Untitled - IDRC Digital Library

264 Pages·2005·1.15 MB·English

The Lab, the Temple,
and the Market
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THE LAB, THE TEMPLE,
AND THE MARKET
Reflections
at the Intersection of
Science, Religion, and Development
(cid:1)
Edited by Sharon Harper
KUMARIAN
PRESS
© International Development Research Centre 2000
Published in Canada by the International Development Research Centre
poBox8500, Ottawa, on, Canada K1G3H9
http://www.idrc.ca/books/
Published in Europe and the United States of America by Kumarian Press Inc.
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http://www.kpbooks.com/
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publishers. All paper used in this book is recycled as well as recyclable. All inks
and coatings are vegetable-based products.
Canadian Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
The lab, the temple and the market : reflections at the intersection of science,
religion and development / edited by Sharon Harper
isbn0-88936-920-8
ccgcat. no. E97-7/2000E
1. Economic development — Religious aspects.
2. Technology — Religious aspects.
3. Religion and science.
I. Harper, Sharon, 1965- .
II. International Development Research Centre (Canada)
HD75.L332000 338.9 C00-901336-9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The lab, the temple, and the market : reflections at the intersection of science,
religion, and development / edited by Sharon Harper.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
isbn1-56549-116-5(alk. paper)
1. Economic development—Religious aspects. 2. Technology—Religious
aspects.3. Religion and science. I. Harper, Sharon, 1965-
HD75.L332000
338.9--dc21 00-055935
Contents
Foreword—Pierre Beemans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Preface—Sharon Harper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Introduction—Farzam Arbab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
chapter 1
The Principle of Fundamental Oneness—Promilla Kapur . . . . . . . . . 7
The context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Hinduism: the backdrop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Self, society, and development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Modern science and the Hindu religion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Devotion, knowledge, and action. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Conclusion: an integrated paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Annex1: Selected ethical principles of Hinduism-inspired
movements for development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
chapter 2
Solidarity with the Poor—Gregory Baum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
A Roman Catholic idea of development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
The World Bank’s new interest in religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
The subjective dimension of social-science research. . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Annex1: Excerpts from papal encyclicals and statements by
the World Synod of Bishops concerning development . . . . . . . . 82
chapter 3
Rediscovering the Resources of Religion—Azizan Baharuddin. . . 105
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Islam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Annex1: Islamic scholars and organizations involved
in science, religion, and development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
(cid:2)v
CONTENTS
chapter 4
Promoting a Discourse on Science,
Religion, and Development—Farzam Arbab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
On personal experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Faith and reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Spiritual principles and the role of knowledge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Capacity-building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
afterword
Our Way of Proceeding—William Ryan, S.J. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
appendix 1
Contributing Authors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
(cid:3)vi
appendix 2
Acronyms and Abbreviations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Foreword
Only the most ingenuous or wilfully blind would pretend that after a
half century of sustained effort and many, many billions of dollars, inter-
national development agencies have at last “got it right.” If anything,
there is a pervasive sense that, in some very real way, we have failed.
True, there have been tremendous achievements: thanks in large part to
the programs of these agencies, the dedication of their staff, and the
advances of modern science and technology (s&t), more people today
have more food, better health, longer lives, more access to education,
and faster communications than ever before.
And yet, more people than ever before are living in extreme
poverty — physical, social, and moral. Education, health, and employ-
ment systems have collapsed in much of sub-Saharan Africa. The Earth
is choking in the poison and filth we have generated through ever-
increasing industrial growth justified by models of human development
that focus on consumption. Population levels outstrip the capacity of
many countries to meet basic human needs, let alone the growth in
social demand for conspicuous consumption. Both developed and devel-
oping countries are facing waves of social disintegration, with crime,
corruption, and violence as only the most visible features. The global
shift in sociocultural value systems, characterized by Westernized pop
culture and the deterioration of collective bonds of community and
kinship, has deprived whole societies of their traditional spiritual and
cultural reference points and bred disturbing patterns of social and spir-
itual alienation.
I am not implying that all of these problems can be laid at the door
of international development agencies and models. These issues do
suggest, however, that somewhere along the line we lost sight of some-
thing or that we never saw it in the first place. Most, if not all, devel-
opment agencies are inspired by a scientific, technological, economic,
and positivistic worldview; perhaps, we have been unable to listen to
what people outside our agencies and worldview have been saying.
Most people situate themselves, their day-to-day decisions, and
their hopes in the context of moral and religious belief systems that have
traditionally been seen by development agencies as outside of — if not
opposed to — our development models. As an institution with a
30-year history of looking at how s&t can be applied to resolve the
(cid:2)vii
development problems of the South, the International Development
FOREWORD
Research Centre (idrc) decided a few years ago to launch a modest
inquiry that would help us better understand how our field of action
relates to the spiritual and religious dimension of human well-being.
This was a new and contentious area for an organization like ours, which
has been accustomed to thinking of religion and spirituality as private
matters with no place in our professional lives or in a public domain like
that of “international development.” We were unsure of how to
approach the question and of whom to ask.
In the end, we were fortunate to encounter four individuals from
different cultural and regional backgrounds, all believers in their own
religious traditions and all trained as natural or social scientists, who
were willing to work together to explore how science, religion, and
development come together in their own personal and professional
(cid:3)viii worldviews. Although we had intended to bring in other actors from
various religious traditions and scientific disciplines, we decided to start
with these four as a “critical mass” and to trust that others would join
in as the inquiry progressed. This book is intended to launch that wider
stage of inquiry.
It is unclear to us at idrc where this experiment in research will
lead, either within or beyond idrc. At the very least, we hope that it
will enrich our thinking about development and about how we do our
work. We also hope that it will be a useful contribution to the growing
international discourse on the relationship between the religious, scien-
tific, and “developmental” worldviews on the improvement of the
human condition. And we would, of course, be delighted if there was
enough interest to support a continuation of our inquiry into what I
believe is one of the great challenges before governments and develop-
ment agencies: how to harness the scientific, technical, and economic
creativity of the modern world to improve the human condition while
respecting and reflecting the underlying values about human well-being
and our relationship with the world that are offered by religious and
cultural traditions.
Pierre Beemans
Vice President
International Development Research Centre
Preface
From the perspective of “research,” the conjunction of science, religion,
and development (srd) is an enormous challenge — even to appreciate
the scope of the issues. Merely a few of the entry points for research cur-
rently being explored in this area are global or universal ethics, ethics
and development, religious and faith-based responses to the concern for
environmental sustainability, religion and development, religiously
based development efforts, issues of globalization and cultural values,
indigenous belief systems and knowledge, efforts to create interreligious
dialogue and understanding, and religious and faith-based approaches
to conflict resolution. The International Development Research Centre
(idrc)srdproject is a modest effort to tease out this knot of questions,
concerns, and rich insights. This effort has been specifically designed for
a research-for-development organization with an interest in supporting
scientific research and research capacity for sustainable development,
because, simply put, the srdproject offered the opportunity to investi-
gate what faith and science have to offer each other in the 50-year-old
endeavour called development.
One of the strengths of the project is that, given the breadth of the
relevant issues, it does not ask people to change their approach to devel-
opment or to reevaluate the skills they have in their various disciplines
but to articulate their disciplinary contribution and the role played by
their faith in their approaches. With each person writing from his or her
perspective and skill set, we offer an eclectic set of reflections, but we
hope that these reflections allow readers to see the relevance of these
questions within various scientific and development discourses and to
see a richness of methods and results. The project highlights that the
governing tenets of organized religion and personal faith are not neces-
sarily divisive or repressive (although, like intellectual and political
ideologies, they can be co-opted to that task) and that belief can be
deeply motivational and strikingly fruitful in scientific pursuits. Most
of the authors emphasize how their faith has brought them a profound
understanding of interconnectedness and compassion and thus a wider
perspective on their research such that the horizon of their work
includes the effects of that research on other people, their community,
the ecosystem, minority and marginalized groups, and ultimately the
(cid:2)ix
world.