Int J Philos Relig DOI 10.

1007/s11153-010-9242-9

Michael Ruse, Science and spirituality: making room for faith in the age of science
Cambridge University Press, New York, 2010, viii and 264 pp., 14 b/w illustrations, $30.00
Edward L. Schoen

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Michael Ruse is the Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University. In the opening pages of this book, he expresses concern over the likes of Steven Weinberg, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, among others. He is bothered by the cultural impact of such inuential writers, at least with respect to their aggressive, openly hostile attitudes toward religion, particularly the Christian religion. Weinberg claims not only that science has refuted religion, but that religion is an insult to human dignity. Dawkins considers religious faith to be a cop-out, going so far as to condemn the Catholic theological tradition as more psychologically damaging than the sexual abuse of children. Prominent philosophers and historians of science, who should know better, have joined the bitter chorus. Dennett claims that religion actually glories in its antagonistic stance toward human reason. As a result, religion now ranks among the greatest threats to rationality and scientic progress. Of course, Professor Ruse acknowledges the presence of more moderate contemporary voices. Though ready to jettison orthodox Christian doctrines, Philip Kitcher makes room for traditional Christian virtues, as symbolized in New Testament parables and embodied in the life and death of Jesus. Stephen Jay Gould peacefully juxtaposes religion and science as noncompeting world pictures. Ruse does not believe, however, that these or similar conciliatory maneuvers provide much comfort to traditional Christians. While he displays little sympathy for the more fundamentalist branches of Christianity, especially those connected with the Intelligent Design movement, Ruse respects the views of less literalistic Christian conservatives. Such people follow in

E. L. Schoen (B ) Department of Philosophy and Religion, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY, USA e-mail: edward.schoen@wku.edu E. L. Schoen 166 Yacht Club Road, Scottsville, KY 42164, USA

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the intellectual footsteps of Augustine and Aquinas, Luther and Calvin. They honor the ndings of genuine science, but also cling tightly to the Virgin Birth, miracles, the bodily resurrection of Jesus and, most especially, the triumphant return of their Lord, coupled with the promise of eternal salvation. Obviously, it is possible to value a tradition, religious or otherwise, without embracing it. Accordingly, Professor Ruse neither espouses nor recommends any particular Christian theology. In this volume, he focuses upon the limits of scientic thought. Contrary to widespread, popular opinion, scientists cannot dispassionately read literally true theories off collected arrays of objective, natural facts. Scientic methods are too untidy for that. Instead, scientic understanding emerges from a tangled mix of observation and mental construct, an intricate interplay of theoretical projections, subjective speculations, empirical data and objective constraints. Even at their very best, scientic theories tell only part of the story, leaving plenty of room for those who want to bring traditional Christian teachings into their overall understanding of the world and our place in it. In the rst four chapters, which comprise about half of this book, Ruse offers a selective, but accurate tour of the history of western science, beginning with a passing reference to ancient Babylonia and hasty sketches of Pythagorean ideas, the formalizations of Euclid and the mathematically saturated philosophy of Plato. With the arrival of Aristotle, the narrative pace slows a bit, allowing more detailed explications. Here, Ruse begins to reveal the pivotal role of metaphors in scientic thinking. Ever since Aristotle, scientists have constructed models to envision how the world might be, then tested their models against the empirical world. In this process, metaphors, like force, attraction or natural selection, have proven indispensable. More than linguistic ornaments, they spur scientists to think and see in new ways, disclosing fresh worlds of understanding and discovery. Obviously, some scientic metaphors are more significant, fertile or insightful than others. A select few, the root metaphors of scientic traditions, have played especially important roles. For the early Greeks, Aristotle in particular, and for the Medievals, the ultimate root metaphor was organic. The natural world, in whole and in part, was construed in terms of the structures, development and behaviours of living things. Even nonliving items, conceived in terms of the organic model, were envisioned as driven by vital forces toward natural goals. As Ruse tells the story, the rise of modern science was not the sudden, breakthrough triumph of bright reason over dark superstition. Instead, it grew from the limitations of metaphorical thinking. Grounded in similarities, not identities, metaphors, even the root metaphors of science, only capture those aspects of the world that are not too foreign. The closer the similarity, the better the understanding. By contrast, dissimilar phenomena remain relatively incomprehensible. In extreme cases, they are downright mystifying. Consequently, over time, the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and others revealed the shortcomings of the organic mindset. Subsequently, a new root metaphor took hold, that of the machine. Its success has been remarkable, even spectacular. Of course, it is no surprise that volcanoes, orbiting planets and other nonliving things are susceptible to mechanistic understanding. More startling is the fact that plants, animals and all sorts of living processes are also amenable to such explanation. Indeed, items like beating hearts, seemingly perfect

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candidates for comprehension in terms of the organic metaphor, are actually better explained on the model of mechanical action. Care must be taken, however, against bedazzlement. No matter how thoroughly the mechanical metaphor may supplant its organic predecessor, it remains limited. It can never capture the full complexity of nature. Moreover, when scientists construe aspects of nature mechanistically, they not only leave out important features of the natural world, they ignore crucial facts about machines as well. Specifically, scientists take special care to drop out two of the most important characteristics of machines, that they are made by people and that they are made for some particular purpose. Accordingly, when geologists speak of the origins of the Appalachians, they avoid any reference to assembly lines or factories. Instead, they speak of various terrestrial pressures, pushing and pulling blindly, with no particular goals in mind. Mechanical explanations for living things proceed similarly. Amphibian hearts, together with the tadpoles that enclose them, grow to maturity. No person, human or divine, deliberately manufactures them. While hearts have various functions, including circulation of the blood, they were not intentionally created to serve those or any other specic purposes. Surveying several hundred years of modern debate, Ruse cites a panoply of familiar western gures, often quoting them at length. Boyle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Darwin, Huxley and James are just a few of those who tussle over a variety of issues, representing all manner of perspectives. As Ruse weaves his way through this material, he distinguishes two types of mechanistic thinking. The more rigorous form, mechanism as process, eschews all reference to ends or nal causes. At the dawn of modern science, this strategy countenanced only clocklike machines, those with parts like intermeshing gears, levers, wheels and springs. As new types of machines were invented, everything from internal combustion engines to quartz watches and microcomputers, this restriction was loosened, permitting ever wider ranges of physical, electrical and chemical interactions. The second form of mechanistic thinking, mechanism as artifact, allows reference to ends or purposes, but not irreducibly so. This style of thinking gures prominently in the science of living things. There, without bearing any ontological implications, reference to ends or purposes facilitates investigation and understanding. Biologists say that the purpose of the eye is to see. But this does not mean that eyes were consciously designed or deliberately intended to achieve that end. Generally, scientists working in specic elds tend to prefer one or the other of these two mechanistic styles. But whichever they favor, Ruse concludes that all of science is now thoroughly permeated with the machine metaphor, leaving organicism utterly eclipsed. In the second half of his book, Ruse turns to the task of marking out space for Christian orthodoxy. He begins with a reminder about metaphors, specifically the root metaphors of science. They are false. Since they offer only restricted ways of construing the world, not literally true descriptions of reality, important issues remain beyond their scope. One of these is why there is something rather than nothing. Here, Ruse believes that any satisfactory explanation demands some sort of necessary existent. A second concern is the ultimate grounding of morality. Even if evolutionary biology, psychology or sociology can explain why humans value what they do, science cannot determine whether humans ought to prize such values, nor whether people should take one moral path rather than another. The mental is yet another mystifying issue. Science

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wonderfully traces the swirling electrical storm of brain circuitry, but cannot explain why all that wetware is conscious. Finally, there is purpose. Since the scientic use of the machine metaphor explicitly excludes reference to irreducible, genuine purposes, contemporary scientists do not even look for such things. Faced with these shortcomings, Ruse does not pine for the return of organicism. He sees no reason to resuscitate anything like nineteenth-century idealism or vitalism. Such philosophies were, and remain, scientifically sterile. Recent holist and emergentist theses, if not entirely vacuous, are too vague to drive focused scientic investigation. For Ruse, neither Gaia, nor ecofeminism, nor any other currently popular resurrection of organic themes holds much promise. When it comes to the epistemic values cherished by scientistssimplicity, elegance, comprehensive scope, theoretical unity, predictive fertilitynothing compares to the raw potential of mechanism. Besides, any revitalized organic metaphor would succumb to the same limitations as the mechanical one. It would fail to explain why there is something rather than nothing. It would generate no convincing basis for morality, no genuine explanation for the emergence of consciousness, no ultimate purpose in nature. All such matters, if they can be handled at all, are better addressed theologically. According to traditional Christian theology, God is a necessary being, the kind of being that could explain why there is something rather than nothing. This explanation is rooted in faith, not human reason. As such, it is decidedly nonscientic, though not necessarily illogical. Ruse offers no defense of Christian theism, though he does nod in the direction of an eternal, rather than an everlasting God, an unchanging, all-loving deity, not one engaged in divine process or growth. As to the problem of evil, he favors a compatibilist, free will strategy for human evil, appealing to the need for unbroken laws as a reason for natural evil. Miracles might just be especially meaningful happenings. If any miracles must violate natural laws, they should do so sparingly. When it comes to grounding morality, divine command theory is probably the way to go. For Christians, the emergence of consciousness, at least in humans, can be linked to the image of God. As to the afterlife, that is all about spiritual bodies located in dimensions beyond the domain of normal science. Professor Ruse nishes out his book, not with a rousing call to Christian commitment, but with a gentle plea for intellectual integrity, graced by a sense of humility, personal reserve and mutual respect. This is not an exercise in Christian apologetics, nor an adventure in natural theology. Ruses goal is merely to provide a generic antidote to the venomous bite of those who would impugn the integrity of religious believers, Christians in particular. While he contends that people of religious faith must respect the teachings of contemporary science, Ruse is convinced that the machine metaphor is neither all-encompassing nor all-powerful. It is no substitute for the Christian God. Consequently, there is plenty of conceptual room left for those who wish to embrace Christian doctrines, even quite traditional ones. This book joins a growing assembly of recent publications, all seeking to carve a respectable place for religious thought in contemporary, scientifically advanced cultures. Others engaged in this task represent a diverse spectrum, including Buddhist, Islamic, feminist, Thomist, Wittgensteinian and Whiteheadian perspectives, to name but a few. Ruses particular approach should appeal to traditionalists of many different stripes. Obviously, the doctrines identied as denitive for Christian orthodoxy,

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including matters like the Virgin Birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, are customary choices. At least by modern western standards, the topics listed for potential religious understanding, including the explanation of ultimate origins, the basis for morality, consciousness and the afterlife, are typical as well. As his argument develops, Professor Ruse mobilizes a standard array of historical gures to represent a predictable collection of inuential positions, arguments and counterarguments. His explications are accurate, balanced and thoroughly mainstream. More often than not, Ruse allows his proponents to speak for themselves. He cites stock sources, quoting lengthy passages that often stretch to twenty or more lines of ne print. When he proposes his own interpretations, they almost always fall squarely in the middle of the scholarly spectrum. One notable deviation from the conventional, at least for many philosophers of science, is the sustained emphasis upon metaphors, especially as coupled with the claim that scientic descriptions are not merely limited, but actually false, leaving space for the possibility of conservative Christian belief. But even here, Ruse does not stray too far. While he mentions George Lakoff, he declines to seize upon the more radical aspects of Lakoffs work. In mathematics, Ruse inclines toward Platonism, citing the Euler identity as a likely pointer toward necessary existents. In traditional fashion, he then sketches the possibility of linking abstract objects with the existence of an immaterial God. Lakoff, by contrast, repudiates Platonism. He grounds all of mathematics, including the Euler identity, in metaphorical connections, not eternal truth or necessary existence. Ruse mentions none of this. When it comes to Quines comments about the existence of sets, Ruse is similarly selective. He leaves out the doctrines of ontological relativity and the inscrutability of reference, ideas that considerably mitigate any latent Platonism in Quines thought. Obviously, there is nothing wrong with the selective use of sources or the defense of tradition. No doubt, many readers will appreciate Ruses sympathetic respect for the history of Christian theology. But, as with Lakoff and Quine, the more pioneering aspects of Augustine and Aquinas, Luther and Calvin are passed over in silence. Confronting their own cultural challenges, those theologians struck out in new, often scandalous directions, sometimes dramatically reshaping traditional Christian teachings. Faced with an equally formidable array of contemporary anxieties, some readers may long for a new transguration of Christianity. Unfortunately, despite its considerable merits, Ruses traditional line of argument remains too conning, too theologically unimaginative to invigorate this kind of spiritual creativity. As a result, those who wish to mobilize the more impassioned, innovative side of their Christian heritage may feel that the room cleared for faith by Ruse is more cramped than cathartic.

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