Ladislav Kvasz

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).