. The four ways are: 1) Conflict, where the two are in opposition. 2) Independence, where they operate in separate domains but do not interact. 3) Dialogue, where each field can inform the other. 4) Integration, where insights from both are united, though some argue this risks assimilating one field into the other.

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Matthew Thomas Nagel
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2K views

Barbour's 4 Models

The passage discusses Ian Barbour's four-fold paradigm for how science and theology can interact or relate to each other. The four ways are: 1) Conflict, where the two are in opposition. 2) Independence, where they operate in separate domains but do not interact. 3) Dialogue, where each field can inform the other. 4) Integration, where insights from both are united, though some argue this risks assimilating one field into the other.

Uploaded by

Matthew Thomas Nagel
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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So, with these considerations in place, let us turn to the question of how science and theology can inter-relate.

Probably the most celebrated way of considering this question is the four-fold paradigm devised by Ian Barbour. The first way in which science and theology can interact, according to Barbour, is conflict, or opposition. Science and theology are, as it were, in competition with each other over the same theoretical territory. One must be right, and the other wrong. This, of course, is the line taken by a number of popular commentators in the media, for whom conflict of any kind is always more interesting than consonance (presumably, because it sells better). More productive approaches, however, are both possible and desirable. The second way is independence. This is the view that science and theology are both important, and both have important things to say to us; but they operate in fundamentally different territories. The naturalist Stephen Jay Gould, an exponent of this view, wrote of non-overlapping magisteria: science explores how the world works, and the physical and biological processes that have led to it coming to be the way it is, whilst theology explores the domain of values, and of ultimate meaning. Another characterisation of this approach is to say that science deals with howtype questions and theology deals with why-type questions. This is an attractive position in many ways; but it seems to deny that any fruitful interaction between science and theology is possible. They are exploring different domains, using different techniques. That leads to the third way in which these disciplines might interact: dialogue. This is the view that an understanding of the sciences can be valuable in informing the way in which we do theology; and reciprocally, an understanding of theology can inform the way in which scientists do science. More obviously, perhaps, it is clear that a sense of values (which Gould assigns to the magisterium of theology) will inform the practice of scientists, since it lies behind any ethical codes which govern their behaviour. A number of commentators on the relationship between science and theology in recent decades have favoured this dialogical approach. The fourth way in which science and theology can interact, according to Barbour, is integration. Barbour believes that it should be possible for insights from both these disciplines to be united to generate what he calls an inclusive metaphysics. Other writers have been less keen than Barbour in pursuing this path, since they fear (and experience tends to show) that it can lead rather to the assimilation of one or other of these disciplines under the categories of the other, inevitably failing to do proper justice to the discipline which is assimilated.!

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