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2004 INTR/REL/PHYS 342
Syllabus
Course Description
The natural world seems very different than it did when the world's major religions developed. How should our developing understanding of the physical world affect our religious experience? Are the implications of science in conflict with religious concepts? Are science and religious experience entirely separate domains of understanding? Is there useful dialogue between them and perhaps even the possibility of integration?
The popular and semi-scholarly press are full of issues in science seen to have implications for religion. The human genome project brings issues of evolutionary design to everyone's attention. Cosmic creation issues are raised by ever more precise understanding of the cosmic background microwave radiation. There is increasing interest in "complexity," understood as the self-organization of systems according to principles not predictable solely from the understood properties of their constituents. Biological and cosmic evolution seem to favor complexity, suggesting directionality of time and purpose, at least in our region of time and space. Complexity seems to suggest a "top-down" epistemological hierarchy, as opposed to the "bottom-up" hierarchy of scientific materialism (understood as "everything is simply a matter of interacting particles"). Quantum non-locality suggests that "particles," understood as localized entities, do not even exist at the quantum level. Neuroscience and robotics both raise new issues of "embodiment," understood as the inseparability (or not) of mind and nervous system, "soul" and "body."
We will draw our scientific examples from our current understanding of quantum indeterminism and non-locality, from cosmology, and from evolutionary biology. Following William James, we will interpret religious experience as personal affirmation of the meaning of existence, whether or not guided by religious institutions. We will explore the relationship of science to religious experience within the framework of conflict, separation, dialogue and integration developed by Ian Barbour.
Format: Lectures, demonstrations, multimedia presentations and discussion. Limited mathematical treatment of scientific concepts. Requirements: Regular attendance and submission of study questions, two short papers, and a longer final paper.
Enrollment limited to 30. No course prerequisites except that enrollment preference will be given to juniors and seniors having some background in science, religion, psychology or philosophy.
Texts
Required:
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Simon & Shuster, NY, 1997
Ian Barbour, Religion and Science, Historical and Contemporary Issues, Harper, 1997
Karen Armstrong, A History of God, Ballantine, NY, 1993
Recommended:
Sidney Liebes, Elisabet Sahtouris, and Brian Swimme, A Walk Through Time, Wiley, NY 1998
Packet (materials distributed from time to time in class or available from Blackboard)
Director Movies (to be downloaded from Blackboard)
Course Requirements
1) Come to each class well-prepared: read the material in advance, take notes on it, and be ready to offer your own perspectives on it.
2) Bring your discussion questions to class, or email them to me beforehand.
3) Write two short papers (1000 words) and a longer final paper (3000 words).
Discussion Questions
For each class you are asked to develop a single discussion question in the following manner. Discern from the assigned reading a question that seems to you to be significant for your own understanding of religion or science or the relationship between religion and science. Briefly summarize the part of the text provoking the question. Explain how and why it poses a question requiring explanation and resisting easy answers. Suggest one or more possible approaches to an answer. Try to limit what you write to 200 words; do not exceed 300 words. If you have an irrepressible urge to expand on the question and answer, please do so in class or in a later short paper. Of the 21 classes for which study questions will be due, I will average your 16 highest discussion question grades. I recommend that you get a good start and keep current, so that you will have some flexibility later in the semester when both sunshine and time pressure tend to increase.
Grading
Class participation 15%
Discussion questions 25%
Short papers (2 x 15% ) 30%
Final Paper 30%
Auditing
Auditors will be welcome, provided they do not increase the size above 30 and provided that they do the reading and study questions for classes they attend.
About the Texts
The Varieties of Religious Experience is based on William James' 1901 Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion at the University of Edinburgh. His audience was the European intellectual elite of his day, but the resulting book is still widely appreciated. Influenced by his father's unorthodox religious views and his own tendency to depression, while growing up in the era of Darwin and the Civil War, James had gone on an extended biological collecting trip to South America with Louis Agassiz before teaching physiology, psychology, and philosophy at Harvard. For James, "religion" is most importantly personal, based on the experience, thoughts and feelings of the individual, whatever the theology or commitment to a particular religious tradition. Its value rests on immediate luminousness, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness, rather than on institutional dogma.
Religion and Science, Historical and Contemporary Issues, is the latest version of Ian Barbour's 1965 Issues in Science and Religion, honed by 30 intervening years of teaching at Carleton College and delivering the Gifford Lectures almost 100 years after James. As it has evolved, it and other Barbour writings are often credited with creating the contemporary discipline of science and religion. The book has also become so inclusive of the developing scholarship in this field that some work has had to be treated with little more than sound bites. It nevertheless provides an indispensable guide to the field, as well as a clear exposition of key issues. The son of an Episcopalian mother and a Presbyterian father who both taught at a university in China, Barbour earned a PhD in physics at the University of Chicago and taught physics at Kalamazoo College before studying religion at Yale and Union Theological Seminary. For Barbour, "religion" is primarily mainline Christian Protestantism, which takes the bible seriously but not literally. He advocates a "theology of nature" which presupposes mainline religious doctrines, but aims to help reformulate them so as to be in harmony with scientific understanding. In the back of the book you will find a helpful glossary of terms, as well as an extensive index of scholars cited and a useful subject index.
A History of God traces the historyof the perception and experience of God from the time of Abraham to the present, emphasizing the three monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also drawing on Greek philosophical ideas and Asian religious understanding. Disillusioned by her experience of God as a novice and young nun in a religious order, Armstrong turned to the history of perceptions and experience of God to find a new focus of meaning. Others of her books, The Battle for Jerusalem and Islam, have also been best sellers. History of God also has a useful glossary and an extensive bibliography.
A Walk Through Time accompanies and expands on the exhibit of posters hung along the corridors of the Williams College Unified Science Center. It dramatically illustrates the emergence of humanity as the child and partner of an interdependent ecosytem. Its themes are the cosmic and microbial origins of life, the emergence of qualitatively new forms in response to crisis, and a systems understanding of our place in the world. Copies of the prose will be provided. You may view the beautiful pictures by buying or borrowing the book or by taking a walk through the Walk Through Time exhibit in the Unified Science Center, using the guide available under course documents on Blackboard. You may also take the Walk Through Time on the web site http://www.globalcommunity.org/wtt.
Modern science has its roots in western philosophy and religion. So it is not surprising that most of the people who write about science and religion deal primarily with Christianity. That is changing, but at the moment there are few comprehensive and readable alternatives to books such as the ones I have chosen. Armstrong does at least include Judaism and Islam, although we will not have time to go into depth with either. I do urge those of you who are familiar with other religious expressions or skeptical of any religious expression to share your ideas with us. I do also want to encourage all of us to practice temporary suspension of disbelief, that is, when listening to others, to stand back from our own beliefs and disbeliefs for the sake of giving other points of view the hearing they deserve.
The Director Movies
The movies were developed during the summer of 2001 by four Willliams students working as the "Hypernauts" with WIT (Williams Instructional Technology Project). They were Naila Balloch '03, Jesse Dill '04, William Lindeke '01, and Iskra Valcheva, '03. The next summer the movies were improved by Iskra Valcheva, Jason Potell, 04, and Jake Mandel, '05, working as the "Entropy, Inc." team with WIT 2002. There are five chapters of these Macromedia Director movies and animations illustrating concepts in cosmology, astronomy, biological evolution, chaos theory and quantum phenomena relevant to the course.
The movies aim to provide an engaging introduction to scientific topics of interest to this course, including interactive animations allowing students to explore the parameter space of scientific environments by pointing, clicking and dragging, without undue struggle with equations. It is a work in progress! I look to feedback to help us use this medium more effectively.
The movies are best accessed by downloading them from Blackboard using a fast connection to a fast computer. For example, to download the movie Creation from Blackboard to one of the fast PC's in the Schow computer lab, follow these steps:
1. Start the computer by simultaneously pressing the CTRL-ALT-DELETE keys.
2. Log on. Enter your username and password. Be sure to check "Advanced" to be see that you are logging on as a student.
3. Double click on the Williams Web icon or any internet icon.
4. Type in http://Blackboard.williams.edu
5. Log in with your usual Williams username and password.
6. Select INTR 342, then Course Documents, then Director Movies.
7. Select PCUsers. (If you are somewhere else on a Mac, select MacUsers.)
8. Click on the underlined title of the movie you want. Save it to the desktop or some convenient folder.
9. DoubleClick on the icon to run the movie. Type "esc" to exit.
10. Then right click on the icon and select "delete." Please do not leave movies up on the desktop or in a folder just anyone can access.
11. Click on Start at the lower left corner of the screen, and select Log Off.
If you are working from a mac, follow an analogous procedure. If you have a slow computer or a slow connection, the download may be excruciatingly long. I do recommend the Schow computers for their fine color monitors as well as their speed.
Getting around the movies: There are navigation buttons in the lower lefthand corner. "Next" should jump you to the next frame. "Back" should work like the back button on your browser. "Menu" or "Chapter Menu" should take you back to the beginning. Rapid sequences of Next and Back sometimes do strange things. If that happens, Chapter Menu should restore the proper sequence. Text that changes color when you roll the cursor over it takes you to the destination labeled by the text. If you get a message complaining that the computer can't find index.html, just click OK to ignore it, and hit the Back button.
Course Format
Classes will begin with an introduction to the topics of the day, followed by discussion. After a short break, I will solicit questions of interest but not necessarily related to the day's topic. Then I will present an introduction to the reading for the next class.
Visiting Instructors
No one can be expert in all aspects of a broadly interdisciplinary field like this one. Fortunately, several Williams faculty expert in particular areas are willing to contribute to our discussions. Professor William Darrow is an expert on Islam, as well as a highly accomplished teacher of Religion. Philosophy Professor William Dudley is an expert on Hegel and the philosophers leading up to Hegel. Professor Lois Banta is a microbiologist and geneticist specializing in issues relating to agriculture. Rabbi Sigma Faye Coran is Associate Chaplain.
Professor Wesley J. Wildman
In addition, we will have a visit March 9 from Boston University Professor Wesley Wildman, who will talk to this class and give a public lecture, sponsored by the American Scientific Affiliation grant. He is Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics in Boston University's School of Theology. He is Chair of the Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics Area within the School of Theology, and Coordinator of the Graduate School's doctoral program in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Initially trained in mathematics and physics, he was ordained and served churches in Australia and the United States before taking a PhD in theology and philosophy at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, 1993. He is author of Fidelity with Plausibility (SUNY, 1997), which deals with Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ in the light of modern scientific
historical knowledge. He is also co-editor of Religion and Science (Routledge, 1996), a college textbook, and of Encyclopedia of Science and Religion (Macmillan Reference, 2003). Author of many scholarly articles and book chapters, his scholarly research takes place at the junction of
theology, ethics, and the natural and social sciences.
He will give a public lecture entitled "Rationality in Science and Religion: A Pragmatist Approach" and based on the following ideas: Western luminaries have predicted the demise of religion for centuries in the face of a supposedly increasingly secular, scientific culture. Yet traditional, novel, and imported religious movements are thriving and flexing political muscle all over the world, including in the United States. Behind the misfiring predictions of so-called "secularization theory" lie misunderstandings of human nature and of the way human rationality works in both religion and science. A better interpretation of human rationality should make sense of the resilience of religion in the modern world. It should also help us understand similarities and differences between the practices of science and religion. This colloquium is about a pragmatic theory of inquiry, which offers just such an interpretation of human rationality, using the resilience of religion in secular, scientific cultures as a test case.
Reading Load
Besides working with the CD-ROM, an average of about 20,000 words, or equivalent to about 40 500-word pages, are assigned for each of the 23 sessions for which reading is assigned. In addition, students may find it useful and fun to read the middle chunk of James over spring break, and students are encouraged to explore on their own the portions of the required texts not assigned for classes.
Blackboard
In your browser, go to http://blackboard.williams.edu. Log in. Select this course. You will find as choices: Announcements, Course Documents, Class Facebook, and Email. You will have logged in on the Announcements page. For any other page, simply click on its button. You may view the course facebook, send emails to some or all of the class, or access materials I have put up under Course Documents. On the Course Documents page, click to open folders containing what you want until you get to the item you want. Click on its underlined name. You will be asked for a destination folder on your computer. After specifying one, click Save to download the item to that folder.
Location: Chemistry room 206 & Physics 113
If you are not familiar with the Unified Science Center, go in through the Atrium, up the ramp to your right, up the elevator to the second floor. Walk around to your right to find Room 206. Physics 113 is on the first floor on the left towards the back.
Schedule
1. F 2/6 Introduction. Please read over the syllabus before coming to class.
2. T 2/10 Order and Place. How the world came into existence and life developed are perennial questions which have exercised the human mind throughout the ages. We compare Plato's creation story to the current scientific story. Assignment: (1) Read A History of God, Ch. 1, pp. 3-39. (2) Read the Timaeus, Section 27C through 45A.* A full (Benjamin Jowett) translation is available at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3963/books/timaeus.htm.
(3) Read the Prologue to A Walk Through Time, pp. 8-18.* (4) Download the computer movie Creation from Blackboard and click your way through it, using the guide distributed in class and also found under Course Documents/Director Movies on Blackboard.
3. F 2/13 What is Sacred. Guest instructor Professor William Darrow will introduce and lead a discussion of the idea of the sacred. (1) Read the Enuma Elish from the beginning through Tablet VII.* Read Sacred by Veikko Anttonen in Guide to the Study of Religion (Braun & McCutcheon, eds.), pp. 271-282. (3) Read Thinking Religion: the Symbol and the Sacred, by Eugenio Trias in Religion (Derrida & Vattimo, eds.), pp. 95-110.
4. T 2/17 Early Judaism and Christianity. From the Axial Age to the rabbis to the early Christian church. (1) Read Armstrong, Ch. 2, pp. 40-78 (but read lightly or skip over the discussion of the prophets Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, pp. 45-59). (2) Read Armstrong, Ch. 3, pp. 79-106 (but read lightly or skip over the discussion of the Gnostics and Marcion, pp. 94-97 and the discussion of Origen, Plotinus and Montanus, pp. 100-104). (3) Read the Second Song of Isaiah (Is 55:6-11).*
5. T 2/24 Christianity and Islam to the Middle Ages. The schism between the eastern and western Christian churches. Muhammad unifies the Arabs with a new religion. (1) Read Armstrong, Ch. 4, pp. 107-131, and Ch. 5, pp. 132-169 (but read lightly or skip over the political developments beginning with the flight to Medina, pp. 153-169).
6. F 2/27 Rational Religion. Philosophical developments during the Middle Ages. Early models of the solar system. (1) Read Armstrong, Ch. 6, pp. 170-208. (2) Read Barbour, Religion and Science, Historical and Contemporary Issues, Harper, San Francisco, 1997, Introduction and Ch. 1, pp. 3-9. Download the computer movie Solar1 from Blackboard and click your way through it, using the guide to it also available from Blackboard.
7. T 3/2 Physics and Metaphysics in the 17th Century. Science comes of age as descriptive models are replaced by predictive analytical models. Read Barbour, Religion and Science, Historical and Contemporary Issues, Harper, San Francisco, 1997, Ch. 1, pp. 9-32. (2) Read Galileo's The Starry Messenger in Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Anchor, NY, 1957, pp. 23-58.* Download the computer movie Solar2 from Blackboard and click your way through it, using the guide to it also available from Blackboard.
8. F 3/5 Nature and God in the 18th Century. Conditions of the possibilities of knowledge. Guest instructor Professor Will Dudley will introduce and lead a discussion of the contributions of David Hume and Immanuel Kant to understanding what we can know and how we can know it. (1) Read Barbour, Chapter 3, pp. 33-48. (2) Read Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section IV, Part I, pp. 322-327.* (3) Read Kant, Preface to Religion Within the Bounds of Pure Reason, pp. 33-39 (6:3-6:11).* No short discussion question is required, because the first longer paper is due. Topic: Develop a discussion question into a three page paper, about 1000 words, fully developing the arguments and presenting a convincing conclusion. You may start with one of your own earlier discussion questions or develop a new one, based on the reading to date. Try to find a question inspired by the reading that seems to you to be central to the issue of the complementarity of science and religion.
9. T 3/9 A Pragmatic Analysis of Science and Religion. A pragmatic thory of inquiry sheds light on how people decide what they know and so also sheds light on what they do. (1) Read Wildman, The Resilience of Religion in Secular Social Environments: A Pragmatic Philosophical Analysis.* (2) Read C. S. Peirce, The Fixation of Belief, in The Essential Writings, pp. 120-137.* (3) Attend Professor Wildman's public lecture, Rationality in Science and Religion: A Pragmatist Approach, in Griffin 6 at 4 pm. There will be an opportunity for members of the class to have dinner with Professor Wildman at some nice restaurant.
10. F 3/12 Pragmatic Christianity. Evaluating religion. (1) Read Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, NY, 2001, pp. 351-358.* (2) Read William James, Varieties of the Religious Experience, Touchstone, NY 1997, Introduction by Reinhold Niebuhr, pp. 5-8, and Lectures 1-3, pp. 21-77. There will be no class meeting, but discussion questions will be due by email or deposited in the instructor's mailbox by 8 am the next morning.
11. T 3/16 Questions of Authority. Galileo and the Holy See disagree. (1) Reread Barbour, pp. 13-15. (2) Read Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess in Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Anchor, NY, 1957, pp. 175-216.* (3) Read Cushing, Philosophical Implications of Physics, Cambridge, UK, 1998, Ch. 10, pp. (135-137), 137-142, (142-145), 145.*
12. F 3/19 Biology and Theology in the 19th Century. Darwin challenges natural theology. (1) Read Barbour, Ch. 3, pp. 49-74. (2) Read Charles Darwin, Essay of 1842, Part 1, in The Works of Charles Darwin, Barrett and Freeman, eds., New York University Press, NY, Vol. 10, pp. 1-16.*
Spring Break - Optional spring break reading, Williams James, Varieties, Lectures 4-19, pp. 78 -376.
13. T 4/6 Ways of Relating Science and Religion. Do religion and science conflict or are they simply different? Can there be dialogue? Can they be integrated? Are these the right questions? (1) Read Barbour, Ch. 4, pp. 77-105. (2) Read William James, Varieties, Lecture 20, Conclusions, pp. 377-402.
14. F 4/9 Models and Paradigms. To what extent do models reflect reality? To what extent do expectations condition observations? (1) Read Barbour, Ch. 5, pp. 106-136.
15. T 4/13 Similarities and Differences. Is there a common and essential core to religion? If so, can it meet the standards of judgment we associate with science? (1) Read Barbour, Ch. 6, pp 137-161.
16. F 4/16 Failure of Predictability in the Classical World. Energetic systems prove to be unpredictable, and classical physics fails to account for the behavior of atomic systems.(1) Read Barbour, Ch. 7, pp. 165-194. (2) Download the computer movies chaos and quantum from Blackboard and work your way through Section IV, Evolution of Atomic Models, in quantum, using the guide also available from Blackboard. No short discussion question is required, because the second longer paper is due. Topic: Describe a religion that makes as much sense to you as possible and analyze its relationship to science in terms of Barbour's four categories of conflict, separation, dialogue and integration. Choose an existing religion, a general category such as New Age or atheism, or simply make up a religion. Specify briefly enough about its corporate nature (community services or rituals, or whatever may take their place), individual practice (prayer, meditation, or whatever may take their place), ethics (rules for living, or whatever may take their place), and beliefs (what James calls "overbeliefs, or whatever may take their place) to give yourself and the reader something to work with. Give arguments, not just opinions! If you get me a draft some time between April 10 and April 15, I'll try to turn it around within 24 hours. Use email for drafts and the final papers. If you are itching to substitute some other topic that seems to you to better illustrate where we and you are at this point in the course, please make a date to talk with me about it first.
17.T 4/20 Quantum Reality. Quantum systems are inherently unpredictable and non-local. (1) Reread Barbour, Ch. 7, pp. 165-194. (2) Work through Section V, The Quantum World, in quantum, using the guide available on Blackboard.
18. F 4/23 Relativity and Gauge Theories of Everything. Space and time are revealed to be dependent variables, constrained by global symmetries and quite likely quantitized. (1) Reread Barbour, Ch. 7, pp. 177-181 and material yet to be determined.
19. T 4/27 Cosmogony and Creation. Our world seems to be highly dynamic and finely tuned for life. (1) Read Barbour, Ch. 8, pp. 195-220. (2) Read John Leslie, Universes, Ch 1., sections 1.4 and 1.5, pp. 2-6.* (3) Read Stuart Kauffman, At Home in the Universe, the section entitled "Alchemy," pp. 276-279.*
20. F 4/30 Evolution and Continuing Creation. Organisms reveal emergent behavior far more complex than the sum of simple building blocks. Guest instructor Professor Lois Banta will present some material and lead the discussion. (1) Read: Barbour, Ch 9, pp. 221-249. (2) Read Walk Through Time, pp. 20 - 82 (Sections on Urban Lifestyles and the First World Wide Web; Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Solutions; The Multicreatured Cell, A Giant Step Forward in Evolution) (3) Review the computer movie Creation, Sections IV and V.
21. T 5/4 Complementarity I: Mysticism. Mystical aspects of the major religions. (1) Read Armstrong, Ch. 7, pp. 209-256. (2) Read Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions, NY, 1962, Ch. 1-2, pp. 1-13.* (3) Reread James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 299-336.
22. F 5/7 Complementarity II: Modern Judaism. Guest instructor Associate Chaplian Rabbi Sigma Faye Coran will present material and lead a discussion of the relationship of science to modern Judaism. (1) Read material to be distributed regarding modern religious duty as affected by scientific developments.
23. T 5/11 Complementarity III: Process Thought. (1) Read Barbour, Ch. 11, pp. 281 through the paragraph at the top of p. 293, up to "III. Process Theology." (2) Read in David Ray Griffin, Reenchantment without Supernaturalism, A Process Philosophy of Religion, Introduction, p. 5 through half way down p. 7.* This is his set of Process criteria. (3) Then read Barbour, Ch. 11, pp. 293 - 304, "III Process Theology" to the end. (4) Finally, read Griffin, pp. 41 - 48, "Problems Created for Science by Materialism" through "Problems Created for Science by Atheism.
24. F 5/14 God and Nature. Prospects for progress in religion and science and their relationship. (1) Read Barbour, Ch. 12, pp. 305-332.
Final Paper due by the end of reading period. About 3000 words, 10 pages. Can religion and science be understood in such a way that they fruitfully complement each other?
* Packet (Materials distributed from time to time in class or available on Blackboard)
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