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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 September 2011
To answer in the affirmative Barth's question ‘Is theology a science? is to acknowledge both that such a question has a history and that the predicate ‘scientific’ is a contested one. T. F. Torrance in Theological Science and subsequent publications, seeks to proceed with a minimalist conception of science, as a study whose methods are directed by ‘faithfulness to object’. Paul Feyerabend, in Against Method and subsequent publications, contends that such a minimalism amounts to an admission that there is no such thing as ‘the scientific method’, and that therefore the predicate ‘scientific’ lacks coherence and substance. According to Feyerabend, philosophers like Michael Polanyi (an important influence upon Torrance) are simply not bold enough to see their work through to the radical conclusions which it demands and he provides. For Feyerabend, science's reference to qualities such as ‘objectivity’ and ‘rationality’ are simply a smoke-screen for decisively influential vested interests of power and wealth – it is these which ultimately determine what we mean by science, and these which therefore must be unmasked in the cause of humanism. However, in the course of this dialogue we reveal that Feyerabend is too careless a thinker, given to rushing prematurely and too willingly to unwarranted and simplistic dichotomies. Thus Torrance's notion of the ‘scientific’ emerges intact, but not without Feyerabend's stimulating challenge raising important questions, not least to theology as a science. For here, above all, ‘human’ factors are likely unduly to influence scientific knowledge. Thus Feyerabend also points to areas where Torrance's project needs further development and closer scrutiny.
1 See Pannenberg, W., Theology and the Philosophy of Science, tr. McDonagh, F. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976)Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 8.
3 Polanyi, M., Personal Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 141Google Scholar.
4 Barth, Church Dogmatics III/2, tr. T. F. Torrance and G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1960), p. 85.
5 Brunner, E. in Natural Theology: Comprising ‘Nature and Grace’ and the Reply ‘No!’ by Karl Barth, tr. Fränkel, P. (London: Centenary Press, 1946), p. 17Google Scholar.
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7 Barth, K., Dogmatics in Outline (London: SCM Press, 1949)Google Scholar, opening words, also in CD I/1, pp. 1–2.
8 ‘I propose that by science we understand an attempt at comprehension and exposition, at investigation and instruction, which is related to a definite object and sphere of activity’, Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p. 9.
9 There is, for instance, only a single entry in the preacher's index of the Church Dogmatics for natural science (CD III/2, pp. 79ff.); McGrath also cites Barth's refusal to join the ‘Göttingen conversations’ in 1931 (T. F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography, p. 197).
10 Schwöbel in Webster, Cambridge Companion to Barth, p. 33; see also McGrath, A., The Order of Things: Explorations in Scientific Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. xiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Torrance, T. F., Karl Barth, Biblical and Evangelical Theologian (Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1990), p. 152Google Scholar.
12 The form of this claim is quite audacious: Calvin, for Torrance, not only initiates ‘modern theology’, but ‘modern scientific thinking’ (Torrance, Theological Science (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1969), p. xiii; see also Lee, N., Calvin on the Sciences (Cambridge: Burlington Press, 1969)Google Scholar, deriving it from patristic sources, paradigmatically Athanasius in Torrance, Divine Meaning (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995, p. 227) – conversely Newton, Kant, Descartes (e.g.) are responsible for holding science back with dualist patterns of thought.
13 For ‘objective’ being more or less a synonym for ‘scientific’ see opening lines of Scheffler, I., Science and Subjectivity (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1982), p. 1Google Scholar.
14 See discussion McGrath, T. F. Torrance: An Intellectual Biography, pp. 202–3; also e.g. Torrance, Theological Science, p. 309.
15 It is worth noting, however, that Torrance's relation to Polanyi's thought is not unambiguous and, as Weightman, Theology in a Polanyian Universe: The Theology of Thomas Torrance (New York: Peter Lang, 1994) and Scott, D., Michael Polanyi (London: SPCK, 1995), pp. 182–3Google Scholar, point out, his theological ‘completion’ of Polanyi does not easily correspond with Polanyi's own late statements on the subject.
16 Hacking, I., The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 58Google Scholar.
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18 E.g. Feyerabend, P., Three Dialogues on Knowledge (Oxford and Cambridge MA: Blackwell, 1991), p. 50Google Scholar, and Killing Time (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 109.
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25 Ibid., p. 324.
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27 McGrath, Scientific Theology, vol. 2, Reality, p, 122.
28 For details see Torrance, Theological Science, chs 3 and 6.
29 Ibid., p. 116.
30 Torrance, T. F., Transformation and Convergence in the Frame of Knowledge (Belfast: Christian Journals Limited, 1984), p. 312Google Scholar.
31 Barth, CD II/1, p. 63.
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35 Torrance, Theological Science, p. 303.
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39 Barth, CD I/2, p. 208.
40 Barth, CD II/2, pp. 242 and 246; leading Brown to conclude that: ‘never was dogmatics more self-consciously set within the “theological circle” of which Paul Tillich speaks’. Brown, J., Subject and Object in Modern Theology (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 143Google Scholar, see also Moore, A., Realism and Christian Faith: God, Grammar and Meaning (Cambridge: CUP, 2003), p. 10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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46 Ibid., p. 170.
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49 Hacking, Social Construction of What?, p. 4.
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53 ‘Such illiterates (scientists) also determine where and how we are going to use nuclear power, how our children are going to live, what is good medicine and what is not, they waste millions of taxpayers money on ridiculous projects and get up in arms when a better control of these moneys is suggested’, Feyerabend, Three Dialogues, p. 68, also p. 140, and Science in a Free Society, p.134: ‘State Colleges and Universities are financed by taxpayers. They are therefore subjected to the judgement of the taxpayers and not to the judgement of the many intellectual parasites who live off public money.’
54 Feyerabend, Science in a Free Socirty, p. 157.
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61 Fellow Scottish Presbyterian for whom remarkably Torrance edited and wrote the introduction to, whilst Einstein wrote an appreciation of, his A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982).
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65 Thus finding himself somewhat at a loose end, it was at this point that he ended up as Popper's assistant.
66 Feyerabend, Against Method, pp. 259–60.
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68 Ward in Webster (ed.), Cambridge Companion to Barth, p. 281; though this was the error which dogged the Tractatus – Hacking, I., Why does Language Matter to Philosophy? (Cambridge: CUP, 1975), p. 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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72 Farell, , in ‘Feyerabend's Metaphysics: Process-Realism, or Voluntarist-Idealism?’, Journal for General Philosophy of Science 32/2 (2001), pp. 351–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Springer and Sankey, Semantic Incommensurability and Scientific Realism, online paper, 2007, http://philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/about/staff/Sankey/howard/semantic-incommensurability-realism.pdf) believe that Preston, Hoyningen-Huene, Oberheim, and Andersen, ‘On Incommensurability’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 27/1 (1996), 131–41, are all wrong to interpret Feyerabend in this way, and that whilst he enjoyed a brief dalliance with non-realism around the time of Science in a Free Society, his view turned back to realism towards the end of his life (in Conquest of Abundance). My own view is that, at the stage we are focusing on, Feyerabend's ethical voluntarism gives his thought highly non-realist tendencies.
73 Feyerabend, Against Method, p. 269.
74 Feyerabend, Farewell to Reason, pp. 267–8; Against Method, p. 189.
75 Feyerabend, Against Method, p. 225.
76 Feyerabend, Knowledge, Science and Relativism, p. 143: ‘castrating’ is Feyerabend's typically colourful term
77 Ibid., p. 187.
78 Torrance, Theological Science, p. 10 – ‘open epistemology’.
79 McGrath, Scientific Theology, vol. 2, Reality, p. 202.
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81 Torrance is under no illusions: ‘the revolutionary task of a Christian reconstruction of the foundations of culture; nothing less is worthy of the Christian gospel’, 1965, p. 271.
82 Hardy in David Ford with Muers, Rachel (eds), The Modern Theologians (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), p. 173Google Scholar.
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86 Weightman, Theology in a Polanyian Universe, p. 275.
