. . . What, exactly, is shifting in this paradigm ?

Four Theatres of Perspectival Change  

Number ONE :

 COMMUNICATION    BETWEEN  

SCIENCE    AND    RELIGION

Physicists, biologists, astronomers, theologians, priests, ministers and shamans are meeting at the same seminar tables in a spirit –unimaginable a few decades ago– of curiosity about each other and their relationship. Often perceived as adversaries, science and religion begin to appear less contradictory and increasingly compatible and complementary. 

While rapprochement may be distant, notice is being taken of some affinities, in  both method and content.

In method for example:

• Shared epistemological traits are identified in patterns of reasoning and in a fiduciary and axiomatic basis for both religion and science.
  
• Older, rigid subject-object distinctions are reconsidered. Naive notions of objectivity become problematic in, for instance, measurements in quantum physics.
  
• At the same time, our understanding of reasoning itself has evolved. The idea of rationality itself has matured to some degree. The work of Polanyi, Quine, Lakatos (to name three) brings the sciences out of an artificial ghetto of empiricist-analytic logic.  Godel’s Theorem (that logical systems reference each other) suggests relationship and interdependency among explanatory systems.

In content for example:

• Seventeenth century physics, with its conceptions of space and time as absolute, is superceded by the physics of the twentieth century in which  spacetime is relative. These and collateral developments offer a cosmology compatible with key Christian doctrines (e.g., the Incarnation), where the earlier Enlightenment physics appeared to negate them.
  
• Previous discussions of freewill and determinism, haunted by the specter of a Laplacian universe, move to new level, inspired partly by new models from the sciences. Fractals, for instance, offer a model of apparent "free," that is, not precisely predictable, variations on a standing pattern. Quantum mechanics requires consideration of randomness written into nature at the particle level. While such discoveries, applied or theoretical, complicate the questions rather than answer them, they radically alter the backdrop and the conceptual repertoire of the debate.
  
• Developments in the life sciences (e.g., genetics research; positron mapping of brain functions) are changing the terms under which we discuss the nature of human being in light of old conundrums such as personal identity and the mind-body problem. At the same time, at the frontiers of science, observations are made about such things as the nature and extended limits of perception, and about spiritual influence upon physical health.
  
• With a century of modern psychological exploration behind us, the secular concept of the "self" is evolving. For example, a  uni-dimensional determination of identity is giving way to one which is many-sided, whose complexity and flexibility requires moral anchorage yet is incompatible with fundamentalism. 
  
• As in medicine, some mental health researchers and practitioners have begun to take an interest in the resources of spiritual teachings and traditions in the interpretation of selfhood, personal growth and psychological health.
  

A metamorphosis of images highlights a transformation in our ideas of the self within society. "Linearity" is used pejoratively. In its place in our thinking and imaging, researchers turn to metaphors that give us three-dimensional, interlocking pictures. Terms such as "web" and "weave" take the place of terms of rank for relationships and for moral reasoning. Holographic metaphors and the language of "network" for instance, are used for the physiology of memory, for information processing from external environment to internal thought, and for analysis of multiple causes

Please read on . . .