Ernan McMullin’s Thought on Science and Theology: An Appreciation

Abstract

Abstract:The thought of Ernan McMullin on the relationship between science and theology can be summarized with a word that he himself used: consonance. We briefly describe this epistemological proposal, and we show a concrete instance of its application by way of a short analysis of one of McMullin's interdisciplinary works, "Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution." With the help of the authoritative comment that William Stoeger has made on this paper, we sketch McMullin's effort to find a consonance between two different claims: the theological one -humans expected -and the evolutionary one -humans unexpected. In this case, consonance is reached by recurring to the classic Augustinian notion of the atemporality of God. We then show how McMullin's way of interpreting consonance affects the question of the viability of a natural theology in a scientifically informed era. In fact, his distrust of various kinds of natural theology is another crucial aspect of his epistemological framework for interdisciplinary dialogue.

Grounding Intelligibility, Safeguarding Mystery: A Neoclassical Reading of Ernan McMullin’s Legacy

“…Strong echoes of this very attitude can be found inside the metaphysical-theological ruminations of Ernan McMullin. As already anticipated, a glaring example of it is his Augustinian endorsement of the classic notion of God's atemporality, which allows him to solve some thorny interdisciplinary issues related to the challenges posed by evolutionary contingency and the non-directionality of biological evolution to a theistic worldview (McMullin 2013;Stoeger 2013;Barzaghi and Corcó 2015).…”

“…His theory of a "consonance" between the sciences and religion via the mediation of a rigorous epistemology is one of the most stimulating intellectual proposals in this field. If asked to pinpoint in a nutshell the main elements of McMullin's legacy for science and theology studies, we would list the following: his appreciation of Augustine's philosophical and theological reflection; his suspicion of the widespread use of natural theology in order to (try to) bridge the empirical sciences and theology; his acquaintance with modern and contemporary sciences, and their methodologies (among the studies on McMullin, see Allen 2006Allen , 2012Stoeger 2013;Barzaghi and Corcó 2015).…”