Science and humanity : a humane philosophy of science and religion / Andrew Steane.

Andrew Steane reconfigures the public understanding of science, by drawing on a deep knowledge of physics and by bringing in mainstream philosophy of science. Science is a beautiful, multi-lingual network of ideas; it is not a ladder in which ideas at one level make those at another level redundant. In view of this, we can judge that the natural world is not so much a machine as a meeting-place. In particular, people can only be correctly understood by meeting with them at the level of their entire personhood, in a reciprocal, respectful engagement as one person to another. Steane shows that Darwinian evolution does not overturn this but rather is the process whereby such truths came to be discovered and expressed in the world. From here the argument moves towards other aspects of human life. Our sense of value requires from us a response which is not altogether the same as following logical argument. This points us towards what religion in its good forms can express. A reply to a major argument of David Hume, and a related one of Richard Dawkins, is given. The book finishes with some brief chapters setting religion in the context of all human capacities, and showing, in fresh language, what theistic religious response is, or can be, in the modern world.

Cover; Science and Humanity: A Humane Philosophy of Science and Relition; Copyright; Dedication; Acknowledgements; Contents; Epigraph; 1 Introduction; Part I: Science and Philosophy (Finding Room to Breathe); 2 Light; 3 The Structure of Science, Part 1; 3.1 A Case Study: Digital Computing; 3.2 Getting the Problem in View; 3.3 Symmetry in Physics; 3.3.1 Avoiding an Overstatement; 3.4 Thermodynamics; 4 The Structure of Science, Part 2; 4.1 The Embodiment Principle; 4.2 Biology; 4.2.1 The Evolutionary Development of the Brain; 4.3 The Role of Uncontrolled Change

5 Logic and Knowledge: The Babel Fallacy6 Reflection; 7 Purpose and Cause; 7.1 Why Has an Anteater Got a Long, Sticky Tongue?; 7.1.1 Premature Telelogy; 7.2 Science and Intellectual Discipline; 7.3 The Multi-Layered View; 8 Darwinian Evolution; 9 The Tree; Part II: Value and Meaning; 10 What Science Can and Cannot Do; 10.1 A Brief Historical Survey; 10.2 Completeness and Cogency; 10.2.1 Cogency; 11 What Must Be Embraced, Not Derived; 11.1 A Philosophical Investigation; 11.2 Reason and Faith; 12 Religious Language; 13 The Unframeable Picture; 14 A Farewell to Hume; 14.1 Introduction

14.2 The Argument fromLack of Explanatory Power14.3 An Example Witness; 14.4 Resolution: The Full Expression of Human Personhood; 14.4.1 Words, Usage, Categories; 14.4.2 Thomas Aquinas and Divine Simplicity; 14.4.3 Opening the Self, Not Just the Mind; 14.5 FourWitnesses; 14.5.1 The Gospels; 14.5.2 Bonhoeffer; 14.5.3 The Desert Fathers; 14.5.4 Soundings from R. S. Thomas; 14.6 The Refutation of the Superfluity Argument; 15 Drawing Threads Together; 16 Extraterrestrial Life; 17 Does the Universe Suggest Design, Purpose, Goodness, or Concern?; Part III: Breathing; 18 Silence

19 The Human Community20 Encounter; 21 The Human Being; 22 Witnessed to; Appendix: Boyle's Law; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Includes bibliographies and index.

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