FIFTY YEARS IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION: IAN BARBOUR AND HIS LEGACY

In 2003 Ian Barbour celebrated his eightieth birthday. In the 1950s he had begun to publish in the field that was to be the major work of his life, the patient, temperate, truth-seeking exploration of the relationship between science and religion. The volume under review honours and analyses the remarkable fifty years of scholarly activity that have followed, bringing together contributions from twenty experts in the field. Barbour's first full book. Issues in Science and Religion published in 1966, immediately established him as a major player in the field of science and religion. It already displayed the virtues that have characterised all his subsequent writings: an enviable breadth of knowledge derived from well-digested reading; an ability to survey in a fair-minded way the work of others, even when he did not agree with them in all respects, a clear presentation of his own position, drawing on process philosophy for the metaphysical setting that seemed to him to afford the best means of making a connection between science and religion. Of course there had been precursors of Issues (perhaps most notably the 1956 Bampton Lectures of Eric Mascall that looked to Thomistic thinking for their philosophical setting), but Barbour's book had an unparalleled influence, not least because its comprehensiveness and clear organisation made it an excellent textbook for courses on science and religion. It, and its subsequent metamorphoses of which Religion and Science (1998) is probably the most important, are essential elements in any library devoted to the issues of science and religion. Three general aspects of Barbour's thought are particularly important One is his conviction that it is the idea of 'critical realism' that best characterises the nature of careful investigation in both science and religion. The noun indicates the belief that both discourses are concerned with an encounter with the way things are, while the adjective make it clear that the nature of this encounter is something at once more subtle and more precarious than a concept of naive objectivity would be able to express. It seems, in fact, that Barbour introduced the phrase 'critical realism' to the field of science and religion, though the idea it represents was certainly in earlier circulation. In Personal Knowledge (1958), Michael Polanyi had already said that he was writing to explain how he might commit himself to what he believed to be true, even though he knew it might prove to be false. Polanyi was talking about science, but any reflective religious believer reading those words would immediately recognise a fellow feeling. The second characteristic of Barbour's method is his recourse to the process philosophy that stems from the thinking of A.N.Whitehead, which he uses as the metaphysical basis for his interdisciplinary bridge-building. Nevertheless Barbour acknowledges that Whitehead's views are in need of some revision. He points to the necessity to recognise a greater degree of personal continuity than is readily accommodated within Whitehead's event-dominated metaphysic. There is also a need to give greater recognition to the emergence of true novelty through increasing complexity than the classical process notion of panexperientialism, seeing no intrinsic difference between a proton and a person, is able to accommodate. Yet it is the categories of a revised process philosophical account of relationality that Barbour finds are most congenial to his own thought about science and religion. This is probably the aspect of his thinking in which he has been least successful in encouraging others to follow him. The third aspect of Barbour's thinking to which continuous reference is made in this book is his celebrated fourfold classification of the types of interaction between science and religion: conflict, independence, dialogue and integration. It is only two of the three European contributors to the volume (Christian Berg, Christopher Southgate) who express any reservations about the utility of this taxonomy. This fact, together with Niels Gregersen's reservations about critical realism, is perhaps indicative of the more astringent style of that continent, for which critical engagement with a person's position is seen as being more complimentary than the expression of unalloyed enthusiasm. I tend to the European view on the taxonomic issue. Harbour's grid corresponds to the four possible strategies for relationship between two discourses: one dominates the other; independent parallel existence; mutual exchange, ultimate fusion, but more detailed analysis of content is necessary to do adequate justice to the richness of the subject matter involved. Finally, one must admire Barbour for the way in which he engages not only with academic issues of science and religion, but also with ethical questions relating to the proper use of technology. His writings in this area have perhaps not been so widely read as those devoted to science and religion. Doubtless this is because, on the whole, the science and religion community itself has been less concerned with such issues, but there can be no doubt of their importance. Barbour has surely been most helpful in not allowing ethical questions to be neglected. Fifty Years of Science and Religion is a book primarily addressed to the scholarly community rather than to the general reader. It is a splendid tribute to a man who has played so significant a part in one of the most challenging and important forms of contemporary dialogue.