Table Of ContentEVOLUTION AND EMERGENCE
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Evolution and
Emergence
Systems, Organisms, Persons
Edited by
NANCEY MURPHY and
WILLIAM R. STOEGER, SJ
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Evolution and emergence : systems, organisms, persons
edited by Nancey Murphy and William R. Stoeger.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978–0–19–920471–7 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0–19–920471–3 (alk. paper)
1. Emergence (Philosophy) 2. Science–Philosophy.
I. Murphy, Nancey C. II. Stoeger, William R.
Q175.32.E44E96 2007
500–dc22 2006102305
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk
ISBN 978–0–19–920471–7
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
to Arthur R. Peacocke
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Preface
We, the editors of this volume, had the privilege of joining a small
group of faculty members and administrators at the University of San
Francisco to plan a conference on the relations between theology and
science. We were given free rein to specify the theme of the conference
and to suggest speakers. Given that we have quite different academic
backgrounds—one a philosopher and the other an astrophysicist—
we expected that we would have very different ideas for the theme.
We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we had independently
chosen the same topic: that of emergentism, on the positive side, or
reductionism on the negative side. Our reasons for the choice were
as follows: First, this philosophical issue cuts across many of the
more specific controversies regarding science and its implications for
theology. Second, this is a problem ripe for solution; recent devel-
opments in both science and philosophy have in various ways called
reductionism into question, and a variety of resources are at hand for
constructing a non-reductive view of reality. One can imagine our
excitement, then, in receiving approval from the USF team for mak-
ing this the focus of the conference, and also in having the resources
at our disposal to bring together scholars who, in our judgment, have
the best ideas to offer on this collection of related issues.
We express our deep gratitude and appreciation to all those who
participated in this stimulating conference, and to those who sup-
ported it in any way. These include foremost Stanley Nel, then Dean
of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of San Fran-
cisco; Paul V. Murphy, director of the St. Ignatius Institute at USF,
and two tireless and immensely competent staff members, Nancy
Campagna and Barbara St. Marie. The conference was co-sponsored
by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the
Natural Sciences. We thank the directors of these two institutions as
well: George V. Coyne, SJ, and Robert J. Russell, respectively. Thanks
to Jeff Phillips and David Brewer, Ph.D. students at Fuller Semi-
nary, for help with the editing and formatting of the book. Rachel
Woodforde at Oxford University Press was particularly gracious
viii Preface
and helpful seeing the typescript through its transformation into a
book.
Finally, we wish to thank one particular participant in the confer-
ence, Arthur R. Peacocke. While Peacocke was one presenter among
many, we realized that he had done more than anyone else to provide
the background against which the ideas here were developed. Among
his many contributions to the current dialogue between science and
theology, two are particularly relevant. First, he has been in the fore-
front in criticizing positivist views of science. The logical positivists’
manifesto for the unification of the sciences was based on recognition
that the sciences could be ordered hierarchically, from physics to the
social sciences, on the basis of the complexity of the systems they
study; they called for the reduction of each science to the one below,
finally intending to show that physics determines the whole of reality.
Peacocke’s contributions include the resuscitation of earlier attempts
to counter the positivists’ worldview—early writings on emergence
and downward causation. The positivists’ assumption was that in the
hierarchy of increasingly complex systems, all causation is bottom-
up, or, in other words, from part to whole. ‘Downward causation,’
then, means that the whole has a reciprocal causal influence on its
own parts. Peacocke has done a great deal to explicate this concept
of downward causation, or whole-part constraint, and to justify its
employment by means of examples, especially from his own field of
biochemistry.
Second, Peacocke has offered a model for understanding the rela-
tions between theology and the sciences that provides the background
for many of the contributors’ work in this area. Beginning with a
nonreductive account of the sciences, Peacocke argues that theology
belongs at the top for this reason: The hierarchy is ordered in terms of
increasing complexity; God in relation to everything else is necessarily
the most complex system possible; therefore, theology, as the study
of this system, must be the top-most science. This model is valu-
able for many reasons. First, the relation between theology and any
science can be understood by analogy to the relation of any science
to the sciences below it. Second, it provides a way of understanding
the claims of many scientists who use science to combat religion:
they are simply attempting to replace theology with a materialist
metaphysic.
Preface ix
In gratitude, then, for these immensely important contributions
to the theology-science conversation in general and to the work at
the USF conference in particular, the participants happily agreed to
dedicate this book to Arthur Peacocke. Sadly, Arthur passed away as
we were finishing the editorial process. He will be missed by many
friends and colleagues, but his legacy of scholarship, vision, and cre-
ative dialogue between the natural sciences and theology continues.
