Keywords
social constructionism
antirealism
imago Dei
Christianity and social sciences
How to Cite
Abstract
This paper critically explores the thesis according to which the main difference between science and religion is that while the former seeks to explain the causal order of the world, the latter deals with giving meaning to the totality of what exists and to individual experiences and actions. In the first part, it shows that explaining and giving meaning are solidarity endeavours, which cannot be easily separated either in science or in religion. Likewise, it finds the central issue of the dialogue between both domains in the question of the origin of meaning. In the second part, it argues against the social constructionist assumption according to which all meanings are entirely a human product. Finally, some aspects are pointed out about which the sciences and Christianity can talk about the existence of transcendent meaning in both nature and human life.
Berger, Peter y Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York (NY): Anchor Books, 1967.
Bhaskar, Roy. The Possibility of Naturalism. London: Routledge, 1979.
Boghossian, Paul. Fear of Knowledge. Against Relativism and Constructivism. Oxford: Clarendond Press, 2006.
Brooke, John Hedley. Science and Religion. Some Historial Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Burr, Vivien. Social Constructionism (2.a ed.). London: Routledge, 2003.
Clayton, Philip. Adventures in the Spirit. God, World, Divine Action. Minneapolis (MN): Fortress Press, 2008.
_____. Explanation from Physics to Theology. New Haven (CN): Yale University Press, 1989.
De Smedt, Johan y Helen De Cruz. “The Imago Dei as a Work in Progress: A Perspective from Paleoanthropology”. Zygon 49, 1 (2014): 135-156.
Elder-Vass, Dave. The Reality of Social Construction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Foster, M. B. “The Christian Doctrine of Creation and the Rise of Modern Natural Science”. Mind Vol. 43, No. 172 (1934): 446-468. [Artículo publicado en español en: Múnera, Luis Fernando; Raúl Meléndez y Carlos Miguel Gómez, Ciencia y creación. La investigación científica de la naturaleza y la visión cristiana de la realidad. Santander-Bogotá-Madrid: Sal Terrae- Editorial Javeriana - Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2018].
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. Fausto. Traducción de Pedro Gálvez. Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, 2013.
Gómez, Carlos Miguel. “Fe y conocimiento. Investigación sobre la función epistémica de la creencia religiosa”. En ¿Ciencia o religión? Exploraciones sobre las relaciones entre religión y racionalidad en el mundo contemporáneo, editado por Raúl Meléndez, Luis Fernando Múnera y Carlos Miguel Gómez, 19-44. Bogotá: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana- Universidad del Rosario, 2017.
_____. “Historicidad, realismo y verdad”. Principia: An International Journal of Epistemology 21, 1 (2017): 77-98.
_____. “In the Beginning Was the Deed? Discovering the Presence of the Spirit in Social Construction”. Scientia et Fides 6, 1 (2018): 53-77.
Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis (IN): Hackett, 1978.
Grondin, Jean. Del sentido de la vida. Un ensayo filosófico. Barcelona: Herder, 2005.
Habermas, Jürgen. “Realism after the Pragmatic Turn”. En Truth and Justification, por J. Habermas, 1-49, editado por Barbara Fultner. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press, 2003.
Hacking, Ian. The Social Construction of What? Cambridge (MA)-London: Harvard University Press: 2000.
Harrison, Peter. The Territories of Science and Religion. Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Hefner, Philip. The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture and Religion. Minneapolis (MN): Fortress Press, 1993.
Heidegger, Martin. Ser y tiempo. Traducción de Jorge Rivera. Madrid: Trotta, 2016.
Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston (IL): Northwestern University Press, 1970.
Kukla, Andre. Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Science. London-New York: Routledge, 2000.
McGrath, Alister. A Scientific Theology: Nature. London: T&T Clark, 2002.
_____. Science and Religion. A New Introduction (2.a ed.). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
_____. Surprised by Meaning. Science, Faith and How We Make Sense of Things. Louisville (KY): Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.
Múnera, Luis Fernando; Raúl Meléndez; y Carlos Miguel Gómez. “La doctrina de la creación como espacio para el diálogo entre las ciencias y el cristianismo”. En Ciencia y creación. La investigación científica de la naturaleza y la visión
cristiana de la realidad, editado por Luis Fernando Múnera, Raúl Meléndez y Carlos Miguel Gómez, 1-20. Santander-Bogotá-Madrid: Sal Terrae- Editorial Javeriana-Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2018.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Anthropology in Theological Perspective. Edinburg: T&T Clark: 1985.
Peters, Ted. God, The World’s Future. Systematic Theology for a New Era (2.a ed.). Minneapolis (MN): Fortress, 2000.
Phillips, D. Z. Religion withouth Explanation. Hoboken (NJ): Blackwell, 1978.
Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York (NY): Oxford University Press, 2000.
Polanyi, Michael. Meaning. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press, 1975.
Putnam, Hilary. Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Smith, Christian. What is a Person? Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. The Meaning and End of Religion. Minneapolis (MN): Fortress Press, 1991.
Turner, Stephen. The Social Theory of Practices. Tradition, Tacit Knowledge and Presuppositions. Cambridge: Polity, 1994.
Van Huyssteen, Wentzel. Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006.
This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights.
Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.