Christian thinkers have proposed a range of ideas about what science is, ranging from reading the book of God’s works and “thinking God’s thoughts after Him” to studying how the Universe runs itself if God doesn’t intervene. Views like these were expressed by early modern scientists (Galileo, Bacon, Newton and others) who were Read more…
To find a series of books that join up the dots in whole swathes of one’s previous education is a wonderful experience. That’s my experience of the writings of philosopher Marinus Dirk Stafleu, which I first discovered a year ago. His multi-volume project Philosophy of Dynamic Development flows from his career as a Christian studying physics and Read more…
Richard Russell looks at the way scientific knowledge grows out of its philosophical and religious roots. What is the relation between religion (in the sense of ultimate commitments) and the academic disciplines? Frequently any positive relationship is denied. The sciences claim to have become autonomous (a law to themselves) with respect to philosophy, Read more…
‘Science’ means ‘knowledge’ according to its Latin root, and that is what the pursuit of science is popularly supposed to deliver. But a little reflection shows that scientific knowledge is of a certain kind – which is powerful but with some peculiar limitations. The diagram above attempts to illustrate from a Christian perspective what scientists are doing. It could be the Read more…
Richard Vytniorgu completes his survey of the transactional approach to science. In my previous post I explored the dynamics of the transactional view of reality and how this relates to scientific inquiry. In this post, I want to draw out some implications of the transactional view – to see transactional inquiry as Read more…
Richard Vytniorgu continues his series on the transactional view of scientific development. In my first post exploring the transactional approach to science, I explained how twentieth-century transactional philosophy developed out of dissatisfaction with a Newtonian understanding of human existence and inquiry. Human beings don’t stand apart from their environment or their inquiry; humans Read more…
Richard Vytniorgu introduces a way of thinking about scientific work by rooting it in its social context. This is the first in a series of three posts in which I introduce the transactional approach to doing science – an approach which encourages us to position scientific work within a broader matrix of beliefs Read more…
Church Scientific is a project of Faith-in-Scholarship in partnership with Blenheim Baptist Church. Launched last October, it seeks to help Christian students and researchers in science-related subjects to explore how a Christian worldview might enhance their scientific work. We believe Church Scientific is unique in bringing Christianity to bear on scientific Read more…
A new space for students and researchers to grow their scientific thinking is about to appear in Leeds. Church Scientific is a project to nurture scientific thinkers in building a holistic understanding of how our insights about the world originate and develop through imagination, theory-building and experimentation. The project concerns all kinds of pure and Read more…
Although I was trained as an archaeologist, over the years I have slowly moved towards research that can more accurately be described as palaeoecology or palaeoenvironmental science, i.e. ecology and environmental science applied to the past. As with archaeology, one of the things that attract me to environmental science is its Read more…