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Simon Appolloni PhD, Department for the Study of Religion, and the School for the Environment, University of Toronto

Key words: Ecothology; (Mis)Appropriating Science; Environmental Ethics; Scientific Processes

“Ecotheologians Taking Science Seriously: An Assessmentof Lisa H. Sideris’s Claim that They Ought to Understand

Nature ‘As Science Understands It’”

In her investigation of a number of ecotheologians who have appropriated science in order to develop a new ethic that speaks to the escalating environmental crisis, scholar of religion Lisa H. Sideris has been very critical about how many misrepresent nature by “neglect and/or misuse of basic scientific data.”1 Specifically, she maintains that they have not dealt adequately with the implications of natural selection. She is especially critical of their “panglossian” portrayal of science, but her indictment of “postmodern and green critiques of science,”2 as well as and her stance toward “new” physics and the appropriationof science “in mythopoeic form,” suggests that she is also critical of the larger grouping of Christian thinkers appropriating science. Sideris’s main contention, then, is that we ought to understand nature “as science understands it,”3 adding, “if details of the model are wrong, the ethics that emerges will, accordingly, be inappropriate.”4 Is Sideris correctin suggesting that some Christian authors have not taken science seriously? This paper will address this question in regards to three specific ecotheologians whose work she discusses: Sallie McFague, Michael Northcott and Rosemary Radford Ruether. It will

1 Lisa H. Sideris, Environmental Ethics: Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003); 264.2 Lisa Sideris, “Evolving Environmentalism,” Worldviews 11 (2007): 15, doi:

10.1163/156853507X173504.3 Sideris, Environmental Ethics, 27.4 Ibid., 6.

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assess Sideris’s conclusions through a hermeneutic of suspicion and a critical analysis of her approach. The paper will end with a brief discussion of some of the difficulties that underline anyassessment of how Christian ethicists appropriate science by drawing our attention to the contention that how science “understands” nature is anything but straightforward, requiring amore comprehensive discussion of how science is structured, and some of its processes for knowing reality and communicating its findings.

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In her investigation of a number of ecotheologians who have

appropriated science in order to develop a new ethic, one that

speaks to the escalating environmental crisis, scholar of

religion Lisa H. Sideris has been very critical about how many

misrepresent nature by “neglect and/or misuse of basic scientific

data.”5 Specifically, she maintains that they have not dealt

adequately with the implications of natural selection. She is

especially critical of their “panglossian” portrayal of science.

She is also critical of what she terms “postmodern and green

critiques of science,”6 and she maintains a suspicious stance

toward “new” physics and the appropriation of science “in

mythopoeic form.” Sideris’s main contention, then, is that we

ought to understand nature “as science understands it,”7 adding,

“if details of the model are wrong, the ethics that emerges will,

accordingly, be inappropriate.”8

While I share in much of what Sideris concludes about the

quality with which some Christian eco-ethicists appropriate

science, I disagree with her on some fundamental claims she

makes. This paper is not, however, an examination of Sideris’s

5

Lisa H. Sideris, Environmental Ethics: Ecological Theology, and Natural Selection (New York:Columbia University Press, 2003); 264.6 Lisa Sideris, “Evolving Environmentalism,” Worldviews 11 (2007): 15, doi:

10.1163/156853507X173504.7 Sideris, Environmental Ethics, 27.8 Ibid., 6.

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conclusions nor of mine. Instead, I would like to focus on

exploring why it is that we seem to differ on our conclusions

about the quality with which some Christian thinkers have

appropriated science in order to foster an environmental ethic.

The reason I wish to put forward is this: where we differ in our

conclusions rests, in large measure, upon our respective

understandings of how science is structured, and some of its

processes for knowing reality, and communicating its findings.

There is much at stake in this particular context. This is

not merely an analysis of Christians appropriating science, but

Christian ethicists finding normative values within science that

speak to the increasingly pressing issues that have arisen from a

planetary environmental crisis. Those of you following, even

half-heartedly, the findings from scientists on the rate of

species extinction, ocean acidification, global nitrogen levels

and, of course, climate change, understand that there is little

room for maneuver should we get the science wrong.

Normally, when appraising how Christians appropriate

science, that is, determining whether they take it seriously, I

suggest we generally look for criteria such as:

1. a coherent and sophisticated understanding of the currentscientific theories;

2. a resolve to avoid conclusions not supported by current scientific evidence;

3. a readiness to accept the challenges to previously-held beliefs brought forth by scientific inquiry; and – related to the previous criterion –

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4. attention to potential incompatibilities between empirically-based assertions and metaphysical claims.9

But there is another step, I maintain, that is not always

addressed, perhaps one that is taken for granted by

interlocutors: expressing how science is structured, discussing

its processes for knowing reality and communicating its findings.

Sideris and I both agree that science is “indispensable for

guiding and informing our ethical interventions in the natural

world,”10 Yet, how science “understands” nature is anything but

straightforward. There exist multiple understandings of how

science operates and arrives at it conclusions. To my knowledge,

nowhere does Sideris underline explicitly how we are to

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Brian Swimme, “Science a Partner in Creating the Vision,” in Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology, eds. Anne Lonergan and Caroline Richards (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1987); Celia Deane-Drummond, “Theology and the Biological Sciences;” and Philip Clayton, “Theology and the Physical Sciences,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed., ed. David F. Ford (Oxford; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1997). Clayton argues that the beliefs a theologian affirms “should be consistent with the results of disciplined study of the natural world” (354). Deane-Drummond argues that there is a need for more theologians to take biological issues seriously, but admits this cannot come about unless theology “becomes a shared task, where mutual encounter and engagement can take place” (366). Along with this must come a “readiness to accept the challenge of the biological sciences in all areas of theology, without necessarily simply accepting biological empiricism as the final arbiter of such theology” (367). The issue is not merely about the quantity of Christianswho marginalize scientific empirical evidence, but the quality or depth of conviction with which they do it. 10 Lisa Sideris, “Science as Sacred Myth? Ecospirituality in the Anthropocene

Age,” in Linking Ecology and Ethics for a Changing World: Values, Philosophy, and Action, eds. Ricardo Rozzi, S.T.A. Pickett, Clare Palmer, Juan J. Armesto, J. Baird Callicott (Springer Publishing – details unclear, p. 157); see https://iub.academia.edu/LisaSideris)

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understand nature “as science understands it,” except by

delineating her preference for biological science, especially

Darwinian science. It bears mentioning that addressing

comprehensively how science is structured and what processes it

incorporates to know reality and communicate its findings, far

exceeds the parameters of this short paper. However, such a feat

will not be needed here. I wish solely to point out that there

indeed exist differences. And that an understanding of such

differences needs to be taken into account in any appraisal of

how Christian ethicists – or any person concerned about the

environmental crisis we face – appropriate science.

I will begin, then, with a brief outline of some of

Sideris’s main contentions and I will point to where she and I

agree and disagree. I will briefly explain some of the rationale

behind my understanding of science. I entreat your patience on my

referencing some scientific concepts without providing more

thorough background – though I will be happy to clarify issues

following the discussion. I will explain, in brief, one important

theory for my discussion, the Gaia theory.

To begin, then, Sideris and I do agree on her criticism of

the ethical vision of eco-theologian Sallie McFague which gives

the impression of yearnings for a loving God who does not wish

there to be suffering, or for Christian hopes for some ultimate

redemption (paraphrasing from Isaiah), “the lion and the lamb,

the child and the snake, lie down together; where there is food

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for all; where neither people nor animals are destroying one

another.”11 Sideris presents a cogent argument when she concludes

that the Christian anthropocentric sensibilities on the

significance and importance of the human compared to the non-

human prevents these theologians from fully grasping and

accurately comprehending what science is telling them about the

negative aspects associated with our interrelatedness,

interconnectedness and utter dependence on the larger biotic

community.

I also agree with Sideris’s critique of some Christian

thinkers, such as Michael Dowd and Connie Barlow, as well as some

scientists, such as E.O. Wilson, who – in their embrace of

science as a wisdom for our time – seem to elevate science to a

role of a sacred, self-sufficient normative guide, as a “sacred

new mythology” in itself. In this latter grouping, Sideris

targets a very broad grouping of proponents of what she calls the

“New Genesis” movement. Her central contention is that this

movement, also referred to as ‘The epic of Evolution’, or ‘The

Universe Story’, presents narratives that tend to encourage awe

at scientific information and expert knowledge as the final

arbiter of what is most ‘real’ about our world.

11

Ibid., 76; this adaptation of a biblical quote (Isaiah 65) actually stems from Sallie McFague’s writing, which Sideris uses to show how her ethic cannotbe supported by science. Ruether, we will see, uses the same quote.

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On these accounts, Sideris and I are in agreement. To

seemingly brush aside some of the darker visions of Darwinian

science does not display evidence of a coherent and sophisticated

understanding of this science, nor does it seem to attend to

potential incompatibilities between empirically-based assertions

and metaphysical claims. As for elevating science to a role of

sacred, self-sufficient normative guide, such a conclusion

appears symptomatic of a narrow epistemology, one that alludes to

scientific materialism. It is reductive and does not display

evidence of a coherent and sophisticated understanding of the

complexities of the natural world.

Where Sideris and I tend to disagree on our appraisals of

Christian authors appropriating science rests broadly on two main

issues:

1. her privileging of the biological sciences, especially

Darwinian science, over the inclusion of multiple

scientific branches (such as contemporary concepts and

understandings of reality from quantum physics,

cosmology, incorporating transdisciplinary theories such

as systems theory and the Gaia theory, with its inclusion

of evolutionary geology), and

2. her dismissal of the import of myth within scientific

discovery.

She suggests, for instance, that Darwinian theory, “more so than

any other scientific theory…connects[…] us with a primordial past

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and with all other life forms, past and present.”12 And that we

can fully understand evolution from what the biological sciences

alone tell us. In fact, her critique stems largely – and almost

exclusively – from readings in the Darwinian biological

sciences.13 She is very doubtful that a narrative story that

12

Ibid., 77. Curiously, Sideris readily admits that Darwin’s attempt to explain the human species, “physical, mental, and moral evolution – exclusively from the side of natural history, as he characterizes his project in The Descent of Man,” marks “a certain type of reductionism” (78). She counters this conclusion by adding it is nevertheless “an oddly expansive kind of reductionism that remains compatible with a sense of wonder, because the recognition of our biological nature, our ties to lower animals and distant evolutionary past, was, in Darwin’s view, utterly ennobling.” She then adds that these connections “enrich and complicate what it means to be human,” suggesting that “what it means to be human cannot be reduced to any one meaning” (78, italics in original). My point is this: if a reduction of meanings is eschewed by Sideris, then why does she suggest that the understanding of the various meanings of being human can be reduced to one field of science? To be sure, Sideris’s aim in this section is to demonstrate that wonder ought to be found in nature and a shared natural history and not in science itself, which she accuses Dawkins and Wilson of doing; the former decentralizes humans while the latter “puts humans and the human mind front and center” (78).13 To be sure, Sideris’s embrace of modern evolutionary biology, particularly

Darwinian evolution to the exclusion of other fields of science, does not meanshe espouses neo-Darwinist thinking as understood by its main proponent, Richard Dawkins. She distinguishes between Darwinism and neo-Darwinism in later writings and adeptly demonstrates how many Christian thinkers conflate the two, saying ecotheologians conflate neo-Darwinism with Darwinism and, hence, “Darwin’s worldview with a mechanistic science that sees organisms as dead machines and/or with the excesses of Enlightenment rationality ignore, orperhaps have simply never encountered,” Sideris, “Evolving Environmentalism,” 76. Still, the focus is clearly on Darwinism as a whole. In “Evolving Environmentalism” (73ff.), Sideris notes that it is Dawkin’s “hyperbolic proseabout the utter meaninglessness of evolution,” as well as others of his ilk “(particularly sociobiologist E.O. Wilson and, at times, philosopher Daniel Dennett), [who] have undertaken the greatest reductionist move of all by rendering everything that is connoted by Darwin – good, bad, and indifferent –down to one rather narrow and dogmatic interpretation” (74). She admits modernday sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists, and other Darwinian

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articulates how the universe came to be, and how it has developed

(cosmology) can have any bearing upon one’s approach to the

environmental issues.

But can we fully understand evolution from what the

biological sciences alone tell us? And can we isolate the process

of scientific inquiry from myth?

My own research, borrowing much upon the works of

philosophers such as Mary Midgley and historian and philosopher

of science Thomas Kuhn, has led me to conclude that the manner in

which we make sense of the world always rests on a larger

conceptual scheme. Our conceptual scheme, even in scientific

work, frames how we interpret facts. Moreover, as Thomas Kuhn

attests, the scientific process not as a purely rational process,

but one that entails the entire spectrum of human experience: it

takes place within a fragmented social community, under social

forces, with habits and biases, and within a particular culture

that influences what science is carried out, as well as within a

certain paradigm that is rarely questioned.

Moreover, as Mary Midgley argues, myths are important to the

processes of science, and that scientists are influenced by myths

in the formulation of their theories. Biologist Brian Goodwin,

for instance, finds interesting parallels between Darwin’s darker

reductionists have “misconstructed the Darwinian project” (78), showing Darwinism as embracing a disenchanted, mechanical worldview. But, she maintains the solution does not lie in embracing postmodern physics at the expense of evolutionary theory or “in bending the rules of science to allow some types of explanation to be included as naturalistic.”

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vision of nature and the Christian doctrine of sin and atonement.

Goodwin compares the view of organisms being constructed by

groups of genes whose goal is to leave more copies of themselves

– the hereditary material being “selfish” – to humans being born

in sin and perpetuating in sexual reproduction; greed and pride

are basic elements of our flawed, sinful condition. The

inherently selfish qualities of the hereditary material,

reflected in competitive interactions between organisms, which

results in the survival of the fittest, parallels how humanity is

condemned in Christian tradition to life of conflict and

perpetual toil.14

On the matter of myth, Midgley writes, “We are accustomed to

think of myths as the opposite of science. But in fact, they are

a central part of it: the part that decides its significance in

our lives. So we very much need to understand them.”15 Kuhn’s

thinking already opens the doors to understanding science not as

a pure rational endeavour. And since science is a fully human

experience, and not some natural or mechanical process, and

because people are essentially purposive beings, Midgley 14

This account comes from O’Murchu, Evolutionary Faith, 51-52. Brian Goodwin speaks of this in his book, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1996); cf.: Mary Midgley (Gaia: The Next Big Idea [London: Demos, 2001], 36), who also quotes Goodwin who stresses, “Darwinian metaphors are grounded in the myth of human sin and redemption.” See also David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin Books, 1997). Noble looks at the historical development of science and technology and arguesthat the religious myth of redemption inspired both scientists and engineers in their endeavours to create more technology.15 Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By (London: Routledge, 2003), 1.

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concludes, myths naturally reflect what constitute an important

purpose.16

Not all myths are good. The myth above pervades evolutionary

science – especially in Richard Dawkin’s notion of a selfish

gene. Midgley believes it is mistaken about our purpose, as it

presents a world in which enlightened self-interest is a

sufficient force to lead life along its evolutionary path to

where we are today. Myths are not lies but “imaginative patterns,

networks of powerful symbols that suggest particular ways of

interpreting the world. They shape its meaning.” This is import,

for, as she concludes, “The way we imagine the world determines

what we think is important in it.”17 Myths, therefore, are

powerful, and once they gain a footing in the consciousness of

scientists and the larger society, they are long sustaining.18

16 Midgley, Evolution as Religion, 158: “The choice is not between integrating facts into one’s world-picture,” she adds, “It is between good and bad world-pictures.” Writer and futurist Alvin Toffler, in the foreward to Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stenger’s book (Order out of Chaos, xi-xxvi), reminds us that science is an open system embedded in society and linked to it by very dense feedback loops; it is, therefore, powerfully influenced by external environment. Its development is shaped by cultural receptivity to its dominantideas. This explains why the acceptance of the mechanistic view coincided withthe rise of a factory system and why the rise in technology (i.e.: railroad, steel, textile and auto) seemed to confirm the universe as an engineer’s “Tinkertoy.”17 Midgley, Evolution as Religion 1, 2. Of particular interest to Midgley is her

discussion on the myth of progress.18 Ibid., 4; when discussing how myths change, Midgley adds: The question is specially urgent in times of rapid change, because patterns

of thought that are really useful in one age can make serious trouble in the next one. They don’t necessarily have to be dropped. But they do often have tobe reshaped or balanced by other thought-patterns in order to correct their faults. …In the process, myths do not alter in the rather brisk, wholesale way

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While attempts to eschew mythopoeic narratives from

scientific understandings appears to be an improbable endeavor,

trying to understand our world from the perspective of

evolutionary biological sciences alone, also seems futile, and

misguided.

Midgley, echoing the sentiments of many scientists,

maintains that the world we are trying to understand is often a

great deal more complex than one scientific approach is ever

likely to satisfactorily capture completely and calls for a

pluralism not only amongst the sciences but amongst all ways and

branches of knowing our world. Paraphrasing biologist J.B.S.

Haldane, she says, the world is probably not just much queerer

than we suppose but much queerer than we can suppose.”19 Midgley

calls for the use of “a number of different conceptual toolboxes”

to be used together, adding that “there is no single law showing

us how we should combine them.20

Along the same line of thinking, physicists David Bohm and David

F. Peat call for greater creativity and communication in the

sciences with a greater emphasis on the whole and not on

that much contemporary imagery suggests.19 Midgley, “Concluding Reflections,” 968-9. Also Midgley (The Myths We Live By,

Chapter 4) compares various ways of knowing the world to using a variety of maps for the same reality: “Reality is always turning out to be a great deal more complex than people expect…. We know that the political world is not a different world from the climatological one, that it is the same world seen from a different angle. Different questions are asked, so naturally there are different answers” (27).20 Midgley, “Concluding Reflections,” 969.

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fragments. Fragmentation, they argue, is not the same as simple

specialization. The division of knowledge into various

subdivisions in science is necessary to its developing precise

knowledge about reality. It is when boundaries are rigid,

however, that problems occur. For this reason they conclude:

“[I]n general, science today is becoming more and more

specialized so that an individual scientist may spend a lifetime

working in a particular narrow field and never come into contact

with the wider context of his or her subject.”21 The two authors

call for fluid boundaries between specializations and a greater

awareness of the wider context by other scientists.22

21 David Bohm and David F. Peat, 5.22 Ibid., see Chapter 1. Bohm and Peat are not alone in their thinking. There

are evolutionary biologists that feel they can indeed gather insights when taking the wider view. In “Biological Theory: Postmodern Evolution?” (Nature 455, no.8 [September 2008]:281-284, doi:10.1038/455281a), John Whitfield recounts ameeting of a group of evolutionary scientists that took place at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Altenberg, Austria. The meeting has received a fair amount of hype — in the blogosphere it was dubbed “The Woodstock of Evolution.” Indeed, the scientists there were discussing the possible course of evolutionary theory based on the belief thatthere is something to evolutionary theory from the so called postmodern camp that cannot simply be dismissed. One scientist, Massimo Pigliucci, while shying away from the term “postmodern,” nevertheless voiced his hope of “moving from a gene-centric view of causality in evolution to a pluralist, multilevel causality.” The author of the article, recognizing the elephant in the room adds, “Postmodernists in the humanities call this ‘decentering’, and they are all for it.” Overall, a tone of caution was apparent at the gatheringin Austria that thwarted any tendency to accept all theories as being equal, while simultaneously recognizing that the modern synthesis was not sufficient to account fully for evolutionary developments. Noteworthy about this gathering is that the worries of the participants were not about the postmodernists on the left. Whitfield writes: Quite the reverse — the dominant political concern was a fear of attack from

fundamentalists. As Gould discovered, creationists seize on any hint of splitsin evolutionary theory or dissatisfaction with Darwinism. In the past couple of decades, everyone has become keenly aware of this, regardless of their

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This does not mean that Darwinian theory does not adeptly

connect us with our primordial past, nor present us with a deep

understanding of evolution. Darwin’s writings, especially as

interpreted through Mary Midgley, reveal understandings of our

interdependency and interrelatedness to a deep past. Borrowing

upon the work of evolutionary theorist Peter Kropotkin, for

example, she reveals a nuanced understanding of what Darwin might

have meant by “struggle for existence.” Kropotkin became

interested in the works of Charles Darwin in the late nineteenth

century. He was in full agreement that the “struggle for

existence” played a key role in evolution, but he rejected the

ideas of Thomas Huxley who placed great emphasis on competition

and conflict in the evolutionary process.23 From reading

satisfaction or otherwise with the modern synthesis. ‘You always feel like you’re trying to cover your rear,’ says Love. ‘If you criticize, it’s like handing ammunition to these folks.’ So don’t criticize in a grandstanding way,says Coyne: ‘People shouldn’t suppress their differences to placate creationists, but to suggest that neo-Darwinism has reached some kind of crisis point plays into creationists’ hands,’ he says. It is tempting to say that it’s not just genes that express themselves in an environment that responds and reshapes itself around them, feeding back and complicating matters beyond simple cause and effect; the same applies to ideas.Sideris too expresses concern with the fundamentalists (see footnote 43);

though, she is still concerned with the postmodernists. Yet, not all scientists and even evolutionary biologists would agree that the postmodern isthe enemy here and I suggest it is because the cogency of its arguments is prevailing. 23 Midgley, The Solitary Self: Darwin and the Selfish Gene (Durhman, England: Acumen,

2010), 46. Compare how Sideris and Midgley each understands interdependence inreading Darwin. Midgley borrows from the writings of Kropotkin and his experiences studying animals over a hundred years ago in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. He observed two aspects on the notion of interdependence: One was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most

species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature….The other wasthat even in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to find – although I was eagerly looking for it – that bitter struggle for the

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Kropotkin, Midgley finds evidence, that “the fittest” members of

an interdependent animal community, “are not necessarily the

strongest, nor indeed the cleverest, but the most sociable: those

whose temperament most inclines them to friendly cooperation.”24

Indeed, she finds that Darwin shows how “friendly order and

cooperation – how much, indeed, of what we call humanity – there

is already in the lives of other social animals,”25 which

emphasizes how much our animal nature is not alien but part of

who we are, which is part of a deep past. While far from a

“panglossian” view of the world, Midgley’s reading of Darwinism

does point to a world not as dark as Sideris claims.

Yet, as Elisabet Sahtouris, an evolutionary biologist

herself, argues, we need to take a broader, more holistic

cosmological look at evolution. In doing so, we find, on the

whole, that life, represented in its earliest stages as ancient

bacteria, while having “competed with each other for resources as

they caused major planetwide problems such as starvation and

global pollution […] invented new technologies to solve them, but

means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species,[original italics] which was considered by most Darwinists (though not by Darwin himself) as the dominant characteristic of the struggle for life and the main factor in evolution. [Instead] I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support [capitalization in original] carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of thegreatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution (48). This view certainly runs counter to the emphasis put forth by Sale on

individual struggle.24 Ibid., 49.25

Midgley, Solitary Self, 11.

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finally had to negotiate and learn to cooperate in communities

and in the ultimate symbiotic bacterial community….”26 In other

words, with this wider perspective Sahtouris can conclude, not

unlike what Midgley says about “fittest” as being the most

“social,” that “The best life insurance for any species in an

ecosystem is to contribute usefully to sustaining the lives of

other species, a lesson we are only beginning to learn as

humans.”27 Such a conclusion would seem to support some of the 26 Elisabet Sahtouris, “The Conscious Universe,” in When Worlds Converge: What

Science and Religion Tell Us about the Story of the Universe and Our Place in It, eds. Clifford N. Matthews, Mary Evelyn Tucker and Philip Hefner (Peru, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 2002), 69. Sahtouris speaks of research that investigates genetic alteration at cellular levels, “as intelligent responses to changing environmental conditions in multi-celled creatures” (69). Scientists are finding that DNA is freely traded in the world of microbes to benefit both individuals and their communities. This idea of gene trading, she maintains, suggest that we should give a lesser import to Darwinian natural selection, asgene trading shows how organisms can cope with unpredictable and extreme environments by transmitting to the offspring behavioural traits. She posits that “we are closer to the much-discredited Lamarck than to Darwin” in this sense. Midgley is making a similar observation in reading Darwin’s works. She notes Darwin was perturbed by oversimplified misrepresentations of natural selection as being the exclusive reason for species modification. She adds, “No doubt one reason why this oversimplification bothered him was that he always remained interested in Lamarck’s idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics;” Midgley, Solitary Self, 102.27 Sahtouris, 70. It should be noted that in Darwin’s later work he sees

“struggle” more as contending with the elements. Sideris quotes Darwin on his observation of a plant in extremely dry conditions. The plant is “said to struggle for life against the drought […] though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture” (Sideris, Environmental Ethics, 222, quotingfrom Darwin’s The Origin of Species). She concludes from this that “Dependence and struggle go hand in hand because the resources upon which an organism depends are not always provided by nature. Food that is abundant one year may be extremely scarce in another” (222). Compare Sideris’s understanding of this passage with how Midgley understands it. Midgley repeats the same passage by Darwin we read above but adds the sentences preceding and following it, and itis worth repeating here to appreciate the difference: I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in large and

metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another [emphasis added by

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conclusions of Christian theorists who do not consider nature to

be as “dark” as Sideris would have us believe.

So where does this leave us? Can we choose to pass over the

mythopoeic nature of science? Is nature as dark as Sideris –

relying on her interpretation of Darwin – attests? Can Darwinian

theory, “more so than any other scientific theory…connect […] us

with a primordial past and with all other life forms, past and

present? Or do other branches of science, such as cosmology,

which tells us that we are ostensibly star dust, having been

formed by the very basic elements that form stars also connect us

with our primordial past?

Midgley], (which is more important) not only the life of the individual but success in leaving progeny…A plant on the edge of a desert is said to strugglefor life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture…When we reach the Arctic regions, or snow-capped mountains, or absolute deserts, the struggle for life is almost exclusively with the elements (Midgley, The Solitary Self, 46, also quoting from Darwin’s The Origin of Species). Here, Midgley, noting the term “struggle,” while replete with military

undertones which makes it misleading, as it allows for any kind of difficulty or effort, concedes it can indeed include fighting. But, she adds, “it can equally include cooperation in the face of natural stresses” (Midgley, The Solitary Self, 46). While Sideris would agree with Midgley that there is more thanone meaning to “struggle,” that is, not simply a struggle amongst animals but between animals and “the very conditions of life” (Sideris, Environmental Ethics, 222). Midgley’s reading of Darwin – which is more in keeping with Kropotkin’s – places more emphasis on struggle, especially in Darwin’s later work, as contending with the elements. Midgley concedes Sideris’s main point where, in Midgley’s parlance, “cooperation and competition go together as two sides of the same coin” Midgley, Gaia: The Next Big Idea, 35).

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And finally, what about Gaia theory? Sideris also dismisses

the import of the Gaia theory.28 Yet, the Gaia theory seems to

incorporate both a wide and inclusive array of scientific

branches as well as a mythic quality, one that could be very

helpful to fostering amongst humans greater intimacy with our

planet. Briefly put, Gaia, as first theorized by chemist James

Lovelock with the assistance of biologist Lynn Margulis, is a

view of the Earth that sees it as a self-regulating system made

up from the totality of organisms, the surface rocks, the ocean

and the atmosphere tightly coupled as an evolving system. The

theory sees this system as having a goal – the regulation of

surface conditions so as always to be favourable as possible for

contemporary life.”29

In short, the theory evinces notions of cooperation amongst

the atmosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and

28 In Environmental Ethics, 54, she emphasizes “Gaia scientists remain skeptical that natural systems can generate normative guidelines for human relationshipswith nature and the earth as a whole.” Elsewhere, she states, “It is not surprising that Lovelock’s Gaia concept should resonate with Odum’s ecosystem idea [an idea Sideris earlier critiques because of its overemphasis on the cooperative nature of ecosystems (see 31ff.)], given that ‘there was a lot of panglossism in James Lovelock’” (52). As with her take on ecology, Sideris posits that Ruether chooses selectively from Gaian theory to emphasize its cooperative nature. In “Religion, Environmentalism, and the Meaning of Ecology,” Sideris refers to Gaia only once and with little enthusiasm for the sense of “earth as mother” invokes: “An understanding of our planet as a single integrated entity, a living organism […] upheld as an important featureof both the premodern and postmodern views. (For this reason, many ecotheologians also gravitate toward the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, which describes our planet in similar terms and also evokes a sense of earth as mother or goddess.)” 29 James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia, 208.

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barysphere for maintaining over the course of billions of years,

conditions on Earth such that life could thrive. But the theory

also points to intra-scientific cooperation: as Lynn Margulis

points out, the theory itself cannot be understood without

collaboration from biologists, especially microbiologists,

geologists, geochemists, atmospheric chemists, and even

meteorologists in order “to understand science outside their own

fields.”30

It is perhaps because Lovelock named this theory after a

Greek goddess (something for which some scientists will never

forgive him), that some theorists have remained aloof to the

theory. Science writer Fred Pearce, on discovering in 1994 that

Lovelock was considering changing the name of the theory wrote

the following in New Scientist,

Gaia as metaphor; Gaia as a catalyst for scientific enquiry;Gaia as literal truth; Gaia as Earth Goddess. Whoever she is, let’s keep her. If science cannot find room for the grand vision, if Gaia dare not speak her name in Nature, then shame on science. To recant now would be a terrible thing, Jim. Don’t do it.31

Lovelock, in fact, was considering changing the name of the

theory to (“Biocybernetic Universal System

Tendency/Homoeostasis”) because of its mystical connotations. In

30

Margulis, Symbiotic Planet, 125.31 Fred Pearce, quoted in Midgley, Gaia: The Next Big Idea, 22. Originally found

in “Gaia, Gaia, Don’t Go Away,” New Scientist (May 28, 1994): 43.

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the end, he chose to keep the name, not wanting to lose the

poetry and emotion it evokes.32 And this is the crux of the

matter: Gaia holds promise as a scientific theory, and it wields

transformative power as an ethos. Curiously, as Midgley points

out, the mythical quality that has many scientists and theorists

reject the concept of Gaia is no less present in Dawkin’s selfish

gene, which many embrace.33

In conclusion, I want to reiterate that my presentation is

not about whether my critique of how Christian theorists

appropriate science is more adept than that of Sideris, nor is it

directly about my particular portrayal of the scientific process.

Instead, the aim has been to underline how much of what we

conclude about one’s appropriation of science rests on our actual

understanding of science.

We are quick to discuss how we must ‘get the facts

straight’, which is not wrong. But rarely do we discuss how

scientists arrive at facts or how they are interpreted. Even more

rarely do we examine the narratives and myths underpinning our

comprehension of the universe. Moreover, we overlook how skewed

our understanding of nature becomes when the scientific

boundaries we set to study nature are rigid. Science, I maintain

(to quote Stanley Aronomitz), does not operate like some sort of

epistemological self-cleaning oven, where, “proper scientific

32 Lovelock, Gaia, xiii.33 Midgley, Gaia: The Next Big Idea, 36.

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methods filter our social and cultural influences in the process

of discovery.”34

As the oceans get warmer and our climate more unstable, how

Christians read the science will become increasingly more

important. How we assess their reading, I have suggested here,

should include an open dialogue on how we understand the

scientific processes.

34 Physicist Alan Sokal, for instance, declares (201), that while facts must be interpreted, “proper scientific methods filter our social and cultural influences in the process of discovery,” insinuating the opposite of what Kuhnis implying, that science operates like some sort of epistemological self-cleaning oven; see Stanley Aronowitz, “Alan Sokal’s ‘Transgression’,” in The Sokal Hoax, 201.