382 - The Return of Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature

The Return of Cosmology:
Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature
By Stephen E. Toulmin
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1983. 283 pp. $19.95.

The goal of most books is to tell us something; others also show us something by being examples of what they are trying to say. The latter is the case with the most recent book by the eminent philosopher of science, Stephen Toulmin.

The book is composed of three parts arranged in chronological order of composition: (a) Toulmin's important 1957 essay on "scientific mythology," (b) several essays from 1964 to 1980 considering contemporary cosmologists (most of these originally published in The New York Review of Books), and (3) a recent essay on cosmology, postmodernism, and natural theology. What the book is trying to show us is the change in attitudes in the scientific community toward questions of cosmology and the relations between science and natural religion over the last quarter century. Toulmin's essays are an excellent way to document this change precisely because he has been in the front of the field of philosophy of science.

Toulmin was a pupil of Wittgenstein, and the 1957 essay on scientific mythology reflects this background. In the essay, we clearly see that the positivist's attack on religion is a matter of a bygone day, but there is not yet any real rapprochement between science and religion. Each is seen as a separate sphere and on this basis Toulmin argues against "scientific mythology" with science used to base broad cosmological theories, such as Julian Huxley's Evolutionary Ethics. Science, Toulmin claims, is a context-oriented language, and whenever its concepts are divorced from the original context or overextended to answer questions it was never meant to answer, a mythology arises which science cannot be expected to underwrite. This attitude of wanting to keep science from cosmological questions continues in the second section where he takes to task such figures as Jacques Monod, Teilhard de Chardin, Arthur Koestler, and others. But we begin to see this attitude soften, and by the late 1970s he is far more sanguine about the possibilities of cosmology.

Finally, in the concluding section, Toulmin comes to his present theme (postmodernism) and the reasons why science and natural theology need to interact in cosmological theory. Postmodernism, as Toulmin defines it, is a rather loose term, but intentionally so since the world of postmodern science (and other fields) is a "world that has not yet discovered how to define itself in terms of what it is, but only in terms of what it has just-now-ceased-to-be" (p. 254). This change, he argues, comes from the limits science faced by operating with a methodology that makes the scientist a pure and detached observer. Physics, biology, and anthropology have all shown us that we continually interfere with and thus are an uneliminable part of our experiments, and that we must

383 - The Return of Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature

now see ourselves as participants in what we know and not just spectators. Science is now also a matter of practice and this, in turn, raises ethical and ecological questions we cannot ignore. As a result, cosmology must now be seen as an open question again, and we must consider the questions of a theology of nature wherein we think of ourselves and our world under basic questions of practice and interrelationship.

As an indicator of the change in attitude in science toward cosmology and as an argument for a new consideration of the relation between science and natural theology, the book is forceful-and convincing. It is also, as are all of Toulmin's works, lucid and well written. But there is one major weakness in the book, namely Toulmin's definition (or lack of it) of natural theology and religion. Throughout, he assumes that natural theology and religion are what one might call a religion arrived at scientifically. If this is what he means, then he would seem to hearken back to the old theological liberalism of the early years of this century which has been justly criticized on numerous fronts by theologians themselves. It is also historically somewhat inaccurate to think that the great cosmologists of the past subscribed to this view. Rather, they for the most part tended already to believe in a Creator and then sought for signs of providence in nature. Kepler is an example. Furthermore, Toulmin here does not consider the actual practice of natural theology by theologians. What they do broadens the scope of the question, for natural theology as it is practiced means something like pursuing the question "What can we know about God by our own natural lights?" This is somewhat broader than the question "What can we know about God from science?" By the broader question, cosmology may be an unnecessary (and even undesirable) way of underwriting theology. Ernan MacMullen, for example, has argued that cosmology may not be a particularly fruitful field for theology. The question needs further examination.

Nevertheless, both science and theology do have a common object of interest in the world and our actions in it. Here Toulmin opens up numerous questions that need careful thought. Can and should science underwrite a natural theology, and what are its possibilities and limits? Can a new consideration of theology change the way we look and act in the world? For the discussion of these questions alone, the book would be valuable. Yet, although these are the questions which Toulmin wants to leave with us, questions that have taken so long to arise once again, the early essays are also worth consideration, too. The essay on scientific mythology is still valuable as pointing out a problem of naive cosmology, and the criticism of Teilhard (a criticism Toulmin says he has not abandoned) is equally instructive on Teilhard's grave shortcomings as scientist and theologian.

Eric O. Springsted
Illinois College
Jacksonville, Illinois