Project
title:
Science and Religion - their common forms of transcendence.
Abstract:
The
paper offers a new perspective on the relation between science and
religion. Based on a historical reconstruction of the scientific revolution
of the 17th century it argues that the theological elements present
in the works of scientists as Galileo, Descartes, and Newton have
a common form. These scientists use theological arguments in order
to underpin their mathematical innovations. Therefore, by examining
not the results of scientific inquiry, but rather the ways these results
were achieved, a new area for the study of the relations between science
and religion emerges. It seems, that scientific innovations happen
not in a haphazard fashion, but they reveal certain common patterns.
And these patterns of scientific innovations are related to the patterns
of transcendence in religion. The standard view on the relation between
science and religion that was dominant during the 19th and the first
half of the 20th centuries was that there is a conflict between the
scientific worldview and religious belief. Nevertheless, since the
1960s a current of publications of scholars such as I. G. Barbour,
W. L. Craig, P. Davies, C. B. Kaiser, D. N. Livingstone, A. E. McGrath,
N. Murphy, A. Peacocke, J. Polkinghorne, R. Swinburne, or T. F. Torrance
challenged this view and succeeded in showing that there are many
topics where the results of scientific inquiry and the doctrines of
theology are not conflicting but show many areas of convergence full
of the potential for a stimulating dialogue.
Short
biography:
Since 1986, Dr. Kvasz has been employed at the Faculty of Mathematics
and Physics of Comenius University. In 1993 he won the Herder Scholarship
and spent the academic year 1993/94 at the University of Vienna studying
philosophy of the Vienna Circle and of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1995
he won the Masaryk Scholarship of the University of London and spent
the 1995/96 academic year at King's College London studying the philosophy
of Imre Lakatos. In 1997 he won the Fulbright Scholarship and spent
the summer term of the1998/99 academic year at the University of California
at Berkeley, working on Husserl's theory of the Galilean revolution.
In 2000 he won the Humboldt Scholarship and spent 2001 and 2002 at
the Technical University in Berlin studying the epistemological background
of the Scientific Revolution. He is currently a member of the Union
of Slovak Mathematicians and Physicists (JSMF) and the Slovak Philosophical
Society (SFZ).
