SCIENCE AND SPECIFICITY: INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHING BETWEEN THEOLOGY, RELIGION, AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES: with Bethany Sollereder, “Introduction to Essays in Honor of Alister McGrath”; Peter Harrison, “What is Natural Theology? (And Should We Dispense with It?)”; John Hedley Brooke, “Revisiting William Paley”; Helen De Cruz, “A Taste for the Infinite: What Philosophy of Biology Can Tell Us about Religious Belief”; Michael Ruse, “The Dawkins Challenge”; Donovan O. Schaefer, “The Territories of Thinking and Feeling: Rethinking Religion, Science, and Reason with Alister McGrath”; Andrew Pinsent, “Alister McGrath and Education in Science and Religion”; Andrew Davison, “Science and Specificity: Interdisciplinary Teaching between Theology, Religion, and the Natural Sciences”; Victoria Lorrimar, “Does an Inkling Belong in Science and Religion? Human Consciousness, Epistemology, and the Imagination”; and Alister E. McGrath, “Response: Science and Religion—The State of the Art.”

Abstract

Consideration of the work of natural scientists by theologians further extends the innate interdisciplinarity of theological study. Here, we focus on interdisciplinarity as it bears upon undergraduate and postgraduate education and supervision. Much research in theology and science today asks how some more specific area of science bears upon some specific aspect of theology, in contrast to earlier attention to methodology, and how theology-as-such might relate to science-as-such. This paradigm, described as ‘Science-Engaged Theology’, is showing itself in teaching, with both benefits (capturing the imagination of students) and challenges (the work of learning about the details of scientific research). Criticisms raised about Science-Engaged Theology in research also suggest goals for education. These include encouraging students to ask whether science does bear upon their theological topic, after all, and the suggestion that a move beyond methodology should not leave the theologian uncritical of the theological freight potential associated with the assumptions and paradigms that shape natural science, either explicitly or implicitly.